The Frankfurt School

Critical Theory originated in the Institute of Social Research at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923. It was developed as a Marxist studies program, and often referred to as the Frankfurt School. Critical Theory preaches the same old Marxist ideology about class warfare. Marx believed that society consisted “of different social classes all competing for a limited pool of resources such as food, housing, employment, education, and leisure time.” He believed that life was a zero-sum game, pitting the wealthy against the poor, a binary conflict of oppressed vs. oppressors, victims vs. victimizers. To Marx, the wealthy were the oppressors, and the poor were the oppressed. The framing all of societal problems through this lens of Marxist class struggle led to many of the Communist revolutions in the 20th century; Russia, China, Cuba, East Germany, North Korea, Vietnam, etc.

In 1933, Hitler shut down the Frankfurt School, and remnants of it moved to the United States, finding a safe haven at Columbia University in the 1930’s and 1940’s. After World War II, a man named Richard Bernstein spread Critical Theory to many elite Universities throughout the United States. And in the 1970’s, a black professor at Harvard University named Derrick Bell morphed Critical Theory into Critical Race Theory to further push the Marxist ideology under a different framework. Bell simply replaced economic status with race to determine who are the oppressors and who are the oppressed. Critical Race Theory believes that the world is not made up of individuals created in the image of God with inherent value and worth, rather it is comprised of racial and ethnic groups delineated as oppressor and oppressed, victimizer and victimized. The individuals’ value is not determined by who they are, or what they do, but by what group they belong to. There are no objective standards of right and wrong, good and bad, that transcend these group identities.

In America, according to CRT, all white people by virtue of being white are deemed oppressors, and all people of color are oppressed. The only white people who escape their oppressor status are those who denounce their “whiteness”, or the white ultra-wealthy who donate an equivalent of a rounding error in their multi-billion-dollar empire to “woke” organizations. This is why millionaires and billionaires are stumbling all over themselves to become “woke”. If they can don the garb of wokeness, then people will forget or at least ignore the fact that they have millions or billions of dollars, and are some of the most powerful people on the planet.

So, big tech billionaires who exploit and manipulate their users with addiction producing algorithms, and data mining, escape the designation of oppressor because they made some woke statement and donated a fraction of a percent of their net worth to organizations like Black Lives Matter. Moments after his $5.5 billion 4-minute joy ride into space, Jeff Bezos threw $100 million, or 0.05% of his empire, at black activist Van Jones, so no one would notice the colossal waste of money he spent to feed his enormous ego, and the fact that many of his workers are forced to pee in bottles to do their jobs at work.

Only in the warped and twisted Critical Race Theory can a millionaire be seen as oppressed, and a poor person is considered an oppressor. The unemployed white pipeline worker who lost his job when Joe Biden cancelled the Keystone Pipeline is an oppressor, and Barack and Michelle Obama living in their $10 million Mansion in Martha’s Vineyard are the oppressed by mere virtue of their skin color. That is where this type of ideology leads us.

Money and power no longer determine if somebody is an oppressor, and lack of money and opportunity no longer determines if someone is oppressed, it is based solely on race. So, a black person can never be the oppressor no matter how much money or power he has, and a white person can never be the oppressed regardless of how poor or disadvantaged he is. The only thing more nonsensical about somebody selling that type of an ideology is that scores of people actually believe and adhere to it. In the United States of America with the true vision of our founders, both of these theories are vacuous, without merit. If all men are created equal, if we all are endowed by our creator with unalienable rights, if we have a Constitution that affirms our rights, and a government that protects our rights, then the only thing that oppresses us is ourselves.

But if we were to follow the original Critical Theory from which Critical Race Theory evolved, which defined the oppressors as the wealthy and powerful, Barack Obama, LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, Oprah Winfrey, Megan Markle, Ibram X. Kendi, Patrice Cullors, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey would be defined as the oppressors, and the working class people, many of whom are white, and Trump voters would be considered the oppressed. Somehow in this new equation, these millionaires and billionaires escape the label of oppressors, while it is being placed firmly on the backs of millions of poor people who couldn’t oppress someone if they tried.

Critical Race Theory is pure racism. Judging and valuing people solely on the color of their skin or their ethnicity, is the definition of racism. There is no escaping that. Proponents of Critical Race Theory argue that they simply want to teach accurate American history. But what is the “accurate history” of America? Who is privy to that truth? No one. There is not one historian who knows every fact, every reality about American or world history. Most of what is written is one view of our history. Yet there are many ways we can look at history, many angles from which to view our history. And the more angles the better. But, Joe Biden continues to push that school kids be indoctrinated in Critical Race Theory, just as he presses social media companies to censor speech he does not approve of.

Remember, it’s called Critical Race “Theory”. This ideology’s own title admits that this is just a theory, not a fact, not a proven reality, not settled science. It is a theory, yet its proponents want it be treated as unassailable truth. Whether it’s Critical Theory or Critical Race Theory, their goal is to pit one group in our society against another group. It is not about unifying a country under one flag, or under one Constitution; it is about dividing the country based on lines they create in order for them to conquer. These are always the tactics of totalitarians. They thrive on division. Which party benefited from the five months of race riots in our country in 2020? Those who rely on division to gain power can never unite those they rule. Six months after the election, Joe Biden still claims that the biggest threat to our country foreign or domestic is “white supremacy”, a group he never defines, but merely suggests as white people who didn’t vote for him. And he only says it, to further widen the divide in this country.

Marxists need to destroy everything, tear down all societal structures, in order to replace them with their own structures. This is a miscalculation. By using diversity as the wedge to tear down the existing structures of our society, they have delegitimized their own structures they hope to implement. If diversity destroyed the free marketplace of ideas, what would it do to a society that requires one system of belief? Diversity will destroy the structures of Communism. A singular ideology like Communism can never survive in a diverse society, like we have in the United States. It is impossible to reign a full array of diverse and conflicting peoples under one ideology, one belief system. We have seen this recently in the much less diverse country of Cuba, where the communists are cracking down on freedom protesters, and cutting internet service. You cannot have diversity without diversity of thought.

Diversity can only survive in a society based on freedom and individuality with free speech, free expression, and free markets. And that will ultimately be the conflict. So, Critical Race Theory’s push for diversity which has become the cudgel to tear down our free society in order for a closed Communist system to rise, will be in direct conflict with Communism, and only one can survive, diversity or Communism. And what will remain of our country, after we have allowed this dangerous ideology to run rampant throughout our most important institutions, destroying everything in its path? A mere shell reflecting what we could have been, and no one remembering what actually was.

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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.