There has long been a fervent movement in academia which has sought to bring about Marxist ideals in America, starting with the Frankfurt School clear back in the early 1930's. These failed ideologies found footholds in American universities, but were largely rejected by society for a variety of reasons. But in the late 2000's the social conditions provided an opportunity for Marxism to become fashionable again and a few years later, Black Lives Matter began to gain real traction in cultural mindshare—particularly among the younger generations which had become increasingly more sympathetic to the ideology due to years of educational indoctrination. Today, America stands on the precipice of a massive cultural shift and many seem to be actively encouraging this revolution because they are either unaware or simply apathetic to the violent chaos they are championing. This Marxist ideology which took root and festered in American universities is seen as so corrosive and destructive, that world leaders are now trying to ban its influence and spread in their own nations. However, many in the church have either pandered to, or partnered with this ideological movement. So, it is absolutely critical that we as believers understand where this ideology came from, what it espouses, what its fruit is, and whether or not it is compatible with biblical Christianity before we reach the point of no return, critical mass is achieved, and our society goes nuclear.
Black Lives Matter: The Slogan
Black Lives Matter is the tip of the iceberg, the public face of a cultural undercurrent which has slowly been metastasizing in our nation for nearly a century. It is however the first step down the rabbit hole of Cultural Marxism and the one which most people are aware of, so let's begin with evaluating the merit of their argument. The slogan itself of course is a rebuttal to the straw man argument that somehow people in America believe that Black lives don't matter. But regardless of the logic or merit of the slogan itself, the movement is largely based upon the assertion that Black people are hunted down, incarcerated, and murdered by a systemically racist police department. Given this premise, every time a Black person has an unfortunate encounter with law enforcement, it is plastered across headlines nationwide as evidence of the claim. But is the claim actually valid? Are Black citizens actually uniquely in danger of police brutality or abuse of authority?
The simple answer is no—for every instance and highly publicized case of a Black person allegedly being mistreated, there is an almost exact counterpart example involving a White suspect as Time Magazine admits and the Black academic John McWhorter has detailed. But we never hear about those cases, because the media can't whip people up into a racial frenzy with such stories. The idea that America is racist is a forgone conclusion by those who are influenced by the political left's ideology which has a near monopoly in our education system, so confirmation bias and the cherry picking of data sets doesn't appear to be a logical fallacy to them, but rather an ethical highlighting of selective societal problems which serve their altruistic and noble goal. And the assumption that America is inherently racist isn't necessarily illogical in and of itself as our history—like the histories of most nations—is fraught with harrowing examples of racism. But history is not the present, so it's important that we not conflate the two and evaluate our current laws, policies, systems, and culture without historical bias. We can't assume guilt, we have to presume innocence and look for actual evidence of guilt.
When pressed to present current examples of racist laws, policies, or systems, none have been put forward which withstand any scrutiny. Instead, most arguments in the public sphere revolve around outcome disparities which according to the proponent, can only be explained via racism. This is simply not true however—outcome disparities are the statistical norm, the mathematically most probable reality, not an aberration due to deep-seated societal unfairness. If you chose any characteristic to separate people into distinct groups and compared those groups using any number of performance metrics, there would almost always be disparities in those stats. If you compared people who drive Toyotas with people who drive Fords, there would be disparities between their average income, life expectancy, drug use, criminal behavior, marriage rate, etc.—it's nearly mathematically impossible to achieve parity between any two groups due to the myriad of factors which affect those numbers. For example, the median income of Australian Americans is just over $100,000 compared to the median income of Austrian Americans at only $86,500 despite both being "White." Similarly, the median income of Indian Americans is a whopping $136,000 compared to Bangladeshi Americans at $68,000 and Napalese Americans at only $64,000 despite all being "Asian" and from the same subcontinent. To take the average of one group, and then argue it is lower than the average of another group due to inherent unfairness in the system like systemic racism or White privilege is a massive leap of logic which the evidence simply doesn't support.
One might argue that individually these statistical disparities might not mean anything, but collectively, if they all lean in one direction, that must be indicative of something gaming the system. This argument sounds logical, but dismisses the reality that patterns of behavior typically produce chain reactions. In the case of human cultural behavior for example, one group having a lower rate of intact families can massively effect the other stats in question, such as highest level of completed education, average income, criminality rate, and a host of other statistics. So again, even trends or patterns of statistical disparities can be explained without invoking some external malevolent force acting against the group in question. As Black scholars such as Thomas Sowell and Glenn Loury have long argued, the biggest issue affecting the Black community today is not racism, but the disintegration of the Black nuclear family which has a domino effect on numerous other aspects of their lives.
But the reality is that not all of the statistics actually lean in one direction. For example, Blacks with a doctoral degree actually have higher incomes than Whites of the same education level. Also, Black women actually outperform White women from similar family economic backgrounds, and Blacks clearly outperform Whites on average in high income earning professional sports. But no one is claiming the Kansas City Chiefs are racist for paying Patrick Mahomes more money than any White athlete in the history of the NFL. Most conspicuously, Black immigrants perform quite well in America. For example, both Ghanaian and Nigerian-Americans have higher median incomes than White Americans according to census bureau data ($69k vs $66k). Skin color or systemic racism obviously isn't the issue here—culture is, including work ethic, family values, and education.
