It's so aggressive. It's so
effective at bullying people
into feeling like they're
either morally bad or stupid,
like that they don't get it.
They don't understand. These
scholars have come up with all
this great theory, and you
don't even understand all of
its details. That it gets
people who are otherwise smart
and good to go along with it
very easily because nobody
wants to be the bad guy.
Nobody wants to be the person
on the wrong side of history.
Nobody wants to be uncool and
missing the trend of society.
And nobody wants to,
especially academics and other
educated people, nobody wants
to be the person caught out
looking stupid.
Just why are mathematicians
saying two plus two doesn't
necessarily equal four? Why
are protesters toppling
statues of not only slave
owners, but also
abolitionists? And why were
executives at a leading
nuclear research lab in
America sent to mandatory
training that described "focus
on hard work" and "striving
towards success" as
problematic aspects of white
male culture? In this episode,
James Lindsay joins us for a
deep dive into what's going on
in our culture today. With
Helen Pluckrose, he co-wrote
"Cynical Theories: How
Activist Scholarship Made
Everything About Race, Gender,
and Identity—and Why This
Harms Everybody." This is
American Thought Leaders, and
I'm Jan Jekielek.
James Lindsay, such a pleasure
to have you back on American
Thought Leaders.
I'm happy to be here again.
James, I've been digging into
your book "Cynical Theories."
Wow, it is quite the opus. I'm
just beginning to wrap my head
around it frankly.
Right.
Let's talk about how you kind
of first came into the
limelight, briefly, because I
think this is where some
people may have come across
your work before. You and
Peter Boghossian and Helen
Pluckrose wrote a series of
these, let's call them, hoax
papers and got published in
what you call grievance
studies journals. And this was
the genesis of this book that
you've now written. Tell me
about that.
Yeah. So in 2017 and '18,
Helen and Peter and I embarked
on an adventure to write as
many academic papers as we
could in a short period of
time in fields like gender
studies, cultural studies, fat
studies, and disability
studies—all these things that
end in studies that we kind of
collected under the title
"grievance studies" because
they talk about social
grievances with relationship
to those identity factors. And
we tried to get as many of
them published as we could. We
got seven out of the 20 we
ended up writing, accepted for
publication.
The story got broken by The
Wall Street Journal.
Everything went public very
quickly. And while we were
doing the research to learn
the relevant material in the
so-called grievance studies
fields, to learn critical race
theory, to learn queer theory,
to learn post-colonial theory,
fat studies, disability
studies, relevant feminist
studies and women's studies
and gender studies—it just
goes on and on—we, of course,
collected rather copious notes
so that we could understand
those ideas.
In the background behind all
of that, Helen had actually
already decided she wanted to
write a book explaining the
postmodern influence on these
lines of thought, and I had
agreed to help her. And so we
ended up with these huge, huge
files of notes and detailed
excerpts from the literature
and our own explanations and
understanding and grappling
with those. Those became the
backbone of "Cynical
Theories," which is what we
ended up writing more or less
as soon as we finished dealing
with all of the media spree
after the hoax papers broke
and like every newspaper in
the world, I think, almost
covered it.
Once that settled down, Helen
and I dedicated full time to
taking those notes and turning
them into something digestible
and understandable for the
average person who's a little
bit nerdy, I guess. It's a
heavy and dense book, it's
true. But that was the genesis
of "Cynical Theories," to try
to communicate what we had
learned in the process of
studying those fields, in
particular the postmodern
philosophical influence on
those fields.
James, this may sound a bit
overly melodramatic, but what
I'm getting from your book is
that the people using these
theories and applying these
theories to the world, it's
like they seek to kind of
restructure our whole
conception of reality in the
vision of oppression versus
oppressed. This is a
disturbing idea. This is, of
course, a questionable idea.
And are you actually saying
that these people are trying
to reconstruct how we conceive
of reality?
Yes, your intuition is
actually correct. The heart of
these fields is actually a
completely different
conception of reality.
Depending on how we want to
parse things out, it's
probably most accurate to say
that the conception of reality
that you're tapping into, this
oppressor versus oppressed,
which is called conflict
theory—which originated with
Marx, and then was advanced
into the cultural arenas and
identity arenas by the
neo-Marxists and the Frankfurt
School—that is the basis of
the worldview that they are
trying to reconstruct.
And to be able to reconstruct,
they have to get the thing
that exists currently out of
the way. The tool that they
have happened upon for
deconstructing what currently
exists is actually called
deconstruction, which they
took from Jacques Derrida,
which is the postmodern
influence. So you have a
completely different way of
engaging with knowledge, the
way that it's produced, the
way that we communicate it,
the way that it is taught in
classrooms, from all the way
down to very young children,
all the way up through
advanced doctoral degrees.
All of these interactions with
knowledge have been completely
reconceived in the postmodern
way in order to serve an
underlying critical theory
ethic that sees the world in
oppressed groups trying to
wage war for their liberation
against their oppressors, and
having to do so in ways that
are primarily subversive and
falling outside of the normal
structures and systems of
society. And so it is those
structures and systems of
society that they want to take
apart and replace with their
own.
That is this critical theory
vision, which is, in short,
that which isn't Marxist
enough, according to the way
they've now reconceived
Marxism through culture,
becomes oppression. And they
have to dismantle that so they
can replace it with this new
liberatory vision, as they
would call it.
Let's talk about something
that's on everybody's mind
right now, frankly. And of
course, Black Lives Matter is
something that's on
everybody's mind. It's
obviously a truth. Black lives
do matter; they matter a lot.
But the group Black Lives
Matter itself espouses a very
specific ideology. I think
that from everything I've read
in Cynical Theories, ... your
book speaks to this.
Yes, I think so. The ideology
that's expressed in the
official—it's even tricky.
There's not technically an
official Black Lives Matter.
They kind of hide behind,
"Well, there's no official
thing," but they do have a
website. If you go to their
website and you go to their
"about" page and "What We
Believe,"  you can read the
things that they list. And you
find some things that are
fairly reasonable and some
things that are definitely
deeper within the ideology
than most people would accept
as being represented by the
simple phrase, "Black lives
matter."
For example, dismantling the
idea of the nuclear family is
in there, marching with our
queer comrades is in there. So
something more is going on.
