Ep 350 ｜ Explaining the 'Logic' of Leftist Hypocrisy ｜ Guest： James Lindsay
Episode Stats
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Summary
James Lindsay is the author of Cynical Theories and the President of New Discourses. He is also an expert on critical theory. In this episode, we talk about censorship in the wake of the Kamala Harris and Joe Biden appointments to the Justice Department and the Department of Justice.
Transcript
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He is also the president of New Discourses, and he's an expert on critical theory.
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We're going to talk about a lot of what's going on right now with the censorship, some
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of the rhetoric that we're seeing from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris about splitting up
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people by their racial groups, where that comes from, where these ideas and these policies
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We're also going to talk about who Biden tapped as the head of the Civil Rights Division of
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She had some interesting things to say about people of different races back when she was
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And so you're really, really going to enjoy his analysis.
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He has so many interesting things to say, and I'm going to have him back on in a couple
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months, too, to talk a little bit more about the philosophical origins of all of this craziness.
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But I'm so excited for you to listen to this interview.
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It really was supposed to be a short interview.
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It ended up being it was supposed to be 10 minutes.
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It ended up being like 45 minutes long because I couldn't stop talking to him and asking him
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questions and I could have kept going for like another two hours.
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And so I know that you guys are going to feel the same way when you listen to it.
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Can you tell everyone quickly who you are and what you do?
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I am the founder and president, I suppose, of New Discourses, which is a company that is
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trying to articulate what's happening with the woke movement.
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I'm trying to build a bridge, in a sense, between their academic literature, their activist
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literature and everyday people or at least smart everyday people.
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So it's that kind of I describe it as peeling the onion.
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Um, if you think of how an onion is constructed, if you want to cook an onion and, you know,
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you can do whatever you want with it, it's got that thick papery layer on the outside.
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And that's sort of like what I'm trying to take off so that even if you want to fry
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the onion, if you want to make onion rings, whatever you want to do with it, you can do
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But I've got to get the thick, tough, papery outside off.
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Other than that, I've written some books, most recently a book called Cynical Theories that
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Explains the Postmodern Elements of the Woke Movement.
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And so mostly I explain the Woke Movement all the time.
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My background, I have a PhD in mathematics, so I'm not from the humanities.
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So I think that's kind of who I am and what I do.
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And are you surprised that the work that you do has placed you in common cause with people
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on the right, that people really regard you now as a conservative, even though you might
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I'm not surprised, but it wasn't something that if you would have said, you know, two
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years ago that I would have believed, I would have said, well, there's some hints that, you
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know, the conservatives are going to be more receptive to this than the people on the left.
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So I've been pleasantly surprised, I think, to find quite a warm welcome from my many new
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And I think it's been been kind of more pleasant than not, to be honest with you.
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And the last time I talked to you, you told me that you have voted for Democrats your entire
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your entire adult life, but not this time over the past week or so, as we've seen a lot of
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Or do you still, you know, stand by the decision to vote the way you did November?
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I am still very, very worried about what a Biden administration is likely to do with
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regard, especially to the work that I do, which is about that woke movement.
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For example, we've already heard with the events at the Capitol, Biden characterized it
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as being, you know, it would have been totally different, he said, had it been black people.
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He's already made indications, for example, uh, openly said, I think it was on Twitter
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either yesterday or the day before that we're going to have to now start doing this building
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And we're going to do that with racial equity in mind.
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And he named specifically racial minority groups in the U S that are going to be favored
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I don't believe that any of this is going to help.
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In fact, I think it's all going to make things worse.
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That's even compared with the fact that, that Trump became kind of a singular object of focus
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that, uh, stoked the culture war to, to the fevered pitch that it's at presently.
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And I also just to be upfront, I don't agree with the consensus view of what happened at
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the Capitol, which is not to say I have an alternative explanation of what happened at
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I don't know what happened at the Capitol and neither do you.
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Um, and so I don't jump on bandwagons very easily or very quickly.
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It took me months to decide even after studying all of this for so long that I would vote for
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And you can see, I talked to Glenn Beck over the summer and I, he was like, are you going
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And he was like, are you going to pull the trigger?
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And they kind of did this whole like emotional guilt thing at the end.
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And so then finally it took until October or something for me to decide, to decide that
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I would vote for Trump, um, and to get over that.
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So I don't jump on bandwagons very easily and, um, I'm not jumping on that bandwagon
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I want to go back to something that you said in particular about the threat that you see
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of wokeness within the Biden administration and tangibly what you see is the consequences
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But first I want to play the clip that you talked about that we saw on Twitter of Joe
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Biden saying that he is going to prioritize black, Latino, Asian, small business owners.
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Our priority will be black, Latino, Asian, and Native American owned small businesses,
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women owned businesses, and finally having equal access to resources needed to reopen
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Basically, he listed every demographic besides white male business owners.
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And some people listening to this really have no idea what we're talking about.
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We're talking about wokeness or intersectionality.
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So can you translate as the person who is peeling back the skin of the onion, what Biden
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Okay, so the key thing to point out is where he says that we're finally going to give them
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equal access to the resources of society, because the point of view from which they're coming
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is one under a heading that's called critical race theory.
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I can say that now, and people kind of know what I'm talking about, at least heard of
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Critical race theory begins with the assumption that racism is the ordinary state of affairs
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in society, and that it has not been improved upon.
