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Race Marxism Is a Very Strange, Very Bad Book

By

Matt McManus

James Lindsay has a best-selling book out called Race Marxism. Reading the book, you soon learn that Lindsay has a shallow understanding not just of Marxism or racism in the US but the classical liberal tradition he seeks to defend.

James Lindsay speaking with attendees at the 2021 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 19, 2021. (Gage Skidmore / Flickr)

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Review of Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Practice by James Lindsay (New Discourses, 2022)

In Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis, James Lindsay accuses critical race theory of being a “sweeping set of conspiracy theories about race and racial power in Western liberal democracies” that is descended from a long line of “Marxist conspiracy theories about the upper class of society.”

Lindsay goes on to accuse critical race theory of working to penetrate and undermine “every school, college, university; every workplace, office, hospital; every magazine, journal, newspaper; every television program, movie, website; every government agency, institution, program; every church, synagogue, mosque; every club, affinity, pastime, and interest” in the United States and beyond.

Hearing Lindsay’s paranoid speculations, one suspects that before long critical race theory will have inspired the shooter on the grassy knoll, concealed the remaining Romanov children, and — worst of all — ruined my night at the bar.

In Search of Argumentation

Lindsay’s book is part of a new genre of conservative critiques of the Left. Gone is the old strategy of compensating for reading nothing by saying a lot. Now we get an avalanche of pages that demonstrate the author has read a lot, followed by little in the way of substance or assertion (see Mark Levin’s American Marxism for the gold standard).

I say this because despite Lindsay’s conspiratorial claims, there is no doubt he has read more critical theory generally and critical race theory specifically than your average conservative firebrand. Race Marxism is filled with long (sometimes pages-long) quotations from major critical race theorists, typically paired with his own explanations of the meaning. Sometimes he’s in the ballpark; other times it is clear he doesn’t understand the thinkers he’s talking about. But it is telling is that Lindsay never sets out to refute these thinkers. In fact, one of the defining features of his book is how remarkably free of arguments and counterarguments it is.

One of the defining features of his book is how remarkably free of arguments and counterarguments it is.

This doesn’t appear to be an accident. In the concluding chapter, Lindsay describes the mess that came before as giving “some sense of what Critical Race Theory really is, where it comes from, how it operates.” Now, he writes, “we can make a few tentative comments about what we can do about it.”

Note that none of this includes what should be the vital argument: why critical race theory is wrong. While the cynic might chalk up the omission to simple ignorance, I suspect the reality is far more banal. Lindsay believes that the mere presentation and mockery of his opponent’s views will reveal them to be so transparently bad, or at least seen as such by a sympathetic audience, that the task of pointing out why they are in fact bad is unnecessary.

To spare the reader the triple headaches I experienced going through the book, I will give just two examples. At one point, Lindsay unpacks Derrick Bell’s controversial theory of “interest convergence.” In a variety of publications, Bell marshals historical and legal research to argue that one rarely sees improvements in the conditions of racialized peoples unless those changes also benefit the white majority. For instance, Bell claims that many of the civil rights movement–era reforms were motivated by a desire to improve America’s moral standing in the Cold War.

Whatever you think about the broader argument — and it’s certainly not immune to criticism — Bell’s latter point is well-documented: as early as the Harry Truman administration, US officials asked the President’s Committee on Civil Rights to report on the foreign policy ramifications of racial discrimination and recommend potential remedies. Lindsay never cites any evidence to rebut Bell’s legal and historical claims, dismissing them as “shocking” “mind reading” demonstrative of the “paranoia and conspiracy of Critical race theorists.”

Lindsay’s claim is an odd one, not least because revising our understanding of history is what historical research does.

An even more telling example is Lindsay’s long tirade against the “historical revisionism that is central to the storytelling of Critical Race theory,” by which he means efforts to retell the history of the United States that emphasize racial and other forms of exploitation. Lindsay’s claim is an odd one, not least because revising our understanding of history is what historical research does. As we gather new evidence about the past, we arrive at a better, more complete sense of both our history and present. This is what many historical commentators have done with race, too, going back at least to Frederick Douglass’s famous pricking of US hagiography in his 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

So what evidence does Lindsay present against those who argue that an honest rendering of US history must include the country’s long periods of racial domination and violence — and the struggles by those at the bottom of society to wrest themselves free? Not even an iota.

He instead insists that the “rationale” of historical revisionism is “raising a racial critical consciousness, which is to say manipulating people into becoming Critical Race Theorists.” In the face of libraries worth of books about race — including many, many works written by non–critical race theorists — this is his objection. How foregrounding the bleak facts of racism in the United States is manipulation, Lindsay doesn’t say.

Misunderstanding Marxism

In the few instances where Lindsay tries to offer some actual criticisms, the results are more than a little puzzling. For instance, Lindsay repeatedly parrots the conservative philosopher Eric Voegelin in describing Marxism as one in a

long line of Gnostic cult ideologies that seek to characterize God as tyrannical and the existing order of the world as a prison (hello Foucault) into which we are flung (hello Heidegger) that we can escape if we discover the true nature of “reality” which is a kind of consciousness that must be raised. That is, Marxism is rebellious Gnosticism reconfigured for industrial Modernity.

For one, Lindsay ignores that Voegelin argued that liberalism was also a secularized Gnostic faith, one of the reasons he has long been an influence on conservative and postliberal critics. But even more egregious is his rendering of Karl Marx.

You see, according to Lindsay, the “prevailing view . . . that Marx offered an economic theory” is “not true in the slightest.” This would come as a surprise to the Prussian theorist, who gave his magnum opus the subtitle “a critique of political economy” and filled thousands of pages with commentary on Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and the other classical economists.

