Critical Race Theory Deciphering the Gramscian Code Part I

By Michael P. Tremoglie

Fortunately, many people across America have become incensed about the prospect of Critical Race Theory (CRT) being taught in schools. Unfortunately, very few know much about it.

CRT has been around quite a while. Since at least the early 1970s. Yet - as we shall see - its origins date further back in time. For at least two generations those who are now outraged about the doctrine were silent, uttering no protests. Many were oblivious to its existence preferring to remain ignorant. Others knew about it, but said nothing thinking that it was a fringe theory and would vanish with time. Only a few of us warned of the danger Critical Theory, in general, and Critical Race Theory, specifically, presented.

Better late than never as the saying goes - but the enraged must educate themselves about CRT. The few superficial facts - CRT is divisive, CRT is racist - that are mentioned in the media and by politicians are not adequate to oppose CRT’s advocates in the public square. It is vital to have in-depth knowledge about the CRT doctrine. If not the wrath of those opposed to CRT will appear insipid, fatuous, and vacuous - which, incidentally, is how Republicans often appear.

Ergo, learning the nature and the history of the origins of Critical Race Theory are crucial to combating it. Without this understanding it will be impossible to discredit it. Intellectual firepower is essential to expose the proponents of CRT as the ignorant bigots and fanatical lunatics they are.

So consider this essay and those that follow as a CRT primer of sorts.

To begin with, whenever one hears the term “critical” used in a social science context, one should immediately know this is a shibboleth for communist. Critical theory was developed by Marxists for the sanctimonious for the benefit of the ignorant. This is true of all Critical theories, Critical Criminology, Critical Legal Theory, etc.

The thesis, arguably, originated in 1937 with a text by Max Horkheimer, Director of Frankfurt, Germany’s Institute for Social Research (The Frankfurt School). It was titled Traditional and Critical Theory. The etymology of the use of “critical” derives, more than likely, from the use of the word by Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx who used ‘critique’ in their condemnations of Western civilization.

Horkheimer, along with other Leftist luminaries such as Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, and Erich Fromm, propagated the concept among academicians so well that it became accepted as a tenet of by the intelligentsia. But consider who these “enlightened” thinkers really were and are. Their ideas are neither sound, nor new, nor enlightened.

Erich Fromm published a much heralded book The Sane Society which condoned socialism. As we all know, socialism is a system that has caused more genocide, poverty, and despair than any other social order in human history.

Herbert Marcuse was the mentor of Angela Davis, a famous Marxist professor, who co-founded Critical Resistance, a prison abolition organization. Marcuse also claimed that it is impossible for Blacks to be racist because they have no power - a fallacious statement if ever there was one.

Indeed, reading the hypotheses by these and other Leftist intellectuals and their repetition by the professoriate, one will understand implicitly what George Orwell meant when he wrote in 1945 that only the intellectuals believed Soviet propaganda. No ordinary person could be such a fool.

Nonetheless, the American Left reveres these thinkers. This was and is especially true among Leftist academics - which are nearly all academics. But why?

Possibly because, no matter how iconic and how important the Frankfurt School may be in the spread of Western Marxism and Critical Theory, it was not the original source, the font, of Critical Theory. For this we need to turn to the Italian political and social philosopher, journalist, linguist, and writer Antonio Gramsci. He was a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy

Among Gramsci’s prolific writings were his treatment of cultural hegemony and the idea of cultural Marxism. These will be discussed in the next installment in this series.

Next week the influence of Antonio Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, on the founders of Critical Race Theory such as Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, and others.