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In fact, it only has been hidden better over all of the different things that we've done,
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like abolishing slavery, ending Jim Crow, ending segregation in schools and in workplaces,
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Critical race theory holds that those things didn't end racism, they just hid it more successfully
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from people and made them less aware that they're participating in racism.
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So there's this belief that they're coming from, and Biden actually acknowledges that belief
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explicitly that we're finally going to give them equal access to the resources of society.
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The belief says that that is not the case, and it has never been the case.
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This is truly the belief in critical race theory, that until the system itself is overthrown
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and replaced with a new one constructed by these race theorists, that it's not possible
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for there to be equal access to the resources and opportunities in society.
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What do they mean by resources, and what do they mean by equal access?
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Cultural, being viewed equally, like in a very culturally relativistic sense, that all cultures
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are exactly identical in terms of their capacity to produce success.
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So the view from critical race theory is that when you hear this phrase, cultural racism,
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is that the reason that black people are actually not as successful in the United States is in
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part because black culture is not held in equal esteem to white culture.
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We have a predominant white culture, and that black culture is different.
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You'll notice that this assigns cultures to races, which is a racist thing to do.
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Um, so it's a very difficult way to think about the world until you understand how they think
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about it, but this is, this is what they're talking about.
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So when you talk about access to the, the, the resources of society, we're primarily talking
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about money and with Biden, that's explicitly what's being, uh, discussed here and power.
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And so with money, what will happen is there will be these so-called equity programs and the
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equity programs are being used to prioritize access to money with the COVID pandemic.
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They've said that they're going to do this by race to, and I quote, level the playing field,
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which in practice is a, literally means having to let older white and other people die of the
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virus, uh, because we have to level that playing field apparently.
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Um, so those are the kinds of resources that can also include freedom or ability to travel
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and under, that's the, the rubric of equity and under the rubric of diversity, it will
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So it'll be positions that are higher up in companies or in government.
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You see Joe Biden appointing people explicitly doing so as he says, because that they have certain
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And so access to money, power, uh, including the, the, the basic liberties to participate
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Like, uh, it could be connected through COVID to the ability to travel.
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If they prioritize the vaccine and then say people who aren't vaccinated can't travel, then
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they can do that that way and make it just your, your even basic freedom to move.
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And tell me the, for the people who are listening to this and they're like, you know, that, that
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doesn't sound like that's actually going to be the tangible consequence.
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When I posted about this on Twitter, that this is partiality, he claims to be a devout Catholic.
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The Bible explicitly speaks against partiality.
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Uh, the, the pushback that I got is, well, what's wrong with finally allowing these people
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to just have the same kind of power and influences money as, as white men have always had.
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Why are you trying to push back against these disenfranchised groups?
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And it's really hard, obviously, to engage in this in a, in a Twitter conversation.
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Thomas Sowell calls this cosmic justice that is not actually accomplished without injustice.
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You have to discriminate and hold back one group and push forward other groups.
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Therefore, not seeing people as individuals who might actually be disenfranchised in some way,
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whether they're white or black, but seeing people as part of a collection or a whole group
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that is just from our own perspective has been oppressed.
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And so it necessarily leads to some kind of other oppression or injustice.
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How do I explain that in layman's terms to people who haven't read your books,
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who haven't read Thomas Sowell, and, uh, who really just think that we don't want
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any kind of fairness or equality for people who may or may not have been disenfranchised?
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It's not easy because it really frequently comes down to haggling about the meanings of words.
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And, uh, for example, you see the word disenfranchised, um, technically with the passage of the civil rights act
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in 1964, full entran enfranchisement was given to all people of all demographics and was protected.
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So nobody's been disenfranchised for a very long time in that regard.
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Um, so when, when I say that I'm not trying to make a, oh, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know,
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that kind of an argument it's, we have to haggle about what you mean by the word disenfranchised
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before we can even start to have this conversation is the very difficult part.
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Because if you look, for example, at the way that different groups are, are succeeding in society,
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what you find is that the narrative that is being pushed by say critical race theory or by Joe Biden
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in this, in this case bears very little resemblance to reality. For example, they are claiming that race
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is a determining factor. Okay. That requires you to be able to explain why South and East
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Asians and, and very dark black on average, Nigerian immigrants are the most successful
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groups in the United States by most of the outcome metrics and they can't. It also requires you to
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explain if white people have always had access to, to, to money and power and privilege, why white
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Appalachian people are overwhelmingly statistically the poorest and, uh, most ridden with, with deep
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societal problems like deaths of despair and opioid addiction and so on. And so the narrative that
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they're pushing is a very simplistic one that does not match reality. Yeah. And so when you say,
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well, why don't you care about the enfranchisement of these people? You have to specify which people
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you mean, and then you have to then figure out how race becomes or remains the relevant variable.
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And then when you push that against the, the, the picture of the civil rights act, which made it
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absolutely illegal, uh, what are we talking about? 56 years ago, it made it absolutely illegal to
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disenfranchise people intentionally by race, um, or by sex. It's very difficult to say what,
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what's going on there. Now, by the way, speaking of, you know, you mentioned Thomas Sowell and he talked
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about cosmic justice, uh, Thomas Sowell, I would, would put on a, on the good guy side of this,
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uh, this argument, there's a bad guy side, uh, that, that you have to bring up this philosopher,
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one of the critical theorists from the Frankfurt school named Herbert Marcuse, who was very
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prominent at Columbia university. And eventually at, um, UC, I think San Diego, where he was the
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mentor to the black activist, Angela Davis, who is prominent within black lives matter and so on.
