First, some background on critical race theory. Critical race theory is a sub-discipline of critical theory, which is a Marxist attempt to infiltrate the social sciences and the universities and use them to destroy Western Civilization, a project that just now is succeeding beyond the wildest expectations of its 1930s founders.
The story begins with Karl Marx, whose ideas were adopted by the Russian Revolutionaries of 1917, and by atheistic intellectuals all over the world. But by the 1930s, it was clear that the laborers of most Western nations, who were far better off than the Russian serfs, were not going to unite and carry out widespread anti-capitalistic revolution.
An Italian communist named Antonio Gramsci realized Marx’s theory of economic determinism—that capitalism would inevitably produce a socialist revolution—was wrong and that socialist intellectuals would have to change the culture in order to pave the way for the victory of international communism. Gramsci wrote:
“The conquest of cultural power comes before political power, and this is achieved through the concerted action of intellectual “organic” call-outs infiltrated into all of the communication, expression, and academic media.”
This was the theoretical impetus for “the long march through the institutions,” the strategy of subverting society by infiltrating academia, the professions, the churches, government bureaucracies, media, entertainment and most recently, big business and big professional sports. This march through the institutions has been mind-bendingly thorough and is now largely complete. Gramsci died in prison in 1937 but left behind 3,000 pages of notebooks, which have been lovingly translated into English by a Maltese-American professor, Joseph Buttigieg. (Name sound familiar?)
A Hungarian named Gyorgi Lukacs built on Gramsci, and became deputy commissar of culture in Hungary, where he pushed a radical sex-education agenda encouraging free love and the rejection of Christian sexual morality. (Strategy sound familiar?)
“I saw the revolutionary destruction of society as the one and only solution . . . A worldwide overturning of values cannot take place without the annihilation of the old values and the creation of new ones by the revolutionaries.”
After the Magyars ran him out of Hungary, Luckacs teamed up with a German Marxist named Felix Weil to found what became known as the “Frankfurt School.” Weil hired a Marxist philosopher named Max Horkheimer who brought in Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. To describe what they were doing, Horkheimer coined the term “critical theory.” As Andrew Breitbart explains:
“Critical theory was exactly the material we were taught at Tulane. It was, quite literally, a theory of criticizing everyone and everything everywhere. It was an attempt to tear down the social fabric by using all the social sciences (sociology, psychology, economics, political science, etc.); it was an infinite and unending criticism of the status quo, [an] adolescent rebellion against all established social rules and norms.”
Critical theory, wrote Horkheimer, is “suspicious of the very categories of better, useful, appropriate, productive and valuable, as those are understood in the present order.” Critical theory does not create; it only destroys. “Above all,” Horkheimer wrote, “critical theory has no material accomplishments to show for itself.” Herbert Marcuse wrote
“One can rightfully speak of a cultural revolution, since the protest is directed toward the whole cultural establishment, including the morality of existing society . . . What we must undertake is a type of diffuse and dispersed disintegration of the system.”
The Frankfurt School—Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, and Fromm—were all Jews; when they were forced to flee Hitler’s Germany they all came to America, where they began the long march through American academia. As Andrew Breitbart notes, we didn’t know what hit us, and we still don’t:
“The United States’ tradition of freedom and liberty, its openness to outside ideas, and our highest value, freedom of speech, ended up making all America vulnerable to those who would exploit those ideals. We welcomed the Frankfurt School. We accepted them with open arms. They took full advantage. They walked right into our cultural institutions, and as they started to put in place their leadership, their language, and their lexicon, too many chose to ignore them. And the most dangerous thing you can do with a driven Leftist intellectual clique is to ignore it.”
If you were wondering how American Academia became factories turning out the Marxist cultural revolutionaries who spilled out onto our streets this past summer, destroying our public monuments, attempting to erase our history, attacking our police and creating violence and chaos, now you know.
In the 1970s and 80s, Marxist critical theory gave birth to a new sub-discipline, critical race theory. Critical Race Theory believes that all white people are inherently privileged, must apologize for and abjure their privilege, and must go beyond mere verbal self-abasement to tangibly empowering the Leftist activists who are working so feverishly to destroy our civilization. Critical race theory also . . .
believes racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction; hence critical race theorists look for racism everywhere
teaches that white people only give black people opportunities and freedoms when it is also in their own interests, so all attempts by the majority culture to outlaw racism and ameliorate the results of past racism are themselves aspects of racism and white supremacism.
is totalitarian in nature and critiques free societies as allowing racial inequalities to exist and continue
believes science, reason, and evidence are “white” ways of knowing, and that values such as ambition, hard work, industriousness, and punctuality are “white values” (remember the Smithsonian chart)
rejects all attempts at racial neutrality, “colorblindness,” and achieving the American ideal of equality before the law as forms of racism and white supremacism
maintains that anyone who disagrees with critical race theory does so only out of racism and white supremacism.
Critical race theory’s connection to Marxism and the destructive nihilism of critical theory are easy to discern.
Last Thursday, Tucker Carlson showed a clip in a which a Catholic priest, Father Kenneth J. Boller (a Jesuit), substitutes a catechism inculcating concepts from critical race theory for the Christian catechism you would expect to hear in a church:
“Do you affirm that white privilege is unfair and harmful to those who have it and those who do not? (yes)”
“Do you affirm that white privilege and the culture of white supremacy must be dismantled wherever it is [sic] present? (yes)”
“Will you strive to understand more deeply the injustice and suffering white privilege and white supremacy cause? (yes)”
Carlson then brought on Eric Metaxas, who gets right to the point:
“The people who are using these new terms, “systemic racism” or “white privilege”, these are Marxists. These people not only don’t believe in God, they hate God, and on the website, the BLM website, they reject just about everything a Christian would say. So what they are doing now is a power play. They want to hollow out the church from the inside, because the real church is their enemy. This kind of church—that will do this kind of nonsense—of course is perfect for them.”
Metaxas does not use the term “critical race theory” or explain its intellectual origins (which is why I’ve supplied the relevant intellectual history above); he just jumps to the bottom line and correctly points out that this new language about “white privilege” is Marxist.
“Listen there are many good Christians and good pastors who are going along with this, thinking they are doing a good thing. I want to say to them, ‘You’re riding on the back of a tiger. That tiger will eat you. That tiger hates you and is using you right now.’ This is a warning to every American.”
As most of you already know, Metaxas’ warning applies as much to the Seventh-day Adventist Church as to any other.
Eric Metaxas joins Tucker Carlson to discuss a New York City Priest leading his congregation in a "white privilege" prayer of repentance.
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“Woe to those who devise iniquity, and work out evil on their beds! At morning light they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand” (Micah 2:1).