The Truth As No Agenda

 Glenn Spitzer has an excellent article explaining all the latest Marxist "theories" designed to keep us on our heels. We are assaulted from every side by DIE, by ESG, by the LGBTQ ad nauseum, and threats of gun control, digital currency, and on and on.  Christianity is denigrated, while Islam is seen by cultural leaders as a "religion of peace."  What all of this, in the end, is the oppressor versus the oppressed, or as one commenter noted, coveting what you did not earn and is not yours.  The Marxists propose, always to take it from those who own it by means legal and foul, which is why they crave power.

Spitzer's article, at the American Thinker is entitled Understanding Marxism Is Key To Understanding Today's Leftists.

As Americans, we are being assaulted by numerous alphabet ideologies we don’t understand—from DEI to ESG to LGBTQ+. We seek to understand through logic, but by doing so, we become only more confused. The only way to understand what’s happening is to recognize the ideology that underlies all of it: Marxism. When Patrisse Cullors, BLM’s co-founder, acknowledged that BLM leaders were “trained Marxists,” we failed to understand the significance. It is time to change that.

Marxism’s central idea is that the world is broken down into two groups; or as Marx stated: “in a word, oppressor and oppressed.” This is from his opening statement in the Communist Manifesto (published in 1848). If you remember nothing else, remember this.

Classic Marxism sees the world in binary terms: the bourgeoisie (oppressor) and the proletariat (oppressed). The bourgeoisie own the means of production, and the proletariat don’t. Marx believed that, if the proletariat seized the means of production, all class conflict would end, bringing us to a Communist utopia. Ironically, Marxists advocated achieving utopia through violent revolution.

The Frankfurt School is the key to understanding how Marxism is used today. It is responsible for what we now term “cultural Marxism” or “neo-Marxism.” The Frankfurt School was established in the 1920s to study Marxism with the goal of understanding why communism was not taking hold in Western societies. The most important idea that came from the Frankfurt school is “critical theory.” (The seminal work is Traditional and Critical Theory” by Max Horkheimer, published in 1937.)

One thing you must understand, the Marxists can never be wrong. For if they are wrong in their diagnosis of what troubles society, then they might not achieve the power they so crave. Thus, while much of their proposed "theories" such as the unverified and unverifiable "institutional racism" have no objective standards, they cling to them as if they are real. After all, if they were to see the ridiculousness of these ideas, they would be forced to change their minds. Indeed, they would be forced to change their minds about everything including the idea that perverse sexual ideologies result from being "born that way," or that there are "racist highways." Horror of horrors, they might be wrong about guns and gun control!  But rather than look at objective facts and statistics, they prefer the lie. And since they can not convince enough others of their lies, they resort of violence and revolution.

The obvious problem with critical theory is that it purports to explain all disparate outcomes between the various oppressor/oppressed groups. Its advocates are conditioned to attribute any unequal outcomes to institutions and not to individuals. However, the connections are often tenuous and unverifiable (think “racist highways”). When one believes oppression is reinforced by unverifiable factors within social institutions, one soon comes to believe that oppression lurks everywhere within those institutions.

Take, for example, the issue of “systemic racism,” a concept that was raised repeatedly during the George Floyd riots. Advocates could not provide concrete, verifiable examples of “systemic racism.” Instead, systemic racism came to stand for the vague notion that our social institutions reinforce oppression on unconscious levels. This naturally led policymakers to flail around on nonsense solutions designed to disable the institutions themselves (think “defund the police”). Contrast modern systemic racism to the actual systemic racism in Jim Crow laws—laws that are verifiably racist and oppressive.

Without concrete or verifiable explanations for disparate outcomes, critical theorists come to see even the most innocuous ideas as responsible for maintaining the oppressive “hegemony.” Extremist CRT advocates attack ideas that most would find universally beneficial. Why do whites (and now Asians) do better in school? To CRT advocates, it’s because standardized testing, meritocracy, and even math and logic are racist concepts that only serve to maintain the status quo. These extremists even decry diligence and promptness as “white” standards used to maintain oppression. Ultimately, if there is any “inequity” (defined as unequal outcomes), the related institutions are viewed with suspicion, sometimes comically so.

So, what does this mean? How does this manifest in reality?

In other words, critical theory trains people to ignore the far more obvious and simple explanations, such as cultural differences, fatherless homes, and other factors that more directly lead to differences in school performance. In that way, critical theory prevents us from effectively identifying and addressing real problems.

With subjective analysis, evidence becomes less relevant. Critical theorists use concepts like “lived experience” or “my truth” to support disparate outcomes. Lived experience holds that truth is subjective and that we experience oppression through our subjective experience as members of victim groups. Individuals from oppressor groups do not have “lived experience” and may not assess the lived experience of the oppressed group members. In fact, this is a common theme in Marxism: the rights of the “oppressors” are irrelevant or subordinate to the rights of the oppressed, which are sacrosanct (think different standards for free speech).

At first blush, we may compare “lived experience” to anecdotal evidence. However, the differences are significant. Whereas anecdotal evidence is an objective piece of evidence used to verify conclusions from larger data sets, lived experience is a subjective understanding of the world. It cannot be verified, falsified, or discounted by the oppressor groups. Instead, it simply must be accepted as true, and it becomes a replacement for traditional scientific methods of proof. Under the “lived experience” standard, objective verification of critical theory becomes impossible and ultimately irrelevant.

For too long, we have not challenged these repulsive ideas. Too many of us have been silenced by the loud mouthed mob that has been seduced by the thought of getting something for nothing. But if we are to stop this assault we must...must...be willing to tell the Truth. Glenn Beck said that the Truth has no agenda. I believe he is right. The Truth is neither right nor left, but sits squarely in the middle. The Truth is God's truth, and since he created us, he probably knows us better than we know ourselves.