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He was in fact, her mentor, Angela Davis says that he radicalized her. He wrote an essay in 1965
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called repressive tolerance in which he called this exactly what you're seeing discriminating
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tolerance. And he also referred to the same discriminating tolerance as liberating tolerance
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and as repressive tolerance. And the idea that he was pushing is that we should only, and this is
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explicit in what he says. I'm not, I'm not, uh, editorializing this. He explicitly says that we should
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not be tolerant of right wing movements, even if we have to use violence to suppress them,
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but we must be tolerant of left wing movements, even when they are violent because of the goals
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that the, the liberation goals that they seek to achieve. So what we see is a profound logic of
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asymmetry that's being pushed on a narrative that doesn't like there, there are big question marks
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around if racism is the determining variable, why are South Asians, East Asians, and Nigerian immigrants
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the most successful groups in the United States? If you talk about their ability for educational or
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financial attainment. Yeah. So you're saying the consistency is not the goal of critical race theory.
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They're not concerned with, okay, well, we denounced violence. If we denounce the violence at the
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Capitol, we have to denounce the violence that happened over the summer. So they're actually operating from
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from what is in a very strange sense, actually a congruent worldview you're arguing that says,
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um, well, the reason why someone like AOC or Ayanna Pressley can say unrest is okay because
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there's unrest in their lives or protests are supposed to make people feel uncomfortable,
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even as there are people who are being murdered in these riots. The reason why they don't have to
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denounce those, but they can say what happened at the Capitol is domestic terrorism is because
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they're actually operating not just from a place of hypocrisy, but from what they see as a very
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consistent and a congruent worldview, which is that liberation, what they see as liberation,
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we would obviously disagree with that. What they see as liberation is worth murder. It's worth arson.
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It is worth looting whatever it takes. That's what they're going to do to accomplish that.
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But these goals, whatever they may be of storming the Capitol, they're not good because they are
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allegedly right wing goals and therefore violence is all of the sudden very bad. Is that kind of the
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mentality? I don't even think they realize that mentality, but is that where they're coming from
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without knowing it? Right. Yeah, that is the logic of repressive tolerance, which again, I'll point
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out that was written in 1965. And then it circulated very rapidly. Marcuse at the time was a rock star
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in radical left circles. It was written in 1965. And then we saw massive riots in 67, 68 and 69.
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That logic has mainstreamed again, primarily since 2015. And what do we see through 2020 riots? And we see
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people who have taken on that logic doing the exact, exactly as you just, just perfectly expressed it.
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You see these people showing a very asymmetric analysis of what is and is not acceptable. Now,
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to be completely fair to Marcuse, which isn't going to make him sound very good in that essay,
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he says explicitly that all violence is always evil. Then he goes on in the next sentence to say,
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however, when have ethics ever been relevant to the making of history? So this is the argument from
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which they're coming. So they have an internally consistent logic that doesn't match with logic.
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They have an internally consistent moral framework that doesn't match morality as we should understand
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it in a bigger picture sense. Yeah. And they're kind of unable to explain,
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I think, where it's coming from. What I've seen on social media as well, this is just different.
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They are, the people over the summer, they were, you know, protesting and rioting for the safety of
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black bodies. And we could even talk about that phrase and how strange it is and where it comes
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from. These people, you know, they just believed a lie. This is totally illegitimate, probably not even
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realizing that they're actually starting with a philosophical premise that has some kind of history.
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They're just repeating the talking points. I've been very disappointed. You know, you and I have
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talked about some people in the woke evangelical world who are so bravely coming out against the
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Capitol storm, which I agree. I'm against political violence of all kinds. So call it out, condemn it.
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Absolutely. But who had nothing to say about the communities who were destroyed last year?
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I know for a fact that some of the people writing these articles like Dr. Russell Moore, for example,
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that he would not call himself a critical race theorist. He probably wouldn't call himself a
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leftist. He certainly wouldn't say that he subscribes to anything at the Frankfurt School. And yet we see
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this lack of consistency that seems to be justified by, well, the ends justify the means kind of thinking
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You would better than I would even. Well, I don't know. The atheists are fairly astute on this point
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as well. But you will understand very well that there are lots and lots and lots of people who
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call themselves Christian, who may or may not qualify. And I would in fact say do qualify in
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the broad sense, who have read virtually none of the Bible. They think that they're, I mean, I don't
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know. And unfortunately, Russell Moore is not one of those people.
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Well, this is the point that I'm making, is that he doesn't have to have read a page of the
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Frankfurt School to have adopted the same belief structure. And so I know so many Christians whose
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favorite Bible verse would be something like, God helps those who help themselves, which is not
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only not in the Bible, it is an anti-Christian sentiment. And so it was one of those strong
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agnostic or deistic sentiments from the 18th century. And that's their favorite Bible verse.
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So here what you definitely can have, so that's a Christian who's taken on an atheistic worldview
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without realizing it. Here you can have a person who's taken on this very broadly critical
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worldview without having realized it. They can have taken on the fundamental asymmetry,
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the fundamental premises of critical race theory and repressive tolerance without having fully
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realized that that's what they're doing. So the second they set a different standard that's based
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in race and they say, well, look at the history of injustice in this country. And then they go one
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step further from that point and say that therefore makes us think that there are systemic injustices
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in this country today that cause us to need a double standard. They've already adopted the
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logic of critical race theory, even if they speak out against a specific tenets, just like you can
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have people who have adopted in reverse. You have atheists, for example, who act in a lot of the
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Christians when they're during the atheist Christian. Remember how quaint that was when we used to be able
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to argue about religion. Um, how cute, how fun. Um, there were a lot of, a lot of atheists or
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Christians, I'm sorry, who pointed out the atheists. You're like, well, that's a Christian belief.
