Critical race theory is the new divide and conquer

When it comes to history, there is nothing new under the sun; just don't fall for the plutocrats' misdirection play on race

Just a short note this Monday as I’ve got about 157 books to read and I’m terribly behind. Plus, I’m starting work on a new project this week which I hopefully will be sharing over the summer. 

I recently watched a documentary called Plutocracy about the brutal history of the American labour movement. If you haven’t seen it, watch it now. It’s a real eye-opener. You can watch it for free here: http://metanoia-films.org/plutocracy/.

I managed to undergo 17 years of formal education in the humanities without ever encountering the story of the corporate and government repression of the American working class. In elementary school (in Brooklyn) we were taught about Rosa Parks and we celebrated the American flag.  In high school (in Belfast), we studied the civil rights movement of the 1960’s and the Puritan era. In college (in Dublin), we read Walt Whitman and Zora Neale Hurston. Somehow, the late 19th and early 20th century ownership of the working class by private corporations aided and abetted by the federal government never came up.

I’m starting to see a pattern here. The working class man (and man in particular) has been forgotten.

The neglect and dismissal of what remains of the working class is so much a part of the fabric of society, it is largely unremarked upon.

And that is because, in the United States and now increasingly in the United Kingdom, the plight of the disadvantaged has been fully racialised. Those who are supposed to champion the working class — the left — have fully and completely linked socio-economic disenfranchisement to skin colour.  What a travesty. Every person who still considers themselves to be on the left will have to reckon at some point with this ignorant and immoral stance. 

This is not just an inadequate and misinformed reading of history, it manages to be racist to both people of colour and white people. It is a deliberately malign framing. And it serves a very specific and dangerous purpose.

What is that purpose? To divide us.

Us, the people. Us, the middle, lower middle, and working class folks who work normal jobs and try to live normal lives while being ruled over by wholly unaccountable elites. Us, people of all races and ethnicities who are feeling ever-more threatened by a neo-racism that is now sanctioned by corporations and pushed by the highest levels of government. 

The great polarity of our time is not left and the right. To frame it in those terms is to buy into a false flag operation, a misrepresentation and a misdirection play. The great polarity which defined us is between the powerful few and the powerless many.  This struggle has been co-opted by political ideologies, but in itself it is not political; it is existential.

As the Plutocracy documentary shows, in the early 20th century many Americans were held captive by the corporations for which they worked. An argument could be made that they were treated as poorly as slaves in the plantation south from the century before. They owned nothing and were worked to death. Their homes, schools, doctors, laws and police were wholly owned by the companies they worked for. It was, the film says, industrial feudalism. 

It is my fear that the most powerful corporations of today are pushing us towards a digital feudalism. And to do so, they are using the oldest trick in the book: divide and conquer. 

Critical race theory is the new divide and conquer. 

As Tom Watson, American populist leader in the late 19th century, said: 

 “You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both.”

History comes back wearing different outfits, but there is nothing new under the sun. There are many echoes of past battles in today’s struggle for justice — they are just not what all of the media elites and educational establishment tell you they are.

While the chattering classes and misguided college kids continue to virtue signal their allyship with the toxic CRT religion — which is masquerading as morally just but is in fact tyrannical and racist— more and more regular people are pushing back with basic common decency and fairness. On the front lines are people like Gabrielle Clarke (see Tweet below), the black mother of a mixed race boy who got into trouble at school for refusing to submit to the idea of “whiteness”. Gabrielle and her son are currently suing their local school district in “a landmark legal battle against indoctrination and discrimination.” You can contribute to her legal fees here: https://givesendgo.com/supporttheclarks

Or people like this Louisiana conservative, who put out this very powerful tweet.

Always remember, folks. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.