An 1867 edition of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, from the Saitzew Collection in the Zurich Central Library. (Zentralbibliothek Zürich / Wikimedia Commons)

The basis of Lindsay’s argument is that Marx’s Hegelian roots commit him to a kind of atheistic eschatology, where revolutionary agitation against liberal “common sense” and “reality” are to bring about an ill-defined utopia through mass violence. In reality, Marx had many good things to say about both liberalism and capitalism, and his own vision of an ideal human society was one where the “development of human powers [is] an end in itself.”

Much of Lindsay’s misunderstanding comes from his deep misreading of Marx, whom Lindsay describes as analyzing the “material contradictions in the conditions of the working class as compared to the wealthy bourgeois capitalists.” Lindsay has it entirely backwards, since for Marx the disparities in conditions and power between classes were an expression of the more fundamental contradictions of capital. This is key to understanding Marx’s revolutionary argument, since he didn’t think reforms that only improved workers’ material conditions could resolve the fundamental contradictions of capitalism.

Whatever one thinks of this argument, even a cursory understanding of Marx’s economic theory would correct Lindsay’s errors. Though I suppose that kind of attention is unlikely since Lindsay thinks it is “not true in the slightest” that a figure even pro-capitalists acknowledge made important contributions to economics actually wrote about economics.

Misunderstanding Liberalism

Most strikingly of all, Lindsay doesn’t have a robust understanding of the classical liberal doctrines he sets out to defend. To be fair, he acknowledges that Race Marxism isn’t intended to provide an account of “the good,” which is “too big a topic for this volume.” But the concluding sections of the book defend a “classical liberal” and “commonsense” commitment to “reality” and “human nature” along with “meritocracy,” “individualism,” and “rights” (especially the right to property). He lays this out in a manifesto of sorts at the end of the book.

That all men are created equally (in the image of God) and endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights that precede any pretense to privileges granted by the state is a great starting place. That we will therefore judge people on their merits and character, not their identity, is a solid starting place. That we can understand reality as it is, in ourselves, in pursuit of a more perfect union (not just American nation, but people more broadly) is a powerful value. That we can own things and do as we will with our property within the reasonable bounds of the law is a cornerstone of a free people.

Seemingly unbeknownst to Lindsay, some of the most effective criticisms of these mythologized values have come from liberals themselves.

Consider the idea of “meritocracy” and merit. As Michael Sandel points out in The Tyranny of Merit, both right- and left-liberal theorists throughout the twentieth century rejected meritocracy as implausible. In The Constitution of Liberty, libertarian thinker F.A. Hayek criticized meritocracy for holding that property should flow to those considered deserving rather than those who happen to benefit from purely free market transactions.

If it turns out that the people want Fifty Shades of Grey novels rather than Gravity’s Rainbow, the market accepts that the less meritorious author will get rich. Writing from the other side of the spectrum, John Rawls argued that the very notion of meritocracy is incomprehensible given the sheer volume of “morally arbitrary” factors that influence our lives. Even our natural talents are the result of a genetic lottery rather than any effort of our own — hardly the basis for a convincing moral theory.

A caricature of John Stuart Mill by the cartoonist Leslie Ward in Vanity Fair, March 29, 1873. (Wikimedia Commons)

Or consider the contention that liberalism is synonymous with an unadulterated respect for private property rights. This may be true of liberals in the “possessive individualist” tradition, such as John Locke. But it’s not even true of all classical liberals. Adam Smith lambasted arguments against higher wages for labor, arguing that capitalists would “say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.” J.S. Mill, whom Lindsay has elsewhere praised as a defender of free speech, identified as a socialist. For Mill, liberalism was less about defending capitalist property rights than protecting individuals from the domination of unchecked power.

Lindsay is largely silent on this more left-wing side of liberalism — which explains why he can slam someone like Charles Mills in the book, while failing to acknowledge that Mills himself identified as a “radical” black liberal.

A Very Strange Book

Lindsay deserves credit for reading a fair number of the major authors of critical race theory. Even if that’s a low bar, it’s one that other critics of so-called postmodern neo-Marxism and its offshoots haven’t managed to clear. I also think the Left (or at least some quadrants of it) would benefit from dropping their affinity with postmodernism and anti-Enlightenment skepticism and adopting a more assertive approach to theory and politics.

But Lindsay’s ever-so-minor accomplishments shouldn’t disguise the fact that Race Marxism is a very strange, very bad book — one as light on real arguments as it is heavy on snide exposition and American exceptionalism.

So, as an antidote, I will end with the wise and prophetic words of Frederick Douglass:

The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.

Contributors

Matt McManus is a lecturer at the University of Calgary. He is the author of The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism and Myth, the coauthor of Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson, and editor of Liberalism and Socialism: Mortal Enemies or Embittered Kin?.

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Dr. James Lindsay at Summit '24

Always a crowd favorite and the winner of the 2024 Liberty Sword!

https://youtu.be/\_sfpjfd_t0E?si=7hsXXQRfWffMdvBo

#m4lsummit24

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James Lindsay | Southern Poverty Law Center

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about James Lindsay

James Lindsay regularly shares conspiracy theories about the supposed communist takeover of the world (especially the United States), promotes “groomer” rhetoric against the LGBTQ community and spreads the “white genocide” theory that Marxists want to eradicate the white race. With alarmism and fearmongering, Lindsay incites and segregates his base.