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That's a Christian. I just had a conversation with someone who said, I, you know, I was talking
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about how secular humanism, something about it. It doesn't make sense. I don't even remember what
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I said. And some secular humanist said, you know, I'm a secular humanist. We just believe in taking
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care of the widow and the orphan. I'm like, yeah, that's from the book of James. That's,
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that's a, that's a verse in the Bible. And so you're just adopting Christian tenets and you're
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applying it to your belief in that there is no God and saying that this is actually a tenet of atheism.
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It's not. No. So exactly. You see, you also see then at the same time that somebody can have taken
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on the tenets of critical race theory while believing themselves to be opposed to it. And, uh,
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what's actually, if we, depending on how philosophically you like to get on your show,
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the, the postmodern philosopher who was actually very good at diagnosing this, but also overdiagnosed
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it and made a lot of mistakes. John Francois Lyotard called this legitimation by parology.
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And what parallel parology, I almost broke it down as parology or paralogic beside logic. And, uh,
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so it's a fake logic. It's a different way of thinking about the world. And for Christians,
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of course, because of the centrality of the logos to, uh, for example, the book of John,
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um, you would have a really profound understanding of how dangerous legitimation. So making something
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true or, or, or valid by means of a false logos. How, how, I mean, that's by, by definition,
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I don't want to speak for Christians, but that's heresy. That's literally heresy. And so when you have
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folks like, like, I think he's Dr. Moore, right? Maybe he's Mr. Moore, uh, speaking up like this,
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if he's speaking out of a paralogos, he's speaking heresy. He's taken on tenants of another faith,
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mixed it into his Christianity, reinterpreted it back through a Christological lens. And now he's in
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a bad place and doesn't know it. And on the one hand, you have to feel a bit of pity, but on the other
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hand, you have to realize that this is still, I mean, Jesus was right when it was like, you'll
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know them by their fruits. This is going to bear bad fruit. And we already see the division that
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it's tearing and tearing through the country at the division. It's tearing through the churches.
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It's bearing bad fruit already. I can't understand why people who are so deeply aware of the know them
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by their fruit gospel, the part of the gospel would not realize when they see the fruit that,
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that they must be on the wrong branch of the tree.
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You know, he would probably argue and we're really, we were supposed to keep this to 15 minutes, but
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no, it's not your fault. I, this has just been really interesting, but I think he would probably
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argue that while the fruit of so-called, you know, Christian nationalism, which is an accusation that
00:25:44.700
we're hearing from a lot of people in evangelicalism toward people who voted for Donald Trump, the fruit is
00:25:50.700
what happened at the Capitol. That is bad fruit. I'm the one bearing good fruit. And I actually agree
00:25:56.100
with so much of what his article said. My only contention with it is where is the consistency?
00:26:03.600
Where is the consistency? There were people that were hurt by the violence that happened last year.
00:26:08.040
Some of us have been condemning violence, political violence for more than one week.
00:26:12.140
And so for this, for him to take a strong, courageous stand on this one thing and not having taken the same
00:26:18.200
strong, courageous stand on another thing that would have probably had a much higher cultural
00:26:22.380
cost than making this stand. That makes me say, okay, yeah, what you're saying is true. Right on,
00:26:28.360
obviously very well written, but where were you? But, you know, you already explained kind of the
00:26:34.200
philosophical origins. That's important. That's the, I tweeted this morning that the Capitol is the
00:26:40.320
distraction. The asymmetry is the story. And that is, that's the key here. And so I also tweeted the
00:26:47.500
other day and somebody emailed me and said it was super deep. So I'm all proud of myself.
00:26:52.520
But I tweeted that when, when a society starts to reward cowardice as though it's bravery. And so it
00:27:02.080
could be a church rewarding cowardice as though it's bravery. That's when, you know, it slipped off
00:27:06.380
the rails. That's when you know that something bad is going on. And so it requires zero courage
00:27:13.940
to condemn. Maybe it requires some, if you're in Trump circles, I talked with, with, with David
00:27:19.100
French yesterday, I had a short debate with David French yesterday and, um, he has received death
00:27:25.460
threats and many of the never Trump Republicans have received death threats from hardcore Trumpers
00:27:29.940
and these kinds of lunatics that most of us all don't approve of and have been condemning from the
00:27:36.540
beginning. Uh, and so I can understand where, where you can have this, you know, feeling that it does
00:27:44.060
take some courage to stand up against the hardcore Trumpers. So I don't want to go too far with it,
00:27:48.700
but when you start rewarding in general, when you start rewarding something that only requires
00:27:54.740
cowardice or going along with the crowd as though it's brave, you've got a problem going on and it takes
00:28:00.500
very little effort to condemn what's going on at the Capitol. Even people that were at the Capitol,
00:28:05.700
I just saw a video of a guy being interviewed today that had come out, you know, he had just
00:28:12.020
been pepper sprayed or something. And he's like the people who were doing violence, that's not what
00:28:16.320
we were here for. So he's, he's there with pepper spray in his face, condemning the violence. It's
00:28:21.420
like a lot of, not very many people supported what was going on in that regard. Although altogether too
00:28:27.740
many did, but to focus on that rather than to be aware of the asymmetry, um, is, is falling
00:28:35.660
for the distraction of the moment that we will all rue. And he is right in the sense that there
00:28:41.980
has been a history of, of white supremacy in the country and in the convention. There have,
00:28:46.560
has been a problem of racism in the past in the country and in the convention, uh, Southern Baptist
00:28:52.740
convention, I mean, and those, those branches can grow poison fruit and do grow poison fruit as well.