The reality of the disintegration of the Black family was first brought to national attention in 1965 by the "Moynihan Report" which argued that civil rights alone could not produce equal citizens of Blacks as there were other factors at play—namely high rates of out of wedlock births. At the time, around 24% of Black births were occurring out of wedlock, often producing fatherless children. This was viewed as quite alarming at the time and was expected to produce absolutely disastrous results for the Black community if the trend was not reversed. Fast-forward to today and the reality is that the Black nonmarital birth rate has skyrocketed to over 70%. As discussed in the article Generational Genocide, fatherlessness has extremely deleterious effects on children and society. Fatherless children are 32 times more likely to run away from home, 5 times more likely to commit suicide, 7 times more likely for girls to get pregnant as a teenager, 14 times more likely for boys to commit rape, they are 9 times more likely to be placed in a state-run institution, 20 times more likely to exhibit behavioral disorders, 2 times more likely to drop out of high-school, 10 times more likely to practice chemical abuse, 20 times more likely to be incarcerated, 4 times more likely to live in poverty, and have 2 times greater risk of infant mortality and obesity. The collective stats which appear to put Blacks at the bottom of the charts can absolutely be explained by factors other than a system which is racist against them. This is further proven by research written about by the Black journalist Coleman Hughes who notes that Blacks with higher intact family rates, including Black immigrants, actually perform quite well in American society and in many cases outperform their White counterparts. He also further outlines the rather mundane and unsensational explanations for the racial wealth gap.
What should be conspicuous to everyone is that the ethnic majority in America who allegedly has all the institutional power to oppress minority groups, are not the group sitting at the top of the privilege charts. Indeed if systemic racism were truly the issue then average income in America should be ordered with the ethnic majority on top, but instead we find not one, but two ethnic minorities there—Jews and Asians. Whites come in at a mediocre number 3 position followed by Hispanics, Native Americans, and Blacks. This uncoincidentally, is the exact order of out of wedlock birth rates or single parent households in America with Jews at the lowest rate around 10%, Asians at 16%, Whites at 24%, Hispanics at 42%, Native Americans at 52%, and Blacks at around 70%. It also just so happens to be the exact order of incarceration rates in America. The system isn't racist, each race simply suffers proportionately to their rate of fatherlessness.
This coincides with studies from the liberal Brookings Institute which found that there are only three things which you need to do in America today in order to escape poverty and enter the middle class, regardless of ethnicity or socio-economic starting point: finish high school, get a full-time job, and wait until you're 21 to get married and have kids. That's it. Do those three simple things and you're nearly guaranteed to be a middle class citizen in America. Notice the last point—don't have kids out of wedlock, otherwise poverty and criminality become much more probable.
This leaves us with the question of police brutality, which Black Lives Matter has seized upon as the unsavory pièce de résistance of systemic racism in America. The popular arguments always seem to revolve around the fact that Blacks are disproportionately stopped, arrested, incarcerated, or killed by law enforcement—a very popular sentiment, but one which studies have refuted—as they only make up around 13% of the US population but make up around half of these cases. This argument makes the rather ridiculous assertion that police should respond to birthrates rather than crime rates in America. But the sad reality is that a tiny population in America—namely young, Black males—are responsible for an enormous proportion of the crime in America. This is particularly true of violent crime, as Blacks account for around 54% of all homicides and 60% of robberies in America.
The former director of data scientists for Thomson Reuters, Zac Kreigman, has written about the myth that Blacks are unjustly or disproportionately dealt with by the police. He investigated the claim made by Black Lives Matter that Blacks are more likely to be shot by police and concluded it was unequivocally false—an inconvenient fact which cost him his job. But the data was clear—if anything, Blacks were slightly less likely to be shot by police. He noted that Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County Patrick Frey’s calculations based on FBI data found Black Americans account for 37 percent of those who murder police officers, and 34 percent of the unarmed suspects killed by police. Meanwhile, Whites make up 42.7 percent of cop killers and 42 percent of the unarmed suspects shot by police—meaning Whites are killed "unjustly" by police at a slightly higher rate than Blacks.
This data lines up with the only study that looked at the rate at which police use lethal force across racial groups, conducted by Harvard economist Roland Fryer—who happens to be Black. Fryer tried to prove BLM’s narrative back in 2016, but ended up doing just the opposite, concluding that Black Americans and Latinos are actually slightly less likely to be shot by police than Whites.
It therefore is not accurate to claim that police disproportionately interact with or kill Black suspects as they interact with them—including with deadly force—proportionately to the number of crimes they commit. Even liberal leaning senior fellows of the Brookings Institute acknowledge the reality that Black men are proportionally dealt with by the justice system. The statistical reality is that men are over 90 times more likely to be arrested or killed by police than women are, but no one is claiming police are systemically sexist. The reason for this disparity is straightforward—men commit an order of magnitude more crime than women do, particularly violent crime. The big question no one is asking is, why do Black men commit more crime than White men? Arguably the most significant factor is that they have higher rates of births out of wedlock and therefore more fatherless homes thereby increasing Black children's risk of incarceration by a factor of 20, their risk of poverty by a factor of 4, their risk of drug use by a factor of 10, and their risk of dropping out of high school by a factor of 2.
Some have argued that the high rate of fatherlessness is actually caused by the incarceration rate—a feckless attempt to yet again place the blame on a racist system. It should be noted that this isn't a "chicken or the egg" paradox as we actually know which came first—increasing fatherlessness. The mass incarceration of Blacks didn't ramp up until the 1970's during the war on drugs, long after the rising rates of nonmarital births in the Black community. Of course this argument also makes the rather questionable implication that currently incarcerated Black males would otherwise be committed and nurturing fathers if the justice system would simply stop prosecuting them for violent criminal behavior. It also appears to make some rather glaring mathematical errors arguing that upwards of 70% of Black children are born out of wedlock because approximately 2.3% of Blacks are incarcerated.