In His Own Words

Speaking about drag queens making themselves targets for violence:

“You guys remember George Floyd? The goal is to have ‘Drag Floyd,’ and the goal is to get you to give in so they get their way or overreact – and that's where I say ‘Drag Floyd.’ It's so important to understand that they want a drag queen to get attacked, and they want to make a huge amount of hay of it, and they want to create summer 2020 again off of a drag queen or a trans person or something like this.” -James Lindsay on Turning Point USA's *Americafest Live Day 3*, December 19, 2022

Series of tweets mocking George Floyd on anniversary of Jan. 6:

“Comment with what you hope the Ghost of George Floyd brings you for January 6!”

– James Lindsay on Twitter, January 5, 2023

“If you support justice for George Floyd, he brings you presents on Democrat holidays. Like Santa.”

– James Lindsay on Twitter, January 6, 2023

“You all laughed, but this showed up in the mail today. George Floyd is real! He will bring you nice presents on January 6 if you believe in him and fight for his justice. I'm for closing the border and shutting down fentanyl snuggling into the US, which is true justice for him!”

– James Lindsay on Twitter, January 6, 2023

“So, boys and girls, that's why we have to be good and send Ukraine another $100B to be laundered a year every year: so George Floyd will fly around and visit all the little Russian kids and take their toys and redistribute them to the poor Ukrainian oligarchs on January 6th-mas.”

– James Lindsay on Twitter, January 5, 2023

“Despite any evidence summoned against these claims, Critical Race Theory ultimately holds the view that ‘racism’ is the correct explanation for all disparity in outcomes from one racial group to another when ‘brown’ races and blacks underperform whites on average.”

– James Lindsay in Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis,2022

“Social-Emotional Learning is the hypodermic needle that injects identity-Marxist social theories into our kids.”

– James Lindsay on New Discourses, May 5, 2022

“It is the vested interests of Queer Marxists to obliterate the normalization scale.”

– James Lindsay on New Discourses, August 18, 2022

“Woke Neo-Communism is the new slavery.”

– James Lindsay on Gab, January 13, 2023

Regarding the Rainbow/Pride flag;

“It's the flag of a hostile enemy.”

– James Lindsay on Gab, January 13, 2023

“Drag Queen Story Hour is an initiation rite into the cult of Queer Gnosticism.”

– James Lindsay on Twitter, December 28, 2022

“When I look at what's going on with the Queer activist cult and children, I really, really hope that millstones part of the Gospel is true.”

– James Lindsay on Twitter, January 17, 2023

(This refers to Matthew 18:6 in the Bible: “*If anyone causes one of these l:{ittle ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”)

Regarding Drag queens filling the vacuum of male role models

“There should be male role models, should be female role models in people's lives. They have to see what these models look like, and when we don't have men that can act as men, and I don't mean this alpha crap all over the internet like this exaggeration this, this …this pastiche of masculinity, but I mean, actual men doing what they're supposed to do, you know, taking responsibility showing what it means to be masculine, to be real, to be present, to be responsible and to work with young people in a model that in their lives. You're going to have young people who don't understand that dimension of life and reality. And so it's just crucial that we start nourishing that again, we start trying to overcome these narratives that have boxed men out or lead men to be treated like as buffoons like, you know, Homer Simpson, or whatever, but also as creepers, and if it's a male who wants to be a role model, and so we have this vacuum of male role models and what do we have now? We have drag queens filling in the role. We have men pretending to be women, so they can be role models or groomers for kids. It's a problem.”

– James Lindsay on Brietbart (Youtube) January 16, 2023

Background

The grievance studies hoax

In 2018, James Lindsay, a former math instructor, was running a fusion massage therapy-martial arts business in his hometown of Maryville, Tennessee.8 He had played a small part in establishing the New Atheism movement, authoring several books on the subject: God Doesn't; We Do: Only Humans Can Solve Human Challenges; Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly; and Everybody Is Wrong About God.

In October 2018, the massage therapist gained national attention for his part in what became known as the “grievance studies” affair. Lindsay, along with partners Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose, coauthored 20 false, satirical papers on topics including fat studies, porn studies, critical race studies, sex roles and “rape culture” at dog parks. The papers were then submitted to peer-reviewed academic journals. Seven of the 20 were accepted and published.

According to Lindsay and his coauthors, these papers were a commentary on how political correctness has overtaken scrupulous scholarship in academia. Their goal was to prove that liberal, progressive movements, such as #MeToo, Gay Pride and Black Lives Matter, have no intellectual foundation or substance.

In an essay explaining the project, Lindsay, Boghossian and Pluckrose wrote that after working on the project for a year, they became experts in liberal and social justice causes and could say that “these fields of study do not continue the important and noble liberalwork of the civil rights movements; they corrupt it while trading upon their good names to keep pushing a kind of social snake oil onto a public that keeps getting sicker. For us to knowanything about injustice in society and be able to show it to those who are unaware or in denial of it, scholarship into it must be rigorous. Currently, it is not.”

Attempting to add to their credibility on this point, they also self-identified as liberals, although Pluckrose would go on to publish an essay titled, “Why I No Longer Identify as Feminist,” and Boghossian has had several public associations with far-right white nationalist and white supremacist Stefan Molyneux, appearing on his podcast, Freedomain Radio. Additionally, Boghossian wrote the forward for Molyneax's book, Against the Gods: A Concise Guide to Atheism and Agnoticism.30 Molyneux, in turn, wrote a glowing review of Boghossian's book, A Manual for Creating Atheists.

Lindsay also eventually shed his liberal views. Although claiming to have opposed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, Lindsay announced his support for the former president in 2020, attributing his flip to an aversion to the left’s supposed illiberalism and “wokeness” -- a term he uses to refer to any attempt to create an equitable, inclusive society.

