A spectre is haunting America – the spectre of Critical Race Theory. For the word America, substitute Europe, and for Critical Race Theory, substitute Communism, and you have the opening words of the 1848 pamphlet “The Communist Manifesto,” written by the German
philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. To label this document “revolutionary” would be the height of understatement. The authors’ purpose was to summarize in one place, and for all time, their theories of nature and of politics. “The Communist Manifesto” calls for revolution to achieve its goals and has served as the template for revolutionary movements on every continent even, as we will see, to the present day and in our own country. In the years that followed that day in 1848, scores of nations have embraced the ideology of Communism and over one hundred million have died because of it.
After the brief introductory paragraph, Section I. Bourgeois and Proletarian begins with the following words, which we do well to consider: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed (emphasis added) stood in constant opposition to each other, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open (emphasis added) fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
The similarity in language between Marx and Engels and the disciples of CRT is remarkable only if we believe their denials that theirs is, at core, a Marxist movement. Marx and Engels dealt with class struggle. CRT deals with struggle between races and, as with the struggle between classes, there are here also the struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed of the races. The bourgeoisie of Communism is the white race of CRT and Communism’s proletariat includes CRT’s other races.
The principal tool and instrument of power of the bourgeoisie (white race) is capital, and the destruction of the capitalist system is a primary Communist goal. Marx and Engels, and their myriad followers, proudly proclaim that capitalism is eventually to be replaced first by what they are pleased to term the dictatorship of the proletariat. Along this evolutionary path, Socialism is but a step on the road toward the classless society of Communism.
The woke and the newly woke among us are carrying on the class/race struggle message. It has for too long been hidden, or worse ignored, but increasingly it is becoming open, not always it seems to the benefit of the movement. Pushbacks are increasing and these lead to the strident demonization, canceling, censoring, doxing and virtue shaming of the increasing number of parents in an increasing number of school districts throughout the nation who have the temerity to object to the indoctrination of their children in what they rightly consider to be Communist ideology. A recent letter in these pages states there is nothing oppressive, hateful, victimizing or humiliating in CRT. Tell that to these parents.
In the China of Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, dissidents were publicly shamed and humiliated, dunce caps placed on the heads of teachers by their students, parents by their children, signs placed around their necks. They were jeered, forced to bow and grovel, all because they refused to support the Communist ideology. We have not reached that level of abomination, but American parents who oppose CRT are receiving anonymous death threats.
It is probably only a small minority of its proponents who are aware of, even if they do not acknowledge, the Marxist origins of CRT. The great majority simply see it as a means of attaining what they consider a valid social justice goal. A latter-day prophet of Communism, Vladimir Lenin, a founder and architect of the Soviet Union, history’s greatest and most spectacular failure of a Communist system, recognized the existence of the latter group. Although ignorant of the ideology behind their activism, they nevertheless carried on the struggle. Lenin’s disdain and contempt for them blaze forth in his term for them: useful idiots.
Critical Race Theory employs Marxist terminology and Marxist methods, embraces Marxist philosophies, supports Marxist goals, and adheres and strives to propagate Marxist teachings. It has no place in a free system of education. It has no place in a free society.
Jack Lee is retired from a 34-year career with the intelligence community.
Critical race theory
Marxism
censorship
communism
The Communist Manifesto
race struggle vs. class struggle
capitalism
socialism
wokeness
school curriculum
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