Our brilliant guest today is Christopher Ruffa, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and one of America s most prominent critics of critical race theory. In this episode, we talk about how Christopher became a critic of Critical Race Theory, why it's dangerous, and what it means to be a woke person.
00:01:07.320It's great to have you on. Listen, before we dive into all this fascinating stuff,
00:01:11.640just tell everybody here, particularly here in the UK, we have an international audience,
00:01:15.220but there may be many people who are not familiar with you, first of all. Who are you? How are you
00:01:19.900where you are? What has been the journey through life that brings you to be here talking to us?
00:01:23.680Yeah, you know, I am born and raised in California on the West Coast of the United States.
00:01:30.380And after I graduated from university, I worked for more than 10 years as a documentary filmmaker.
00:01:35.960I directed four films for PBS, which is our equivalent of the BBC, roughly.
00:01:41.100I sold the film to Netflix a number of years ago.
00:01:44.060And then in the last few years, I've gotten kind of transitioned from pure documentary filmmaking to getting involved in more social and political issues.
00:01:52.400And then shifted my own kind of field of my own domain, my own field of expertise from kind of the filmmaking process to a journalism writing advocacy process.
00:02:02.760And I found myself almost exactly a year ago, a little bit more than a year ago now, kind of accidentally becoming one of the primary critics of critical race theory, as you explained.
00:02:15.040And it really happened to me very briefly because I started reporting on these issues, reporting on training programs, reporting on critical race theory in schools, reporting on critical race theory in corporations, and became the kind of go-to source for whistleblowers all over the United States that were seeing these ugly and divisive tenets of critical race theory starting to make headway and take over their institutions.
00:02:42.280Christopher, the one thing that I really take away from that is you've had a life which theoretically would make you super woke, right?
00:02:49.700You grew up in California. You make documentaries. You know, you're married to a Thai American woman.
00:02:55.400You've got mixed race kids. Like, how did you how did this become a thing for you?
00:02:59.920I guess that's right. Yeah. I mean, like you would you would add up all those things and you would say somehow that probably equals a woke.
00:03:06.320You know, I was to the left as a younger person and my growing up in high school for the first bit of college.
00:03:15.760But, you know, the ideas of the left started for me to break down as I saw more of the world.
00:03:22.700As a documentary filmmaker, I had a chance to travel to, I think, 70 plus countries around the world.
00:03:28.000I've seen a lot. I've seen the highs, the lows, the awful, the beautiful, everything in between.
00:03:32.900And as I actually looked at the world in a very up close and personal way, all the different systems of government, all the different cultures, I quickly realized or slowly realized, actually, that these ideas that I grew up with, these ideas that I had been stewing in, these ideas that I had been taught in a university setting just didn't hold up to reality.
00:03:57.140And it took me a while to then, I guess, move to the right. It took me a number of years. But once I started actually kind of not just having the caricature of conservative thought or conservative politics, but actually started doing the reading, doing the homework, understanding a bit more about the kind of conservative philosophy, the conservative body of work over the last hundred years or so.
00:04:22.140it started to me to match my experience with reality uh more closely not perfectly of course
00:04:29.420nothing is perfect uh but but but that was kind of my own journey my own transition and i think
00:04:35.640as things have gone into kind of hyper drive wokeness in the last four or five years uh
00:04:41.820that that transition seemed to be more prescient and more accurate uh than ever
00:04:47.440and what is critical race theory and why it's the second part to that question is why is it so
00:04:55.920dangerous to our society yeah so you know critical race theory i'll try to give you a kind of succinct
00:05:01.760summaries critical race theory is an academic discipline uh it's a neo-marxist philosophy
00:05:07.380derived from critical theory uh which really took hold in the united states around 1965
00:05:12.720and it holds something very simple. It says that the United States is a fundamentally racist country
00:05:19.540founded on white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalist exploitation, and that those forces
00:05:25.360are still at the root of our society today. And even though it may seem that we've made progress,
00:05:30.300the critical race theorists argue that in many ways we haven't made any progress. The country
00:05:34.720is just as racist, exploitative, and patriarchal today as it was 100 years ago or 200 years ago.
00:05:40.280those forces have merely become more subtle, more sophisticated, and more insidious.