Anti-communism crusade

Lindsay mainstreams his ideas and reactions to world events via his social media accounts on various platforms. He also now runs the website New Discourses, which is owned by Michael O’Fallon, president of Sovereign Nations, a Christian nationalist organization.1,10 The site features podcasts, articles and videos, as well as a Social Justice Encyclopedia with “translations from wokish,” definitions of common social justice terms such as systemic racism, BIPOC and intersectionality, along with commentary on these definitions by Lindsay.

In an August 2022 interview with right-wing provocateur Andy Ngo, Lindsay confirmed his changing views, arguing that in 2019-2020, “woke stopped being fun and just this stupid but dangerous thing that happened primarily in academia.” Lindsay told Ngo he began to reject everything that supports the woke agenda, which he claimed has become ubiquitous in American society. Still, he said he does not consider himself committed to Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology.

His primary focus is “to renew America back to a constitutional republic as opposed to something that's undergoing a communist revolution.” He claimed the U.S. currently uses what he called “nudge theory,” like modern-day Russia, China and Korea, to pressure citizens to comply to Marxist ideologies.

Through his multiple communication channels, Lindsay continues to spread his various conspiracy theories and aversion to what he deems as “wokeness.” Most of his rhetoric focuses on the specter of cultural Marxism/communism, a supposed white genocide and the alleged indoctrination of children by sinister forces.

Lindsay promotes the New World Order conspiracy theory, which alleges a communist plot to create a totalitarian world government. He has repeatedly attacked the World Economic Forum (WEF) for its attempts to highlight inequality and change social structures through programs like environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, as well as social emotional learning in education. Social emotional learning is an educational method that incorporates social and emotional skills into the curriculum. It aids in developing self-awareness, self-control and interpersonal skills to better help students cope with challenges in the classroom, at home and in the community.

Denying systemic racism and oppression, Lindsay took aim at a statement by Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the WEF, declaring that “inequality defines our time.” Instead, Lindsay argued that the WEF and its partner organizations fund “a lot of woke Marxism, a lot of this identity politics that makes people angry and makes them perceive inequality and injustice. And then that same organization happens to point out ‘look how angry people are, look how dissatisfied people are because of the inequality that we are actually stoking.’” He argued that the WEF created social and income inequality that didn’t exist so that it can demand social changes.

Lindsay has admitted that the concept of ESG was born from corporate responsibility but eventually “got hijacked into this tool of totalitarianism,” forcing companies to accept supposedly communist concepts, such as social justice activity, identity and belonging programs and hiring highly paid diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) “commissars.”

In an educational video on social emotional learning on his site, New Discourses, Lindsay also warns, “know if you have just one minute to have listened to this is that the people who are implementing social emotional learning on purpose belong in prison, because it is advocating that teachers practice psychology without a license in unregulated nontherapeutic spaces on groups of children.”

In line with his quest to save the world from a New World Order, Lindsay is acutely concerned with a communist takeover in America.

In his book Cynical Theories, cowritten with his grievance studies affair partner, Helen Pluckrose, Lindsay explains that the extreme left and extreme right are in an intense culture war. He argues that extreme right populists are desperately fighting to preserve liberalism (political democracy, universal human rights, legal equality for all adults, freedom of expression, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, etc.), while the far left is advocating revolution.

In his interview with Andy Ngo, Lindsay claimed Antifa (or the anti-fascist movement) and far-left organizations are merely “self-fulfilling prophecies,” who create hysteria that prompts groups like the Proud Boys to have to show up because they’ve made a big deal of things that no longer exist. In his words: “Their idea that systems and structures are indefinitely self-perpetuating, which is a Marxist belief about how the bourgeoisie rig society and dictate ideologies to keep themselves in power to exclude certain other voices … which is again why as political prostitutes they should really think twice about what they’re supporting.”

His concentration on combating communism and cultural Marxism in America earned him prominence in the reactionary anti-student inclusion movement that rapidly gained traction throughout the country at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Cynical Theoriesexamined several critical theories, such as queer theory, disability studies and fat studies, Lindsay's self-published Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxisfocuses solely on critical race theory (CRT).

Among the top fearmongers of critical race theory, Lindsay often plays on the terrors of concerned parents, preaching about the indoctrination of students. Speaking at conferences and meetings across the country, in addition to media on his own site, Lindsay raises fear among parents and groups with statements such as, “they’re going to present critical race theory through Ruby Bridges and statistics lessons.”

Chris Rufo, who credits himself with bringing CRT into mainstream America’s spotlight, credits Lindsay with being an expert on studying and making theoretical explanations that he can then follow up with more populist calls to action, saying, “James is really the theory expert. James is an encyclopedia of theory connecting all the dots laying out the case … creating this giant content to guide all of us into this world. And then I think I come in as a complement to what James is doing, really following his lead with the praxis or the practice, which is translating the theory into the realm of practical politics and then translating this kind of esoteric knowledge that school moms and school dads can use at school board meetings and hammer their school boards with.”

Lindsay has become a featured speaker at conferences across the country, where he speaks on his ideas against CRT and promotes his book. He has also done several media appearances on podcasts and television shows. On the Dr. Phil show, he appeared alongside proponents of CRT, as well as some opponents, including a representative from Moms for Liberty.

In Race Marxism, Lindsay uses an oversimplified definition of critical race theory to inflame his base by flipping the concentration of CRT to focus on hatred and racism toward white people, scapegoating them for all of society’s problems. He attempts to simplify CRT, stating, “more simply, Critical Race Theory can be understood to be a vast conspiracy theory which argues that white people, both historically (which has some truth behind it) and into the present (which does not), have organized society specifically so that it produces disparate outcomes (“systemic racism”) that advantage themselves over everyone else, especially Blacks.” Notably, Lindsay rejects most tenets included in CRT, including systemic racism and oppression.

