A Black Lives Matter protestor in Texas (Photo by MARK FELIX/AFP via Getty Images)
One of the most irritating terms of our time must be “gaslighting”. It sounds so serious, but is just another of those pseudo-criminal charges that people fling around online, as though it has a well-known application in the real world. Loose in definition, assumed by the user to be understood by all, it is merely a form of elite jargon, known and understood only by a few.
But when a word gets used so relentlessly, it begins to take on a certain legitimacy — and even begins to crop up in the minds of people who loathe it. Indeed, it even happened to me recently after I read a number of pieces in the American press claiming that “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) was a bogeyman of the Right. Now here, I thought, is something that is definitely gaslighting. Surely these people must be trying to drive readers mad by making assertions that are so clearly untrue; presenting one vision of the world and then denying that it even exists. If this is not “gaslighting”, then what is?
In the New York Times last week, Michelle Goldberg claimed that the current wave of concern across America about CRT had simply been whipped up by a clever propagandist — and that, as a consequence, CRT had become a maddening debate. In particular, she said, “the phrase itself had become unmoored from any fixed meaning”. Elsewhere she criticised people of being guilty of a “moral panic” and said that she was “highly sceptical” of the idea that CRT is being taught in schools, before going on to explain that “antiracist education” isn’t “radically leftist” but just “elementary”.
This slew of claims demonstrates the problem at hand. For in CRT we are not talking about some hidden theory; we are talking about a school of thought which was openly heralded within American academia and has now been forced upon the wider world. Yet just at the point that it has infiltrated the public sphere, Goldberg and others claim that our understanding of CRT has become confused — as if an ideology that is wilfully obscurantist ought, in fact, to be straightforward and agreed upon.
In the Washington Post and elsewhere, this debate has come to define American politics in recent weeks. Most prominently, Joy Reid of MSNBC has taken to claiming that CRT is not being taught in schools, is not what its critics say that it is and is both too complex for people to understand and also an exceptionally obvious demand for social justice.
What prompted such a desperate defence? Well, American parents have finally woken up to what is being taught to their children. At one prestigious Manhattan school, the headmaster even resigned after a group of parents complained about a number of school initiatives, ranging from “racist cop” re-enactments in science lessons to classes about “decentering whiteness” and “white supremacy”.
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Subscribe“Gaslighting” is right up there with “dog whistle [politics]” and that old chestnut “populism” in the leagues of words I’ve read hundreds and hundreds of times over the past few years but I’m still no wiser as to what they mean. They seem like reliable indicators of vacuous twaddle.
See also: the “problematic view”. This, more often than not simply means “a view that does not correspond exactly to mine”. When I see it written, I automatically start grinding my teeth. It has become almost Pavlovian.
The misuse of the word “problematic” has been irritating me for well over 30 years too, Katharine. It is now always used interchangeably with “troublesome”, whereas its original meaning was “doubtful”, in the sense of not-be-relied-on, uncertain, apt not to work well. British Rail was of problematic reliability. The accuracy of the Old Testament is problematic. In carpentry a butt-joint is of problematic strength. And so on. As you say, nowadays it just means “I have a problem with….”
The other one that drives me made is when someone re-coins a new word from another because they don’t recognise the word they need already exists. For example, the adjective from “comedy” is “comic” but how often do you read that so-and-so is a great “comedic” talent? There no need for any such word – you wouldn’t say so-an-so was a great “tragedic” actor. Another example is “societal”. The adjective from “society” is “social”. We don’t need another one. Yet another is the verb “to commentate”. A commentator is someone who comments; it’s a noun from the verb. The assumption now is that we need to coin a verb from the noun “commentator”. Logically, the next step must be that a commentator presumably “commentatates”. She is therefore a “commentatator”. And so on.
I’m all for neologisms generally, I think they’re fun, but I think we need a neologism to describe these impoverishments of language. By assigning an existing word a meaning that another word already carries, or abandoning a word in favour of a clumsier one that means the same thing, nothing is added, but you then lose the word previously used.
“Inappropriate” went on the same journey as “problematic”.
I once heard an American say burglarize. But the one that drives me to distraction is “beg the question” when all they are doing is asking, or raising, a question – Invariably a journalist.
I think burglarize is common in US English. I have seen this word several times in legal dictionaries and it is even creeping into British English I think. “Burgle” isn’t wonderful though, it seems…truncated somehow.
I once had a geography teacher describe the last ice age as a time when the earth was ‘glacierized’
I think it’s because someone who does things is a do-er of them. Runner; writer; joker; wrestler. But we also have sailors, actors, executors and advisors, who also do all those things but spelt differently, and we have pedlars, beggars, registrars and burglars, likewise. Then we have mercerised fabrics and brokers brokering deals. It’s a mess. I don’t know what came first, the noun burglary or the the verbs burgle or burglarize, but one of those, I don’t know which, is clearly redundant.