00:29:00.440
I even said, uh, also on Twitter, another one, somebody emailed me about was that I said that
00:29:06.040
if we're all created in the image of God and colorblindness of all forms must be holy
00:29:10.760
because God can't possibly have a color. And then, uh, that would mean that racism in this
00:29:17.080
neo-racism in, in, in critical race theory would have to be evil. And so if you, if you don't
00:29:22.920
understand the asymmetry, I mean, there can be more than one bad fruit, right? You don't have to say,
00:29:28.240
that's a bad fruit. So this fruit must be, that's the opposite. It must be good. You can diverge both
00:29:33.000
ways. Right. Yep. Absolutely. Um, I think there's a force about something like the straight and narrow
00:29:38.740
or the take the narrow path or something. I'm not a biblical expert. Well, you seem to be more
00:29:43.600
biblically literate than some people who profess to be Christians. All right. I've abandoned the goal
00:29:49.320
of having this be a short interview. So I do want to ask you one more question, um, because I saw
00:29:55.460
this on the news last night and, um, I, I figured that you would probably have a take on it. So
00:30:01.700
Biden has tapped as the head of the civil rights division of the DOJ, a woman named Kristen Clark.
00:30:09.060
Now she has an interesting background. She went to Harvard and, uh, she wrote in Harvard or in the,
00:30:15.380
in the Harvard Crimson that, um, black people, according to her have superior physical and mental
00:30:21.320
abilities because of their melanin because white people can't produce as much melanin as black
00:30:26.680
people that they're actually inferior, both mentally and physically. Now this is someone
00:30:31.800
who is supposed to be a champion of civil rights and is going to be put in an official position
00:30:36.620
to champion civil rights for the country. Now this fits in to a worldview that critical race theory is
00:30:44.340
somehow going to achieve liberation and equity and equality. But for the people like you and me who
00:30:50.040
sees that, okay, this is just another form of racism and discrimination that's going to lead
00:30:54.080
to oppression. What do you think are going to be the tangible results of something like this?
00:30:59.620
There's just going to be more justification of this. What we used to call, I don't know. I mean,
00:31:05.400
some people called it reverse racism, but it is just racism. Some people now, I think very
00:31:10.200
cleverly are calling it, and I just use the word neo-racism, that they've reinvented racism.
00:31:15.360
I think the tangible aspect of this- But they would say that black people can't be racist
00:31:19.620
because they say racism is prejudice plus power. And since, according to critical race theory,
00:31:25.860
black people don't have power, they have been disenfranchised, as we talked about. It's
00:31:30.580
impossible for them- It seems to be the opposite situation now as to who has power though, doesn't
00:31:36.500
it? Right. And that's why I like this term neo-racism because all of a sudden, you know,
00:31:42.020
oh, you took racism away. Fine. You're a neo-racist. And then what does that mean? And
00:31:46.340
they look into it and it means what they are. So it means reinventing racism. I've been arguing
00:31:51.060
from when I was doing the basic research for cynical theories several, a couple of years ago,
00:31:56.160
when we were writing the chapter on critical race theory and finally really, really reading
00:32:00.720
into critical race theory to write it. I, my big discovery, and I remember, I remember contacting
00:32:06.620
Helen Pluckrose and so much excitement when I realized this is like, Helen, they reinvented
00:32:12.000
the same problem. So what happened in the 1600s was that, that white people put social significance
00:32:18.640
of racial superiority and inferiority into the categories of white and black. And then we unleashed
00:32:26.020
a monster doing that. And it took us three centuries or more, almost four centuries to fight back
00:32:32.880
against that. We had to bear on the question scientifically. We had to bear on the question
00:32:37.360
ethically. We had to bear on the question religiously. We had to bear on the question
00:32:40.440
just about every way that you can possibly imagine. Finally, we achieve abolition. Finally,
00:32:45.340
we write the Declaration of Independence, actually, and all men are created equal. And there we lay the
00:32:50.600
seeds. We write the constitution. There the seed is planted. And finally, almost 100 years later,
00:32:58.960
we get abolition. Finally, almost 100 years after that, we get rid of segregation and Jim Crow.
00:33:03.820
We finally, 30 years after that, 40 years after that, have used comedy and social discourse and
00:33:10.080
the, the interactions between everyday people to have brought racism down to a low simmer at the
00:33:15.740
worst. We've really made some progress undoing the mistake of just to put a fake date on it, 1650.
00:33:22.200
And then I said, Helen, these critical race theorists made the same mistake. They put social
00:33:28.020
significance back into racial categories. They said, it is important to distinguish
00:33:31.940
the sentence, I am black. And this is quoting Kimberly Crenshaw, who is credited as the founder
00:33:37.180
of intersectionality and the co-founder of critical race theory. She said, it is important that we
00:33:42.580
distinguish between the sentences, I am black, and I am a person who happens to be black.