00:05:45.880The conclusion then that the critical race theorists arrive at is that all of our systems
00:05:50.480must be deconstructed, dismantled, and demolished in order for a better and utopian society to
00:05:56.780emerge. This includes capitalism. They're explicitly anti-capitalist. This includes
00:06:02.040kind of gender relations and family structure that they want to kind of dismantle and deconstruct.
00:06:07.960And I think it also crucially includes our system of constitutional government, where they are deeply skeptical of the First Amendment right to free speech, the 14th Amendment right to equal protection, and so on and so forth.
00:06:21.520so when you kind of arrive at it in its totality and the early work is explicit even though they've
00:06:28.340tried to kind of cover their tracks lately it is not a program of reform it's not an extension of
00:06:34.260the civil rights movement it's actually a program of liberation or revolution that was outlined in
00:06:40.420the early years in the 1960s as critical theory taking on a racial component into 1990s and now
00:06:47.280seemingly has spread throughout our institutions. And you said it spread right the way through our
00:06:53.560institutions. It seems to have come to prominence in the last year or so. Why is that? Do you think
00:07:00.280it's related to what's been happening in America? Or do you think it exploded into the public
00:07:05.680consciousness because of lockdowns, because of BLM, because of COVID? I think a bit of both. I mean,
00:07:12.380certainly in my reporting, what I've seen is that some of the earliest school districts to adopt the
00:07:17.680principles of critical race theory and their teacher training programs or their curricula
00:07:21.080were doing so around 2010. I know Portland Public Schools was an early adopter. That's Portland,
00:07:26.920Oregon, kind of the home of Antifa, one of the wokest place on earth. They were adopting it
00:07:32.780around 2010 in a kind of tentative, kind of light way. But certainly what you've seen is that school
00:07:39.420districts, not just in Portland or Berkeley or New York or Boston, but actually kind of middle
00:07:44.980America school districts, suburban school districts, all started to adopt it around the same time
00:07:50.300following the death of George Floyd, which of course followed the COVID lockdowns and then was
00:07:55.400kind of succeeded by these large scale protests and then large scale riots. And you see the
00:08:02.600documentation from these school districts and it's like a immediate domino effect. It's actually a
00:08:08.200pretty profound process of spread, of contagion, where all of these school districts around the
00:08:15.520country are adopting the same kind of board resolutions, the same kind of training programs,
00:08:19.960the same kind of curriculum modules, things that have been in development for years and decades.
00:08:25.680All of a sudden, in the environment of COVID lockdown, in the environment of remote school,
00:08:31.400in the environment of ongoing racial unrest, they suddenly became adopted almost everywhere
00:08:37.980simultaneously. And this, I think, is significant, not only in itself, but it's also significant
00:08:45.580because what we've seen since I started really exposing it, reporting on it, others have been
00:08:50.100working on this issue as well. We've seen a tremendous backlash and a tremendous resistance
00:08:56.400to this, you know, not only race conscious, but really racially divisive program in schools.
00:09:05.280Christopher, before we get into the real kind of implementation of some of this stuff, which
00:09:10.440is very important, I know you've done a lot of work on it, let's explore just the theory itself.
00:09:16.700And, you know, you laid out, I think, an accurate description of what I understand to be critical
00:09:22.760race theory. And the beginning part of it, isn't it accurate to say that the United States was
00:09:28.820founded, it was at its foundation, at least, let's say, a society that did involve elements
00:09:35.120certainly of racism. I don't know about white supremacy, but probably white supremacy,
00:09:39.260capitalist exploitation, patriarchy. Aren't those things all quite accurate to point out?
00:09:45.000Yeah, well, I think that there is a subtle but very important distinction. I mean, you can
00:09:50.360certainly say that, I mean, undoubtedly anyone would agree that when the United States was
00:09:56.080founded. Slavery was a widespread practice, racial discrimination, injustice, exploitation,
00:10:02.800of course. But they're not making that argument that these are historical realities that we should
00:10:07.140grapple with, that we should seek to understand. And if they have any kind of residual effects
00:10:11.600today, we should seek to rectify. That's an argument that I've made. That's an argument
00:10:15.540that I believe to be true. What they're saying is that the United States is fundamentally,
00:10:20.380in its foundation and irredeemably racist, patriarchal, and exploitative. And this is
00:10:27.400then the premise for the conclusion, not a program of reform, but a program that it has to be
00:10:32.680abolished. So you have things like abolitionist teaching, abolish prisons, abolish, you know,
00:10:38.720the constitution, abolish the United States as a kind of historical entity itself in some cases.
