00:00:27.000Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, Vodi Bockam, author of Fault Lines, one of the best and most important conversations we've ever had on critical race theory.
00:00:38.000Vodi talks about the need to challenge this pernicious and evil ideology, how it's infecting our cultural institutions, as well as our churches.
00:00:50.000Vodi is a black American who understands how important it is to speak out against this issue at this time.
00:00:59.000Spread this podcast with your friends, especially if you are a person of faith.
00:01:03.000If any of your friends are engaging or participating in BLM Incorporated or critical race theory, this is the podcast for you.
00:01:12.000If you want to support our program, go to charliekirk.com slash support.
00:01:45.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:51.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:04.000Charlie Kirk here, and I've warned you about home title theft, where cyber thieves remove you from your home's title and you become the owner.
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00:03:07.000Author of Fault Lines for all of you watching on Rumble, R-U-M-B-L-E.com, the social justice movement and evangelicalism's looming catastrophe.
00:03:19.000Yeah, it was a labor of love, a labor of love for the bride.
00:03:26.000I have been talking about these things for a while and was really concerned with what I was seeing in terms of Christians being duped by and in some cases just embracing and imbibing this critical social justice movement.
00:03:43.000And it's, you know, there's some books you want to write and other books you have to write.
00:03:48.000I felt like this was a book I had to write.
00:04:10.000And so this really hits home for me because so many pastors that I grew up with and grew up watching have all of a sudden decided to kind of mix into their potion of Christianity this heavy dosage of wokeness.
00:04:28.000And next thing you know, churches I used to drive by, even one here in Highland Park, Texas, has a BLM flag bigger than the American flag.
00:04:37.000Whether they should have a BLM flag or not is even more of a disturbing question.
00:04:41.000So you wrote this first and foremost to diagnose this problem.
00:04:46.000And I love the term fault line because you're saying this could really be destructive and disastrous to the church.
00:04:54.000Let's first talk about what is critical race theory.
00:04:58.000Why does it present an existential threat to the church, both domestically and globally?
00:05:03.000Well, critical race theory comes out of critical legal studies.
00:05:07.000And again, when you hear that word critical, I try to tell people when you hear that word critical, their ears need to perk up.
00:05:14.000They're telling you something when they use that term critical.
00:05:17.000They're telling you that they're coming from the Frankfurt School of critical theory.
00:05:21.000They're telling you that they're applying neo-Marxism.
00:05:24.000They're telling you that they're operating from an oppressor-oppressed paradigm.
00:05:30.000They're telling you that they're trying to problematize whatever it is that they're addressing so that they can bring about a revolutionary political solution to whatever that issue is, which ends in a reversal of this oppressor-oppressed paradigm.
00:05:47.000So critical race theory is one of the many applications of this sort of Gramscian Frankfurt School neo-Marxist ideology to the issue of race in America.
00:06:24.000So let's just go to 1619, you know, when first slaves, you know, come over or whatever, so that we don't have to deal with those ideals, which contradict the idea that America is systemically and irreparably racist.
00:06:39.000So critical race theory, critical theory, is all about viewing things through that lens.
00:07:34.000They believe that Europe's going to fall like dominoes, and it doesn't.
00:07:39.000So Gramsci begins to think about why this happened.
00:07:43.000He comes up with the idea of cultural hegemony, is really the idea that there is an oppressive worldview that causes the oppressed to accept their oppression.
00:07:58.000And so if you want to see this revolution, you've got to deal with this hegemony with this worldview.
00:08:05.000And the way that you do that is by controlling the robes of society.
00:08:10.000And so, you know, you control the law, you control education, you control religion.
00:08:15.000So now, you know, this sort of moves things in this cultural direction.
00:08:21.000Then the Frankfurt School in Frankfurt, Germany, how do they influence America?
00:08:28.000Well, Hitler comes to power, World War II happens, and they come over to the United States and they start to influence places like Columbia, places like UCLA, and then institutions like Hollywood, you know.
00:08:42.000And what they're doing is they're applying this Marxist ideology.
00:08:47.000And I say neo-Marxist ideology because it's really Gramsci's ideology about changing the hegemony, about influencing the culture so that you upset things from within.
00:09:04.000And so Marcusa and the Frankfurt School, these individuals start really plying their trade and really thinking through and getting at the very practical issues of how you transform a culture from within through the application of Gramsci and neo-Marxism.
00:09:27.000And Marcuse taught Angela Davis, who is actually a communist.
00:09:36.000That's always interesting, is it, when somebody identifies themselves as a communist and you say they're a communist, you always have to explain.
00:10:52.000And so because they went deep into these institutions, they were then able to have influence broadly in the culture through these individuals who were trained and educated without even recognizing.
00:11:07.000I often say if you got a degree in education, you got a minor in neo-Marxism and you didn't even get credit for it on your diploma.
00:12:20.000I'm going to play devil's advocate and pretend to be a leftist.
