I agree with all of your election analysis, but think you are missing the key point.
The 60-year old Black-Power/CRT movement gave Nixon and Trump their wins in almost identical ways. Miss that and you miss the essence of the present crisis.
Nixon didn’t win it, the spectacular loss of the working class from 67% Dem in 1964 to 30% Dem in 1…
I agree with all of your election analysis, but think you are missing the key point.
The 60-year old Black-Power/CRT movement gave Nixon and Trump their wins in almost identical ways. Miss that and you miss the essence of the present crisis.
Nixon didn’t win it, the spectacular loss of the working class from 67% Dem in 1964 to 30% Dem in 1972, was caused by the Dem Party takeover by the BP/CRT movement. Their anti-Americanism and pandering to Black radicals alienated the working class. Their identity quotas ousted the working-class Chicago delegation from the ‘72 Convention.
And, No, Civil Rights didn't do it. The '64 CR Act was passed 4 months (and a year of headlines) before LBJ's landslide that still holds the record for the 200 year-old Dem Party.
You need to dig deeper into the past. The movement flipped from physical to psychological violence, but it's still anti-American, anti-white and pro-revolutionary. Technically growth has been exponential and continuous for 60 years (I do math and checked the numbers).
The continuity, power, and revolutionary essence of the BP/CRT movement caused Trump’s win.
And it's not about to stop. It's stronger than ever.
You see the identity trap clearly, but you miss crucial parts of the movement it's embedded in. Postmodernism’s anti-objectivity comes from “Traditional [objective] and Critical Theory,” 1937. You missed that Crenshaw states emphatically that CRT comes from Critical Theory!
Crit historian Peniel Joseph tells us the Black Power Movement started Nov. 10, 1963 (he’s right). Malcolm X called for an anti-white, Black nationalist revolution, emphasizing “bloodshed.” X attacked MLK etc. as Uncle Toms, recommending shooting them like in the Chinese cultural revolution (see Message to the Grass Roots).
Carmichael says X converted him to Black nationalism and names the date. He named and publicly launched the BP movement. Three days later on Face the Nation, June 19, 1966, he gave Derrick Bell his 2 most famous ideas, (1) segregate schools, (2) what Bell later named his “interest convergence principle.” Carmichael also calls MLK’s Civil Rights movement an “insidious subterfuge for the maintenance of White Supremacy.” He repeats these things almost daily on his national speaking tour and succeeds in destroying King’s movement—a black-power gang (Invaders) wrecks King’s final march.
CRT forms and adopts “Bell’s principle” and Intersectionality in 1989. You know this, but you miss that these are both revolutionary (anti-progressive) in the sense that they require things to Get Worse before a Utopia can arise. This is straight out of Crit Theory, 1937. You see Bell as "proudly pessimistic." Not really. Bell is pessimistic only about the progressive approach; he is Strategically “pessimistic.” His “pessimism” is necessary to produce the revolution. CRT feels triumphant because their pessimism about progress is winning. Trump is winning. Their goal is making things worse.
Crit Theory (1937) explicitly rejects the working class (to Trump’s benefit) because they turned on the Marxists in the 1920s and 30s (Hitler and Mussolini). Workers have been captured by capitalist culture, so the dominant culture must be destroyed — by the marginal groups outside the culture. That’s what intersectionality is about!! Crenshaw has many identity groups but divides them all between the “basement” and the oppressive heteropatriarchy on the “floor above.” That binary split is necessary to make the identity trap revolutionary.
Joseph and other Crits vouch for BLM as central to CRT, BLM’s “mother” is Assata Shakur, a leader of the Black Panther’s underground Black Liberation Army dedicated to assassinating police. Kendi says explicitly that he learned his theory of systemic racism from Carmichael’s book, and his theory of anti-racism from Derrick Bell (who got it from Carmichael) and from Malcolm X. This is all one movement that is separate and antagonistic to real progressivism and the Democratic Party.
Google Scholar finds about 40,000 CRT papers/year now. Their total take-home pay roughly equals the combined budgets of Dems and GOP for all elections. This explains all other reasons for Trump.
And that CRT is the underlying ideology behind the woke movement that was indeed a major factor in Trump’s win. And that the analogy to Nixon and the Silent Majority is also quite apt.
But most of the people who are woke - and indeed even most of the radical academics pushing woke / DEI / CRT / oppressor-oppressed ideology - are not specifically about “Black Power” these days. They are about “generic” radical leftist cultural Marxism, within which blacks are just a minority(!) component of the movement.
Hi Andy, I agree. Black Power was a progenitor of CRT, but it's over. However, a number of its ideas live on in CRT. And if you read Alicia Garza's autobiography, The Purpose of Power, she claims to be all about Black Power, but I don't think she quite gets it.