00:10:44.540And it lays the foundation for not a kind of responsible look at history, trying to understand the bad and the good, trying to sort it out.
00:10:54.700They say even the Declaration, even the Civil War, even the Civil Rights Act are remnants of white supremacy, are remnants of domination, are mechanisms for racial control.
00:11:06.180And I think that that's in some ways a subtle distinction, but I think it's very important because the story that I think is accurate and how I think that history should be taught in schools, for example, is that you should take an honest and hard look at the history of racism, slavery, segregation, injustice, etc.
00:11:25.060But you should also place those historical injustices within the context of the country's highest ideals. First, kind of declared in the Declaration, codified in the Constitution, fought over and consecrated in blood in the Civil War, and then put into kind of specific legal practice in the Civil Rights Act.
00:11:46.340that's always moving towards the principles of freedom and equality that were really the founding
00:11:51.420essence of our society. You know, not racial injustice exploitation. We don't live currently
00:11:59.060in a slaveocracy as some critical race theorists have argued. The language is very important and
00:12:07.160it's very important to make those distinctions because now what we've seen is precisely what
00:12:11.560you're suggesting. They're now conflating all of these things together to try to conceal
00:12:16.220the true nature of their philosophy. And Christopher, the way you describe it,
00:12:22.300abolishing prisons, abolishing the United States, the Civil Rights Act is a remnant of white,
00:12:28.860all of that sounds insane, right? To a normal person, to a normal, reasonable person.
00:12:33.660I hope that's still true. I really hope so. I have no doubt that it's true. I think the
00:12:38.480vast majority of the public completely wouldn't buy into that so if that is the case and let's
00:12:44.360just sit for the sake of argument say that it is insane and it's crazy how has it happened that in
00:12:50.840a very short period of time this ideology has not only become popularized in in a small minority of
00:12:58.360people who talk about it but is actually now bleeding into our institutions how has that
00:13:03.280happened? Well, I think there's a key mechanism that you have to understand to explain that.
00:13:11.640This is still very much a kind of numerical minority position. Very few people subscribe
00:13:18.880to critical race theory. Very few people in the general public support critical race theory.
00:13:24.500The latest polling data shows that by a 19% margin, Americans who have an opinion about this
00:13:29.720oppose it. And this includes Latinos and Asians that oppose critical race theory in schools
00:13:36.000by a two to one margin. So it is deeply unpopular. It is a very kind of small
00:13:44.300numerical minority position. But the people who are true believers, the people who are
00:13:50.520the most fierce advocates for this philosophy are in those bureaucratic positions, predominantly in
00:13:57.260public institutions, so government jobs, where they can actually impose this without the consent
00:14:03.500of voters, without the consent of parents, without the consent of the public. They can implement it
00:14:09.920in many cases unilaterally through a bureaucratic process. So you have all of these kind of woke
00:14:17.440bureaucrats in public schools, in municipal governments, in state governments, in the
00:14:23.320federal bureaucracy everywhere, as I've documented in my investigative reporting,
00:14:27.760that are really taking these ideas and very astutely, very shrewdly, they've then covered
00:14:36.060them in euphemism. So instead of the revolutionary theory to abolish capitalism, they're saying
00:14:42.440equity, inclusion, diversity, very nice, very soft sounding words that are in themselves kind
00:14:50.020of unopposable. But then underneath, if you actually look at the documentation, even in
00:14:56.100Fortune 100 companies of all places, they're laundering in these more kind of revolutionary
00:15:02.380principles, these more radical ideas. And that's what we're seeing. And I think that a lot of it is
00:15:10.480this confluence of public bureaucracies, of an apathetic citizenry, and then these ideologies
00:15:19.360that have leaked out of the university system well maybe not leaked out actually been been
00:15:24.380exported from very deliberately from university systems to k-12 education to you know federal
00:15:31.260state and local bureaucracies but wouldn't you say christopher as well that in some ways the fact
00:15:37.880that this has come to prominence shows that america there's still a problem with race there's still
00:15:43.780anger that surrounds it. And what we see with critical race theory is people trying to explain
00:15:50.740the injustices that they still see in America. Yeah, I would take a different and perhaps more
00:15:57.680cynical view. I actually think that if you look at the polling data from Gallup and others, for
00:16:03.240example, the kind of racial attitudes, the idea of kind of, is there kind of racial harmony? Is
00:16:11.160their racial integration, is their cooperation and trust between racial groups in the United
