The story has been told several times over the years. There are, however, several ways to tell it, although a passage from the beginning of Roger Kimball’s 2000 book The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America can serve as a more than acceptable summary of all of them: In the Sixties and Seventies, after fantasies of explicit political revolution faded, some student radicals urged their followers to undertake” the long march through the institutions”.… In the context of Western societies ,] this ] signified– in the words of Herbert Marcuse –” working against the established institutions while working within them”. It was largely by this means– by insinuation and infiltration rather than confrontation– that the revolutionary dreams of radicals like Marcuse have triumphed. For what it’s worth, the phrase” long march through the institutions”– a reference to the long march of Mao’s army in 1934 in retreat from the Republican forces of Chiang Kai – shek – has been attributed by some to the European socialist Rudi Dutschke( 1940 – 79 ) and by others to the European socialist Antonio Gramsci( 1891 – 1937 ). In any event, in recounting the British left’s much march, who or what should be foregrounded? No two writers have precisely the same answer. Kimball, for his part, chose to focus on a range of individuals and institutions, including Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, the” Beat Generation” writers, Timothy Leary, and The New York Review of Books. Two decades later, in a 2000 book that was even entitled The Long March, the English writer Marc Sidwell traced the continuous revolutionary subversion of the West back to Gramsci before delving into the roles played in that process by György Lukács, E. P. Thompson, and Marcuse in that process. James Lindsay, whose 2022 book The Marxification of Education limits its purview largely to the subversion of the academy, puts the Brazilian socialist Paulo Freire( 1921 – 97 ) at the heart of the story, and my own 2012 book The Victims ‘ Revolution, which also confines itself to the leftist takeover of higher education, splits the responsibility for that dire development among Gramsci, Freire, and the Afro – Caribbean Marxist Frantz Fanon( 1925 – 69 ). Christopher Rufo’s insightful new book America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything covers basically the exact territory as Kimball’s and Sidwell’s books while giving attention, along the way, to the events reported by Lindsay and me. Rufo, now a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is a remarkable young man( he turns 39 on August 26 ) who increasingly needs no introduction: during the last few years, he’s become a leading voice in the struggle against the mainstreaming at American schools and colleges of critical race theory( CRT ), transgender ideology, and the tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion( DEI ). In addition to writing extensively on these topics( notably at City Journal ), he’s been impressively active on the barricades, leading the effort to have CRT banned from public schools in no fewer than 22 states, inspiring President Trump to ban CRT” training” in the federal government, and rolling back radicalism at New College in Florida, at which Governor Ron DeSantis named him a trustee. The progressive reaction to his activities is summed up in the fatuous headline of a 2021 New Yorker hit job:” How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict over Critical Race Theory”. In America’s Cultural Revolution, Rufo confesses that it took him a while to recognize that CRT’s ascent was only one aspect of the latest phase in a gradual, decades – long process of far – left cultural infiltration that has targeted not only schools and colleges but also America’s other major institutions, including corporations, media, and government. His own subsequent investigations led him to see the whole business as starting with Marcuse, who initiated the process of” sanitiz ] ing ] and adapt ] ing]” the radical ideas that motivated the militant groups of the 1970s” into the official ideology of America’s elite institutions “. In order to impose some order onto a sprawling and multifaceted topic, Rufo subdivides his book into four parts. Each depicts a different aspect of the cultural insurgency, which Rufo identifies with a specific prophet of revolution and a particular postmodern perversion of critical thinking, to wit: while Marcuse, with his” critical theory”, was a prophet of political revolution, Angela Davis( 1944 -), with her” critical praxis”, was a prophet of race war, Freire, with his” critical pedagogy”, was a prophet of academic coup – making, and Derrick Bell( 1930 – 2011 ), with his” critical race theory”, was a prophet of power. Of course this threefold division is generally a fundamental conceit, in reality, the severe developments that Rufo identifies with these four horsepersons of the apocalypse are all about revolution and all about power. For those to whom Marcuse is only a name, Rufo fills in his backstory: a German Jew who was given refuge in America in the 1930s, Marcuse thanked his new homeland, two decades later, by formulating ways to overthrow it, in the late Sixties, celebrating Mao, Fidel, and Che as heroes of” freedom” while savaging American conformism and consumerism from his faculty perch at UC San Diego, he became the New Left’s# 1 guru. Then the New Left collapsed, UCSD cut Marcuse shed, and he went back to the drawing board. What to do? Marx had vested his revolution hopes in the poor, downtrodden workers, but Marcuse recognized that in postwar America that demographic was, by most traditional standards, wealthy: they owned their own homes, they vacationed in the Caribbean, and they enjoyed every imaginable creature comfort. Rather than recognizing this as a victory for capitalism, however, Marcuse