And this ideology is really
what we were trying to write
about within the context of
"Cynical Theories," which 
s that there's this bro
d constellation of what 
e called "cynical theories" th
t fall within this kind 
f critical theory school as it
s evolved into many n
w branches, including critic
l race theory, queer theor
, postcolonial theory, and the
e certain studies of fields li
e fat studies and disab
Now, why, in your mind, is
this a problem?
lity studies. There's even cr
tical stud
es of nutrition, critical educ
tion theory, critical 
egal studies. There's tons and
tons and tons of these. So
this critical theory thing has
kind of worked into everything
 And that's actually w
at's underlying the Black 
ives Matter movement, t
is critical theory eth
Well, because a couple of
things. Primarily, it's that I
actually care about the
problems that it's speaking
about wanting to solve. And in
caring about those problems, I
want them solved genuinely and
as well as possible. That
requires understanding the
problem as accurately as
possible and adopting
solutions that can actually
work, which also requires
understanding the situation
that we find ourselves in
correctly.
I have, after spending so much
time deeply researching the
critical race theory aspect of
this for example, find very
little reason to believe that
it does any of that
successfully. I think it
points generally in the
direction of real problems.
And then its diagnosis of
those problems is completely
incorrect and its prescribed
solutions are almost exactly
backwards.
So as somebody who cares about
the problems that are
underlying the entire movement
and as somebody who wants to
see the problems solved, I
can't get behind a huge now
global effort to do them the
wrong way, to misdiagnose the
problems and propose solutions
that don't move us toward
solving the problems at all.
So well, what are the
solutions in this? This is
kind of a living example,
right? And I am hoping to, as
we go through the interview,
look at some different
scenarios that a lot of people
have questions about and of
course a lot of people would
want to support. I mean, why
would you not want to support
black lives matter as a
concept, right? It's sort of a
truism almost that you would
want to. But if that's not
what's going on, what is
actually going on?
Our friend, we'll call her
[that], at The New York Times
Magazine, Nikole Hannah Jones,
who is the architect of the
1619 project, which I know we
spoke about some before, put
it on Twitter—apparently
accidentally or without
realizing what she was doing
because she later deleted the
tweet—and she said that,
"There's a difference between
being politically black and
being racially black." Being
politically black means being
a political black activist in
a particular way.
A concrete example of this
that played out was when Kanye
West put on the Make America
Great Again hat and said that
he thinks for himself. And
then Ta-Nehisi Coates, a very
famous author who wrote
"Between the World and Me,"
said that he's no longer black
because he's not politically
black; he's not taking the
correct political positions.
And so it becomes very
concerning when the phrase
"black lives matter" now
becomes ambiguous. Does it
mean the lives of black people
matter, which is true, or does
it mean that we're going to
approach the concept of black
lives through this very
narrow, particular political
lens that is full of very
radical politics, like
dismantling the family, for
example, that most people may
not agree with? 
Defunding or abolishing police
and getting rid of prisons are
very, very concrete, radical
agendas. These equity agendas
that are even tipping into the
point of having racial quotas
for hiring, which is a very
concrete problem that people
have to deal with. These are
the kinds of agendas that
they're pushing.
We can look at it in terms of
scholarship where they talk
about research justice, where
they say that we have to now
make sure that our researchers
are primarily going to
represent historically
marginalized groups, and we're
going to forward their
knowledge, we're going to cite
their literature, we're going
to give them prestigious
appointments, we're going to
give them professorships,
we're going to base teaching
off of their work, and we're
going to say take out elements
of the Western canon that they
feel have been overrepresented
such as Shakespeare and—as
I've been in a battle on
Twitter for the past month
about—two plus two equaling
four even, which is apparently
a white Western construction
of math that denies other
possible values.
Well, that's actually a very
interesting ... example in the
real world that there's a real
debate about this. Let's jump
to this one chapter you have
in the book. It's early on—I
forget which number—but it
basically talks about
postcolonial theory. That
sounds very heady and
everything, and I didn't
frankly, understand this realm
terribly well. I knew a little
bit about it before I read the
chapter. But I found it very
fascinating that this whole
concept of postcolonialism in
a way comes before all these
other studies. It kind of fits
into all these different
disciplines that emerged
afterwards. And this idea,
we've heard it probably "let's
decolonize." We can decolonize
practically anything, right?
That's right.
To most people, it's really
difficult to understand. So
what is this decolonization
that's happening that people
are pushing for? And is it in
fact, as I've read at least,
central to this whole new
ideology?
Right. So we have in general
with almost all of these
cynical theories, as we called
them, the expansion of
concepts to apply to
categories that they may not
have applied to before. We
name in the book that a theme
of postmodern thought is the
blurring of boundaries,
including the dissolution of
stable categories so that you
can now apply words in more
expansive contexts.
Perhaps the most obvious and
familiar example of that would
be the concept of violence,
which even will apply in this
postcolonial theory situation,
which is now words are
violence, the wrong kinds of
symbolism are violence, but
apparently burning down a
target isn't violence. So
there's this very topsy turvy
expansion of the concept of
violence.
Well, there's also a very
topsy turvy expansion of the
concept of colonialism. And
you have to understand that to
understand the deep colonial
project in terms of
decolonizing everything. The
narrow, and I would say
proper, understanding of
decolonization makes perfect
sense. Nobody's confused about
it at all. If you have a
colonizing entity, and it
takes over another region, and
it asserts its own politics
and its own way of life into
that context, removing that is
the process of decolonizing,
right? So it's not complicated
at all.
You can imagine, whether it's
the French or whether it's the
English or whether it's the
Spanish or whether it's the
Chinese or whoever it is, it's
gone in and now claimed
another territory as their
own, asserted their political
hegemony over the existing
order, and forced people to
live by that—that's
colonization. And then when
that occupying force or
culture removes, that's
decolonization. Now you have
political, you have
institutional, and you have
very material and legal issues
of decolonizing and getting
things toward some new state
that's maybe more like it was
before the colonizing came in.
And then you also have this
idea that people think
differently and they act
differently, and so you can
get very expansive with the
idea of colonization. The
theory—and this sounds
preposterous; I constantly
have to warn people about
that—the theory that we're
dealing with sees the
Enlightenment in Europe as
having been a uniquely unfair
incident in all of history
because science and liberalism
are very, very successful
entities or projects.
Capitalism is a very
successful project.
And these have been able to
spread very effectively around
the world, whether through
direct colonization or whether
through the process of people
taking them up because they
work. So it would be very
difficult to claim that China
today has been colonized by
the West. I don't think that
that's true in almost any
regard. But you do see them
very much driving Western
cars, wearing Western brands,
using Western mathematics,
integrating Western medicine
into their Chinese medicine
practices, and in fact,
typically in their hospitals,
favoring them and using the
traditional Chinese medicine
as kind of the supplement
rather than the core.
