Anti-Semitism, Hate and CRT

By:  Christopher Arend

Mass demonstrations against Israel in foreign countries are nothing new. Yet we are now surprised, even shocked to see countless thousands of young Americans shouting, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” They apparently want nothing more fervently than the destruction of the state of Israel and the then inevitable slaughter of all Jews living there and for that matter, anyone else who does not accept Hamas-style Islam.

American college students play a major role in the demonstrations, displaying both a visceral hate and an astonishing amount of ignorance about the Middle East. They shout about ending an occupation that had already ended in Gaza in September 2005 when Israel unilaterally withdrew its forces and dismantled Israeli settlements in northern Gaza. If Israel had actually imposed a traditional military occupation on Gaza similar to the Allies’ occupation of Japan and Germany after World War II, any resistance would have been immediately crushed. Hamas would never have been able to launch the barbaric attack on October 7.

The demonstrators prove that just like many talking heads in the mainstream media they know nothing about the concept of proportionality under the international law of war. This is a concept  that has nothing to do with comparing how many deaths occur on each side and instead involves considering the value of a military target with the risk of collateral damage and also the risk to the own forces if a less effective means is used to attack the target. Demonstrators wave LGBTQ+ flags, again completely ignorant about how homosexuality is punished by gruesome death in Gaza and inside the Islamic Republic of Iran who are the main financiers of Hamas

Those American college students participating in the demonstrations apparently know nothing about the history of modern Israel. They rant about colonialism, although Israel was never a British colony and instead was only under a British protectorate after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Modern Israel was created by the United Nations after the shock of the Holocaust in World War II.

Many of Israel’s neighbors since then have wanted nothing more than to realize the Nazis’ “final solution.”  Ignorance about history is not confined to students. Associate professor of history at Cornell University Russell Rickford loudly proclaimed before a pro-Palestinian rally that he found the butchery on October 7 “exhilarating” and “energizing.”

Hate is one of the strongest human emotions. Expressing hate before a crowd and otherwise acting out of hate can indeed be “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Tyrants from the beginning of time have accordingly exploited hate to gain power. “You’re with us or against us” is a powerful tool for suppressing dissent and focusing hostility and violence against a real or often only perceived enemy.

The Nazis were experts at exploiting hate against Jews and others to cement their hold on Germany in the 1930s. America saw in the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd that race-based hate can even tear a democratic society asunder.

When we send our children to college, we expect them to learn critical thinking and resist the temptation to join the mob. Our expectations have been woefully disappointed, especially in the Ivy League and other top universities and colleges. The American journalist Bari Weiss, who is Jewish, recently spoke in an interview on TV a couple of days after the October 7 attack about the “intellectual rot” at our universities.

This rot that Ms. Weiss referred to has a name: Critical Race Theory (“CRT”). Just like its predecessor Marxism, CRT is a fundamentally simple minded way to look at society by dividing our extremely complex and diverse society the oppressor class and the oppressed. Marx used economic class as the distinguishing criterion. CRT uses race in its version of the age old “us versus them” ploy.

As a leading proponent of CRT Ibram X Kendi argues, “[T]here is no neutrality in the racism struggle. … The claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism.” In other words, “You’re with us or against us.” CRT is especially hostile towards “whiteness” and “white privilege.” Jews are considered to be white and privileged and, thus, oppressors, i.e. legitimate targets for hate.

Critical Race Theory has spread in the last 50 years from a movement led by a few legal scholars to an ideology that has infected not only the liberal arts, but also the natural sciences. CRT is characterized by severe intellectual flaws, including circular reasoning, ridiculous redefinition of basic terms such as “racist” to the point that all whites are inherently racist and no person of color can be racist, and a denial of obvious facts. However, CRT has been allowed to flourish in academia because people who reject CRT are automatically labeled racist, the kiss of death to an academic career.

It is now high time that Americans relegate CRT to its proper place in society, namely, an esoteric subject taught as an example of past, failed ideologies such as Communism and Fascism. This ideological battle must be fought by showing the proponents of CRT the severe intellectual weakness of this racist ideology.

A couple of recent books, including James Lindsay’s Race Marxism and my book The Critical Race Theory Scam – Dissecting a Racist Ideology published last August, analyze CRT and show that it is nothing more than a racist ideology couched in pseudo-academic blather. College students can be vaccinated against CRT even before they get to college when given the tools to identify CRT’s foolishness. Academicians must also have the courage to intellectually challenge CRT, even at the risk of angering their fellow professors.

Above all, American political leaders must stop pumping billions of dollars into our system of higher education without insisting on accountability and genuine academic performance. There is no reason why our taxes should be used to generously finance professors intent on tearing down the society that feeds them.

Christopher Arend is the former President of the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District Board (California) and he is the author of “The Critical Race Theory $cam: Dissecting a Racist Ideology”