Race Marxism Is a Very Strange, Very Bad Book
James Lindsay has a best-selling book out called Race Marxism. Reading the book, you soon learn that Lindsay has a shallow understanding not just of Marxism or racism in the US but the classical liberal tradition he seeks to defend.
James Lindsay speaking with attendees at the 2021 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 19, 2021. (Gage Skidmore / Flickr)
In Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis, James Lindsay accuses critical race theory of being a “sweeping set of conspiracy theories about race and racial power in Western liberal democracies” that is descended from a long line of “Marxist conspiracy theories about the upper class of society.” Lindsay goes on to accuse critical race theory of working to penetrate and undermine “every school, college, university; every workplace, office, hospital; every magazine, journal, newspaper; every television program, movie, website; every government agency, institution, program; every church, synagogue, mosque; every club, affinity, pastime, and interest” in the United States and beyond.
Hearing Lindsay’s paranoid speculations, one suspects that before long critical race theory will have inspired the shooter on the grassy knoll, concealed the remaining Romanov children, and — worst of all — ruined my night at the bar.
In Search of Argumentation
Lindsay’s book is part of a new genre of conservative critiques of the Left. Gone is the old strategy of compensating for reading nothing by saying a lot. Now we get an avalanche of pages that demonstrate the author has read a lot, followed by little in the way of substance or assertion (see Mark Levin’s American Marxism for the gold standard).
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