And so within the theory that
we call postcolonial theory,
this would all be seen as an
act of Western colonization,
regardless of if it was taken
up willingly or not because
they think that the
Enlightenment itself, the
development of science and
liberalism was an act of
cheating in human history that
enabled a lot of real
colonization. [In] the
Americas, for example, for
sure, lots in Africa happened,
Australia, and all around the
world, we could just start
naming countries. Even in
South Asia, in Southeast Asia,
we have lots of colonization.
India, of course, in South
Asia, is the most prominent
example that people might
appeal to.
They see that not only the
physical occupation and the
legal occupation, but also the
mental and conceptual
occupation by bringing, say,
science and liberal values
into these other cultures is
an act of colonization. So,
decolonization now means
removing all vestiges of
liberal, scientific,
enlightenment thought, which
they would call Eurocentric
thought, from anything that it
has touched, which is why you
can now decolonize literally
anything.
We see at Rutgers the attempt
to decolonize grammar because
grammar became codified under
Western ideals of clarity of
expression and whatever other
things, systematizing of
language and so on. And so now
we have to decolonize grammar
and remove those systematizing
influences from even how we
speak and write. We have it in
mathematics; we have it
in—literally everything can be
decolonized.
You most often, most directly
hear it in terms of either
decolonizing some kind of
abstract entity, like
decolonizing the workplace,
not some specific workplace,
but the workplace as a
concept. Or decolonizing some
subject like decolonizing the
classics, which I don't even
know what that means when y
u start trying to [do it]. I
mean, I do. I know what they
mean by it is taking out the
emphasis in Western thought on
say Greek and Roman
philosophy. 
So it's a very, very expansive
idea of colonialism where
anything that Western
influences touched, you have
to take the Western influence
out and basically start again
from scratch, not using any of
the ideals, values, or virtues
that were developed under the
context of the Enlightenment
and liberalism.
And hence the hostility to the
nuclear family which would be
one of the units of this
system. So, essentially, what
you're saying, I think, is
that a lot of the, let's say,
all the good that has come out
of the Enlightenment needs to
be thrown away and rebuilt
from the ground up in the eyes
of a new theory?
That's right, because the
underlying belief is that, if
we might just call this all
liberalism in the broadest
philosophical sense, the
underlying belief is that for
any good that it achieved, it
also achieved a great deal of
evil, and in fact, it
established the ability to
have a new kind of evil that
they are uniquely obsessed
with, which is called systemic
oppression. Systemic
oppression refers to the
oppression by a system, an
existing system.
So you're thinking maybe what
kind of systems we have. Well,
we have legal systems, you
have institutional systems, we
also have systems of
knowledge, we have systems of
language, we have systems of
thought, and in particular,
the Enlightenment or liberal
system of everything—social
order, language, knowledge,
ethics—all of it is the
system. And so everything that
that system, every harm that
that system either creates or
allows becomes part of why
it's terrible. The goal is to
liberate humanity from the
harms caused by the liberal
system.
It's an absolute rejection of
being able to see the thing in
a broader sense where you see
the good and the bad and
realize there are trade-offs
and everything and that
nothing can be perfect. It is
instead a hyper-focused
analysis of everything that
went wrong, everything that
wasn't the delivery of an
absolute perfect promise of
liberalism and the desire to
throw the entire system away
because it created those
problems.
I mean, it's a silly analogy,
but we all say, "More money,
more problems." It's very much
like that: more technology,
more problems. You see this
very commonly in their line of
argumentation. Well, if we
hadn't invented these high
tech military weapons, we
wouldn't have been able to
kill millions of people with
them. Rather than saying,
"Well, at the same time, we
have these cities, we have
these food distribution
networks, we have all these
functional things that make
society work, we have
skyscrapers, we have all these
sanitation, and we have all
this great stuff," they just
say, "Yeah, well, we also have
the ability to kill millions
of people with a single bomb"
or whatever, and then that
potential harm, to them, is so
awful that the whole system
that would create such a thing
has to be scrapped in favor of
something simpler.
I have to say this because it
frankly just occurred to me.
Is this where the hostility to
America as a concept comes
from?
Yes and in particular, that's
very much in the postcolonial
context, because the United
States was established as a
British colony that required a
great deal of death, a proper
genocide of the indigenous
tribes who lived here, not
necessarily peacefully. I
almost said peacefully because
of the propaganda, but it
certainly wasn't peacefully
[before colonization]. But it
required the displacement and
genocide of the people who
already lived here.
And so they see the whole
American project as a huge
project of colonization. This
also you see with the 1619
project being that they've
tried to cast it as a project
of slavery. Both of these
things, of course, have
elements of truth to them. But
when you start looking at it,
it's also point of fracture
within their own ideology.
They're fighting over whether
it was more of a postcolonial
issue or a more of a race
issue. So it's sort of a messy
thing, but you are correct.
They see all of the
colonization of the Americas
as the starting point of the
failures of America. You can
read this very, very clearly
in "A People's History of the
United States" by Howard Zinn,
which was a critical
historiography of the United
States, much like the 1619
project with a different
emphasis. Zinn's opening
chapter describes Christopher
Columbus and how terrible he
was. And then it's all about
that the very founding of
America—this is the message
that it's saying—was this
horrendous colonial project.
So the hatred of the West, and
the hatred of America in
particular, is tied very
deeply into this postcolonial
context, but also into the
context of that "everything
the Enlightenment produced
must be wrong, because look at
all of the harms that it
brings with it."
Now I'm thinking about the
significance of the toppling
of all these different
statues. Why is it that even
people that were, I don't
know, emancipators of slaves
could be subject to this
toppling?
That's all consistent with
this. The entire history of
the United States is shot
through with the problematics
of the Enlightenment. And all
of that has to be torn down to
start again. I mean, people
think it's hyperbolic—when you
start seeing iconoclasm, like
tearing down these statues,
people will think it's
hyperbolic to compare this to
what you saw in the Chinese
Cultural Revolution with the
destruction of the Four Olds
or within the Khmer Rouge with
the attempt to get to Year
Zero, which resulted in the
Killing Fields. But that's
exactly what this is.
It is the attempt to get back
to Year Zero before the
Enlightenment introduced
systemic oppression into the
world. And now the thing that
has to be gotten rid of is not
some old Chinese culture that
maybe was antiquated or wasn't
revolutionarily Marxist enough
or Leninist enough as Mao
would have seen it, but now it
is to get rid of Western
culture itself, which the
Frankfurt School in particular
has been waging war openly on
since the 1920s as the single
object, Western culture as the
single object that prevents
people from taking up the
Marxist revolution that Marx
had predicted and didn't
manifest, and they couldn't
figure out why.