00:33:47.460
And her problem with, I am a person who happens to be black, is it centers their universal humanity
00:33:52.720
rather than their race, which would be useful for identity politics. So that's reinventing the same
00:33:58.900
mistake of 1650 that took us three and a half centuries to undo the ravaging damages of. And this fits
00:34:07.720
exactly into that logic. This woman is a race essentialist. She believes that there is some
00:34:12.680
biological, this is actual biological racism coming back onto the scene, that there is a biological
00:34:18.640
reason why black people in this case are genetically superior to white people. And therefore, they have
00:34:27.180
what she said, intellectual, physical and spiritual powers that exceed that of the white. She talked
00:34:32.680
about calcified pineal glands and all of this. And she's going, if she is in a power, in a position of
00:34:39.840
using, of judging civil rights law, and she has beliefs like this, granted that was in the 90s
00:34:44.580
that she wrote that, then we have every reason to believe that what we're going to see is more of
00:34:50.820
this asymmetric treatment and stronger justifications for it, or more ability for the people in, that are
00:34:58.840
supposed to be the adults in the room to apply a biased, as we would, we would have said 20 years ago,
00:35:05.520
backwards or reversed standard. Um, but in, in plain terms, that's a reinvention of, in fact,
00:35:12.960
I got this talking to a Kenyan man on the phone, a Kenyan scholar called me a few months ago, a couple
00:35:18.180
of months ago. And he said that he was like, you're the only person who will understand. He's about to
00:35:22.500
cry. You know, they can get, they tend to be so like big emotion that the African people tend to be.
00:35:28.680
And he's like, he's like, you're the only person who'll understand they've reinvented the mistake
00:35:34.060
of 1650. And that's where I chose that date from. And so this is this, we're seeing that now being
00:35:42.020
deliberately empowered by this administration. And so tangibly, what we'll see is justifications
00:35:48.840
coming from that civil rights office to continue tilting the playing field under a guise of leveling
00:35:56.120
it. Right. And, uh, that's going to create again, problems, division, uh, alienation. If we want to
00:36:04.080
talk in Marxist terms, which I'm fluent in those two, that is going to alienate an awful lot of people.
00:36:09.520
Uh, and, and it's going to create nothing but problems. Yeah. And of course, if you react to this
00:36:16.640
as someone who says, you know, a white male, the only demographic that was left out of Joe Biden's
00:36:23.880
speech, when he was saying, you know, we're going to build back better by resourcing,
00:36:27.740
prioritizing, uh, these people, if you do react in a way that says, Hey, you know, like I, I need help
00:36:33.900
to my business closed down to, uh, whatever it is, then you are told that that is your white fragility.
00:36:41.220
That is your white privilege. And so you were told that that's actually an act of racism to say,
00:36:47.220
Hey, why, you know, why am I being punished as someone who was just born with a gender,
00:36:52.460
who was just born with a skin color, but you're not allowed to care you James as a white male
00:36:57.680
about, about those things. You're not allowed to say anything about it. And then we wonder why there
00:37:03.200
is so much division and so much hatred and so much resentment. I was reading, I'm, I don't know if
00:37:08.760
you've read CS Lewis's abolition of man, but he is talking about creating men without chests. Uh,
00:37:14.680
and he's talking about, uh, the, the, the school books at the time, how, well, I won't even get into
00:37:21.120
his whole critique, but his, uh, entire point was that we are saying that society is trying to build
00:37:28.360
these virtues or to say that, for example, sacrifice is a good virtue or that charity is a
00:37:33.340
good virtue while also rendering them impossible by what we're teaching people. And that's what I
00:37:38.500
think of when I think of you talking about repressive tolerance, or when I hear people say,
00:37:43.760
oh, you know, I just want love and unity and within the evangelical world, racial reconciliation.
00:37:49.700
Well, you are saying that you are upholding these virtues, that you are making it impossible
00:37:55.120
for us to actually manifest. You cannot find reconciliation and unity and so-called equity,
00:38:01.800
equality, liberation, whatever it is that you are trying to achieve through the vehicle of critical
00:38:07.540
race theory, because it does the exact opposite. It divides. Um, and so I see that problem within
00:38:14.680
the church. I see it in the secular world. And I truly think that there are tangible consequences.
00:38:19.140
Some people just think that we're talking or having an academic or philosophical consequence or
00:38:23.000
conversation. It's not, it's going to affect your neighborhood. It might affect your suburb.
00:38:28.180
It's going to affect your kid's school. It's going to affect how your kids act possibly like in 1984,
00:38:33.980
when Orwell talks about how everyone over 30 is scared of their kids because of how horrible they
00:38:38.800
are. They, you know, snitch on their parents and, and things like that. It's because of this kind of
00:38:44.000
mentality that is going to flourish, that has been flourishing and is going to flourish even more,
00:38:48.400
um, under the Biden administration, I'm afraid, and I'm afraid we're going to see the worst of it
00:38:53.220
in the next few years. I think so. Uh, this year will either prove pivotal or it will, uh,
00:39:01.320
become much worse over the next three. And then we'll see. And I don't know what will come. Um,
00:39:09.040
this is, this is exactly what you just described. It's things like that are already happening. We saw
00:39:14.180
a 18 year old who turned in her mother for being at the Capitol.
00:39:19.180
Not even storming the Capitol. Correct. Just there peacefully. I think.