00:16:15.400States, was actually very high as recently as 10 years ago. It was roughly 70 percent of white
00:16:21.720Americans, slightly less, somewhere in the high 60 percent of African Americans, believed that
00:16:27.560race relations in the United States were good. Starting in about 2013, 2014, and continuing
00:16:33.460today to today, those numbers have plummeted. They've been reduced by roughly half. So you have
00:16:41.900a very paradoxical situation where you have a kind of progression of a legal regime of equality over
00:16:48.920time that somehow peaks in the kind of 2000s and then mysteriously just absolutely plummets among
00:16:56.620all racial groups. And I would say my hypothesis, again, it's very hard to kind of prove this in a
00:17:02.840social science method. But I think that my hypothesis is that critical race theory is
00:17:08.280designed and has effectively achieved not to explain the history of racial injustice, not to
00:17:15.240reveal the truth about racial attitudes in the United States, but actually to perpetuate a sense
00:17:21.860of division, to instill this idea that we can be separated into oppressor and oppressed classes,
00:17:29.400and to revive some of the ugliest tropes and ideas from the kind of racist race science of
00:17:37.920the 1920s, things like race essentialism, like collective guilt, like neo-segregation,
00:17:44.840and then re-implant them in our institutions. Of course, under different pretexts with different
00:17:49.780stated goals. But this is what we see. We see, for example, in classrooms where students are
00:17:54.400being told that they are either a member of the oppressor or the oppressed class based on their
00:17:58.980skin color. They're being told that they are guilty and responsible for historical crimes
00:18:04.020committed by people who look like them in the past. And they're also in the process of teacher
00:18:09.520training, for example, and employee training programs. Adults are being separated into
00:18:14.660separate facilities, separate programs based on race. And I think that this is very ugly. It's
00:18:21.240very much counterproductive. And if the polling data accurately reflects the kind of
00:18:25.720the spread or the hold of this ideology. It is actually tearing people apart rather than
00:18:33.600bringing them together. And Christopher, what would you say those people who would give you
00:18:37.580the First Amendment argument, which is, look, we have freedom of speech in this country.
00:18:43.300You know, this is a theory just like Marxism, just like libertarianism. It should be free to
00:18:48.840be taught like any other theory in our public schools, in our colleges, in our universities.
00:18:54.940Yeah, well, I'm obviously, or maybe not obviously, I should make it clear. I'm a supporter of the
00:19:01.260First Amendment. I think it's essential. There's a reason why they put it first of all the
00:19:05.120amendments. But I think that you have to understand that this isn't a freedom of speech issue.
00:19:11.980Of course, if you're a critical race theorist, I support your right 100% to go on the street
00:19:17.020corner, to publish in the newspaper, to write a book about critical race theory,
00:19:20.460to preach it as radically as you want, as often as you want. But we're talking about a context of
00:19:27.560publicly funded and publicly governed institutions, like, for example, K-12 schools.
00:19:33.580K-12 schools are government entities that are beholden, that are responsible and accountable
00:19:38.800to taxpayers. And the First Amendment in the case law and its own kind of intention
00:19:44.800was designed to protect individuals from the government, not to protect the government
00:19:49.480from the individuals or government from the voters. So as these institutions function,
00:19:55.200they include and exclude certain ideas. We're not teaching kindergartners eugenics. We're not
00:20:02.160teaching them phrenology. We're not teaching them flat earthism. You can preach all of those things
00:20:08.400from the street corner if you want as a First Amendment right, but you're not entitled to
00:20:12.860include them in the official state curriculum. That is a political decision. It's a political
00:20:17.980process. It's determined by state legislatures. It's determined by local school boards and boards
00:20:24.860of education. So they get to decide what is in the curriculum, what is out of the curriculum.
00:20:30.420Teachers, this is kind of First Amendment, kind of jurisprudence case law for many years.
00:20:36.100They don't have an unlimited First Amendment right in the classroom. It's restricted because
00:20:40.080they're public employees. So this idea that somehow, you know, one group gets the exclusive
00:20:47.520and kind of right to use taxpayer dollars to promote their private ideology within
00:20:53.480public institutions doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And Christopher, tell us a little bit about some
00:20:58.980of the work that you've been doing, because I said at the top of your introduction that you are
00:21:02.700one of the most prominent critics of this. But actually, I think it's more accurate to say that
00:21:07.100you're one of the people who's been doing the most to actively oppose all of this in the
00:21:12.400institution. So you've had some success in that area. Tell us a little bit about that.
