Jeet Heer takes on the "critical race theory" theme

Jeet Heer has a column from two weeks ago in which he makes an important point about when refuting a crackpot conspiracy theory like the "critical race theory" scare that Republicans have taken up, be careful about giving it more credibility than it deserves by focusing on refuting bad-faith claims: Critical Race Theory as a Bogeyman Substack 06/02/2021.

As he puts it on Twitter:

If someone is saying "A bunch of Jews created CRT to stir up race war in America & kill white people" you don't respond by saying, "Well, I have a much more modulated criticism of Adorno & Horkheimer's's Dialectic of Enlightenment." You say "that's an anti-Semitic myth."

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) June 18, 2021

His basic point is correct. The Republican bogeyman of "critical race theory" is actually a dogwhistle phrase meaning, "Scary Jews! Scary black people!"

It's actually a variation/continuation/mutation of the longer-standing far-right conspiracy theory about "Cultural Marxism." And it really does boil down to what Heer summarizes in that tweet. The basic narrative is: the Frankfurt School of the 1930s (Jewish Marxists) begat postmodernism (not even close to accurate) which begat Critical Race Theory. In other words: Scary Jews! Scary black people!

But, as with all conspiracy theories, refuting or debunking it can contribute to actually spreading the conspiracy theory. Debunkers need to be aware of that and be careful. But it's a risk that can't entirley be avoided. Jeet's column itself is an attempt to manage that risk while recognizing that people trying to counter the conspiracy claim need to have some understanding of what is being said in the conspiracy narrative, even if it's more-or-less nuts.

I've recently posted about "critical race theory" and the Cultural Marxism trope from which it derives.

Jeet's column has a link to a disturbing argument from Ruy Teixeira on how the Democrats should respond to this propaganda claim by resorting to a stock Democratic response, which typically does not provide impressive results:

But Jeet does miss something on the brief summary of the claim that he provides:

Fact checking is a necessary but tedious affair. One could go through Woolery’s comments and note that there is no Frankfort school (unless there is a stronghold of Marxism in Frankfort, Kentucky that I’m not aware of. In which case, apologies). The critical theory of the Frankfurt school isn’t to be confused, despite similar names, with critical race theory. The Frankfurt theorists are no longer alive, let alone ruling the roost in Columbia. And Frankfurt school social theories, with the exception of Herbert Marcuse, had little truck with anti-racism. In fact, if the Frankfurt school is to be taxed with anything, it is a tendency towards apolitical quietism and alienation from activism. [my emphasis]

Axel Honneth, one of the leading contemporary philosophers, was head of the present-day Frankfurt School (ISR) until 2018. And he's current a professor of philosophy and Frankfurt (Germany, not Kentucky) and at Columbia University. Other living philosophers associated with the Frankfurt School critical theory" perspective include:

• Jürgen Habermas, who is considered Second Generation Frankfurt School, is generally considered Germany's most important public intellectual. At age 90, he published a two-volume history, 1700-page history of (mostly Western) philosophy with a focus on faith and knowledge.
• Oscar Negt, who is currently publishing a multi-volume history of political philosophy
• Wendy Brown, author of Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (2015)
• Seyla Benhabib, author of Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (2021)
• Rainer Forst, author of Tolerance in Conflict (2016)