00:39:23.820
I have no idea what the story with that is. All I know is that we have an 18 year old eagerly
00:39:29.400
turning in her mother to go viral on social media and then vigorously defending it and being
00:39:34.020
vigorously defended for doing it. Uh, so, and we, we already see this, you know, separations of
00:39:40.320
families. You talk about neighborhoods, you talk about whatever club or affinity group, even the
00:39:44.980
knitting, the knitting community somehow became like a flashpoint for this early on, like knitting,
00:39:50.800
like, you know, yeah, that's so street. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's got just out of control.
00:39:57.300
It will, it will tear the, the logic of this is to create polarization to where you have to pick a
00:40:03.600
side. And one side is the, again, we see that asymmetry. One side's always right. The other side's
00:40:09.120
always wrong. And, um, I, I mentioned the Marx analysis and alienation and all of this a few
00:40:16.620
minutes ago. The truth is what we're seeing is that people have taken it, the best, most charitable
00:40:24.160
way you can read it. You can say Marx wrote a great critique of capitalism, of the dangers of
00:40:28.620
capitalism. You can say that the critical theorists wrote a great critique and of the dangers of
00:40:32.920
fascism. You can say that the, that the postmodernists wrote a great critique of the ideas of social
00:40:38.380
power. And all of that is correct. Um, but what we have now is people who have taken those things.
00:40:45.300
And I think it may have been those, those writers intentions, but nevertheless, as instruction
00:40:50.560
manuals, if you read them as warnings and as critiques and as, uh, especially the postmodernists
00:40:56.220
are easy to read as, as warning people of what can go wrong, um, because they didn't want to commit
00:41:01.840
to anything. So they, they weren't pushing any kind of agenda. They were just playing around with words
00:41:07.000
and tearing everything apart. If you look at them as warnings, and then you realize that people have
00:41:12.340
said, Oh, those are tools we can pick up and use against society. Then you find yourself,
00:41:18.920
that's where I am now in a very awkward position of realizing just how dangerous this stuff is.
00:41:24.820
For example, critical race theory will create only division polarization in particular, not just
00:41:29.620
division. You will have to pick sides and one side will be asymmetrically viewed as evil, where the
00:41:34.880
other side will be viewed as good. Um, in a way that is, is almost incomprehensible unless you're
00:41:42.120
playing within it and nothing good happens here. So we will see all kinds of problems emerge out of
00:41:50.320
this. And if you read those theories, especially Marx and the critical theorists, less the postmodernists,
00:41:55.020
that alienation was the goal. They want critical race theory was born out of a tradition that wants
00:42:01.220
to alienate people specifically so that society will fray and come apart. And then they, by having that
00:42:09.260
asymmetric position, we'll be able to claim the mantle of power for their, their project.
00:42:14.800
Right. Right. Um, can you give anyone a little bit of optimism or at least some advice? Because I
00:42:22.480
think what people feel after this, um, even if they're not looking for some rosy picture of the
00:42:27.240
future, they just want to know, okay, what, what do I do? Because I see this in my kid's curriculum.
00:42:32.280
I see this at the college that I'm, you know, paying to indoctrinate my adult child. I see this
00:42:38.720
at work and diversity and inclusion trainings. I see this among my friends. I see this in my pastor
00:42:44.540
and they don't feel equipped to be able to say anything. And they don't know if they should say
00:42:48.360
anything. They really just want to be quiet so they don't get canceled. Um, what's your advice to them?
00:42:53.120
Well, um, you're going to get canceled. So, you know, I, I should warn you about that. So
00:42:59.720
speak up while you can speak more rather than when you won't be able to speak as much.
00:43:05.160
That said, there are a lot of reasons for optimism and there are a lot of things people can do.
00:43:08.720
One reason for optimism is that the United States was built on firm principles, good principles and
00:43:14.560
good ideas. And the constitution has not been shredded. It's just being threatened. And so
00:43:22.080
the courts may be a wonderful line of defense against this, that starts turning things back.
00:43:29.940
Um, we see already indications that the tech companies are going to be pushed on antitrust
00:43:35.940
legislation. We'll see how that pans out or an antitrust charges. At least we'll see how that works.
00:43:41.100
That, that may change some things very quickly. We see, um, schools being pressured in the same way.
00:43:48.020
So there are ways that things will turn back as a, as a point of optimism, more people are now aware
00:43:55.240
of this problem than ever before. And awareness is actually the main thing that it takes. When you
00:44:01.400
realize that these things that are happening are manipulations and you're aware of the manipulations,
00:44:05.800
they don't work, they don't work on you. And so this rapid awareness over the past first six
00:44:12.740
months or eight months or whatever. And then again, in the past week or two that has arisen
00:44:19.060
to what's going on with this, this rapidly progressing movement seems to be happening
00:44:26.140
faster than, uh, the people who are pushing it would have wanted. People have become aware that
00:44:32.160
they're in a totalitarian trap much sooner than they wanted. And they're becoming aware of the
00:44:36.180
manipulations. So something you can do is learn a little bit about, you don't have to learn a lot.
00:44:40.560
You can learn a little bit about critical race theory and these other ideologies,
00:44:43.700
and then you understand what they're doing and you won't fall for it. And then
00:44:47.700
you won't get sucked into those traps where you feel bad and you go along with it.