That's what the point of the
Frankfurt School was, to
figure out why the Marxist
revolution didn't occur in the
West. And you can read in
Antonio Gramsci's prison
notebooks that it's all these
vestiges of Western
culture—the family, religion.
As you look into Theodor
Adorno, you start seeing pop
culture, mass media. You start
looking into Herbert Marcuse,
and it's all about, he talks
about, what's his book,
"One-Dimensional Man." So it's
like that the way that the
society flattens life for the
average citizen down into one
dimension where they just are
satisfied with what they're
given.
And there's this entire deep
critique that's always been
openly, explicitly against the
Western liberal democracy
ideals as the thing that stood
in the way of the Marxist
revolution and that needs to
be chipped away at from
within. That's the underlying
ethos that we see here. And so
when you asked at the
beginning, is this an attempt
to deconstruct—well, you
didn't ask about
deconstruction—but to take
apart the existing order to
replace it with a new order
that's built from the ground
up, I think we've established
that case now in three ways
very conclusively, that that
is the underlying objective
here.
James, the incredible thing
here is this is an attempt
basically to reconstruct how
we conceive of reality
entirely. Frankly I'm still
trying to wrap my head around
that part, but you did mention
Marcuse and the Frankfurt
School.
I'm actually finding myself
thinking about repressive
tolerance and Antifa, again
another applied example that a
lot of people are concerned
about or wondering about. Some
people have been told it
doesn't even exist [or] it's
some kind of peaceful
movement. Tell me about—I know
a little bit about the
connection of the idea of
repressive tolerance and
Antifa. But tell me how this
ideology fits into what Antifa
is doing now.
Okay, the concept behind
repressive tolerance that
Marcuse laid out—and this was
in 1965, so that's relevant
because the riots that started
in 1967 were very much
inspired by the essay that was
published in 1965. It's like
these pieces go together quite
clearly. But Marcuse made the
case that in any world in
which fascism has ever arisen,
which includes ours after,
say, the 1920s, we are
constantly, constantly under
the threat of fascism arising
again, and it is in fact an
emergency.
He says that Western societies
live in an emergency situation
where fascism may come out at
any moment. And the point of
the essay, "Repressive
Tolerance" is to say that
anything that can be used as
fuel or support for anything
like a fascist movement cannot
be tolerated. We need a new,
different kind of tolerance
that doesn't tolerate
difference of opinion, but
rather absolutely stamps out,
including by use of, as he
phrases it, revolutionary
violence to prevent the
possibility of the arising of
fascism.
This seems to be a misreading
of Karl Popper, who obviously
had written similarly about
tolerance with his "paradox of
tolerance." So if you're too
tolerant for too long of the
intolerant, then they can get
to a point where they have
enough strength to be able to
enforce their intolerance, and
there's nothing you can do
about it at that point. And so
Marcuse interpreted this in
terms of it being an emergency
situation, and in terms of the
need to use violence in a
revolutionary sense to disrupt
any possibility that fascism
could take root.
So now anything that can be
construed as fascist becomes
able to be met with violence
under this philosophy. It has
to be stamped out; it has to
be stopped. So with Antifa,
one of the things that they
are strongly focused on is the
idea of the maintenance of the
status quo.
The status quo is in a very
weird, abstract sense, the
thing conservatives kind of
leaned toward. "Don't change
things too fast." And so they
believe that—and Marcuse is
very explicit about this in
"Repressive Tolerance"—that
the status quo has been
oppressive and is oppressive,
and in the context, writing in
1965, I think he actually had
much more of a point than he
would have if he was trying to
write it in 2020. And Antifa
seems to be very expansive
with the understandings of
these ideas and interpreting
them in a new context as
though nothing changed.
But the claim was that the
status quo itself is
oppressive, and it's filled
with the tools of oppression,
and therefore, anything that
maintains the status quo is
the seed of fascism according
to this line of thought, and
this is the line of thought
underlying Antifa. So when you
have a stable, orderly society
that involves law and order
and, in fact, has the police
interrupt bad behavior, such
as riots or looting or arson,
and using state-sanctioned
force to do so, that,
according to this analysis, is
a form of fascism.
And so Antifa is going to rise
up in particular against the
police or the police ever
being able to use force, so
now we get to, "Defund the
police; abolish the police.
The police are just a fascist
arm." But the trap that's been
set in the current mood is
that there's this mayhem
happening in certain cities,
and if the state—say it's the
National Guard, say it's
federal troops, say it's the
local police, it doesn't
matter—respond with force,
they are now proving the
point, as far as Antifa sees
it and messages it, that they
are fascistic and trying to
control society and stamp out
dissidents.
It turns out though, Antifa
isn't just Marcuse. It also
draws very heavily, and
Marcuse probably did as well,
off of the French
psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon.
And Frantz Fanon is actually,
in "Cynical Theories," we
position him as not the
founder of postcolonial
theory, but the founder of the
whole postcolonialist line of
thought that became
postcolonial theory.
Fanon was a very revolutionary
thinker and saw colonialism in
very much the same way I just
described fascism through
Marcuse. They're in perfect
parallel. So Fanon believed
that violence is necessary to
overthrow colonizers and all
aspects of colonialism in
particular to restore the
dignity of the colonized
people. And so he openly
advocated for violence in
response to colonialism.
Now we just talked about how
colonialism can be anything in
a very expansive definition
under these new cynical
theories' very blurred
boundaries. And so again, you
see the same pattern. But if
you put the writings of Fanon
together with the writings of
Marcuse, you get the seeds of
Antifa. And again, the
justification is that society
has been ordered by people who
are doing illegitimate
behaviors like colonization or
who want to just maintain
their power with the status
quo, which is reinterpreted as
fascism.
Stability in society is the
definition of fascism that
Antifa operates on. And those
things, because of the
writings of Fanon and Marcuse,
have to be met with subversive
activism, vigorous activism,
and even violence to make sure
that they can't take root,
they can't establish
themselves, they can't gain a
foothold where they could grow
in the amount of power that
they have to eventually either
colonize and control people or
establish fascism and control
people.
This is the underlying mindset
of Antifa, which is a
decentralized but real
organization. I mean, if you
read some of the works that
they actually have published
themselves about themselves,
they cite Marcuse, they cite
Fanon repeatedly. There's a
book, an Antifa book published
by AK Press, in fact, that is
called "Black Bloc, White
Riot," which the title itself
is an homage to Fanon's famous
1952 book titled "Black Skin,
White Masks," and they refer
to Fanon as dynamite in print,
and say that he's the most
important, portent, and
influential thinker because he
justifies the use of violence
against a controlling entity,
which is what they see in the
state or a stable society.