Lindsay attempted to prove the nonexistence of systemic racism and oppression in an interview, pointing to formerly enslaved abolitionist Frederick Douglass' famous speech from July 4, 1852. That speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” called out contradictions in the U.S. Constitution, specifically the line that “all men are created equal.” Douglass questioned this statement’s validity given slavery’s existence. Lindsay then notes, 10 years later the constitutional promise was fulfilled with the abolition of slavery.

Lindsay then pointed to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for equal rights in the 1960s, arguing that promise was fulfilled by the Civil Rights Act: “In other words, we did. We started to live up to that promise, but that promise had to be there, and it had to be made stable and something to appeal to in order for us to be able to live up to it and appealing to living up to it rather than tearing it apart is what enabled us to make progress consistently and steadily over painful decades and painful centuries and to get to a place. … I mean, except for our lunatic fringe, undeniably better for literally everybody.”

He has also attempted to explain the “whiteness as property” tenet of CRT, which is a concept that white people are automatically afforded privileges and benefits solely because of their race. Lindsay states, “It’s so stupid. And so for, say people to go to Africa or to South America or to anywhere in the world that doesn’t have science and try to teach them science is literally a colonial act of trying to change their culture to value white and Western things, rather than just trying to teach them very effective methods to understand the world. Coming to Africa to teach them to rely on reason, if that’s what it was, would be seen as an act of colonial aggression that tries to erase African cultures that have always thought differently. In some sense in that way, very f---ing conservative because it’s like, no, leave the noble savages alone, don’t change anything about them, even if it would be to their benefit, you can’t change that because that’s … even if it would be to their benefit you can’t change that, because that’s, as they say, colonialism.”

Self-appointed founder of the modern-day groomer movement

According to a September 2022 report released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Human Rights Campaign, between January and July 2022, tweets mentioning the derogatory, anti-LGBTQ social media phrase “ok, groomer” increased 2,465%. In Lindsay's interview with Andy Ngo, he indirectly took credit for this boom: “I can't claim that I was the first person to do it, but I think that I can credibly claim that I was the one who popularized it and kind of drove it into the mainstream.” In the report, Lindsay ranked second in the list of most-viewed hateful tweets, coming behind only U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

When Twitter previously cracked down on this type of hate speech, Lindsay switched up his messaging but maintained the same sentiment, responding to a tweet from a transgender Harvard instructor with “ok child sexualization specialist,” as opposed to his signature “ok groomer.” For this, he received a lifetime ban on this personal account, prompting an outpouring of sympathy from his supporters.

In November 2022, Twitter reinstated Lindsay after Elon Musk acquired the platform. Upon the revocation of his ban, he told the Post Millennial: “I don't know how I feel about this. I don't think platforms like Twitter should be where the big conversations happen, but we have to work with the world as it is.”

Nonetheless, Lindsay has returned to the platform, naming himself in his Twitter bio as the “leader of the Christian right” (despite his fervent atheist views), posting several times a day, promoting his site and continuing to spread groomer rhetoric, now unrestricted.

Lindsay has also contributed to the “groomer” narrative, often warned against what he calls “groomer schools,” schools that have supposedly adopted Marxist principles to groom and brainwash children. He reiterates this conspiracy theory in his most recent book, The Marxification of Education.

Lindsay has also railed against drag queens and their performances, claiming that they are also groomers and threaten to fill the void of male role models that society is currently pushing out, saying, “We have this vacuum of male role models and what do we have now we have drag queens filling in the role we have men pretending to be women, so they can be role models or groomers for kids, that's a problem.”

He has also claimed drag queens “make provocations” of violence against themselves, recently stating that their goal is to recreate the summer of 2020, saying, “This is an unconventional warfare tactic to provoke. The goal – you guys remember George Floyd, the goal is to have Drag Floyd. And I'm serious, this is deadly serious.”

White genocide: ‘Ideally, we just start saying no and push them out with legal means.’

On top of perpetuating the conspiracy theories of a communist takeover and groomer indoctrination, Lindsay also spreads rhetoric related to white genocide, a theory that maintains there is a deliberate effort by people of color to erase the white race from existence.

Lindsay sometimes makes this point by once again summoning the evils of critical race theory (CRT). In CRT, the tenet of whiteness as property generally refers to white privilege as social benefits and advantages that come with being a member of the dominant race. However, in Lindsay’s oversimplification of concepts, coupled with his signature fearmongering, he calls up white genocide theory in Race Marxismwhen claiming that “Critical Race Theory frames whiteness as a type of ‘property’ that it would seek to abolish.”

In Race Marxism, Lindsay also likens critical race theorists to Nazis, saying, “I do not think Critical Race Theory can be understood without realizing it seeks to establish Völkisch nationalism in which races are considered like their own separate nations and into which ‘patriotic’ members have considerable investment.”

Lindsay then points sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, from whom many pioneering critical race theorists drew inspiration, claiming that he too championed Völkisch ideology in his work, harping on Du Bois' use of the word “folk” in some of his work, such as The Souls of Black Folk and The Gift of Black Folk.Lindsay claims that, "This mode of thought is considerably important to understanding the otherwise odd word ‘folks’ in Critical Race Theory, which constantly refers to ‘black folks,’ ‘white folks,’ and ‘brown folks’ (and any of the above “folx” if intersectionality queer at the same time.) The Volk, in German, is the relevant “folks” here, and it refers to a people or a nation bound by similar cultural heritage. Critical Race Theory, largely following from DuBois, is very racially folkish (that is, Völkisch).”