00:44:53.300
Another thing that you can do is just the, the, the proverb in Poland during the, or the saying in
00:45:02.020
Poland during the Polish revolution, I'm told was, was live as though they don't exist. And so you can
00:45:08.180
carry on to the degree that you need to. And I think that's actually got a very Christian
00:45:12.680
background, right? You know, the, the, the Roman persecution people certainly were not having a good
00:45:19.620
hundred years there as Christians and they still had to do their Christianity. They had to live their
00:45:25.760
beliefs as best they could as though the Roman persecution of them did not exist. And then
00:45:32.040
eventually the truth outs, the truth, reality always wins. So the bad times may last a week.
00:45:41.060
They may last a season. They may last a year. They may last a hundred years. They may last a thousand
00:45:45.400
years, but the truth in reality always went out in the end. And so people who are willing to take
00:45:52.740
the side of that now are already, you know, we always hear, yo, you have to be on the right side of
00:45:56.840
history. The right side of history is on, is, is, is whichever side is on the side of truth.
00:46:02.740
Right. Right. And that's, I think the most optimistic and hopeful thing. I mean, that more
00:46:07.900
and more people realize this and realize that there's a need to, to stand up and just not go
00:46:15.300
along with the crowd right now is, it's just a really hopeful sign to me. So there's lots of reasons
00:46:21.980
to be helpful. The U S is a good place. The truth, reality bats last, the truth wins out.
00:46:27.760
I won't be so cheeky as to make a claim about, you know, it's in God's hands and, and bear into
00:46:34.100
your faith because I don't want to come off awkwardly, but I hear a lot of Christians say
00:46:38.600
that to each other. And so to remember, I think Daryl Bernard Harrison recently said, remember that
00:46:44.220
this is God's fight. And so I'll say it through him because, uh, that way I'm not being, you know,
00:46:51.520
inappropriate or something. Yeah. You're close. You're close, James. You're going to, you're going
00:46:56.300
to be, you're going to be back on this show and you're going to tell me about how you traveled,
00:47:01.340
uh, theologically. And you realized that really the real, the only real lasting and ultimate pushback
00:47:10.440
to all the craziness that we're seeing is a theological one. And I will have a conversation
00:47:15.160
with you about that. At some point, this was supposed to be a short interview. It wasn't
00:47:20.620
because I couldn't stop asking you, uh, asking you questions. So thank you so much for taking the time
00:47:26.720
and peeling back the skin of the onion for us. Unfortunately, discourse, which is what you are
00:47:33.280
trying to do and trying to lead is getting harder and harder with that kind of repressive tolerance that
00:47:39.580
we're seeing. But while people can support you, um, how can they, where can they find you? Where can
00:47:45.520
they buy your book? So, well, I would say that normally is you can buy my book anywhere where
00:47:51.500
books are sold, but there are certain companies that sell books right now that maybe you shouldn't
00:47:55.240
use. And, uh, because they're exerting monopolistic control over the whole world. Um, so my book is
00:48:02.420
pretty easily available until it gets canceled from, from most booksellers. So, you know, pick your
00:48:07.060
favorite one that maybe doesn't sound like a jungle in Brazil and do what you will with it.
00:48:12.240
And, uh, you can find me also on my, as long as it lasts on the website, new discourses.com.
00:48:19.000
That's, uh, the home of my company, new discourses. There are lots of ways to support. There's a support
00:48:24.000
button that's easily found right at the top. So you can find ways to support it if that's what you
00:48:28.260
want to do that way. Um, if you just want to share the articles and share the information on there,
00:48:33.120
that's supporting me too. If you just want to send a nice note, that's also support. I'm very
00:48:37.740
grateful for all of that. Um, you can find me on social media everywhere that I have one so far
00:48:44.240
at conceptual James, um, mostly active on Twitter. I find more than one social media platform exhausting.
00:48:51.600
So I kind of stick to one, but, um, I do copy most of it to the other ones. So as long as I'm still on
00:48:59.060
social media, you can find me and support me there as well. Same stuff. You can, you know,
00:49:04.080
send me kind words or you can share my message and hopefully get that out there.
00:49:09.400
Or you can send, you can see your, send your disagreeing words to him too. And he typically
00:49:13.560
does respond to those on Twitter, right? Yeah, that's true. If you're rude though,
00:49:18.400
my rule is tit for tat. So if you come politely, I will be polite. And if you come rude,
00:49:23.580
I'm probably going to say something rude back. Um, yeah, that's typically how social media goes.
00:49:29.460
But it's all in good. I hope people understand though, that first of all, it is that I will
00:49:34.300
not provoke rudeness. And second of all, um, I do try to keep good humor about it. I don't try to be
00:49:40.100
mean to anybody and I don't try to make it too personal. Although some people would read it as
00:49:43.800
personal when I'm trying to be funny. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that about you. And like you said,
00:49:49.240
truth, I, we say on this podcast, truth is like a beach ball. You can try to push it under the
00:49:54.440
water and you might be successful for a little bit, especially if you have a lot of people doing
00:49:58.020
it, eventually it's going to pop back up. And that's exactly what you were saying in your last
00:50:03.100
answer. So that is a bit of optimism for people. Doesn't mean it's not going to be a hard fight.
00:50:07.620
Doesn't mean like you said, you won't be canceled in the process, but it will be worth it. You,
00:50:12.640
you want to be on the side of the beach ball, not the people trying to push it down. So thank you
00:50:18.180
so much again. Um, we will have you back on soon. Thank you.