Another argument made is that the disparity in Black vs. White incarceration rates resulted from the difference in penalties for crack cocaine in Black communities vs. powder cocaine in White communities which implies this was racially motivated. Except it wasn't. It was Black citizens and Black congressmen who demanded harsher sentencing and stricter enforcement for drug violations in their communities in order to clean up their neighborhoods—not racist White policy makers. It was actually well-intentioned legislation and policy. May it have had some unintended consequences? Possibly. But implying it was the product of a "systemically racist" judicial system is quite literally beyond the pale. It also hasn't resulted in the majority of Black imprisonments as only about one fifth of current Black inmates are incarcerated for drug offenses—the vast majority are incarcerated for violent crimes.
Dave Rubin, host of the show The Rubin Report, also held to the left's political ideology and therefore believed in systemic racism. That is until Larry Elder, a Black conservative talk radio host, author, and documentary filmmaker, came onto his show. This interview went viral and became a defining moment in Dave Rubin's career and personal beliefs as well as being the turning point for others like Black firebrand, Candace Owens. The entire interview was on point, but the following short segment was what changed everything for Rubin as Elder refuted every feeling of racism with actual facts.
The reality is, Blacks often do underperform in American society, but there are many logical and evidence-based explanations for those statistics—we don't need to invoke the lazy catch-all boogeyman of "systemic racism." Many who champion the slogan of Black Lives Matter have good intentions—they want to rid our society of racism. The problem is they start with a faulty assumption that racism is the underlying issue causing these disparities, and then actually stoke racial tensions by victimizing Blacks, demonizing Whites and looking for racism under every stone. This would seem as an unintended consequence, but this is actually by design and perfectly inline with the ideological framework espoused by Black Lives Matter as an organization.
Black Lives Matter: The Organization
The second stop down the rabbit hole of this movement is the BLM organization which has far less savory stated goals than those who appear to just like the slogan. Many argue that one can support the slogan without supporting the organization, but there are a few problems with this reasoning. First, it is the organization which organizes the rallies, sets the political agenda, creates the media talking points, and largely defines the movement. Secondly, it is the organization which receives all the donations to keep the movement marching forward—donations which totaled over $90 million in 2020 alone which virtually no one knows how is spent. However, Candace Owens' new documentary "The Greatest Lie Ever Sold" provides plenty of damning financial evidence against BLM and the founders of the organization seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. One of the founders recently spent over $3.2 million on real estate, proving just how farcical this "Marxist" movement is. Thirdly, it was the same people who began both the slogan and the organization in July of 2013, so trying to separate one from the other is kind of like trying to separate the teachings of Jesus from Christianity.
It should be noted that even the slogan is not nearly as well received as proponents are led to believe. A recent Economist/YouGov poll actually showed that the slogan All Lives Matter was more popular than Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter polled at 48% positive and 30% negative associations, while All Lives Matter polled at 53% positive and only 23% negative associations. The real surprise was that among Blacks, the All Lives Matter slogan polled even higher than the national average at 58% positive and only 16% negative associations. That said, the BLM organization is even less well received among the general populace than the slogan is and is worrisome to many even on the political left.
The BLM organization website has some rather interesting professions of faith under their What We Believe section (Editor's Note: since publication of this article, BLM has quietly deleted the "What We Believe" page from their website, but you can still view news articles which preserved it). There you will find beliefs including promoting the LGBTQ+ agenda and conversely, standing against the traditional nuclear family, which it claims is "Western prescribed" and therefore racially motivated—a construct of White culture. They also claim to want to "dismantle the patriarchal practice" of mothers being primary care givers of children. All of these stances are direct attacks on historical and biblical family values and ironically if actually achieved, would only cause even greater harm to the already decimated Black family structure. In fact, some BLM leaders have actually left and denounced the organization after realizing what it actually stood for. But why on earth would BLM be advocating for such destructive ideas? It's not simple ignorance, it's actually by design. The founders of BLM are avowed Marxists, and that ideology explicitly denounces traditional family structures—as well as capitalism and Christianity—as they believe the state, not the family, should raise and indoctrinate children. This is where we finally peek below the waterline and see the rest of the iceberg that we're headed for as a nation.
Marxism is a truly miserable ideology—dozens of historical attempts in multiple geopolitical regions boasting a 100% failure rate. Its goal was always violent revolution in order to overthrow capitalism, pitting different groups against one another to achieve that goal. Traditionally, the groups which Marxism turned against one another were the rich and working class (the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat), hoping to instill enough hatred between the have and have nots that the latter would violently overthrow the former. It turned out that traditional Marxist theory predictions didn't work out very well as economics weren't a strong enough motivator, so many became disillusioned and became post Marxists adopting the theory of Postmodernism, while others doubled down and decided the theory was sound, but the tactics needed tweaked.