00:21:17.460Yeah. So I, you know, it really all started for me with the reporting. I think that it's one
00:21:23.220thing to criticize a theory where you can say, hey, this is critical race theory. This is what
00:21:29.540it holds. This is why it's wrong. You engage in a very abstract argument and you can win or lose.
00:21:36.400Sometimes it's very unclear who wins or who loses in those kind of debates, whereas my approach and my strategy and then my kind of skill set was to actually expose the most egregious and sometimes salacious examples from public schools.
00:21:50.860So just very quickly, you have like teaching third graders in Cupertino, California to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and then rank themselves according to a hierarchy of power and privilege.
00:22:02.700So dividing, you know, eight-year-olds into oppressor and oppressed. You have the kind of system in Buffalo, New York, teaching K-12 students that, quote, all white people perpetuate systemic racism, that all white wealth derives from slavery, that white people are, quote, unfairly rich.
00:22:21.580and then sharing a video, a video dramatization of dead black children. This is to kindergartners,
00:22:28.220to four and five-year-olds, speaking to them beyond the grave, warning them that, quote,
00:22:33.080racist police could murder them at any minute, instilling this kind of race-based terror in
00:22:39.480small children, or even a public high school in New York City that sent an email directed to
00:22:45.320white parents that said that they need to become, quote, white traitors to betray the white race
00:22:52.120and then to advocate for, quote, white abolition. So abolishing the white race, which is an idea
00:22:59.080from critical race theory and critical whiteness studies. Those are just three of the examples.
00:23:03.600And the idea was to basically cut through the gaslighting, cut through the lying, cut through
00:23:08.640the obfuscation, cut through the euphemisms and show people, you know, these stories did about
00:23:13.300250 million direct media impressions in the United States. They really brought this issue
00:23:18.280to the forefront. You see the kind of Fox News numbers, mentions of critical race theory
00:32:28.980There are the very elite, affluent, big city schools, including private schools.
00:32:34.240So the kind of places where it's, you know, $50,000 a year, maybe like 30,000 pounds,
00:32:39.220I don't know the exchange rate, a year to attend these schools.
00:32:42.280I mean, these are, you know, the most affluent elite places in the country. They've adopted it because they, in my reading, they believe that being fluent in the language of wokeness is essential for advancing in the Ivy League institutions, is essential for advancing in elite workplaces like consulting firms and government and politics and journalism.
00:33:02.980so they're preparing their kids not to be uh kind of uh you know throwing molotov cocktails uh
00:33:09.880into a police car although that does sometimes happen even among this set but they're preparing
00:33:14.540them for this kind of meritocratic system that has been really uh that wokeness has grafted itself
00:33:21.200onto but you also see it and i think and like whatever who cares i really don't care personally
00:33:26.040what they do in elite private schools i think they shouldn't do it but it's really up to them
00:33:29.320those kids are going to be fine. But where it really concerns me and frankly enrages me
00:33:36.160is in the big city, poor school districts with high rates of educational failure. So for example,
00:33:44.340like Buffalo, which I talked about, also Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. These are big
00:33:50.400urban school districts, high number of black students in those two courses. They're teaching
00:33:55.640a very aggressive kind of critical race theory-based curriculum. In the case of Buffalo,
00:34:02.320from pre-K through grade 12, they've overhauled their curriculum. And the tragedy and the thing
00:34:10.420that I think should infuriate voters and parents and families is that these are school districts
00:34:17.020where in some schools, their literacy rates are less than 20%, sometimes less than 10%.
00:34:22.96010%. So kids who are unable to reach basic proficiency in reading and writing, you have
00:34:28.860sometimes 80% of students that are functionally illiterate by the time they graduate from their
00:34:35.020primary school or middle school education. So you have an educational crisis. You have kids in fifth,
00:34:44.060sixth grade that are illiterate, that have been in school for 6,000 hours of classroom time,
00:34:49.860that can't read, can't write at a basic level, and yet they're pumping them full of ideology.
