Spencer Critchley

Communication and Change

Politics & Society

A Guide for the Confused: “Wokeism,” Critical Theory, and Critical Race Theory

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­­Also published at dastardlycleverness.com and as Episode 48 of the Dastardly Cleverness in the Service of Good podcast.

Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw. Photos: Wikimedia Commons.

On the one hand, Trumpist attacks on Critical Race Theory are in obvious bad faith: just more of the same race-based fear-mongering that helped put Birther 1 in office, that other Republicans have embraced, and that generates endless ad money for right-wing media outlets. It’s demagoguery 101.

On the other hand, even if you see through the phony panic, some of what you hear from critical race theorists can sound extreme, especially if you don’t know much about the context. For example, if you believe in equality, how should you interpret Ibram X. Kendi’s assertion that “racial discrimination is not inherently racist [if it’s] creating equity?”[1]

And by the way, what’s the difference between equity and equality?

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A War of Elites: The Intolerant Right vs. the Intolerant Left

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Mirrored collage of the painting the Battle of Wagram by Horace Vernet, showing two identical Napoleons and their armies, facing each other.
Collage of “The Battle of Wagram” by Horace Vernet. Original via Wikimedia Commons.

The crisis we’re going through now isn’t a struggle between right and left, but between illiberalism and liberalism, on both the right and the left.

It’s the latest battle in a war that has been going on for a very long time. It amounts to a struggle for control between two intolerant elites, each trying to exploit the rest of the population in service of its own self-serving worldview.

One illiberal worldview is an empire of will, tending towards fascism — domination by a strongman who supposedly embodies the spirit of the nation — and the other an empire of mind, tending towards communism — domination by a dictatorial government supposedly legitimized by a “science of history.”

Small-l liberals, whether on the left or the right, reject both forms of illiberalism in favor of a tolerant, inclusive worldview that allows for a wide range of opinions as long as they’re expressed nonviolently.

Illiberalism of either sort is intolerant and leads to violence as the only remaining resort when people refuse to agree with the “right answer,” whether that’s defined as the right-wing illiberal’s radical individualism or the left-wing illiberal’s radical collectivism.

For those of us on the liberal left fighting the intolerance of the right but puzzled by the intolerance we see in our own ranks, I think we need to recognize its history — and make a clean break with that history.

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On the Podcast: Guns and Lies

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Much of what Americans think they know about gun violence costs, causes, and solutions is wrong. To help fix that, The Guardian has been running a series of in-depth stories called “Guns and Lies.” Its lead reporter is my guest on Episode 44 of Dastardly Cleverness in the Service of Good: Abené Clayton of The Guardian. (Hear it on any podcast app.)

Reporter Abené Clayton

Abené recounts her own experiences with gun violence and the discoveries she’s made while covering the issue as a reporter. It’s a fascinating discussion that goes behind, and well beyond, the conventional wisdom and clichés of gun violence coverage.

If you don’t use a podcast app, you can also hear it at dastardlycleverness.com.

Scam + Scandal = Scamdal

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Outraged man gaping at his smart phone
iStock

A few weeks ago the right wing media’s latest scam scandal — hereinafter known as a scamdal — was about the mainstream media supposedly hyping the story of Ted Cruz in Cancun, while burying allegations against Andrew Cuomo.

Surprise, it wasn’t true. The Cruz story is long gone from the MSM, while Cuomo is still leading, because there have been no new developments on Cruz and lots on Cuomo. But RW outlets issued no corrections to their scamdal; they just moved on to the next one.

Hence Dr. Seuss and the Potatoheads.

People who ignore RW media probably don’t appreciate that this happens every day, year round. The infinite cycle goes like this:

  1. “Expose” a scamdal.
  2. Demand to know why the mainstream media isn’t covering it. (If the story has actual news value, the MSM is covering it, but devoted RW media consumers won’t know that. If as is so often the case the story is just bull, that’s kind of a deal-breaker for legitimate journalists.)
  3. Go “in depth” behind the “crisis,” filling the schedule.
  4. As the story starts to feel a little old — scamdals must always be new and urgent — milk it once more in the weekly roundup of “stories the mainstream media didn’t want you to hear.”
  5. Add it to the “evergreen” stock, along with Birtherism, Benghazi, Hillary’s emails, Fast and Furious, transgender bathroom marauders, and all the other never-corrected, ever-remembered scamdals — all of which add up to just one message, repeated over and over and over, because it’s so lucrative:

“Trust no one but us, so you’ll buy whatever we sell.”

On the Right, Symbols of Anything and Nothing

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The Golden Trump idol, beating cops with a Blue Lives Matter flag, Kayleigh’s cross… I’m thinking today about how the right’s flight from reason towards faith has overshot the mark so far that the symbols they use no longer have any consistent meaning whatsoever.

Silver crucifix necklace worn on a black sweater.
iStock

Communicating in symbols, such as the symbols of religion or art, can be a way to express truths that reason can’t. But on the Trumpian right, symbols now appear to be the whole point: they don’t have to mean anything in particular, beyond what you want them to mean in the moment. That is the new freedom.

The Golden Trump presented for veneration at CPAC — with some fans literally bowing before it — could hardly be more blasphemous in the context of a Christianity whose symbols used to have meanings. God literally told his people never to make golden idols, on pain of obliteration.
Then there’s the American flag, which previously flew as a symbol of freedom, now repurposed as shorts cradling the junk of a would-be dictator.

Since a flag is now meaningless beyond whatever one wants it to mean in the moment, the Stars and Stripes can be torn from the Capitol by “patriots.” A Blue Lives Matter flag can be a weapon against blue lives, because law and order means rioting when you want it to.

Not long ago Kayleigh McEnany’s little gold cross was a symbol of eternal faith, morality, and truth — Jesus was the word of God made flesh. By wearing a cross while working as a professional and enthusiastic liar in the service of a dishonest and immoral Caesar, Kayleigh staged a symbolic crucifixion on it every day.

Because it meant what she, her boss, and his followers wanted it to, whatever that was, until the moment they wanted it to mean something else.

Or nothing at all. Down that road towards the void is where we find Cruz, Hawley, McCarthy, McConnell, and the rest, for whom the only goal is power, even over an empty realm.