So this is why they feel
justified, for example, to
show up in the streets and
cause mayhem or to break
windows or damage property
because the property is
protected by the police. And
they say that the law exists
to protect property owners and
that concentrates and steals
the wealth of the community
and puts it in the hands of
corporations, which are in bed
with the state because the
police protect them and
sanction business to be able
to do what business does, and
therefore they say, "Oh, well,
the collusion of the state and
business, that's fascism. So
therefore, we have to disrupt
especially corporate but other
business."
This is the tortured
mentality. This is the extreme
interpretive frame in which
these books that they do write
and read are based. And the
theorists are the same
theorists we talk about in
"Cynical Theories." It's all
very deeply connected together
in that way.
This is incredibly
fascinating. It's also, and
again correct me if I'm wrong,
because I'm not an expert
here, but we have what some
people describe as cultural
Marxism emerging in Marcuse,
and then you have the applied
postmodernist mentioned in
Fanon. And so there's a kind
of a fusion of these two in
the Antifa ideology, I guess
[in] the way I read all this.
And frankly, you don't talk a
lot about cultural Marxism in
the book itself, and I found
that interesting. You focus
very heavily on postmodernism.
But there seems to be a deep
connection. I'm wondering if
you could just speak to that.
There is a deep connection.
And there are a number of
reasons we didn't talk about
it much in the book. One of
the reasons is that we
actually have a limited scope,
and the book is already long
and dense. So we kept the
focus of the book to the
postmodern influence on this
line of thought and we traced
from the 1960s postmodern
thinkers through to today,
rather than tracing all of the
various lines of thought. We
may do this in the future, and
I've done some of that on "New
Discourses."
The thing with cultural
Marxism is that it's also very
easily discredited when you
start talking about it because
people see it purely as a
conspiracy theory. And this is
complicated because there is
actually a conspiracy theory
within it that's sort of a
backwards conspiracy theory in
a very complicated way.
A little background, the
overwhelming majority of the
thinkers in the Frankfurt
School were, in fact, Jewish.
They definitely were talking
in very high-minded tones, for
the most part, about wanting
to radically reorganize
society. So now you have a
group of Jews who are talking
about wanting to radically
reorganize society and
overthrow it for their vision.
And all of a sudden you're
going to have right-wing
people jump on this without—I
mean, extreme right wing
people jump on this without
the necessary nuance and say,
"Aha, Jews are trying to
control the world."
And so now boom, you have the
Frankfurt School being
characterized [by] an
anti-semitic conspiracy, in
terms of an anti-semitic
conspiracy theory because they
make the leap that the
Jewishness is what's relevant,
where it's actually the
anti-liberal critique that's
relevant [not] their
identities. It could have been
made by anybody.
So, there is an actual
conspiracy theory that got
worked into all of this, which
makes it very difficult to
talk about. What cultural
Marxism should refer to is not
that conspiracy theory,
however. It should refer very
simply to Marx's concept
that's called conflict theory,
which is the belief that
society is stratified into
groups that have different
access to resources and
opportunities. We could just
say the elites versus the
prol[etariat]s if we want to.
And those groups are
fundamentally in zero sum
conflict with one another,
rather than that it's a much
more complicated sociology.
This was Marx's idea, and this
is what underlies Marxism.
Marxism is the application of
this conflict theory to
economic thought, particularly
in the context of industrial
capitalism, which we've
already mostly had to grow out
of anyway, which makes things
even more complicated.
So when you take that
oppressor versus oppressed
conflict theory mentality,
where it was the bourgeoisie
versus the proletariat for
Marx and you now say, "Oh,
it's the white supremacists
versus the racial minorities
they oppress," or "it is the
male patriarchy versus the
women they oppress," or "it is
the heteronormative straight
culture versus all of the
sexual minorities they
oppress." And we could go on
and on and on. When you take
that same conflict theory and
apply it to cultural features,
or in particular with Marcuse
to identity-based cultural
features, now, you have
something that could be called
cultural Marxism.
And I want to stress the point
that before Marcuse got very
invested in identity politics
in the 1960s, before that, the
Frankfurt School tended not to
get deeply into identity
politics at all, but they
still were doing a cultural
form of Marxism by talking
about cultural elites versus
the cultural everyman, high
culture versus low culture.
And one of the things that
they complained about was that
a middle culture was
developing and stealing away
the ability to raise a class
consciousness in terms of
cultural class.
So all of a sudden, you have
this middle class rising up
economically, you have people
who just want to go about
their business and enjoy their
lives and see themselves as a
middle culture filled with pop
cultural references, sports
teams, and so on. This was
what Theodor Adorno was really
all about. It was that the
main body of what would be the
cultural proletariat was no
longer going to be able to be
agitated into hating their
society because they were
being fed stuff that they
liked, for instance, football
games and television programs
and radio shows that they
found amusing, and they were
content with their lives.
And again, the whole point of
the Frankfurt School was to
figure out every way that
Western people are made
content with their lives and
ruin it for them so that they
would want to agitate for a
Marxist revolution. So you
have kind of different stages
of this cultural Marxism as
well. It wouldn't even be
right to call what's going on
now cultural Marxism because
it's really identity Marxism.
It's really rooted, the idea
even went further to the point
where being black is supposed
to have a unique culture
associated with it, which is,
in my opinion, a very racist
idea. But this is how the
current identity movement
thinks.
So it's come in different
stages, high culture versus
low culture, then it became
racial and sexual identity
cultures and so on, into every
facet you can imagine, now.
There are 40,000 denominations
of identity, you might say,
isn't this kind of cultural
Marxist Protestantism or
something where now there's a
million different ideas of
what constitutes our culture?
But that's why what we see now
looks like cultural Marxism
and why it's so difficult to
call cultural Marxism and have
it stick, so we avoided the
term just to avoid unnecessary
point-missing criticism that
was sure to follow if we stuck
it in there.
You describe how postmodernism
is basically, I guess cynical
is the right word. I actually
looked up the word cynical
multiple times while reading
your book—I'll tell you it's
kind of a funny anecdote on my
end—but postmodernism, if I
read it right, was deeply,
deeply cynical of any what
they would call
meta-narratives that exist,
right? So any sort of
conceptions of reality,
whether it's the
Judeo-Christian conception of
reality and so forth,
[postmodernism] basically
said, "Begone with all of
them." And it sort of stayed
theoretical that way, but then
as it came into the supply
phase with postcolonial
theory, it actually, and I
find this fascinating, it
actually took on certain
things. It kind of denied
postmodernism in accepting
certain basic truths, and
we're still staying here in
this theoretical land, but I
find that fascinating, and I'm
hoping you can tell me what
these truths are right now.