To be fair, the true meaning of ‘begging the question’, which in logic is basically a circular argument, is not exactly obvious. It’s all to with badly translated Latin and the change of normal meaning of beg from ask to implore, or something.
Wasn’t someone burglarized in Withnail and I?
“Burglarise” makes me think of Captain Beefheart.
I’ve even heard (the horror!) “conversate”!
that would be an interesting conversatement!
What a lovely list! Here’s a couple more:
Orientate—the verb is “to orient”, yielding the noun “orientation”; orientate is a later back-formation from the noun
Aspirational—the verb is “to aspire”, yielding the adjective “aspiring” and the nouns “aspiration” and “aspirant”; the word aspirational more properly should be linked back to the verb “to aspirate”, which has a very different meaning, namely to pronounce with a heavy breathing
Someone has suggested we need a new neologism to indicate this whole category of newly coined words.
Status is probably the key concept uniting all these neologisms. They sound more Latinate, more learnéd, thus harking back to the ascendance of the Norman conquerors with their Latin language over the Anglo-Saxon peasantry with its Germanic. High-status holders from academia, the Church and the professions use language and in-group jargon that is Latin-based. Those aspiring (!) to those desirable social positions, who may justly be deemed the “aspirational”, may be found disproportionately in the lower middle class and lower ranks of the public service, and among the vulgar more generally.
So, how about statusism, statusist and to statusise? We might even be lucky enough to end up with statusational. Given the genius of the people for amalgamating words which sound alike, we might conceivably then progress to something like statusensationalist, whose powerful vibrations I can already feel in my bones…
I agree some of these are intended to make the user sound intelligent, notably societal, problematic and comedic. Fortuitous is another – it is widely used as though it means “lucky”, as in “Andy Murray was fortuitous with that line call” when in fact it means “by chance” (“the ball fortuitously landed right on the green”).
But maybe we need two neologisms, because “commentate” to mean “comment”, along with words like “phenomena” used as a singular, is used by the ignorant rather than those seeking status.
I confess to conflating the ignorant with the status seekers…
Technically, I think you are wrong about ‘aspirational’. ‘Aspiring’ could only refer to someone who aspires. ‘Aspirational’ would be ‘having to do with aspiration’, which is a different meaning.
My favourite peeve is ‘usage’, BTW; which is often used (wrongly) as a synonym fore ‘use’.
Yes, I can see where you’re coming from, but I’m not sure of the definitive answer.
Basically, we have two verbs which today have clearly distinct meanings: to aspire, and to aspirate.
My COD (Concise Oxford) traces both back to Latin aspirare, from spirare, to breathe.
But whatever the route, aspirational is now an adjective which can be applied to a person, and by extension, a certain sort of person. Thus, for example, ‘of all the terms which may have been applied to describe Mr Smith, “aspirational” may have been the most revealing… keeping up with Mr Jones without doubt encapsulated the entirety of his ambition’.
I am actually very interested in the relationship between heavy breathing and ambition. It seems it may have more than a passing relevance to today’s English politics.
***
And re usage, yes, what a horror. All of these things make our language poorer, less able to discriminate, to paint subtle tones on our human landscape.
Dum spiro, spero – as Matt said to Gina.
Interesting the OED says that. Had I to guess, I would have said that aspire in the sense of “hope for” came from Latin ad + spero meaning “towards” + “I hope”, or something.
the e of spero would not change to an i
My antenna is tuned to “controversial idea”. This is now taken on Orwell’s double talk function were something entirely uncontroversial is, like biology, is rendered as being doubtful. Hence Mrs Rowling’s comments on transgender and its implications on females are reduced to controversial, but in the actual world are completely uncontroversial
Yes, it’s the left’s SOP – if you disagree with them, they try to paint your views as bizarre and out-there, and automatically bad. So to the left it is “controversial” to suggest that there are men, women and a tiny handful of unfortunates.
All are best categorised as weasel words.
Dogwhistle: a signal to your supporters that only your critics can hear.
Thanks for explaining. I had never taken a second to analyze its usage because it is exclusively used by leftists and it seems to always be applied to some common sense proposal or claim such as “we have a crisis at the US southern border”. Which now makes we wonder why leftists can’t “hear” (comprehend or appreciate) such claims. Isn’t usage of this phrase the equivalent of a toddler covering their ears and yelling repeatedly “I CAN’T HEAR YOU”
Being facetious, are we? The more official meaning of ‘dogwhistle’ is something that is not (e.g.) racist, sounds reasonable and mostly unobjectionable to the wider society – but still makes it clear to your supporters where you stand. But it has been so overused that it has lost most precise meaning.