These Neo Marxists theorized that instead of attempting violent revolution to overthrow capitalism via economic class emnity, they could shift gears to cultural Marxism—which has the same goal, but instead sows bitterness and hatred between racial groups. It still groups people into the haves and have nots, the oppressors and the oppressed, and still uses the divisive narrative of victimization to get the torches and pitchforks to come out en masse. But now "the man" which needs violently overthrown is the cultural hegemony, the dominant racial group in a society which allegedly rose to its prominent position through force, coercion, and manipulation—exactly how Marxists used to describe the rich Bourgeoisie. Everything they have that those who don't have want, are ill-gotten gains which they don't deserve. This ideology of envy and bitterness believes that everything is a zero sum game, a power struggle which is rigged in favor of those who already have it and that they got it at the expense of everyone else. Equality is therefore only achievable by burning the capitalist system down, along with those who support it, and rebuilding a Socialist Utopia out of the ashes. So if you were hoping the BLM movement was leading us into an era of greater racial harmony, you're in for a rude awakening as their goal is the exact opposite—to antagonize, divide, and tear down. Alicia Garza, one of the three co-founders of BLM, said so herself at a gathering of progressive activists in 2015 stating that, “It’s not possible for a world to emerge where black lives matter if it’s under capitalism, and it’s not possible to abolish capitalism without a struggle against national oppression.”
To build this new narrative demonizing Whites, these new cultural Marxists born out of the Frankfurt School devised Critical Theory, which then gave birth to Critical Race Theory. The Frankfurt School itself began in the 1920's in Germany, then moved to Columbia University in New York City in the 1930's as the Nazis didn't tolerate their ideology. America naively gave them safe harbor which provided a foothold for Marxism in the US. However that foothold took a long, long time to gain traction in the society at large. It wasn't until the late 1960's that a strategy coalesced and was dubbed The Long March Through the Institutions, seeking to subvert and deconstruct every sphere of society in order to rebuild them in their image.
Universities and education systems were the first of America's institutions to fall prey to Marxism and Critical Theory. As Marxist professors indoctrinated and graduated Marxist students who then became more Marxist professors, the humanities began to be completely consumed by the ideology. This in turn created more papers and studies being written from this ideological viewpoint which then increased the legitimacy and mindshare in the broader society. By the 1980's, the expansion of the ideology in academia was so rapid and so pervasive, that many books were written warning of the catastrophic effect it would have on the broader culture.
Some balked at these dire warnings, including UCLA history professor Dr. Russell Jacoby, who wrote a book in 1987 dismissing such fears. He originally posited that the Marxist pedagogy's damage would be limited to university campuses, but recently penned an apologetic article titled "The Takeover," recognizing just how wrong he was. He concluded that these university educated students "constitute an unmitigated disaster, intellectually and politically" as "self-righteous professors spawned self-righteous students and unleashed them into the public square."
As former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov warned the US media back in 1984, this tactic is called ideological subversion. The purpose is to create such a barrage of disinformation that truth is nearly impossible to ascertain. This four-stage process of demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization began in the sphere of the American education system, but the goal is to ultimately affect every sphere resulting in a complete reshaping of the US into a socialist nation.
The strategy appears to be working quite well as every year support for socialism and even communism increases, particularly among our university educated young adults. While Democrat support for socialism has been steadily rising in the last decade, hitting 59% in 2021, recent polling has found a full 70% of Millennials say they are likely to vote socialist and another 36% view communism favorably. A shocking 43% of Millennials believe the Communist Manifesto better guarantees freedom and equality than the Declaration of Independence. Another 22% said they believe society would be better if all private property was abolished. Many pundits attribute these stats to mere historical ignorance, but the reality is that our children aren't lacking an education, they're being reeducated by Marxist teachers, writers, and professors.
Critical Race Theory & Cultural Marxism
Here we arrive at the third stop down the rabbit hole. Though Marxism has consumed much of academia, there have been those who recognized it for what it was and have gone to war against it. Dr. James Lindsay in particular has taken on the behemoth and attempted to show its dark underbelly to the world. He first made national headlines by proving how absurd the published research is in the field of grievance studies by submitting a series of absolutely ridiculous hoax papers to many prestigious journals which were then peer-reviewed and published. He has since appeared in many popular long-format interviews discussing the illogical and evidence-free claims of Critical Theory, is a nationally sought after speaker, and has published a book on the subject called Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody.
To fully appreciate the inanity of Critical Race Theory, we must take the time to outline its fundamental beliefs and arguments which have been established via both published scholarship and populist books such as White Fragility and How to Be an Antiracist. As Dr. Lindsay and others have demonstrated, published papers are not more scientifically rigorous than populist books in this field—they all lack rigor, amounting to little more than academic activism which has produced fame and wealth for the authors but virtually zero actual research and data. But unlike Karl Marx's Das Kapital, you won't find the bulk of the tenets of Critical Race Theory contained in any one book, you have to piece it together and be fairly well-versed in the literature in order to really grasp it. Thankfully Dr. Lindsay, Dr. Peter Boghossian, Dr. Voddie Baucham, research fellow Christopher Rufo (whose published research nearly single handedly influenced federal policy changes on CRT), and many others have done the deep dive into this literature to help us get a bird's eye view of what this theory believes. Among its core tenets are the following:
The objective of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is to produce a radical political and cultural revolution in order to overthrow the oppressors.
The oppressors are the cultural hegemony, the dominant racial group in society—namely Whites.
The concept of race itself was socially constructed by Whites so that they could discriminate against other races. All White people benefit from and perpetuate this system, therefore all Whites are inherently racist.
Racism is the default state of affairs in a society, therefore the question is not "did racism take place?" but rather, "how did racism take place?"—It assumes racism is present, then looks to find it.