So the original postmodernists
were content to just tear
everything apart. And then you
had these very critical
theory-laden activists who
stumbled upon this as it
became popular in the 1970s
and especially 1980s in the
United States, who started to
take up the ideas of
deconstruction, but were very
critical of postmodernism as
well. So they were
simultaneously critical of
liberalism, being that they
were critical theorists, and
very critical of postmodernism
in that it takes, as they
said, a great deal of
privilege to tear apart
everything.
Only somebody with privilege
could possibly think it's
possible to tear apart the
lived experience of systemic
oppression, as outlined by the
conflict theories and
neo-Marxism. And so they then
concretized or reified the
idea of systemic oppression.
So this was a very pivotal
moment in history where the
theories of postmodernism and
critical theory fused into a
single thing to do identity
politics. And the way that it
did it was by setting
aside—deconstruction applies
to everything that they want
it to except the experience of
systemic oppression based on
identity.
So identity itself and the
lived experience of systemic
oppression are real,
objectively real. Everything
else is completely not real
and can be deconstructed. It's
just a functionary of power,
everything else, so it can be
taken apart with postmodern
deconstruction. But the
systemic oppression itself and
that experience, that lived
experience, that's real,
that's solid, that can't be
deconstructed. Only privilege
could possibly think you could
deconstruct something like
that.
The first tenant of critical
race theory—they actually came
out of legal theory so they
tend to list things—is that
racism is the ordinary, not
aberrational state of affairs
in society and all of its
interactions. So that's a very
kind of abstract way of
phrasing it. This was maybe
written down the first time in
the early 1990s, mid 1990s. By
the mid 2010s, you have the
theorist Robyn D'Angelo, who
is very famous for her book
"White Fragility" now—she is
almost a household name; she
needs very little
introduction—saying that the
question has moved. The
question is not, this is th
 way she phrased it, t
e question is not "Did raci
m take place?" but instead, "H
w did racism manifest in th
t situation?" So you can s
e that the same thing is ther
Racism is the ordinary, not
aberrational state of affairs
So racism ends up being the
conclusion in every single
in all of, they say, American
society. Racism manifests in
every situation, and it is the
objective of the critical
theorist to be able to point
it out, to find it and point
it out. [Here's] a very
concrete example that helps
people understand. You could
imagine owning a shop. And
that's a shop say like a
tailor shop where you have to
help the customer
individually. You're working
alone that day. Your race is
irrelevant to this
conversation.
Two people walk in at nearly
the same time before you can
get out from behind the
counter to greet them. One is
white, one is black. You have
to choose who to help first.
Racism is the ordinary state
of affairs, not aberrational.
How did racism manifest in the
situation because it must have
somehow? So you have to
choose: white person or black
person. If you choose white,
the goal of this theory is to
find out how racism manifested
in that choice. And so they
say, "Well, it's clearly a
matter of getting inside your
head. It's clearly a matter of
you thinking that white people
are first class citizens and
black people are second class
situation that you find
yourself in and you see this
citizens who need to wait. You
have a preference for
interacting with white people
over black people, therefore
you have chosen in a racist
way."
But if you chose the black
person instead, again, racism
is ordinary, not aberrational.
Racism must have manifested in
this situation, so it must
have been behind this choice.
They say, "Well, you don't
trust black people to be left
unattended in your store, so
you want to get them out as
quickly as possible and deal
with that person first because
you trust a white person to
wander around unattended while
you help another customer, but
you don't trust a black
person. Therefore racism must
have been present."
The second pillar of critical
race theory is interest
convergence, that you only do
things to help other races in
in every possible analysis,
anywhere, anywhere you go. Did
you donate money to Black
Lives Matter? Well, if you
did, either you didn't donate
enough—that's racist—or you
did it to make yourself look
good—that's racist. You just
tried to make yourself look
like a better person. That was
in your own self interest.
your own self interest if you
have power, so it's racist. Or
maybe you didn't. But the
reason you didn't, obviously
must be that you have a racist
animus against black people
which are being conflated with
Black Lives Matter. So the
goal is to find the racism in
whatever happened no matter
what. 
And you can just come up with
as many concrete examples of
this—that you probably know
somebody who's experienced one
of these now—as you want, and
it's because this is the
underlying mentality. It is
the critical ethos: to find
the problematic that it knows
must be there because of the
conflict theory, oppressor
versus oppressed dynamic,
combined with postmodernism's
absolute lack of need to be
constrained by the truth
because the truth is merely
politics.
So what you were really
thinking doesn't mean
anything, partly because you
were socialized into your
beliefs by the racist forces
of society, and partly
because, as critical theory
would have it, you have a
false consciousness where
you've internalized your
dominance or if you happen to
be a racial minority, you've
internalized your oppression,
and because you have false
consciousness you need to be
woken up from. You were not
acting authentically. It's a
very, very consistent set of
abstract concepts that have
very real world practical
applications that literally
everything is racist.
Just listening to you describe
this scenario, I truly
understand why you called your
book "Cynical Theories"
because there's no positive
interpretation to be had.
That's correct. Anything that
has to do with systemic power
cannot have a positive
interpretation pointed toward
the people who are alleged to
be in possession of or benefit
from systemic power. On the
flip side of that is that
somebody who's systemically
oppressed, according to
theory, has to be interpreted
where they've done nothing
wrong, and so it literally
almost removes their sense of
agency.
And you see this expressed,
it's easy to say it
abstractly, but you see it's
expressed very clearly when
they, the people defending the
riots, say, "Well, you have to
think about how these people
have been systemically
oppressed for so long. They
don't even know that they're
not supposed to burn down a
Starbucks." Wait a minute,
what? It's a horrifyingly
racist statement to make. But
then the systemic oppression
argument, because of the idea
of false consciousness and the
socialization that are at the
core of this, removes all
agency from basically
everybody. Moral
responsibility is no longer
understood in terms of agency,
but rather in terms of
complicity with the system of
power or not.
This is super interesting. You
talked about
intersectionality. That's
another difficult concept for
a lot of people to talk about
or to think about. But one of
the things that you mention in
the book, I believe, is how in
intersectionality, you look at
all the different oppression
classes that someone might
have, and you can reduce
things down to a very small
grouping, but never to the
individual, never to the
individual because the
individual never has agency.
And this is a really kind of
bizarre twist on this whole
thing because it means "I'm
never accountable for my
actions, and there's some
bigger power that is similar
across my particular
grouping." Presumably, I'm
obviously one of the
oppressors, but it doesn't
really have to do with my
decision making. So that's
sort of out of my hands. It's
all kind of happening.