Obviously it also implies that such appeals are directed at “dogs” –i.e., subhuman animals. Practitioners of CRT understand themselves as dog-trainiers: They believe themselves the true humans (having “progressed” to that status they are entitled to drag the rest of us along the true path…this is textbook Marxist activism). Their arrogance alone is enough to reject their advances.
Probably a coincidence. Dog whistles are real objects – they emit a tone at a frequency that is too high for humans to hear but that dogs can hear fine.
Or: if you hear the whistle, you’re the dog.
Correct.
I was indeed being facetious, since the term is never used about one’s own side but always disparagingly about the other. Sorry for any confusion.
I am puzzled by this.
A dog whistle is made by a farmer to his sheepdog, giving it directions as to how to direct the flock of sheep.
Translated into purely human social terms, it would seem to imply a signal from someone in authority to his follower(s), a signal understood between them, to carry out some action to direct and control other people outside the in-group.
But this interpretation seems to be the opposite of what you imply?
I think you are right, Penelope, and Brendan is wrong. A ‘dog whistle’ message is indeed intended to be heard by your supporters, while not ‘audible or clear enough to attract criticism.
I think you got that wrong. A dog whistle is (originally) an object that emits high-frequency sounds that dogs can hear and humans cannot.
I was going to write something similar about the term ‘gaslighting’. I find it maddening. I’m glad Murray led off with that. He completely captured my frustration with people (the woke, for lack of a better term) who throw certain terms around, including the others you mentioned. It reeks of self-importance. As if they’re onto something I can’t grasp. It makes me just want to roll my eyes (or grind my teeth!). To some extent, it reminds me of how the jargon around business changes every decade or so when the next crop of MBA grads write new books to explain the same things that were true a decade or two earlier, but with new language.
Yes, that’s it – there’s something about the way which these words are used and the context in which they are used which smacks of academic fad. As if they’ve been rolling around in some lecture hall for ages, mutating in a range of very clever brains, getting further from their original meaning…before finally reappearing in the real world…where the rest of us just go “eh?”
For me, pretty close to the mark with the term ‘problematic’. In addition to your teeth grinding, what winds me up is how critical theorists – as in race theory or feminist theory or gender theory etc – have a worldview that they express using typical or common terms but redefine those terms to promote the critical worldview. Hence racism now has the added component of ‘power’ – as a critical theorist understands it. It is a form of equivocation and also a motte-and-bailey resource for they can slip back to the common or reasonable usage when challenged. Essentially what Murray is describing when CR theorists are challenged. So problematic is any phenomenon a critical activist doesn’t like and problematics are the reasons they give for their dislike – but only as viewed through critical theory.
Another fiendishly slippery tactic was outlined by James Lindsay of newdiscourses dot com. It is an Hegelian dialectical tool called aufheben – keeping and destroying. It is a very subtle technique where a person, makes an observation about cancel culture and another person replies with an observation that appears relevant to that comment, but isn’t to the point of the original remark. It gives additional information that downplays the point of the original remark and if successful, removes the relevance of that original remark – even though it was very relevant. So the original remark is kept but it also has been sufficiently diluted so that it appears not relevant (destroyed, in a sense).
I hope I made that clear as it is a very difficult tactic to dig into and I am still contemplating it. I saw it used when Andrew Doyle was discussing cancel culture on GB news. It was also used in The Times BTL comments yesterday where an operator took a term in the original comment and then replied by equivocating on that term by subtly redefining it so as to dilute or ridicule the original point.
The key indicator of aufheben is that an answer or reply appears to miss the point that was being made.
No, you did explain that well. Interesting. I know the word “aufheben” well – I would translate it with “to cancel” or “to set aside” and it’s commonly used in the context of a contract. “Einen Vertrag aufheben” means to cancel or to set aside a contract with effect ex nunc. The contract, then, did exist and has produced effects that may continue, but it has now been cancelled going forward. That sounds similar to the technique you are relating here. I shall have to read more on this.
James Lindsay’s excellent resource for everything woke (newdiscourses dot com) has the podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf4R0gX7g3w&t=5970s
titled Hegel, Wokeness and the Dialectical Faith of Leftism
(and beware it is very long so needs to be ingested in bite sized chunks)
He goes into aufheben de culture that arose out of Hegel and also goes into alchemy (as in gold from a base metal etc), but in this case as applied to the woke worldview that is essentially Hegelian dialectical in nature – it is mentioned and referenced in many critical social justice texts. So it proceeds by problematising, critiquing, disrupting and dismantling and finally deconstructing cultural foundations and when all that has crumbled, what emerges – what was hidden beneath culture that is pure and good and holy etc – can emerge (the utopia). Hence, according to Lindsay we have the irksome attacks on sex, categories, science, truth, knowledge etc etc. and woke is fundamentally a quasi religion based on the faith in the alchemical process.