Racism is "systemic" and pervades everything. Therefore any unequal outcomes must be explained by racism.
Racism has a permanence to it as a result of being tied to the cultural hegemony. It cannot therefore be overcome from within the system—it can only be eradicated by overthrowing that system via a revolution that reorders society in the way CRT demands.
CRT alleges that each racial group holds a subjective view of reality or unique systems of knowledge called Regimes of Truth. Therefore one race's "truth" or shared experience cannot be challenged or questioned by outside processes because there is no objective reality, only subjective constructs established by different intersectional groups which cannot be falsified.
The White race's Regime of Truth is based on reason, logic, science, empirical evidence, exegesis, etc and as they are the oppressor, these are called "The Master's Tools" which are used to invalidate and suppress other races' Regimes of Truth in order to keep Whites in power.
It is therefore racist to use these methods to evaluate the claims or arguments of a racial minority group as these tools for legitimizing knowledge are alleged to be unique to the group who designed them (White, straight, cis-gendered males) and therefore are illegitimate methods for evaluating other groups’ truth claims.
Intersectionality is a theoretical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities (e.g., gender, sex, race, class, sexuality, religion, disability, physical appearance, height, weight etc.) combine to create unique modes of discrimination and privilege.
Where you stand in terms of your group identity and their relationship to power dictates what you can and cannot know—a theory called Standpoint Epistemology.
The baseline knowledge that everyone knows due to the cultural hegemony is White knowledge. But if you are a member of different, more oppressed intersectional groups, you have access to higher levels of knowledge which White people cannot know.
Essentially the cultural hegemony is the least enlightened and the most oppressed group (according to Intersectionality) is the most enlightened.
As CRT, like Marxism, views everything through the lens of a power struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed, systemic racism is simply assumed as Whites must be actively subjugating other races in order to maintain their power.
As a member of the ethnic majority then, by default you are a racist. It is impossible for White people to not be racist. The only way a member of the oppressor class can attempt to atone for their implicit participation in systemic racism is through the work of anti-racism.
Anti-racism is the perpetual act of examining yourself and others, searching for ways in which they are participating in the deep, hidden, and inherent system of racism.
The work of anti-racism is never done (at least until the oppressors are overthrown), therefore the personal redemptive process is never fully achievable or complete—as long as you are a member of the ethnic majority and cultural hegemony, you are guilty of racism.
If you in any way challenge or disagree with all of the above, it’s because you don’t have the “racial stamina” required to engage in the work of anti-racism. This inherent weakness and inability to confront the alleged truth of Critical Race Theory is called White Fragility.
Even if as a White you do engage in anti-racism, it's only out of self-interest in an attempt to paint yourself as a "good" White in order to confer special status on yourself. This is because as a member of the oppressor class, you are inherently racist and "bad." This principle is called Interest Convergence Theory.
As you can see, Critical Race Theory is a mythology, a belief system or faith which makes many unproven and unprovable assumptions and vague claims, cannot be falsified, and suffers from extreme confirmation bias and circular reasoning. The mythology is insulated from scrutiny as ironically any criticism of CRT is argued as proof of CRT. If you disagree or challenge its precepts, it is simply because you’re too low on the intersectionality pyramid to be enlightened enough to understand, or because of White Fragility, or because you’re a racist. You can't challenge these baseless accusations as denial of your racism is proof of your racism. Even asking for evidence of racism is proof of your racism because logic, reason, and empirical evidence are all “tools of the masters” designed by White people to preserve White hegemonic power. In fact, the Smithsonian recently claimed that rational thinking, hard work, and even being polite were attributes of oppressive White culture. Simply put, CRT is an ideological Rorschach test—if you stare at an ink blob and don't see racism, you're racist.
In a final twist of irony, giving in to the witch hunt and acknowledging your hidden racism and even joining in on the witch hunt to uncover other people's hidden racism does not make you any better of a person. Now not only are you a White racist, but you're also seeking special status for yourself. In effect, you are trying to gain status and claim knowledge which your intersectional identity cannot obtain by definition. So why engage in anti-racism at all? Simply to help bring about the violent revolution and overthrow the White oppressors. As a White person, you can never cleanse yourself of your inherent racism, but you can become an ally in destroying the hegemonic power your oppressive race wields. The oppressors are irredeemable, so they must simply embrace their White Guilt and bring about societal collapse.
This ideology is an assault on the principles of Western civilization and is actually worse than traditional Marxism as the means to get to its exalted ends—the destruction of capitalism and the rise of a socialist state—are considerably more caustic and destructive. It has proven to be an effective tool in infiltrating institutions however, and has universally destabilized any community, organization, field, or discipline it has been allowed to enter. Because as soon as you submit yourself to the witch hunt, you must then take part in the witch hunt to ever increasing degrees in order to prove your allyship. This demands ever more time and resources of the community or organization to perform the penance of anti-racism, leaving less and less time and resources to devote to anything else.