00:34:56.340And the cynical read on this, which I think unfortunately has a lot of truth, is that this
00:35:02.780is used as a diversion tactic to shift the focus away from the failures of these institutions,
00:35:10.300the failures of teachers unions, the failures of the school districts, the failures of
00:35:14.780principals and classroom teachers in these districts, and then shift the blame onto the
00:35:20.820abstract forces that are the kind of, is almost a kind of a safety valve mechanism, a scapegoating
00:35:28.200mechanism. Well, it's not that our schools are crumbling and dysfunctional and failing to teach
00:35:33.640you how to read. It's actually the fault of white supremacy, the fault of anthropocentrism,
00:35:40.580the fault of, you know, whatever kind of evil villain of the day is.
00:35:46.880And I think that to me is just unconscionable.
00:35:50.340And those stories for me were really the most tragic, the most difficult, the most heartbreaking to report.
00:45:09.040And so they're scared. Even teachers who deeply oppose it in a principled way are scared to speak out. And then on the top, what we've seen is that the largest teachers union in the United States, the NEA, National Education Association or Educators Association, which represents 3 million teachers in all 14,000 school districts, just this summer at their annual conference, at their annual Congress, voted in committee as an institution to support
00:45:38.840implementing critical race theory in all 14,000 school districts in all 50 states.
00:45:43.160They've gone on the record by name, critical race theory, saying we support this. We want to put
00:45:48.160this everywhere. And they've also approved funding to attack people like me, to attack journalists
00:45:54.380and writers and intellectuals who are opposing critical race theory. They're going to put their
00:45:58.620part of their $375 million annual budget into attacking us, into intimidating us, into coming
00:46:05.440after us. So these institutions, which I don't think reflect the majority of their members,
00:46:11.220have been captured by this ideology. It's a top-down revolution. It's a revolution from
00:46:15.980above. It's an elite-driven revolution. And they want to impose it from their position of power
00:46:22.380and privilege, ironically, onto the rank-and-file people of all different social classes, all
00:46:28.140different racial backgrounds, who by large majorities oppose it. Christopher, but other
00:46:32.940than their revolutionary mindset, which you've detailed, surely they must have some good
00:46:38.180arguments, aren't they? What is the strongest argument in favor of introducing the stuff
00:46:43.520in school that people make? This is a good question. I mean, it depends, right? I mean,
00:46:49.080the premise is right. I would say that the premise is a strong premise. The premise is
00:46:54.460the United States has a history of racial injustice, and we should make sure to look at
00:47:01.540look at history through the lens of racial injustice to illuminate areas where the United
00:47:06.160States has fallen short of its ideals of freedom and equality. I think virtually everyone in the
00:47:13.260country, if you put it to them that way, if you implemented it in those terms, would support it.
00:47:18.340But the problem is, is that that is really a kind of a kind of Mott and Bailey, a kind of
00:47:25.500kind of presentation argument that really masks the real content of it. Because you can say that
00:47:33.920I would agree with it. I think both of you would agree with it. Most parents would agree with it,
00:47:38.220including conservative parents. Yeah, we should really take a look at this history. We should
00:47:42.640really teach kids the deepest injustices in our past, but also the progress that we've made
00:47:48.960towards realizing those ideals. That, I think, could get almost universal support. But the
00:47:53.480critical racers are deploying that argument uh disingenuously but then implementing things like
00:47:59.100like segregating employees like telling children that they're inherently oppressive like telling
00:48:04.640you know small uh young people that they are have a kind of blood guilt or ancestral guilt or
00:48:10.560collective guilt based on skin color those things aren't connected those things those conclusions
00:48:17.000those practices don't follow from the premise so i think that what we could do theoretically
00:48:22.720although I'm not optimistic about this, is we can say, hey, look, we agree on the premise.
