Owing largely to a campaign led by Florida, many people are now aware of the fallacies of Critical Race Theory. In recent months, some states have banned the “divisive concepts” of CRT. For example, in Alabama it was reported that:
The bill has examples of divisive concepts such as “individuals, by virtue of race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin, are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.
That any race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior… That’s what a divisive concept is.
Readers familiar with the ideologies of CRT will immediately recognize these concepts. But banning them is no straightforward matter as the same ideas can be expressed using a variety of words and phrases. It is impossible to effectively “ban” CRT concepts from public institutions while still respecting free speech. Banning “concepts” is, in any event, impossible to police, as these concepts are expressed in ordinary language that cannot, of course, be prohibited. Free speech is the paramount principle.
Moreover, it is too late now to ban CRT concepts as these concepts are already deeply embedded in the established lexicon of the Court Intellectuals. David Gordon describes Court Intellectuals as intellectuals who “play a crucial role in getting the public to accept the state” by giving an account of history that depicts state power and state interventions favorably. In the context of understanding history, these Court Intellectuals do not see history as “the result of individual, contingent actions”; instead, they view history as “brought about by impersonal deterministic forces.” Therefore, in the example given by Gordon, instead of “studying the origin of the Civil War [by] looking at Lincoln’s policies,” Court Intellectuals see the Civil War “as an inevitable conflict between the industrial North and the agricultural South.”
While Gordon defends Murray Rothbard’s approach to studying history, which looks at the historical facts and the truth of what actually happened, he criticizes Court Intellectuals for emphasizing the role of “impersonal deterministic forces” and deriving a “structural explanation for [historical] events.” As Gordon explains, the reason Court Intellectuals do this is to depict state interventions as inevitable. In the context of CRT, “structural racism” is seen as the great deterministic force that shaped all events in American history. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Civil War history, where CRT is now the “ordinary language” of explaining that history. The message of Court Intellectuals is that structural racism determined everything, and state interventions are needed to undo the racist structures which are the “legacy of oppression.” A few examples will suffice to illustrate the importance of de-bamboozling this CRT history of the Civil War.
One example is describing Radical Republicans of the nineteenth century as “white allies of African Americans.” The notion of the “ally” is a term of art with a specific meaning in CRT. In CRT, “An ally is anyone from a dominant or majority group that is working towards ending oppression by supporting and advocating for those in marginalized and oppressed groups.” Allies are whites who accept CRT as the ideological lens through which to understand the world.
Moreover, “allyship” is achieved through a process of training, which is often included as part of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness training programs: “Becoming an ally is a process and it isn’t always easy or comfortable. It requires one to recognize the power and privilege that being part of the dominant culture affords them.” This notion, of “the power and privilege that being part of the dominant culture affords them” refers to the CRT concept of “white privilege.” In that light, merely by describing the Radical Republicans of the Reconstruction Era as “allies,” the wrong impression is created that the government’s political goals and ambitions in the 1870s were those now designated in CRT as “working towards ending oppression.”
Another example is the justifications given for dismantling or destroying Confederate monuments. Here an attempt is made—by adopting CRT language—to depict the South as “oppressors” and the North as allies of the “oppressed.” The reason why racism in the South is treated as significant while racism in the North is overlooked is because, in CRT, “racism” is defined as “one group having the power to carry out systematic discrimination through the institutional policies and practices of the society and by shaping the cultural beliefs and values that support those racist policies and practices.”
The group in question is the Confederates, thus all Confederates are “racists” in the CRT sense and anyone who is not a Confederate is not “racist” (or, to be more accurate, the forms of racism they may exhibit are not considered relevant). Being racist is determined by being a Confederate. That is how the statue of Emma Sansom—a sixteen year old Alabama girl—came into the firing line of Black Lives Matter. In 1863, Emma helped General Forrest cross a swollen creek near her home. This action is now described by Court Intellectuals as “guiding to victory the man who would become the first leader of the Ku Klux Klan.” The implication is clear—by tying Emma’s name to the Ku Klux Klan, the reader is meant to understand that she is being indicted for “racism” that occurred several decades after her chance encounter with General Forrest. In addition, Lincoln’s invasion of the South is described as “a struggle to establish a multiracial democracy.” The phrase “multiracial democracy”—like the linking of a teenager in 1863 to the Klan—is anachronistic. This is how CRT language is used to propagate false history.
A final example is the insistence of Court Intellectuals that black Confederates “did not exist” and that “no documentation whatsoever exists” to support the claim that there were any black men in the Confederate ranks. On closer inspection, it turns out that what they mean by “did not exist” is that there were no all-black units (as Confederates did not racially segregate their soldiers), and, if there were, for example, the Louisiana Native Guards, they are said by Court Intellectuals to have played no significant role in combat and to have been merely ceremonial. Even if they were not merely ceremonial, we are told that they only fought “to shield their families from hostile suspicions and hoping to raise their social or political standing in the local community” so we are invited to conclude that they did not exist.
By reasoning in that way, discounting as irrelevant any facts that do not support the Court Intellectuals’ claim that there were no black Confederates, a deterministic history is constructed in which only facts that help the case count as relevant facts. A disputed value judgment, namely, as to whether any significance ought to be attached to the presence of black men in Confederate ranks, is transformed by the dishonest use of language into a claim that they “did not exist” because in the view of Court Intellectuals they should be regarded as if they did not exist.
Historical revisionism true and false
Some professional historians in the United Kingdom are aghast that their field has been taken over by political ideologues, and they are attempting to “reclaim” their academic discipline by highlighting the danger of co-opting the study of history into political disputes. They caution that, “The abuse of history for political purposes is as old as history itself.” History is now regularly conflated with contemporary politics, with CRT activists, “Treating History as a playground in which self-confessed radicals find an outlet for their political instincts,” exhibiting “a desire to use history as a form of cultural subversion.”
This is not to say that revisionism, in itself, is wrong. On the contrary, without revisionism a false account of history would take hold and be treated as if it must never be questioned. This would be fatal to scholarly inquiry and would prevent anyone from being able to challenge the CRT account of history, as challenging Court Intellectuals is also a form of revisionism. In explaining why Murray Rothbard defended revisionism, David Gordon clarifies the correct approach in countering the dominant historical narratives. The dominant reasons given for why a state wages war on another, or indeed on its own people, cannot be “revised” simply by asserting that all established war narratives are a priori false, nor by dismissing out-of-hand anything said by the state simply by reiterating that the state always lies, therefore, everything it says about any war is a lie. Instead, revisionism requires a careful study of the relevant historical facts. This is an important distinction between CRT revisionism and the revisionism which Rothbard defends. The distinction is not one of ideology—as it is obvious that different groups of revisionists have different ideologies—but a difference of method.
As Rothbard explains, his method of revisionism is not based on a priori axioms or theoretical disputation—for example we do not simply assert that the “capitalist” view of history is correct because capitalism is based on correct theory, while the “Marxist” view of history is wrong because Marxism is based on the wrong theory. Instead, historical revisionism is based on examining the facts. Revisionism looks at history “not from the point of view of the state and the ruling class, or from a priori theorizing, but from looking at the raw facts of the case.” That is the correct purpose of revisionism, in Rothbard’s view—to de-bamboozle the public who have been fed a false view of history by Court Intellectuals:
The noble task of Revisionism is to de-bamboozle: to penetrate the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history of the motivation, the nature, and the consequences of State activity. By working past the fog of State deception to penetrate to the truth, to the reality behind the false appearances, the Revisionist works to delegitimate, to desanctify, the State in the eyes of the previously deceived public.
Originally Posted at https://mises.org/