00:12:22.000So they're going to go grab me a vegan smoothie and I'm going to try my best to play a leftist and ask you the toughest questions I possibly can, Bodhi, because I agree with everything you're saying, but I'm going to play opposite.
00:12:35.000Aren't we called as Christians to seek justice, to be vessels for God's will here on earth?
00:12:43.000What is so wrong with wanting to say that we want to take money from rich people, that we want to displace power from white people?
00:12:53.000Well, actually, the problem with that is that CRT doesn't argue that we're all racist.
00:13:00.000It argues that some of us are actually incapable of being racist.
00:13:03.000So when you say we're all racist, I'm agreeing with you 100%.
00:13:07.000The Bible's agreeing with you 100% because of the pride that's in the heart of every man.
00:13:13.000But the problem with this ideology is that it says some people are guilty of that sin and other people are incapable of being guilty of that sin.
00:13:23.000White people are guilty of that sin and they can't get away from being guilty of that sin.
00:13:28.000And minorities, people of color, are not even capable of being guilty of that sin, which is why they talk about structural racism and systemic racism.
00:13:38.000Because if racism is in structures, structures, and systems, then you don't need it to be present in people.
00:13:47.000To your other question, you know, shouldn't we be and mustn't we be about justice?
00:13:57.000But social justice is redistributive justice.
00:14:02.000Social justice is not the justice that you do or I do to our fellow man.
00:14:07.000Social justice is redistributing resources so that various groups have equitable outcomes on all things.
00:14:19.000Well, that cuts completely against the grain of scripture.
00:14:23.000I mean, you have huge problem, for example, with Jesus and the parable of the talents because, you know, you've got the 10, you got the five, you got the one.
00:14:32.000You've already got a problem because he didn't distribute the talents equitably in the first place.
00:14:38.000Then he comes back and the person with the one talent didn't do a good job and he takes it from him and gives it to the one with 10 instead of going the other way around.
00:14:48.000Social justice would have said, take it from the one who made all that money and give it to the one who was scared to invest, right?
00:14:56.000But again, that's not what Jesus talks about in the parable of the talents.
00:15:01.000And so, yes, we're about justice, but biblical justice is about the righteousness of God and the law of God being applied equally to all individuals because we are all guilty before a holy and just God.
00:15:21.000And we all need the redemption that can only be found in Christ.
00:15:24.000So some Christians will say, well, then it's our role to recognize how awful our society used to be and then do something to fix with how it is because someone I was related to did some awful things.
00:16:11.000I don't have to face God based on the sins of my great, great, great grandparents.
00:16:17.000I have to face God based on my own sin, the sin in my own heart.
00:16:23.000And so this is just, it's a misapplication of the truth of scripture.
00:16:29.000It's also a misapplication of history because people who say that, what they want to do is they want to say, well, didn't we do that from Japanese internment?
00:16:48.000Restitution to people who have been wronged, not to the descendants of people who have been wrong, and not by the descendants of the people who did the wrong.
00:16:59.000I can see why the woesters don't like you.
00:17:30.000And, you know, I was born and raised in Los Angeles, so I've experienced my share of earthquakes, which is kind of why this really resonated with me.
00:18:30.000And it's interesting because what that was for a lot of people was a smoking gun.
00:18:35.000And there was a discussion and a debate about the extent to which police were targeting black people, if at all.
00:18:48.000And there were debates about, you know, numbers and which numbers you're using and what research that you're using and what metric are you using, you know, in order to make this argument.
00:18:59.000And there were a number of studies that came out and indicated that there was no evidence of this sort of racial disparity, you know, in police shootings and whatnot.
00:19:11.000And then all of a sudden, the George Floyd case comes and there is this video evidence and people just kind of went, I told you, right?
00:20:51.000How did the church all of a sudden just become so susceptible to this?
00:20:56.000It's supposed to be the beacon of truth, the light of the world.
00:20:59.000And then the church ends up flying these BLM flags.
00:21:01.000Part of it was being taken up with the moment.
00:21:04.000And the other part of it was, you know, forms of white guilt.
00:21:09.000The last thing you want to do is be called a racist.
00:21:13.000You don't even want to be called insensitive.
00:21:16.000And so I've had conversations with a number of pastors who said things like, well, I didn't necessarily perceive it that way, but there were some of our black brothers and sisters who did perceive it that way.
00:21:28.000And we wanted to be sensitive to that.
00:22:00.000Even though we know that's how you treat children, you know, it's not how you treat your brothers and sisters in Christ.
00:22:06.000So I think there are a number of things that sort of came together and led to that moment.
00:22:12.000I think it's also sort of a byproduct of some things that have been creeping in slowly for a long time in terms of the way we have embraced either knowingly or unknowingly some of these Marxist ideas.
00:22:31.000So yeah, there were a number of things that sort of led to that moment.
00:22:34.000So some Christians and pastors, especially youth pastors, will say, as they go to college, that we are systemically racist.