saw it as a gyp: blue – collar Americans, he complained, had been bought off by” the hell of the Affluent Society”, while they might think they were free and happy and well off, in reality they were wage slaves, repressed without even knowing it, and therefore useless to anyone seeking to foment a fine old – made Marxist rebellion. Where to turn, next? Marcuse was wise enough to see that if blue – collar Americans, damn them, tended to be loyal and content, a great many of America’s presumably also – educated elites were ripe for propagandizing, with disgruntled blacks serving as their foot soldiers, they could, over time, capture key institutions and implement a” dictatorship of the intellectuals”. To be sure, this meant replacing class struggle with race struggle– the is, encouraging whites to feel guilty about their purported cultural privilege while encouraging blacks to believe that they stood no chance whatsoever of achieving social equality or economic advancement in capitalist America. And, damn it, it worked: over the years, as Rufo puts it,” Marcuse’s students and followers gained professorships at dozens of prominent universities”, where they dedicated themselves to the noble work of brainwashing. Weathermen terrorist Bernadette Dohrn was hired by Northwestern University, Bill Ayers, who’d planted bombs at the U. S. Capitol and Pentagon( and who would go on to help launch Barack Obama’s social career ), won a sinecure at the University of Illinois, and Kathy Boudin, who’d taken part in the famous 1981 Brinks robbery that left two cops( and whose son Chesa would be San Francisco’s DA from 2020 to 2022 ), ended up at Columbia. And in turn, some of their students became professors, and continued the work of indoctrination. Among them was Davis, a graduate student of Marcuse’s( and member of the Black Panther Party ) who became famous for supplying the guns used in the 1970 kidnapping and murder of a judge, and who, after being acquitted( perhaps because of the global Kremlin campaign to paint her as a victim of racism ), spent many years in Cuba, traveled to the USSR to accept the Lenin Prize, planted flowers at the Berlin Wall in memory of an Eastern European border guard, and ran for president of the U. S. on the Communist Party line. Not least, in a time while major scholars with humanities and cultural – science Ph. D. s struggled to find teaching jobs, Davis held the University of California Presidential Chair at UCLA, was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Syracuse and Rutgers, and ended up as a Distinguished Professor Emerita at UC Santa Cruz. ( Davis, observes Rufo dryly, has always displayed” a unique talent for securing the support of the institutions she was revolting against”.) In the 1980s and 90s, the National democratic center moved to the right. But academia– particularly the Ivy League and additional elite universities– moved upwards. Did parents notice? If but, they didn’t seem to care. Those who did notice generally felt that it didn’t matter– that once students entered the real world, they’d shed their seditiousness. Back in the day, this was true enough: wealthy graduates who took jobs at white – shoe law firms or Fortune 100 companies used to kick radicalism to the curb fast enough. But this eventually turned round. Now, as soon as graduates get hired, they set about radicalizing their workplaces. This process started years ago, but as Rufo points out, the global hysteria surrounding the death of George Floyd in May 2020 sent it into overdrive. The New York Times was a sizable honor bestowed upon Marcuse’s heirs. Following the 2008 financial crisis, the Times fired a large number of senior reporters and hired new Ivy graduates to” capture” the left-leaning newspaper. Rufo correctly refers to this as” a key turn in the long march through the institutions.” MSNBC, NPR, and the Washington Post all collapsed quickly. The effects of this media takeover and the subsequent transformation of these media organizations into rigid propaganda machines are unimaginable. Only 32 % of Democrats in the United States considered racism to be a” big problem” in 2009, according to Rufo, and by 2017, that percentage had more than doubled to 76 %. In 2019, one-fifth of” quite progressive” Americans estimated that there had been more than 10,000 unarmed black men killed by police in 2021. The actual number was 14, in fact. Yes, there is a difference between today’s awake hand-wringing about” systematic racism” and” white supremacy ,” as opposed to the Black Panthers of old who preached violent warfare, mass executions, and the rape of white women as” an insurrectionary act.” However, the difference appears to be more simplistic the more you consider the past and present. The long-term goals in both situations are the same: entire social upheaval, a sweeping transfer of power, and the replacement of personal liberty with victim-group dominance. Even with gloves on, a fist remains. As long as you can get the opposition fired, evicted, and deplatformed, you don’t really need to kill them. Rufo is covering well-traveled ground below, as I’ve already stated. However, this does not imply that the American Cultural Revolution is unnecessary in any way. Contrarily, even today, many years after the woke era began, approximately half of Americans also believe that waking up simply means being polite. Woke means awakened to the needs of others, to quote a Facebook meme I saw earlier this week. to possess knowledge, consideration, compassion, humility, and kindness. willing to improve things for everyone in the world. ” Democrats like Joe Biden, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, and Jerry Nadler are champions of democracy and the MAGA movement stands for fascist insurrection, toxic masculinity, white supremacy ,” the clueless characters who repost nonsense like this have been told a thousand times — and they really, truly believe that. The thorough reality check that Christopher Rufo offers in this sage, perceptive, and wholly timely book is desperately needed by these benighted souls.