I’ll add “elites” and “elitism” to that list. It means “anyone we don’t like who we suspect has more than us.”
I hope Mr. Murray is right that the fight back against CRT has not just begun but is gaining traction. I see signs elsewhere too, but this pseudoreligion now has such deep roots in higher education, government and large corporations, I’m not convinced its defeat is imminent, although large corporations will be the first to back off if they sense the political (and consumer) winds turning.
My hope is that the rise of CRT was inextricably linked to the fight to remove Trump. Now that he’s gone, CRT may not be able to withstand the cool light of day.
I’m not quite so sanguine. This predates Trump’s election, under the guise of the various Diversity & Inclusion type training schemes. His removal is not the victory condition for dialling things back.
I hope it can be defeated, but if it can, it’s a long way off – it is, after all, just a portion (albeit a major one) of the whole Critical Social Justice drive. It’s entangled with all of the other Critical Theory approaches to identity politics.
No, this goes back to early 1900s Existential Germany Philosophers and Mar*ism. This is the same element which took over the high education industries of the West beginning pre WWII, and then really took off in 1970s. The entire MSM, Education, Entertainment, and Social Media industries, with all Liberal Political Parties are under its power. We are at about the point now, in the West, when China was as Mao was doing his Long March, and the Nationalists could have held, but instead fell…… The West is likely lost, and the New World Order coming.
The Enemy Within
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” –Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 BC – 43 BC
As you say, this started with Marx. In the USA in the 1920s, a newish idea called Anarchism became popular. The popular press portrayed the Anarchists as a group of people throwing bombs; they themselves were fans of Marx. They saw all government as evil with Communism as the only alternative. The main brain behind the idea, Alexander Berkman, saw what was happening in Russia and tried to differentiate between a Communist Dictatorship (bad) and Communism/Anarchism(good). This morphed into Critical Theory (a good book in 2020 called Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose describes the rise of the Frankfurt school and postmodernism).
As Sanford says, today we have something developing which is akin to what happened with Mao in China. The young people are being brainwashed and the old cannot resist. If you are young and you are told repeatedly that your parents have been greedy, they have destroyed the Earth to become rich and that they need to be punished by having their easy lives removed – in the end you believe it. You need to save the ‘victims’ from the aggressors. Everyone has to fight to become a ‘victim’ before it is too late. Hence the plethora of ‘victims’ around us today.
All of this leads to poverty for everyone (except the leaders who deserve to live well). The leaders will have been quicker to realise that there is a true revolution now while the ordinary people think that it’s just a blip which will go away. As in Russia and China, it is the ordinary people who will suffer the most when millions of immigrants (victims) take over this country.
As Sanford says, the ‘Awaiting for Approvals’ are proliferating so the site is no longer the same free speech site as in the past. This is my final post. I need to work on becoming a victim.
Don’t overreact, just stay around. Their moderation system is shite, they are clearly using some kind of text recognision program that flags any post with certain words no matter how they are used. It makes no sense, and it is intensely irritating, but it is not censorship. If you are in doubt, try the Guardian’s moderators for a while, it will give you a whole new perspective.
Yes, I referred in another post to a type of joint in woodworking which spells ttub backwards. The post has been held up in moderation because ttub means esra, which is of course a very rude word indeed.
Automation could ruin the joint.
19C Anarchism was hostile to Marx, although most modern anarchists are indeed Marxists.
Thank you – I really don’t see why my posts have to be checked and ‘approved’ before being allowed into the debate. Yes, I’m using a pen name, but I’ve subscribed and if it isn’t actually illegal such as breaching a superinjunction, free speech either is or isn’t. Unherd indeed.
I think there is an argument that it can be traced back through Marx to Hegel. And Hegel’s dialectical method.
James Lindsay, who co wrote Cynical Theories with Pluckrose, lays out the Hegelian significance to critical social justice ‘theory’ by referencing Hegel’s dialectical method from key critical theory texts.
Perhaps it goes back to Hegel?
Good quotation!
I think large organisations will take a while to back off depending on the way their ‘values’ are worded. If they are obliquely worded they can survive quite a long time. Human Resources and Diversity departments depend on their poison to survive.
“Human Resources and Diversity departments depend on their poison to survive.”
Good point. I’ve long believed HR departments are the last refuge of otherwise unemployable liberal arts graduates.
I think you will need to wait for children to come home from school and tell their parents what is happening at school. My experience is that normal people – you know people who don’t subscribe to sites like UnHerd – don’t know what CRT is. However when their white child comes home and explains they are personally responsible for colonization – or black children are told they will never succeed because of racism – that is when people will wake up and start asking questions.