For example, humanities departments swell at universities to include every conceivable grievance study program and their administration departments are pressured to hire more and more diversity officers, counselors, and support staff eating up enormous percentages of their budgets. This opens the door to cancel culture as no leader or staff member in the organization is immune to the baseless accusations encouraged by CRT. Take for example the fact that recently Princeton virtue-signaled by putting out a public statement confessing that their university was systemically racist. Then when the Department of Education responded by launching an investigation into the university's apparently false certifications of nondiscriminatory and equal opportunity protocols which allow them to receive millions of dollars in federal funding, they sheepishly claimed that the racism they were alluding to wasn't the kind which you can actually find any evidence for. But while chasing their tails and making baseless claims, all those politically correct diversity officers make more and more recommendations to censor or fire certain views and opinions while hiring and promoting more like-minded allies who will parrot their dogma. At this point, humanities programs in American universities boast a near total ideological monopoly with over 90% of professors and staff identifying as liberals. Indeed it seems more common to find a Communist on a college campus these days than a conservative.
As such, CRT is a virus which infiltrates a healthy host, then attempts to convert all of its internal mechanisms to the work of replicating the virus. And just like a virus, this leads to the demise of the host organism. Fittingly, the three pillars of this ideology form the acronym DIE—Diversity, Inclusion, & Equity. Note that equity differs from equality in that it is the deliberate rigging of the system against people lower on the intersectional pyramid in order to benefit those higher on it in an attempt to produce equal outcomes regardless of effort or input.
A little side-stop down the rabbit hole is the "woke" spin-off movement which is actually a combination of three schools of thought: Critical Theory, Postmodern Theory, and social justice. The element of Critical Theory this movement really latches onto is not just the mythology of the oppressed vs. the oppressors, but that the oppressed have accepted and internalized their oppression forming a false consciousness which they have to be awakened from. Unfortunately, unwoke minorities do not know how to act in their own best interest—it's up to the woke few to "consciousness raise" others into enlightenment and bring about their liberation. Note that according to Critical Theory, "liberation" means liberation from capitalism. This adds another layer to intersectionality in that it's not enough to just be a member of an oppressed group in order to have a more enlightened truth claim, you must also be woke as by default you are brainwashed by the powerful oppressors to align with them. This is why Black conservatives are constantly labelled Uncle Toms, house Negroes, Oreos, and other pejoratives—they may have the right color, but not the right politics, so those Black lives don't matter. You have to be far left ideologically in order to have a valid voice in this discussion.
This movement takes the concept of Regimes of Truth derived from Michel Foucault's ideas and mixes it with the idea from Jacques Derrida that language doesn't have actual meaning—words only derive meaning by how they are related to other words and the relationships between words is where the struggle for power lies. This philosophical concoction produces the woke idea of "the metaphysics of discourse" which asserts the way we speak about things actually shapes what is and isn't true. This gives rise to the importance of politically correct speech as to have political and cultural power, you must first control words and language in order to reshape society, awaken the oppressed, and defeat the oppressors. Due to the radical redefining and misuse of words in this movement, an encyclopedia of woke terms is necessary.
Critical Race Theory & Christianity
The article Che vs. J: Socialism & Christianity already covered how the ideology of socialism is incompatible with scripture due to conflating the roles of family, church, and state, but it's important to address the gateway drug of Critical Race Theory as well. The reality is that CRT has been quite successful in infiltrating the church with entire mainline denominations falling prey to it, many others officially adopting its Diversity, Inclusion, & Equity policies, and yet others portraying Jesus as LGBTQ+ in their Sunday School material for children in order to "emphasize diversity." It's odd to say the least that church leaders would try to justify this pandering to the liberal mob by claiming their ideologies align with biblical values while BLM rioters march down American streets chanting "F*ck your Jesus!" It also begs the question that if these ideologies and their resulting policies are truly biblical, then why have they not been championed or even mentioned throughout church history? This is a clear case of biblical eisegesis, shoehorning foreign concepts into the texts, and prostituting out the Gospel.
Critical Race Theory and the woke movement have so influenced the church that 2,000 year old basic doctrines are now being questioned. Currently, there are actual and sincere discussions in the church about whether or not White people can even be saved due to being members of an inherently, intrinsically, and irredeemable group of oppressors. As the woke church becomes consumed in the self-deprecating, self-defeating, and divisive endeavor of the holy trinity of anti-racism—Diversity, Inclusion, & Equity— it will inevitably lose its focus on actual Christian doctrine, orthodoxy, and orthopraxy and therefore lose more and more of its membership and funding. When asked about the compatibility with scripture in an interview with a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Lindsay replied that even as an atheist, in his reading of scripture, a woke Christian is even more antithetical to the tenets of Christianity than a Christian who rejects the historicity of Christ. Dr. Voddie Baucham, a Black American serving as the Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Zambia and who has taught extensively on this subject, agrees—Cultural Marxism and Critical Race Theory are completely incompatible with the Gospel.
But just what are some of these ideological conflicts and incompatibilities? Well, besides advocating for violent revolution, demonizing entire ethnic groups, denying that objective truth exists, desiring the destruction of the family unit, and having the goal of a totalitarian state which usurps the authority of all other spheres of society—including the church—there are several core issues which stand in stark contrast to biblical teaching.
The Core Problem
Cultural Marxism claims that all the problems in society are caused by the oppressors and that once a society overthrows them and establishes a socialist state, humanity will finally experience peace, harmony, and equity. The Bible claims that all the problems in society are caused by sin, which every man, woman, and child are guilty of and perpetuate and only Christ can heal and defeat at His second coming.
The Struggle for Power
Cultural Marxism asserts that the primary dynamic in the world is the power struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors—man's struggle against man which can only be resolved by a socialist state. The Bible teaches that the primary dynamic is man's rebellion against God and the resulting power struggle between good and evil in the world which can only be resolved by Christ's second coming and subsequent reign and rule.