Thanks for joining my substack, but it won't be active for several months. I've got a book to finish first.
I agree with all of your election analysis, but think you are missing the key point.
The 60-year old Black-Power/CRT movement gave Nixon and Trump their wins in almost identical ways. Miss that and you miss the essence of the present crisis.
Nixon didn’t win it, the spectacular loss of the working class from 67% Dem in 1964 to 30% Dem in 1972, was caused by the Dem Party takeover by the BP/CRT movement. Their anti-Americanism and pandering to Black radicals alienated the working class. Their identity quotas ousted the working-class Chicago delegation from the ‘72 Convention.
And, No, Civil Rights didn't do it. The '64 CR Act was passed 4 months (and a year of headlines) before LBJ's landslide that still holds the record for the 200 year-old Dem Party.
You need to dig deeper into the past. The movement flipped from physical to psychological violence, but it's still anti-American, anti-white and pro-revolutionary. Technically growth has been exponential and continuous for 60 years (I do math and checked the numbers).
The continuity, power, and revolutionary essence of the BP/CRT movement caused Trump’s win.
And it's not about to stop. It's stronger than ever.
You see the identity trap clearly, but you miss crucial parts of the movement it's embedded in. Postmodernism’s anti-objectivity comes from “Traditional [objective] and Critical Theory,” 1937. You missed that Crenshaw states emphatically that CRT comes from Critical Theory!
Crit historian Peniel Joseph tells us the Black Power Movement started Nov. 10, 1963 (he’s right). Malcolm X called for an anti-white, Black nationalist revolution, emphasizing “bloodshed.” X attacked MLK etc. as Uncle Toms, recommending shooting them like in the Chinese cultural revolution (see Message to the Grass Roots).
Carmichael says X converted him to Black nationalism and names the date. He named and publicly launched the BP movement. Three days later on Face the Nation, June 19, 1966, he gave Derrick Bell his 2 most famous ideas, (1) segregate schools, (2) what Bell later named his “interest convergence principle.” Carmichael also calls MLK’s Civil Rights movement an “insidious subterfuge for the maintenance of White Supremacy.” He repeats these things almost daily on his national speaking tour and succeeds in destroying King’s movement—a black-power gang (Invaders) wrecks King’s final march.
CRT forms and adopts “Bell’s principle” and Intersectionality in 1989. You know this, but you miss that these are both revolutionary (anti-progressive) in the sense that they require things to Get Worse before a Utopia can arise. This is straight out of Crit Theory, 1937. You see Bell as "proudly pessimistic." Not really. Bell is pessimistic only about the progressive approach; he is Strategically “pessimistic.” His “pessimism” is necessary to produce the revolution. CRT feels triumphant because their pessimism about progress is winning. Trump is winning. Their goal is making things worse.
Crit Theory (1937) explicitly rejects the working class (to Trump’s benefit) because they turned on the Marxists in the 1920s and 30s (Hitler and Mussolini). Workers have been captured by capitalist culture, so the dominant culture must be destroyed — by the marginal groups outside the culture. That’s what intersectionality is about!! Crenshaw has many identity groups but divides them all between the “basement” and the oppressive heteropatriarchy on the “floor above.” That binary split is necessary to make the identity trap revolutionary.
Joseph and other Crits vouch for BLM as central to CRT, BLM’s “mother” is Assata Shakur, a leader of the Black Panther’s underground Black Liberation Army dedicated to assassinating police. Kendi says explicitly that he learned his theory of systemic racism from Carmichael’s book, and his theory of anti-racism from Derrick Bell (who got it from Carmichael) and from Malcolm X. This is all one movement that is separate and antagonistic to real progressivism and the Democratic Party.
Google Scholar finds about 40,000 CRT papers/year now. Their total take-home pay roughly equals the combined budgets of Dems and GOP for all elections. This explains all other reasons for Trump.
I agree with you on a lot of the above.
And that CRT is the underlying ideology behind the woke movement that was indeed a major factor in Trump’s win. And that the analogy to Nixon and the Silent Majority is also quite apt.
But most of the people who are woke - and indeed even most of the radical academics pushing woke / DEI / CRT / oppressor-oppressed ideology - are not specifically about “Black Power” these days. They are about “generic” radical leftist cultural Marxism, within which blacks are just a minority(!) component of the movement.
Hi Andy, I agree. Black Power was a progenitor of CRT, but it's over. However, a number of its ideas live on in CRT. And if you read Alicia Garza's autobiography, The Purpose of Power, she claims to be all about Black Power, but I don't think she quite gets it.
Thanks for joining my substack, but it won't be active for several months. I've got a book to finish first.