My concern with this ever-growing trend of Critical Race indoctrination is that the people who are driving it have NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in achieving equality between the races.
They are not in the Equality business, they are in the Grievance business.
And business is good at the moment. There are fortunes to be made, stirring the pot, feeding the sense of guilt among Whites and feeding the sense of victimhood among the Black community.
Truly – WHO DOES THAT SERVE? Are these people looking to improve relations between communities? It doesn’t seem so. It is creating division and separating and segregating people based on which “community” they “belong” to.
When it comes to the vast majority of those who’ve bought into the woke agenda, I think it comes from a good place. Many seem unaware of the malignant undertones of the BLM movement, and buy into the simple idea that ‘Black Lives Matter’ – but that is so obvious a statement as to be almost a banality.
How, though, do the well-intentioned woke justify to themselves calling for the cancellation of anyone who counters with ‘All Lives Matter’, or any other push-back against this pernicious doctrine?
I’m not paranoid enough (yet) to believe that the majority of the “woke” actually want to see society divided – but I cannot fathom how they think the divisive, separatist attitudes of their movement can possibly bring us together. It seems so self-evidently self-defeating.
Just a few years ago we were exhorted as a society to be colour-blind, to accept people simply as people, whatever their background, their lifestyle, their “differences”.
What happened to that idea?
For many years I lived in London and worked in an industry (Broadcast TV) that was as diverse as one could possibly find anywhere. As far as we were concerned the arguments of Race, Gender, Creed, Orientation had been fought and largely won. We seemed at the time – perhaps naively – to be enjoying the peace.
Maybe those who are inclined to be activists feel they have to keep picking at the scab and reopening old wounds or there is no point to their existence, but it seems incredible that we’ve gone so far backwards and quite so quickly.
As I say, I have a good deal of sympathy with the young in all this – not the activists who are driving this pernicious and divisive movement, but those who’ve grown up in this atmosphere. They’ve been fed a constant diet of woke totems and “progressive” thought (actually horribly regressive thought) throughout their education and now must navigate a “thought-crime minefield” where the slightest miss-step can blow up in their faces.
Some, believing what they’ve been taught – and with the best intentions – try to stick to all the latest approved attitudes and mantras and find themselves saying and doing things that (I can only hope) will make them shudder with embarrassment when they look back on them in years to come. I’m optimistic that they’ll be young enough to still have the chance of an awakening (from their awokening?). Others eschew the whole concept of inclusivity and adopt almost a siege mentality that helps no one (the rise of the young alt-right in America is a direct consequence of US College campus PC conformity).
The liberal-left decries inequality of opportunity and income disparity as the two main evils that are fracturing society. But I’d suggest this Identity politics agenda is a far more pernicious way to separate us.
Identity politics is the very antithesis of the principles of universalism – it suggests what differentiates us is more important than what we have in common. Surely we should treasure more what we share as members of a diverse community rather than seek to silo people and segregate that community into ghettos based on our racial identities, sexual orientation, age, gender or creed?
How do people who claim to speak for progressive attitudes justify shifting the argument from Martin Luther King’s dream of a future where people are judged according to their character rather than the colour of their skin to the point where these activists are calling for PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE? That you are defined, as a person, solely by the groups to which you belong. To abandon that call for universalism in favour of separatism is surely a retrograde step?
For those cultural Marxists driving this movement and cancelling any who dare gainsay it, of course debate must be silenced. The easiest way to prevent your argument from being examined, its flaws exposed to ridicule, is to prevent any discussion of it in the first place. If you are a Racist then your opinions can safely be dismissed. According to their doctrine, if you deny being a Racist then that is merely proof of your defensiveness and further proof of your inherent Racism. “Heads I win, Tails you lose”
The easiest way to gain status is to tear down those who would even dare question your argument. That is the defining characteristic of CRT and of cancel culture. It appears, from the outside, almost a competition as those who vie for greater woke status compete with fellow adherents to identify and criticise (what reasonable people would see as) vanishingly trivial offenses.
You can spend years going along with the progressive herd, but the minute you fall out of lock-step with them on a single contentious issue you will be turned on. Previous adherence to orthodoxy is no defence once you’ve been accused of heresy.
And so anyone who is not willing to go to war is compelled to agree with this nonsense, or at the very least stay silent on the matter, for fear that they too will be “cancelled” or face accusations of bigotry.
Reagan saw this coming in the mid-70s when he noted “If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.”
But not only does the politics of grievance divide us, it makes us weaker. It glorifies victimhood and vilifies anyone who tries to suggest otherwise. The #metoo movement could have been empowering, yet insisting that a clumsy advance, or an unwanted touch of a knee, is somehow equivalent to rape is insane. Who is that empowering? Telling every woman they are a victim, teaching impressionable young women they are likely to become victims, that all men are naturally predatory? Does that heal divisions in society or exacerbate them?