The story has been repeated many times. The story has been told many times over the years. There are no two writers who have the same answer. Kimball chose to focus his attention on a variety of individuals and institutions including Norman Mailer and Susan Sontag as well as the “Beat Generation’s” writers, Timothy Marc Sidwell, a British writer, traced the countercultural subversion of Western culture back to Gramsci in a book published in 2000. He then went James Lindsay, whose 2022 book The Marxification of Education limits its purview largely to the subversion of the academy, puts the Brazilian socialist Paulo Freire (1921-97) at the heart of the story; and my own 2012 book The Victims’ Revolution, which also confines itself to the leftist takeover of higher education, splits the responsibility for that dire development among Gramsci, Freire, and the Afro-Caribbean Marxist Frantz Fanon (1925-69).Christopher Rufo’s incisive new book America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything covers essentially the same territory as Kimball’s and Sidwell’s books while giving attention, along the way, to the events reported by Lindsay and me. Rufo is a young man who has become an increasingly prominent voice in the fight against the mainstreaming of critical race theory, transgender ideology and the tyranny He has written extensively on these subjects (notably for City Journal) and been active on the front lines, leading the fight to ban CRT from public schools in 22 states. He also In America’s Cultural Revolution Rufo admits that it took a while for him to realize that CRT was just the latest phase of a decades-long, gradual process He concluded that the whole process began with Marcuse who started the process of “sanitizing and adapting” the radical ideas which motivated militant groups in the 1970s into the Rufo divides his book into four parts, each of which depicts a different aspect. For example, Marcuse’s “critical theory” was a prophec This fourfold division, however, is mainly a conceit. In reality, the egregious events that Rufo identifies as being the work of these Marcuse realized that Marx’s revolutionary hopes were centered on the poor and downtrodden, but that postwar America was richer than ever before. They owned their homes Marcuse, however, saw this as a gyp. He complained that blue-collar Americans had been bought off by the “hell of the Af Marcuse knew that the blue-collar Americans were patriotic, and that the supposedly educated elites would be ripe to be manipulated. They could use Bill Ayers (who planted bombs in the U.S. Capitol, Pentagon, and helped launch Barack Obama’s career) was given a sinecure by the Davis, a former graduate student of Marcuse (and a member of the Black Panther Party), was one of them. She became famous for providing the guns used in 1970′ Davis, a serious scholar with a social-science or humanities Ph.D. who struggled to get a teaching job, held the University of California President’s Rufo observes that Davis has always shown “a unique ability to secure the support of the very institutions she was rebelling against.” In the 1980s and 1990s, the American The Ivy League, and other elite universities, moved to the left. Did parents notice this? If so, it didn’t appear that they cared. Those who noticed usually thought it didn’t really matter, that once students entered into the real world they would shed their seditiousness. This was true in the past: elite graduates who got jobs at Fortune 100 companies or white-shoe law offices were able to quickly put radicalism behind them. This slowly changed. Graduating students are now radically changing their workplaces as soon as they get hired. The process began years ago, but, as Rufo points our, the national hysteria around the death of George Floyd, in May 2020, accelerated it. After the 2008 recession the Times replaced many veteran journalists with Ivy-grads who “captured” the newspaper for leftists. Rufo describes this event as ” The impact of the media takeover and the subsequent transformation of these media firms into hard-core propagandist machines is incalculable. “In 2009,” says Rufo, “only 32% of Democrats thought racism in the United States a “big problem”. By 2017, that number was more than doubled at In 2021, the majority of “very liberal” Americans believed that police killed over 1000 unarmed Black men in 2019. One-fifth said that it was over 10,000. In reality, the actual figure was 14. In both cases, long-term goals are the same: total social upheaval, wholesale power transfer, and the replacement individual liberty with victim group dominance. A gloved hand is still a hand. You don’t have to kill your opposition if you can get them fired, evicted and deplatformed. As I’ve already said, Rufo covers well-trodden territory here. To say this does not mean that America’s Cultural Revolution was unnecessary. Even after several years of the woke movement, about half of Americans still believe that being woke is just being nice. To quote a meme that I saw on Facebook this week, “Woke” means being awakened by the needs of others. To be well-informed, thoughtful, compassionate and kind. A desire to make the world better for everyone. “The clueless characters that repost this nonsense have been told a hundred times – and really, truly believe that Democrats like Joe Biden and Adam Schiff are champions of Democracy and that the MAGA Movement stands for fascist rebellion, toxic masculinity, white supremacy, and white nationalism. Christopher Rufo’s trenchant and timely book, The Comprehensive Reality Check, is a must-read for these benighted souls.