The Goal
Cultural Marxism believes that an all-powerful socialist government can produce equal outcomes for all peoples, resulting in a "fair" society. The Bible states that not only are all human governments broken and incapable of perfect justice, but that equal outcome is not in fact, "fair." Even in heaven God rewards people proportionately to their obedience and sacrifice for the Gospel, not equally among all believers. Meritocracy, not equity is the biblical standard.
Our Identity
Cultural Marxism and intersectionality create hundreds of identity groups which compete against one another for value and ultimately demonizes and pits all of them against whichever group happens to have the most members. The Bible states that all mankind are one race descended from Adam, and that there is no difference in value or status between Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood.
Definition of Racism
Cultural Marxism defines racism as a uniquely and intrinsically White sin as they are the cultural hegemony of oppressors. The Bible defines racism as the sin of partiality based on attitudes and actions of ethnic prejudice which any person is capable of, but all can be free of.
Resolving Racism
Cultural Marxism claims that Whites cannot overcome their racism, only do penance for it. It perpetuates guilt and shame and believes that all cultures have equally valid truth claims and values. The Bible claims that any person can overcome any sin through a change of heart and mind through repentance, forgiveness, and discipleship. It denounces guilt and shame as tools of the enemy and teaches that all peoples are equally loved by God, but not all cultures are equally walking in truth.
Like most ideologies of man, Cultural Marxism positions itself as another gospel, a counterfeit or substitute for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, offering false hope and alternative salvation through the works of man. The church must recognize this folly and return to biblical truth and sound doctrine.
Of course there are those who will attempt to reconcile CRT and Cultural Marxism with Scripture, but the arguments run aground of 2,000 year old Christian orthodoxy. In 2017, Tim Keller—a well known pastor and theologian—argued that the Bible supports the notion of corporate guilt and thus supported the idea that White people as a group could be culpable for both systemic and historic racism. Keller built an argument from the concept of original sin established in Romans chapter 5 and buttressed it with passages from Joshua chapter 7 and Daniel chapter 9 to give examples of individual sin which seemingly resulted in corporate guilt and condemnation. Of course, the plain text of scripture makes such an interpretation difficult.
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, BECAUSE ALL SINNED... -Rom 5:12 (emphasis added)
Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents; EACH WILL DIE FOR THEIR OWN SIN. -Deu 24:16 (emphasis added)
THE ONE WHO SINS IS THE ONE WHO WILL DIE. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them. -Eze 18:20 (emphasis added)
For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS. -Mat 16:27 (emphasis added)
But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render TO EACH PERSON ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS. -Rom 2:5-6 (emphasis added)
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that EACH ONE MAY BE RECOMPENSED FOR HIS DEEDS in the body, ACCORDING TO WHAT HE HAS DONE, whether good or bad. -2Co 5:10 (emphasis added)
Romans 5 doesn't state that all mankind is individually innocent, but corporately condemned due to the sin of one—but rather that all have sinned in the likeness of the one and therefore all are condemned. We may be born into a sin nature through the seed of Adam (this is debated in the Church), but that doesn't mean God condemns or judges us for Adam's individual sin—He judges us based on our personal sin. The wages of all sin is death, and Adam certainly introduced death and decay into God's perfect creation, but that doesn't mean at the day of judgment, all men will be sentenced to the 2nd death solely due to Adam's individual sin—their condemnation will be a result of their own thoughts and actions. We all have free will and therefore have the ability to not rebel against God as Adam did, but all have chosen to rebel against God nonetheless.
Even here in the Old Testament passages of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel we see that God does not judge individuals based on the sin of others, including their immediate family. If scripture clearly states that sons are not morally culpable for the sins of their fathers, it is ridiculous to argue that one White person can be held accountable for sins of their distant relatives from generations ago. If such group condemnation was biblical, then the implications would be endless. Black people bought and sold slaves historically as well. In fact, the Black scholar Thomas Sowell frequently reminds Western audiences that far more White Europeans were captured and sold into slavery in Africa than Black Africans sold into slavery in Europe and the American colonies. So according to the racial guilt argument, all Black people alive today are just as morally culpable for slavery as White people. But let's not stop at slavery or racism—sin comes in a variety of forms. How convoluted would our justice system be if for every man who committed murder, rape, kidnapping, theft, or arson today, all persons of their ethnicity were tried and found guilty of the crime and had to do the time. That's CRT social "justice."
Of course, another issue is that ethnic distinctions are quite subjective and arbitrary. Whether you're a young earth creationist or an old earth evolutionist, all agree that every single person on the earth today descend from a single set of parents (due to mitochondrial DNA studies—see the Eve Hypothesis) and therefore all are related. In fact, mathematical models have shown that our most recent common ancestor was alive only 64 generations ago—around the time of the ancient Romans—and that everyone alive today is at most, 50th cousins. So where does God draw the line of moral culpability within the extended family of mankind? This is quite the hairy moral dilemma to solve and why scripture makes it clear that God draws that line at the individual—not at some random point of distant relations or socially constructed group identities. God judges us, He isn't counting back an arbitrary number of generations or comparing melanin concentrations in order to determine our guilt or innocence.