Similarly, teaching young black men that they are oppressed, that society doesn’t value them as much, that the police are not to be trusted. Who does that help? Does it improve their chances of success in life or does it weigh them down with unnecessary baggage? Does it drive a wedge between communities, between groups? I would suggest that, yes, of course it does.
In the end, the politics of grievance can only be defeated by a better politics – but that has to be rooted in honesty, not what fits the narrative. Honest assessments of a situation probably sell fewer newspapers, or get fewer Youtube views, than sensationalised hyperbole. This poses a dilemma for any media outlet that has bought into the identity fixated woke agenda.
The ongoing narrative is blatantly at odds with reality. The “liberal Left” media – in thrall to appearing Woke – has a narrative that drives and supports a worldview that is predicated on catastrophism and a dystopian future – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
For each anecdotal instance of intolerance that gets trumpeted as “proof” of widespread bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc there are a million other instances of just everyday acceptance of people, – regardless of colour, nationality or gender – that aren’t worthy of anecdote simply because they are so everyday.
I would suggest that these activists seem not merely willing, but positively hoping, to see the country divided, pitting their Woke agenda against the reality of a tolerant and accepting society. In an attempt to appear Woke they are sleepwalking the country into the very same dystopian future that they imagine our present to be.
Worst of all this movement pits the young against their own families who have not bought into this madness. But the young have been told that any who do not immediately fall into line are somehow the intolerant and hateful ones!
Many of these woke activists would undoubtedly denounce any who’d think to pigeonhole someone whilst, almost in the same breath, constructing a fairly sturdy pigeonhole themselves and stuffing it with a well-fed pigeon.
You can’t win (unless you simply refuse to play their game).
“. Others eschew the whole concept of inclusivity and adopt almost a siege mentality that helps no one (the rise of the young alt-right in America”
You make it hard to win. If you go along you lose, if you resist ‘that helps no one’.
I kind of recognise that in the last line of my (admittedly over-long piece) – “You can’t win (unless you simply refuse to play their game).”
They are in the power game.
CRT is only just starting to wreak destruction in the business world.
Diversity training is filtering down to smaller companies and will probably become a compulsory requirement of certain tenders.
Like hyper-regulation, this is effectively a subsidy from small business to big business. The opportunity cost to innovation will be enormous.
Beware the “Social Justice Institutional Complex”.
Feminism is another branch of critical theory. These last months I have taken the advice to educate myself. I’ve read and listened to explanations of Herbert Marcuse , Antonio Gramsci, the Frankfurt school and Hegel. I suggest listening to James Lindsay and his critical theories podcast,under his direction you can get a pretty good overview.
The tactic of retreat when exposed, then presenting a reasonable social justice argument, fully expectant of a charitable reception is how CRT operate.
CRT is a neo Marxist, post modern critical theory, hybrid philosophy. It needs to co-opt a group to do its bidding, so they set about convincing the impressionable, thoughtful and disillusioned, that life stinks because of the power imbalance that oppresses them and the wider proletariat. That oppression can be one of racism, gender and sexuality. Opposing that oppression will deliver the revolution which will end all discord.
The plan is both covert and overt, it doesn’t need public acceptance to prosper, as it is a top down ideology. CRT works successfully in academia , corporate NGOs and government agencies, anywhere with HR officials, lawyers and diversity specialists . It has evolved into a graduate industry which relies on a hierarchical structure. CRT often refers to itself as a combination of theory, educator and movement. It makes the analogy of a virus attacking a host,living off the unsuspecting organism.
This is how I have come to understand CRT and I have concluded that it is fundamentally totalitarian.
I watched Martin Durkin’s documentary
Great American race game, well worth seeing.
Well reasoned point.
I get the ‘Awaiting For Approval’ (Mod*rated) as often as not, and sometimes may slip it through by copying and deleting links and use of * in any word referencing real oppression. I am trying to slip the post above through by this means, and here it goes.
I know I flog the Frankfurt School here a lot (Wiemar Germany, Ma* xi sts and philosophy intellectuals at the Goethe institute, later moving to USA 1933, and making the full move 1980, to Columbia University.) as the source for all which ails the West, they they wished to destroy Capitalism, and so figured destroying the Middle Class was the way to do it, and thus set out a plan – the effects you see everywhere in social decay, about us. Critical Theory was their thing, they invented it, and now we know a segment of it as CRT.