00:48:28.520We agree on the premise that we should take a look at these issues. We disagree with your
00:48:32.420conclusions, but let's try to come up with a better curriculum, a better practice from that
00:48:36.840common premise. And to the extent that it's possible, you're never going to convince the
00:48:40.280people on the fringes. To the extent that it's possible, get a large majority of citizens,
00:48:45.020whether it's locally or statewide or nationally, to agree on a new approach to address these issues
00:48:51.240in a way that is kind of broadly popular
00:49:14.660And I would defer to you guys, to you two in the UK,
00:49:19.120but from what I've seen, from what I've been reading, these are, you know, I'll tell you
00:49:25.220what, this is how I'll put it. America has demonstrated one immense capacity and one
00:49:32.320immense talent. We take things from all over the world, we package them into commodities,
00:49:39.840and then we export them to every country on the planet. I mean, you can go to a kind of
00:49:45.100remote Tibetan village that has just achieved electricity and watched Michael Jackson dance
00:49:51.000videos with Buddhist monks. I mean, I've actually done that. I mean, it really is extraordinary,
00:49:56.220the reach of America's cultural commodities. So if it hasn't successfully been exported to you
00:50:01.920in the UK, into Sweden, into other countries, it will be. It's coming. And I think even
00:50:07.040the president of France, I saw that he said, France is being affected negatively by all of
00:50:14.060these American ideas, which I thought was amazing, a kind of a dodge. France has had its share of bad
00:50:19.520ideas. But I think that it's certainly coming, even in relatively homogenous societies like
00:50:27.340the Scandinavian societies. I don't think they'll be immune to this. This politics, once it takes
00:50:32.300hold, once it gets a foothold in institutions, it's very hard to dislodge. It's very hard to
00:50:37.920disrupt and seems to spread quite easily. Christopher, we're going to have to wrap up
00:50:43.620in a few minutes. But before we do, I wanted to talk about the role of the media in all of this,
00:50:48.220because you and I interacted recently on Twitter over the long thread I wrote about the falling
00:50:53.300trust in public institutions, particularly the media. What do you think has been the role of
00:50:58.780the media in advancing this theory or opposing it or, you know, the role of different media
00:51:05.380outlets on different sides in in having this debate and facilitating the conversation oh i mean i mean
00:51:11.760i think the media is uh uh the media is is is the um if academia is the the flame you know if
00:51:20.640academia is the origin the flame the media is the accelerant you know it's like the the lighter
00:51:25.860fluid that's being squirted over the top of the flame uh the media has has done uh you know an
00:51:33.020an incredibly bad job promoting this stuff. And you see the numbers from the social scientist
00:51:38.020Zach Goldberg, where he looks at the terminology like systemic racism, racist, racist, white
00:51:43.160supremacy, white supremacist. It's kind of like boop, boop, boop, hovering in the 1990s, 2000s,
00:51:48.0802013, boom. I mean, just go straight vertical on the graph because the media basically adopted
00:51:55.160the terminology from critical race theory and then just repeated it so many times in their
00:52:00.200narratives and their language and their concepts and their terminology in their tweets, that it
00:52:05.540became this kind of mythology, this new mythology for the kind of center left or liberal left
00:52:15.540in our country. And I think that they mainstreamed or mainlined these ideas from academia
00:52:22.100into mainstream politics. And now I think it's just absolutely ridiculous what they're doing.
00:52:29.000I mean, the media promoted this ideology. And now that it turns out to be unpopular, now that there's a revolt in public schools, a revolt in state legislatures, now they're retreating from their own language and saying, no, no, no, this is just accurate history. No, no, no, this is just equity. This is just inclusion. It's none of those other things.
00:52:49.040that the media had been promoting for years prior. So I have I have I am a man of little faith.
00:52:57.020And and I'll say, you know, even even me personally, I mean, there was about two months
00:53:03.360where I was just getting relentlessly into tact in the media. The Washington Post published 10
00:53:08.300stories calling me out by name and trashing me. The The New York Times published multiple
00:53:14.460full pieces profiling me in a very negative light. The Atlantic, MSNBC's Joy Reid, every night for a
00:53:22.860while, was putting my tweets on screen and trying to yell at me about them. I mean, they are really
00:53:28.960dedicated to the narrative. They're trying any tactic to discredit the opposition, to gaslight
00:53:37.040the public, to obscure the true nature of their ideology that they've created. But I think that
00:53:42.160the American public is too smart. They see what's happening in their local schools. They see
00:53:47.280the documents that are being released in the media by me and others. And they know that this
00:53:53.580is bad, even if they don't understand the kind of nuances of the theory. They know instinctually,
00:53:58.960they know intuitively that this ideology spells trouble for everyone, spells trouble for our
00:54:05.000country. And I think that they are, you know, one good thing, you know, kind of referencing your
00:54:11.440tweet thread about loss and trust of the media. In some ways, this is good. I mean, the media
00:54:15.820deserves to be trusted less, and it creates the opportunity for programs like yours, for programs
00:54:21.000that are independent, to actually fill that gap and build real trust with the audience,
00:54:26.100not just getting fire hosed by the New York Times with their, you know, endless stream of