Lindsay cites Du Bois’ well-known concept of double consciousness, introduced in the Souls of Black Folk. Here, Dubois spoke about inequity, inequality, racism, intersectionality and systemic oppression that Black people faced while also being Americans. Lindsay, however, interpreted and presented this as admissions of his Völkischideology.

Lindsay goes on to make further claims of there being little difference between Nazism and Marxism, as he labels the critics of racism. In his analysis, those who call out racism are "scapegoating" white people like Hitler did with Jews. Recalling that no systemic injustices exist in Lindsay's view, he paints white people as victims, warning that if CRT is not reigned in or stopped completely, whites – deemed the “usurping class” – will ultimately be abolished.

Attempting to make this point, Lindsay writes, “There’s not much daylight between Marxism and Nazism here. In both ideologies, the point of the scapegoating, by race for Hitler and by class for Marx, is to seize the property of and ultimately abolish those seen as the usurping class of society. In Critical Race Theory, this is explicitly racial, however, which is a point that Hitler hammers home repeatedly (and with tremendous racism) throughout Mein Kampf.”

Lindsay has also pushed this narrative of white genocide on Twitter, warning: “If this ideology isn't stopped, one way or another, there will be. Ideally, we just start saying no and push them out with legal means. Their funders might liquidate or mass incarcerate them when they seize power too, which is way less good but avoids it.”

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Right-wing influencer James Lindsay argued that the joy Harris “is pushing has been explained by ‘organizers’ (Communist cadres) to be a Communist concept called ‘radical joy.”Lindsay continued that this “radical joy” is a “state of cult-religious ecstatic mania centered upon the idea of seizing power and using it to ‘advance history’ and punish class enemies.” Twitter/X, [8/12/24]

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off bs

14 AMAZON BESTSELLER! As seen on The Joe Rogan Experience and The Glenn Beck Program.

Critical Race Theory is one of the hottest and most controversial topics in the world today, but what is it, really? Rightly understood, Critical Race Theory is a reinvention of an older, terrible idea, Marxism, using race "as the central construct for understanding inequality" in place of economic class. That is, Critical Race Theory is Race Marxism. The evidence of this claim is so overwhelming upon even casual examination that it is a shock that it isn't immediately plain to everyone who encounters it. Therefore, this book by James Lindsay, the leading investigator of Critical Race Theory, serves less to make the case that Critical Race Theory is Race Marxism and more to serve as a long permission slip to the public to call Critical Race Theory what it plainly is.

Race Marxism exists to tell the truth about Critical Race Theory in unprecedented clarity and depth. Across its six weighty chapters, Lindsay explains what Critical Race Theory is, what it believes, where it comes from, how it operates, and what we can do about it now that we know what we're dealing with. It exposes Critical Race Theory for what it is by ranging widely across its own literature and a survey of some of the darkest philosophical currents of the last three hundred years in Western thought. Readers will come away understanding Critical Race Theory and be able to speak the truth about it with authority: Critical Race Theory is Race Marxism, and, like all Marxist Theories before it, it will not work this time.

James Lindsay is an author, internationally recognized speaker, and the founder and president of New Discourses. He is best known for his relentless criticism of "Woke" ideology, the now-famous Grievance Studies Affair, and the bestselling book Cynical Theories, which has been translated into over a dozen languages. In addition to writing and speaking, Lindsay is the voice of the New Discourses Podcast and has been a guest on prominent media outlets including The Joe Rogan Experience, Glenn Beck, Fox News, and NPR.

mma

right-wing media’s playbook for attacking Kamala Harris: A flood of misogyny and racism

Right-wing media spared no time in hurling racist and sexist attacks against the likely Democratic presidential candidate

WRITTEN BY PAYTON ARMSTRONG, CHARIS HOARD & EMMA MAE WEBER

PUBLISHED 07/23/24

Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential election and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, right-wing media have launched sexist and racist attacks at Harris to try to diminish her qualifications. They’ve claimed that she can’t be president because she doesn’t have biological children, labeled her “the ultimate diversity, equity, and inclusion candidate,” fixated on her laugh, claimed that she promotes "the occult,” and likened her to “Jezebel.”

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8 22

https://www.mediamatters.org/elon-musk/right-wing-influencers-leading-social-media-crusade-against-esg

Right-wing media figures are fueling outrage against ESG, an acronym for corporate standards and practices related to environment, social, and governance issues that Republican lawmakers and the fossil fuel industry are seeking to turn into a new bogeyman. Conveniently vague, ESG is being misleadingly cast as a tool for “elites” to force a tyrannical agenda on unsuspecting Americans, specifically investors, as part of the far-right “Great Reset” conspiracy theory.

The anti-ESG movement is gaining momentum fast. In May, former Vice President Mike Pence, seemingly gearing up for a potential 2024 presidential run, attacked ESG in a speech in Houston and in aWall Street Journal op-ed.Biotech founder and conservative influencer Vivek Ramaswamy launched an explicitly anti-ESG asset management firm called Strive that same month. More recently, right-wing media spearheaded an effort to blame upheaval in the Netherlands, Sri Lanka, and other countries on green policies supposedly forced into place because of ESG compliance, warning that if the “global elites” had their way, the United States would be next. 

This right-wing campaign is now targeting corporations which are implementing ESG practices and the financial institutions which are encouraging them through investment. According to Reuters, 17 conservative-led states have pushed at least 44 bills or new laws punishing companies for taking a stance on ESG issues in 2022, compared to about a dozen of these types of actions in 2021. Notably, an August 5 New York Times investigation revealed that a dark money group with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry is working with state treasurers across the country to hinder climate action in the form of anti-ESG legislation, among other tactics.