So how can we interpret Keller's examples in Joshua 7 and Daniel 9 in a hermeneutically consistent manner? Well, in Joshua the example is of Achan, who took treasure from the defeated city of Jericho which God commanded was to be designated for the tabernacle (Jos 6:18-19). As a result, he and his immediate family, as well as all his oxen, donkeys, and sheep were put to death and all his possessions burned. Keller argues that Achan was the only guilty party, yet his family was also put to death, hence scripture teaches corporate guilt. But here Keller is not only ignoring the plain text of Old Testament law which forbids such a judgement, but basing his argument on a pretty dubious assumption—namely that Achan's family was innocent of any wrongdoing.
However, the most plausible and straightforward reading of this passage in light of clear Old Testament law is that they were actually complicit in Achan's crime. They didn't do the actual stealing, but they were enriched as a result of it, so they conspired to keep quiet. Joshua announced to the entire assembly that someone had stolen from God and gave the guilty party time to confess and repent, but neither Achan nor any of his family came forward. There are lessons to be learned from this passage, just not that individual sin condemns entire families or ethnic groups. The entire Israelite population wasn't found guilty due to his actions—neither was his tribe of Judah nor even his clan, the Zerahites. Achan's sin certainly had an effect on others, but innocent people were not found guilty by a holy and just God simply because they shared his genetics.
The passage used from Daniel chapter 9 is even more curious as it is simply an example of the principle of intercession. Daniel "stands in the gap" for Israel and confesses their corporate sin to God. This is not a case where one individual's sin results in corporate condemnation, but rather the opposite—Israel's corporate sin (sin which each and every individual had committed) was confessed and repented of by one man. This speaks of God's mercy and willingness to relent of judgement based on the actions of one, not His extending guilt, condemnation, and judgement to all based on the actions of one. This is indeed a pattern seen all throughout the Bible, starting with Abraham, formalized in Levitical law, and culminating in Christ.
To Keller's credit, three years after making his unorthodox argument for the concept of corporate guilt, he penned a series of articles denouncing Critical Theory and Cultural Marxism, labeling them incompatible with biblical justice and Christianity. He concluded with the statement, "There is nothing in the world like biblical justice! Christians must not sell their birthright for a mess of pottage."
Critical Analysis
Now that we have laid out what it is we're actually dealing with, it might be worthwhile pondering how exactly we got here. Dr. James Lindsay once again offers some insight which helps bring things into focus in this chaotic season of history. He notes that early on in man's understanding of a concept, his explanations begin as mythology, then gradually give way to systems of philosophy and reason which produce science, experimentation, and falsification. The reality is that human behavior is insanely complex and our knowledge and understanding of it is in its infancy. While the physical sciences have matured and are well developed, the social sciences are still opaque—the methodologies are not worked out and replication is dubious at best. The social sciences have no scientific rigor, so mythology is still relied upon to provide explanations.
As mythology progresses into philosophy and philosophy into science, in societies enthralled by materialism, those on the less empirical end of that spectrum get indignant and jealous as they become more and more irrelevant and lose their prestige. To regain their relevance and prestige, they double down and create ever more complex systems of mythology, leaning on the power of story, narrative, and appeals to emotion rather than adopting proper methodology and scientific processes. They often even demonize science as part of the problem.
This, along with the reality that our society has entered a 20-25 year season of crisis according to the Strauss and Howe generational cycle, certainly doesn't bode well for the future of America. This young generation, as a Hero generation according to Strauss and Howe, is very civic minded. This creates a bit of a problem as there’s a burning desire in young people to be civil rights heroes, but all the major battles have already been won. This tends to lead to them making mountains out of molehills and raging against a self-constructed boogeyman in order for them to feel they have fulfilled their design and calling. The sad reality is, it’s a really bad time to be under 35 years old as the education system has indoctrinated them into mythologies, impoverished them via student debt, removed—or at least labelled racist—their critical thinking abilities, and poisoned them against all systems and structures which have built the modern world and produced the best season of human prospering in all of history.
The outcome of this ideology and season is likely exactly what the Marxists are aiming for—violent societal collapse. Who knows, they may even win over enough hearts and minds to build a socialist nation out of the ashes. But America as we know it will be history, and out of that power vacuum will come another world war and the rise of another empire all too eager to take her seat of preeminence in geopolitics. That empire could likely be led by China, which may suit the Communist tastes of the saboteurs here in America just fine—at least in theory. But can the majority here in the US look at China—which is currently sterilizing ethnic minorities in concentration camps—and honestly say they believe the world would be more racially just and equal under their leadership?
So what is the solution? As God gave authority to the Church, it has to begin with repentance and revival among His people. This will require a massive movement of God to draw a wayward bride back to her first love and back to biblical truth and sound doctrine and theology. But individually, there are some action steps we can take. One option would be to take this cultural movement on. To do this you must have some basic proficiency with the ideology/mythology and get involved in the cultural discussion. Serve on the panels, the councils, the school boards and speak up in the places of influence where you can stand up and vote against the woke agenda. The other option would be to go build competition in the marketplace. To do this you must still have some basic proficiency in the ideology, but rather than directly entering the discourse for mindshare, you create the alternative systems and products which simply refuse to host the parasitic ideology. You will most likely outperform the woke competition as they will have to devote ever increasing resources to the parasite which will ultimately consume them. What’s not an option is giving in to the woke mob as allowing shakedowns and extortion only invites more shakedowns and extortion. This ideology cannot be satiated with compliance—it will simply demand more and more compliance until its ultimate objectives are achieved.
So, before we hit that critical mass and our nation goes up in flames and down in history as yet another decadent society which committed suicide, maybe we should utilize a bit more critical thinking.