00:22:42.000We have been racist for quite some time.
00:26:08.000There are multiple ethnicities, but there is but one race.
00:26:12.000So from a biblical perspective, we have to repudiate any ideology that would then divide us all and then say that the essence of who we are can be determined by our melanin count, right?
00:26:26.000Again, nothing can be further from the truth.
00:26:29.000That's not the way we're taught to think in scripture.
00:26:31.000I think you're getting on to what the actual debate is about.
00:27:45.000And you said something earlier that is important because one of the other principles of critical race theory is that we know truth by elevating the voices of the oppressed, right?
00:27:55.000That's how we find truth, by listening to those voices, to those narratives and those counter narratives.
00:28:02.000This is why narrative and story becomes so important.
00:28:05.000And this is why elevating certain voices becomes so important.
00:28:08.000So you hear a lot about having a conversation about race.
00:28:12.000But in critical race theory, the conversation goes like this.
00:28:16.000You listen to me talk about my oppression that you can't possibly understand and shut up because you're an oppressor who can only be an oppressor.
00:28:24.000And your only hope is listening to me.
00:28:26.000So the conversation becomes one-sided.
00:29:09.000We're going to be disciplined here at NRB, everybody, but you probably, anyway, that are engaging in this at a very dangerous level.
00:29:16.000And I don't think they quite understand it, but this book will inform them in more ways than one.
00:29:24.000Hey, guys, you guys have heard me talk with my friend Kelly Shackelford before.
00:29:29.000Kelly Shackelford from First Liberty is a good person.
00:29:32.000Look, we've talked about court packing.
00:29:34.000It's the tool of left-wing authoritarians.
00:29:36.000Hugo Chavez packed Venezuela's Supreme Court with his socialist cronies and paved the way for his tyrannical regime.
00:29:42.000But now Joe Biden and American socialist radicals want to pack our Supreme Court with four new liberal justices.
00:29:49.000Court packing isn't some policy idea to improve our courts.
00:29:52.000It's a coup, a coup to take away your constitutional freedoms and turn America into a socialist country.
00:29:58.000That's why First Liberty Institute, the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated to defending religious liberty in America, is doing something about it.
00:30:05.000First Liberty recently launched SupremeCoup.com.
00:30:09.000That's supremecou.com to serve as a one-stop shop in the fight against court packing and help patriots like you learn the truth about what's happening in the courts.
00:30:18.000But more importantly, there's a big take action button so you could do something to stop the Supreme Court coup.
00:30:23.000So do me a favor, support Kelly Shackelford in this and get involved.
00:30:28.000If you want to defend our God-given freedoms and stop the left's court packing scheme, head over to supremecu.com slash Kirk.
00:31:07.000And what I want to say to people is none of us would argue that there's no racism.
00:31:14.000None of us would argue that there's no oppression and no evil or any of this stuff.
00:31:19.000But what we have to do is we have to think biblically and theologically about those issues.
00:31:25.000One of the reasons we're falling prey to this stuff is that we don't have a well-developed theology around them.
00:31:30.000The other thing that Paul talks about, the first half of that, is destroying arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.
00:31:38.000We have to identify these things and call them out.
00:31:41.000And that's one of the things that people are really uncomfortable with.
00:31:45.000We really don't like the idea of confrontation.
00:31:49.000We really don't like the idea of saying to another person, you're wrong.
00:31:55.000But we have to do that because these ideas are ideas that are raised up to oppose Christ.
00:32:03.000You know, in Titus 1, 9, elders are called upon to have three qualities.
00:32:09.000Hold firmly to the trustworthy word has taught so that we can, secondly, exhort in sound doctrine.
00:32:16.000And then thirdly, refute those who contradict it.
00:32:20.000And we do this because we love the gospel, because we do not want falsehood to go unchecked and unchallenged, because we want people to know Christ as he is and as he has revealed himself and not some faulty version of Christ that's created for itching ears by individuals who are trying to lead us astray.
00:32:43.000So if someone listening right now has a church where the pastor has gone woke or they have a board that is trying to pass CRT or a school that's doing so, what do they do?
00:32:54.000You know, number one, find out what this is.
00:32:57.000And then secondly, when you educate yourself, engage in meaningful, informed conversation, discussion, and a necessary debate.
00:33:05.000I'm convinced that a lot of people who are, you know, going down this road don't really understand what's happening or haven't really been confronted about this.
00:33:17.000And then the other thing that I would say is don't be afraid to confront this.
00:33:22.000This is something that needs to be confronted.
00:33:24.000So don't just immediately run away, right?
00:33:27.000Educate yourself, inform yourself, engage lovingly, respectfully, but also clearly and unapologetically.
00:33:37.000And then it may be necessary at times for us to shake the dust off and to move in other directions.
00:33:46.000You know, when this fault line comes, we don't want to be found on the wrong side of it.
00:33:50.000And there is a there's a belief that this is overwhelming.