ESG is attracting more and more attention from right-wing media influencers like Elon Musk, Glenn Beck, and James Lindsay. They are part of a growing number of conservative media figures seizing the opportunity to turn ESG into the next battleground in the culture wars, in part by fitting it into the broader “Great Reset” conspiracy theory on social media. As it relates to climate change denial, the Great Reset posits that global elites are using the climate crisis as a pretext to impose economic control on the masses.

What is ESG?

On May 18, Musk took to Twitter, writing, “ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.” Tesla had just been kicked off of the S&P 500’s ESG index, potentially spelling trouble for the company’s stock value, and Musk was mad. It wasn’t the first time he had touched on the topic, but the media frenzy that followed had everyone asking one question: What is ESG?

From May 17-19, Google search interest in “ESG” skyrocketed by 233%, reaching peak popularity for a relatively esoteric acronym.

ESG stands for “environmental, social, and governance” criteria that companies can meet by developing initiatives and disclosures to appear responsive to environmental concerns, workers' rights, and other pressing social issues. Independent rating agencies evaluate how well they are managing risks and growth opportunities in these different areas and how that could have material impacts on their performance. For example, a company that provides detailed reporting on its greenhouse gas emissions from direct operations and across its supply chain and has a robust plan to achieve net-zero emissions may be more likely to receive a high ‘E’ score.

Investors who want to prioritize financial returns but are seeking some level of corporate accountability are increasingly relying on ESG scores to make decisions. ESG investments are on track to exceed $50 trillion by 2025. The big three asset management firms – BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, which have sometimes used their shareholder power to support ESG resolutions – are the main villains in the right’s anti-ESG narrative. For example, at Exxon’s annual meeting in 2021, the three firms used their voting power to help activist investors install three directors on the company's board, with the goal of building out a more aggressive strategy to transition away from fossil fuels.

But that doesn’t mean corporate ESG will save the planet. To the contrary, climate advocates have called ESG a greenwashing scam. Despite being in the S&P 500’s ESG Index, Exxon has increased its investment in oil and gas drilling and does not have a climate planthat meets the goals of the Paris agreement. But the fossil fuel industry and the lawmakers who receive lavish contributions from it aren’t concerned with legitimate criticisms of ESG.

Why ESG matters to fossil fuel proponents

It is clear that despite short-term demand rising, fossil fuels are not viable long-term investments. However, fossil fuel industry allies are clawing to keep their power and profits, discouraging any corporate commitment to climate by vilifying and even prohibiting adherence to ESG standards while advancing pro-oil and gas legislation at the state and federal levels that prohibits investment and business decisions from considering the economic and environmental consequences of fossil fuels. What’s more, Republican legislators are vowing to continue this trend if they take control of the House in the November midterm election.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to hamstring the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency in June, ESG opponents are now calling for the court to place similar limits on the Securities and Exchange Commission and its ability to ask public companies for disclosures about their climate impacts.

Right-wing culture warriors, conspiracy theorists, and Fox News hosts are attacking ESG

The burgeoning conservative campaign against ESG isn’t just playing out in state legislatures or financial institutions. ESG panic may be approaching critical mass, with high-profile climate skeptics like Tucker Carlson, Marc Morano, Alex Epstein, and Michael Shellenberger realizing that the acronym is ripe for manipulation and fearmongering.[vid]

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Some key media figures in the right-wing campaign against ESG, such as radio host andconspiracy theorist Glenn Beck and anti-critical theory activist James Lindsay,jumped at the chance to amplify several attacks from Musk in an effort to move ESG into the mainstream discourse.

These anti-ESG evangelists aren’t just concerned with protecting oil and gas interests. Their grievances are often focused on the social and governance aspects as well, applying the same flawed arguments to specific examples to deride and toxify ESG as a whole.

Musk: “ESG is the devil incarnate”

Musk’s vendetta against ESG is personal, and it has been building at the same time his faltering deal to buy Twitter with the goal of stopping the “woke mind virus” has transformed him into a reactionary martyr.

Musk first took to Twitter with his ESG grievances on March 8, claiming, “ESG rules have been twisted to insanity,” replying to a tweet from venture capitalist and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen.

On April 3, Musk tweeted, “I am increasingly convinced that corporate ESG is the Devil Incarnate,” cueing up another right-wing media pile-on.

On May 18, Musk wrote his infamous “social justice warriors” tweet, which has over 360,000 interactions.

On May 26, Fox host Laura Ingraham dedicated an entire segment of The Ingraham Angle to fearmongering about ESG, citing Musk at the outset.

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Glenn Beck: “Elon Musk Joins Glenn in Anti-ESG Crusade”

Beck is not new to ESG. The right-wing TV and radio host was an early adopter of the “Great Reset” conspiracy theory in 2020 following the World Economic Forum’s annual Davos summit, along with Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and a slew of other conservative influencers. He has also been weaving ESG into this theory, which has been aptly described as a “hodgepodge of one-world-government fears.”

[twt]

Beck worked with the fossil fuel-funded Heartland Institute, to help spread his message. Heartland has been testifying before lawmakers in several states to back anti-ESG legislation, providing them with misleading information about how financial institutions are implementing ESG strategies. Beck even wrote a book with Heartland Editorial Director Justin Haskins. In onevideo Beck claimed that “there are now 20 states that are starting to put anti-ESG legislation in because of his book.”

A true Musk fanboy, Beck has gone so far as to blame ESG and the Great Reset for roadblocks to his deal to buy Twitter.