Here is from the Stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy on Frankfurt School and Critical Theory:
“It follows from Horkheimer’s definition that a critical theory is adequate only if it meets three criteria: it must be explanatory, practical, and normative, all at the same time. That is, it must explain what is wrong with current social reality, identify the actors to change it,” (link deleted, search Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy)
And there it is – Identify the problem, Who are the problem, and how to stop them.
same link, Stanford University ““Critical Theory” in the narrow sense designates several generations of German philosophers and social theorists in the Western European Mar* ist tradition known as the Frankfurt School. According to these theorists, a “critical” theory may be distinguished from a “traditional” theory according to a specific practical purpose: a theory is critical to the extent that it seeks human “emancipation from sla* ery”, acts as a “liberating … influence”, and works “to create a world which satisfies the needs and powers of” human beings (Horkheimer 1972b [1992, 246]). Because such theories aim to explain and transform all the circumstances that ensl* ve human beings, many “critical theories” in the broader sense have been developed.”
CRT is pure Mar* ist Philosophy based on existentialist, Nihilist, and Freudian thinking as a way to destroy civilization as we know it (Capitalism, Conservativeism, and Liberalism as well – they have the usefull idiots destroying themselves! The Wiemar Republic was one of the darkest times and places of all human existence, so much evil came from those existential thinkers of that time and place, we know the great effects as WWII, but this residual effect is as dangerous. I doubt any of the ‘Educators’ who advocate CRT even know the first thing of Philosophy, although the writer of the linked does make it pretty gaslighted, you can still see what it is. Not just a ‘Theory’, but a plan, by what I quoted above, “”And there it is – Identify the problem, Who are the problem, and how to stop them.””
SEARCH on line for:
1) Frankfurt School
2)Critical Theory (note it leads right to Frankfurt school)
3)Frankfurt School 11 points.
*used to redact sections of post which are not allowed
8 posts have been removed including one of yours. The site has been infiltrated.
A really good resource for the topics you raise is newdiscourses for com
It has many podcasts, detailed and lengthy analyses in essay form as well a the excellent ‘woke encyclopedia’ that alphabetically lists many critical social justice terms and gives quotes of their usage from critical theory texts and then discusses and breaks them down whilst linking other concepts in as well. Highly recommended.
I remember seeing Douglas Murray refer to people adhering to CRT as people dragging around a wheelbarrow of excrement. Or something like that. I still chuckle.
Stout courage and sound sense as usual, Mr Murray. Only one objection – neither CRT nor Marxism work on paper, either. They are riddled with contradictions. It’s just that they advance those contradictions so shamelessly – dictatorship in the name freedom, etc – that people ignore them. It is part and parcel of their wilful obscurantism. Never forget their disdain for the enlightenment.
One thing that puzzles me on this topic (and do correct me if I’m wrong) is why the majority of proponents of these ideas and their offspring are women? Most people mentioned in the article are women. Is it because we had become afraid of challenging any feminist narratives and so allowing them to make outrageous statements? I recognise that there is an increasing prevalence of fem vs fem happening which will probably help get a balanced perspective back.
Maybe it’s as simple as decades of women conditioned to strive to get sex/gender equality resulted in them needing a new cause to fight when most of the war was won.
But what do I know … ?
Because the other half, the men, are to busy in the ‘trans’ business swinging their soceital wrecking ball(s)….
The ticks are fine, but I would like a laugh option.
You think it is the ‘highbrow’ content, rather than the aggression level? That is interesting – though I would not think that the level of the contributors (myself included) is as high as all that. As they say, you can have a PhD and still be an utter idiot – but you will generally have learned how to fake it.
Generally you get upvotes if you agree with the majority, and lots of downvotes (as I do) if you do not. Never mind, just hang in there, we need some varied opinions. As Jimmy Hoffa said “Illegitimi non carborundum esse” (very bad latin for “Don’t let the b**tards grind you down) 😉
If you interpret upvotes as “makes sense to mainstream conservatives” and downvotes as “makes sense to mainstream leftists”, then the significance of up and downvotes is better understood. It’s more usually based on that than on post quality.
“Mainstream” is important in this. My views on the Royal Family – the Queen has four children by three different fathers, Prince Philip had three by two women, and so on – are not at all mainstream, and get downvoted accordingly.
I am fine with the downvotes. If you are anti-Brexit or pro-lockdown on this forum, it is obvious that a lot of people will not agree. And it is more interesting to argue with people who disagree than sitting in a circle and saying ‘Oh Yes!’ to each other. Actually I am not a leftist, mainstream or otherwise, but a wet, European conservative like Ken Clark – though seen from the US that may amount to more or less the same thing? 😉 Anyway, I got an even frostier reception on the Guardian, till it became too woke to bother about.
And yes, Jon, I would downvote your views (and your facts) on the Royal Family as well.
“the Queen has four children by three different fathers, Prince Philip had three by two women”
B0110CKS.