It's in terms of your posi
ionality. That's the phra
This is pretty fascinating.
I'm just reminded of an episod
e that they use in inte
sectionality. They call it p
sitionality, which means the 
tate of your social posi
ion with respect to the syst
ms of power that they beli
ve exist in terms of iden
ity factors. So who you happ
n to have been born to be posi
ions you, and so you are acti
g rightly or wrongly in this
worldview under inte
sectionality if you are full
 cognizant of all of your grou
 identities, and then whic
ever one you happen to be spea
ing from or into, that you'
e speaking authentically with
the critical perspective of t
at so that you understand the 
ay that the power dyna
ics are relevant. 
And so again, your agency
comes down to: are you
supporting the systemic power
that's theorized to be around
you, or are you doing what
they tell you you have to do
in order to resist or disrupt
or dismantle or deconstruct
it? So it's a very bizarre
thing that agency comes with
doing exactly what you're
told. It's a complete
inversion of the concept of
agency because only when
you're doing exactly what
theory tells you you should be
doing with regard to the
systems of power that are
bigger and beyond you, only
then are you exercising agency
as they say it.
 that we as The Epoch Tim
s faced, and all of this giv
So they have a complete theory
of the individual, a complete
theory of moral responsibility
that is entirely detached from
the one that all the rest of
us understand. And it takes
quite a bit of immersion and
exposure to it to actually
understand that the people who
have become intuitively
sensitive to this really are
thinking through it in that way.
Their moral intuition has
become aligned with the
systems of power dynamic in
the same way that a very
devout, say, Christian's moral
intuitions will align with
what the scripture teaches
them about the way that their
religion sees moral obligation
in the world. And so you have
this entire flipping of agency
on its head, and this entire
demand that you act in
accordance with what we called
in the book, the truth
according to social justice.
s me a lot more perspective on
it. We had published a special
edition, both in the US and 
anada, and in Canada it was p
etty widely distributed, abo
t coronavirus, or actually CCP
virus as we call it at The 
poch Times. And then the Ca
adian national broadcaster who
I grew up with and respected c
me out and said this was s
me sort of a racist act. The
 produced multiple episod
s on this and so forth. 
There was a pushback. A major
Canadian newspaper pushed back
on this. This situation got
worked out, but just this so
bizarre that this happened at
all, because we were simply
talking about what the facts
reveal, so to speak, right?
But this was immediately
called racist, and it was
called racist by the Canadian
national broadcaster. And when
I listened to you talking
about this, I think, "How many
people actually believe this
stuff?" And if it's not a lot,
which because you say the rest
of us, how does it have so
much influence over our
society right now?
Well, the influence question
is a little more challenging.
We actually are existing in a
moment of moral panic, and
people do not tend to behave
in accordance with their
better judgment during moral
panics because they are so
afraid of looking like they're
on the wrong side of any
issue. And this, of course,
has become very pronounced
since George Floyd died in
terms of the moral panic
level, but it was already kind
of at a boiling point before
that.
Maybe partly because of the
irritation to the left of
Donald Trump's presidency,
maybe because theory has been
escaping the lab also in the
form of educating our
teachers, educating our
journalists. There's an
incredible social pressure,
however, to fit, even whether
you believe it fully, whether
you believe it partially,
whether you fully understand
it or not, to fit in with this
view of the world, and because
of the nature of the internet,
if you don't, you will get a
tremendous amount of blowback,
usually very, very quickly,
often with coordinated
campaigns.
And so there's been a very
quick learning curve in terms
of being able to say the
things that will prevent you
from falling on the wrong side
of this online mob to some
degree because it's very
responsive. It's very
aggressive. It's just Chinese
enough where I can say, maybe
I can get away with saying, it
models itself almost off of
Xing Yi Quan, the very
aggressive martial art from
the general I think in the 9th
or 11th century [12th
century]. The Chinese invented
[martial art], that just bowls
people over and keeps them on
their heels strategically.
So that's what this does.
These activists show up. If
you say the wrong thing, they
bully you into believing that
you're morally failing or that
you're too stupid to
understand racism on these
new, more complicated,
sociological terms. They keep
you constantly on your heels.
So there's not just the fact
that this is being taught in
our colleges and below to the
point where people are vaguely
familiar with the ideas,
there's also the issue that
the social media environment
allows a very quick real-world
training for everybody who
steps on a landmine.
And in this case, the West is
not allowed to judge any
culture outside of the West in
a negative way whatsoever or
hold them responsible, and if
they were to do that, there's
obviously some sort of
imperialism or racism involved
in having done so, which is
why you were accused of racism
for saying that the actions of
a literal political entity,
whether by negligence or
otherwise, led to the escape
and spread of this virus.
So it'd be considered racist
for you as a Westerner to
accuse them of having
responsibility for anything
because that's not your place
to do. That would be holding
them to unfair standards. That
would be colonizing them with
Western standards to say that
they were responsible in any
way. Or to even name them in
complicity with something bad
because it's not acceptable.
Again, the underlying ethic is
always: does what's being said
support or dismantle or
disrupt systemic oppression as
theory understands it?
And so theory understands
criticism of other cultures as
supporting systemic oppression
of those cultures. Therefore,
you are in the wrong. You were
supporting systemic oppression
by making such a statement.
Whether it's true or not is
irrelevant. The politics of
its truth are actually the
only relevant object. So this
is a completely different
worldview with a completely
different set of ethics, a
completely different
relationship to knowledge, a
completely different
relationship to everything.
And it's so aggressive. It's
so effective at bullying
people into feeling like
they're either morally bad or
stupid, like that they don't
get it. They don't understand.
These scholars have come up
with all this great theory,
and you don't even understand
all of its details. That it
gets people who are otherwise
smart and good to go along
with it very easily because
nobody wants to be the bad
guy. Nobody wants to be the
person on the wrong side of
history. Nobody wants to be
uncool and missing the trend
of society. And nobody wants
to, especially academics and
other educated people, nobody
wants to be the person caught
out looking stupid.
To your point, well, actually
two vantage points, okay. One
is just simply I was watching
this two plus two equals five
debate, and it's just all over
the place. There's so much
discussion about this. And
there were ostensibly people
who are tenured mathematicians
who were saying "no, there's a
good case here," right? So for
me, do I really understand
mathematics well enough to
say, "No, two plus two equals
four?" It's not even that I
feel stupid. I just don't feel
qualified if this guy, if the
math professor is saying,
"Hey, there's a legitimate
case here." James Lindsay,
astudent of critical social
justice says two plus two
equals four, why should we
believe you?