James Lindsay: “We’re going to do to ESG what we did to CRT”

Lindsay, a critical theory opponent, has emerged as a loud ESG critic, particularly on Twitter. Lindsay is an influential figure in the “critical race theory” panic. He was also instrumental in popularizing the baseless “groomer” slur which has been used to target LGBTQ people and falsely suggest they are child predators. (Lindsay was recently permanently suspended from Twitter, where he had over 300,000 followers, for calling a trans Harvard instructor a “child sexualization specialist.”)

Now, similarly to Beck, Lindsay is using his influence to spotlight ESG as a key feature of the Great Reset conspiracy theory, becoming increasingly obsessed with the topic and anyone who he feels could give it momentum – especially Musk. More broadly, Lindsay is focused on gathering a smorgasbord of right-wing grievances under the umbrella of ESG, with the intent of building a nearly all-encompassing cause for conservative activists to rally behind. Unlike some of the lawmakers who are primarily targeting climate-conscious businesses, Lindsay’s interest is more aligned with attacking the “social” aspect of ESG, which includes Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts (DEI).

In May, Lindsay wrote that “we’re going to do to ESG what we did to CRT,” in response to an article from The New Republic examining ESG’s role in the broader culture wars. The article highlighted Musk’s tweets and noted that anti-critical race theory and anti-ESG groups have common funders.

Lindsay repeatedly attempted to engage with Musk about ESG on Twitter, encouraging and agreeing with his objections to ESG and praising Tesla and SpaceX. On Facebook, he invoked Musk when posting about the issue, and generally jumped to his defense in the face of any criticism

In June, he was a guest on The Charlie Kirk Show, to discuss how ESG is part of a “Marxist theology.”

ESG is seemingly poised to continue gaining traction

If we learned anything from the rise of critical race theory to a national issue and right-wing media obsession, it’s that underestimating the right-wing media’s ability to create a moral panic out of opaque terminology has serious consequences. Musk’s tweets were all that right-wing media figures and conspiracy theorists needed to expand attacks on ESG. Now, conservative TV news outlets have picked up on the narrative. With midterms approaching, so is the opportunity to mobilize voters and shareholders against this new iteration of ever-evolving “woke” ideology.

There are legitimate concerns about ESG. But even if it isn't an effective path toward decarbonization, permitting a maliciously misleading interpretation conceived by the fossil fuel industry and its allies to dominate the media cycle certainly won’t get us there, and may even further demonize various types of climate action.

ggl 10 24

ouTube · Liberty Vault 14.6K+ views · 1 month ago

James Lindsay explains how Marxism became popular over time. To support daily videos and receive special perks, please consider becoming a ...

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[### Race Marxism Is a Very Strange, Very Bad Book

Jacobin

https://jacobin.com › 2022/03 › james-lindsay-race-mar...](https://jacobin.com/2022/03/james-lindsay-race-marxism-book-review-crt-liberalism)

Mar 16, 2022 — James Lindsay accuses critical race theory of being a “sweeping set of conspiracy theories about race and racial power in Western liberal democracies.”

[### James Lindsay

Southern Poverty Law Center

https://www.splcenter.org › extremist-files › individual](https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/james-lindsay)

However, in Lindsay's oversimplification of concepts, coupled with his signature fearmongering, he calls up white genocide theory in Race Marxism when claiming ...

[### James Lindsay and a Friendly Point of Criticism

American Institute for Economic Research

https://www.aier.org › ... › Philosophy › Education](https://www.aier.org/article/james-lindsay-and-a-friendly-point-of-criticism/)

Jun 8, 2023 — James Lindsay presents varieties of leftism as expressions of Marxism. He calls Marxism the “genus” and all the varieties “species.”

Missing: post ‎| Show results with: post

[### Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and ...

Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com › Race-Marxism-Critical-The...](https://www.amazon.com/Race-Marxism-Critical-Theory-Praxis/dp/B09SJ1NHG7)

Lindsay's Race Marxism starts w/ a working definition of woke and then continues to unpack its meaning, refining it and exposing a deeper hidden purpose. His ...

4.7

(784) · $18.94 · ‎30-day returns · ‎In stock

[### "Race Marxism" by James Lindsay - Summary and Review -

authortomharper.com

https://authortomharper.com › 2022/03/18 › race-marxi...](https://authortomharper.com/2022/03/18/race-marxism-critical-theory-james-lindsay-summary-and-review/)

Mar 18, 2022 — Race Marxism by James Lindsay is an exposition of Critical Race Theory, what it is, what it believes, and how it got that way.

[### The Boy Who Cried Marx

Commentary Magazine

https://www.commentary.org › articles › robert-pondiscio](https://www.commentary.org/articles/robert-pondiscio/marxification-education-james-lindsay/)

May 15, 2023 — Instead, Lindsay describes a top-down education system that is “unambiguously Marxist” and that long ago “abandoned the idea of educating ...

[### James Lindsay's “Race Marxism” is Ignorant About Both ...

Home ❧ Current Affairs

https://www.currentaffairs.org › news › 2022/12 › jame...](https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/12/james-lindsays-race-marxism-is-ignorant-about-both-race-and-marxism)

Dec 1, 2022 — Critical race theory and Marxism are thoroughly and predictably warped in this conservative bestseller.

[### James Lindsay

New Discourses

https://newdiscourses.com › author › jameslindsay](https://newdiscourses.com/author/jameslindsay/)

Host James Lindsay reads a section on ignorant protests, revealing the Woke Marxist (American Maoist) problem we face in the West today. View Post. Share.

[### James Lindsay - Why Wokeness is Marxism

YouTube · Liberty Vault

13.2K+ views · 6 months ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK1dUmhy870)

James Lindsay explains the connection between wokeness and Marxism on Jordan Peterson's podcast. Buy my book, Thomas Paine: A Lifetime of ...

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