But many of us understand that the up/down marks are meaningless, as are most of our comments. It helps to see other’s thoughts which is useful, helps sharpen thought which has benefit but aside from a place to vent comments have little further value. Tracking and subthreading might allow analysis for research but now require use of Python scrapes few have.
You do sometimes learn something, and it can be helpful to establish that not all sensible people agree with me/you, nor are all those who disagree idiots. But yes, it is not like it it produces anything important.
I suspect Jimmy’s Latin grammar was better than that. A gerund doesn’t take an infinitive, and the noun should be in the dative/ablative rather than the nominative case.
It’s all Greek to me … 🙂
I suspect your answer to that is to use the “Just William” defence. “….cos girls are silly”
Can’t say I have noticed the high brow nature of the comments. Unherd is significantly the realm of angry middle-aged white men who like to cluster together for mutual support and to insulate themselves from the rough winds of critical radical thinking.
“Critical Race Theory” is based on challenging the idea that racism in the US was just an example of wicked people doing naughty things rather than the idea that it was baked into the system from the Founding Fathers onwards.
What data did you use to decide on my age and ethnicity ?
Or maybe you just used tired convenient assumptions as a means of avoiding “hard yards” ….
Thanks for dealing with the racist.
none, but them my comment was not aimed specifically at you
‘Gaslighting’ seems to be a firm favourite these days. Yesterday I saw Jen Psaki (White House Press Secretary) claim that by Republicans not supporting the American Rescue Plan (in which there was some provision for a version of law enforcement), Republicans are responsible for defunding the police. Or maybe that is just a lie and not gaslighting!
The first political use of ‘gaslighting’ in the UK was in fact from the right. This was around 2015-16 when Theresa May’s government accepted a group of ‘child’ asylum seekers from the ME. Some of these were obviously adult men but the government persisted in denying what we could see with our own eyes.
It’s a pity that – as with many good terms – it has been co-opted by the far left and become almost unusable because associated with blatant lying – the gaslighter crying ‘gaslighting!’. The word has itself been gaslit to destruction.
That’s not gaslighting, that’s just lying. Calling it gaslighting is the novelty here.
It’s a very appropriate term for a particular type of lying which creates cognitive dissonance. It denies what you plainly see and/or know.
The term goes back to the movie ‘Gaslight’ where a man sets out to drive his wife crazy by altering things to make her think she is losing her mind – one of his main ways is to change the settings on the gaslights (old days houses had gas pipes in the walls which were for fueling gas powered wall lights) so she would believe her memories of how she left things were wrong as she was losing her mind.
My house still has those. We redid a few rooms and found all these lead pipes up the walls and when we pruned back a hedge we found the inlet pipe.
Every social science or political theory collapses due to the weight of its absurdity, when it eventually catches up with reality (which Critical Theory casually dismisses). The question is, how much damage will it do in the meantime?
Very true. I’ve not read the wicked old villain but apparently Marx thought that Russia could never have a revolution because it didn’t have a middle class. He thought that instead of electing a communist government, the workers should overthrow the state, forcibly install a Communist government and replace elections with something else, that would not allow the removal of the Communist government. He apparently didn’t notice that this would – obviously and necessarily – be murderous tyranny.
Come on, UnHerd, what’s wrong with my comment and why was it disappeared?
That you expect people to give you money for such fickle ‘moderation’ is utterly ridiculous!
I think certain people are flagging posts they disagree with. I had one very vanilla comment in moderation yesterday for hours. I think it is time to point this out to them.
Imagine opening a discussion today in school suggesting there is a problem with Black laziness or aggressive violence. Now imagine teaching it to Black kids in Newark. Anybody wonder what the response would be? It is a vile and racist theory they are pressing
Douglas Murray riding in to bravely and pompously expound on the obvious. Irritating? Look in the mirror.
CRT is racism. Simple. And, yes, saying CRT is not racism /is/ gaslighting. Also simple.
Deftly defined and argued. Thank you once again.
The fight against critical race theory (CRT) has just begun; with many battles yet to be fought. Opposing teaching CRT in schools, while admirable and appropriate, may not be sufficient. Opponents of CRT need to respond with an understanding of Black under-performance that fits the empirical data. Fortunately those of us who are opponents of CRT have Thomas Sowell. Jason Riley (of The Wall Street Journal and the Manhattan Institute) has just had his book on Sowell (Maverick, by Basic Books) published. Maverick is a biography of Thomas Sowell’s ideas which covers numerous topics on economics, sociology and the incredibly slow advancement of Blacks, especially since the passage of the 1964 and 1965 civil rights acts. Sowell was prescient that the 1964 and 1965 civil rights laws would be anti-climatic. To understand why proponents of CRT are mistaken, there is no on better than Thomas Sowell. I recommend Maverick.