Yes, this is really the thing,
right? It's very easy to tap
into people's fear. And
especially if something like
mathematics, which most people
are not particularly competent
at, and I don't think they
need to be particularly
competent at it in general,
it's very easy to tap into the
fear that they don't
understand.
And of course, that's what
Orwell pointed out in 1984. He
very explicitly said that the
the worst fear isn't that
they're forcing you to say or
believe a thing, it's that
they might be right and you
don't know how to tell. And
so, why should they listen to
me? Well, because the evidence
of your senses is still
intact. Two and two actually
do equal four. Every example
that you can think of will
work out that way. And if we
start looking at the examples
that they give, it's actually
fairly easy.
Even these people, and I won't
name any names, but these
aren't just seemingly
respected mathematicians. At
least two incredibly high
level mathematicians have
gotten involved. A Fields
Medal winner, as a matter of
fact, has gotten involved. One
of the most highly recognized
mathematicians in the world
has also gotten involved. And
they're trying to point out
that if you get really,
really, really abstract with
things that it's possible to
make these ideas mean
different things, but this is
actually easy to pick apart.
And I think that the key is:
is the person that's
communicating this trying to
clarify and help you
understand clearly what the
differences are? What's really
going on in each case? And how
could this be misleading
versus how could it be
something clarifying? Or, are
they trying to blow your mind?
You're like, "Oh, look at
this. Everything's more
complicated than it seems.
Everything's mysterious." I
would actually say that's the
fundamental [purpose], and
this draws off of a feminist
theorist, Martha Nussbaum, who
I very much like her work.
This is the difference between
the teacher mechanism and the
guru mechanism. The guru
mechanism is trying to give
you shock and awe and, "Oh,
wow, look at all the bright
lights and smoke and
everything else. Believe me,
believe me, believe me." And
then the person who's trying
to inject as much clarity as
possible. For example, I could
take one of these
mathematicians that says,
well, under these particular
conditions, you could write
down the symbols 2 + 2 = 5,
and it creates a true
statement. And then that's
confusing because they should
also be explaining why those
conditions are not the usual
conditions and how because
that's the situation, it's
potentially confusing to
everyday people.
And that this is why it's very
important to try to be clear
about what we're talking
about, what context we're
talking about, not just
saying, "Oh, well, there are
other contexts and other
contexts could change
everything." That's just
obfuscation. It's a lack of
clarity rather than trying to
add clarity. And I think
that's so important. And the
two plus two equals four or
five issue is so clarifying
for people because it's so
fundamental, it's so simple, a
d it's so easy to see when s
mebody is trying to make it c
ear what's going on, versus w
en they're trying to hide a v
riable or change the meaning o
 a symbol like changing the m
aning of plus or changing t
e meaning of equals, or c
anging the meanings even of t
o or five. 
Somebody even on Twitter tried
to defend this by saying,
"Well, if two and five as
symbols actually mean
something different, they mean
different values, then you
could have two plus two equals
five or whatever you want."
But that doesn't mean
anything. That just means that
if you wrote it down with this
squiggle plus that squiggle
equals some other squiggle. It
doesn't mean anything. It
doesn't tell you anything. So
the person who's trying to cut
through the fog to clarity is
probably the one that you
should trust. And I hope
that's what I'm doing. I'm
trying to make things as clear
as possible, even though it's
all very complicated.
So the other thing I was just
thinking about, as someone who
came out of the human rights
fields into journalism, is the
kind of horrific consequences
of this reality that you just
described prior to us
discussing two plus two equals
four, that essentially you can
see horrific, you can see
genocides happening, you can
see horrific crimes against
humanity. But if you happen to
be in a Western liberal
democracy, you aren't allowed
to say anything based on this
theory. That's horrific to me.
Yeah, so you're again, you're
not allowed to call out the
bad behaviors—and we talked
about this at the end of
"Cynical Theories"—you're not
allowed to call out the bad
behaviors of other cultures
from a Western perspective
because again, that would be
seen as colonizing them with
Western ideals and holding
them to Western standards,
which is not fair, even if
those standards are
scientific, even if those
standards are [in the]
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. You're not allowed to
hold other cultures to other
standards.
And the reason for that, as we
discussed very close to the
beginning of our conversation,
is that this ideology is
utterly, navel-gazing level,
utterly obsessed with the
emergence of Western
civilization and values as
they came from the
Enlightenment and the
establishment of liberalism
politically, science
conceptually, and capitalism
economically, as the system.
And so since it conceives only
of the world, both in terms of
knowledge and in terms of
ethics, in terms of how, which
is what I think we've
established very clearly in
our conversation so far, that
only in terms of that system,
the only system that's
relevant to them is the
post-Enlightenment, Western,
liberal, capitalist,
scientific context.
And so anything that happens
outside of that, not only can
you not adjudicate it in terms
that we understand within it,
it's wrong to do so. So for
them, impossible to render
judgment about, say, some
other genocide, mpossible
because we can't possibly
understand the other cultural
context from within our own
because it has its own logics,
its own rules, its own
understanding in relationship
to the world that we don't
have, so we cannot understand
it.
But it's also morally wrong to
do so because it reasserts
colonialism, Western
superiority and imperialism
into the world, which is an
abuse. And so much of what
we've heard, you pick your
favorite situation in which
the United States has decided
to intervene, either
economically or militarily in
the past several decades, and
you'd hear exactly this
rhetoric again and again and
again. "It's not our place to
be able to decide our
imperialism. This is an act of
imperialism. This is actually
making the situation worse. It
can only make the situation
worse. We don't understand
their context." This point of
view is very, very deeply
established within the far
left line of thought and in
particular, in the critical
social justice, as we've
called it, line of thought.
James, this has been an
absolutely fascinating
conversation. I want to
recommend the book to everyone
and hopefully more than just
the nerdy folks as you
describe them. "Cynical
Theories." I think it's coming
out in a few days. Any final
words before we finish up?
No. I think that, I do want to
say, with the nerdy comment, I
do want to say that we did
actually hire some friends, so
we didn't really hire them, I
guess, we enlisted some
friends who are not academic,
and their names appear in the
acknowledgments, to read the
book and make sure that it's
accessible for every reader.
The concepts are heady; the
book itself is dense. It's
very, very difficult to read
in a short span of time. It's
probably best digested a
chapter at a time and let it
sit for a bit, but it is
accessible to any reader at
least with some degree. A high
school education should be
enough but anybody with a
college education should find
it very accessible and an easy
to read except in terms of its
density and depth.
James Lindsay, such a pleasure
to have you on.
Thank you, Jan.
