It has been supposed by a number of commentators that climate change is going to replace COVID as the next major excuse for tyranny in the west. I suspect they are correct (although probably on a longer timeline than they supposed), but the tools, tactics, ends, and means of the climate agenda got me thinking about another controversy that’s been in the headlines recently.
I’ve just finished James Lindsay’s “Race Marxism” on the origin and nature of Critical Race Theory (CRT). I can recommend it for anyone interested in a rather in-depth dive into its Marixst origins. I will avoid a full review here, but I want to summarize a few important concepts:
CRT is essentially Marxian class theory with race replacing economic class as the central organizing principle of society. As Lindsay and the Critical Theorists put it, CRT “centers” race, just as Marxism “centers” class. If you are trying to analyze literally anything in society but do not consider race to be the key factor of your analysis, you are doing it wrong, says CRT. And you are probably racist, but more on that later.
The ultimate stated goal of CRT (Marxism) is to usher in “racial justice” (Communism) a utopian ideal in which race (class) ceases to exist and everyone lives happily ever after. As a precursor to this paradise, there must first be a transitional period led by a dictatorship of antiracists (dictatorship of the proletariat), a panel of unaccountable experts whose job it will be to forcibly enforce antiracism (socialism). At some point, society will spontaneously transform into the aforementioned utopia.
CRT assumes that society is fundamentally racist, has always been racist, and will always be racist (until the dictatorship of antiracists, through cultural revolution, ushers society into Utopia). The idea of incremental progress, or improvements within the existing social structure are worse than ineffective because they placate the masses into thinking we don’t need their revolution. Since society must be racist, any perceived improvement can only be obfuscating racism, making it more difficult to detect, even by those who are supposedly benefiting from it.
CRT progresses by producing more Critical Race Theorists. That is its only output. Its entire raison d'être is to infiltrate existing institutions and either destroy them or transform them into factories for the advancement of CRT.
CRT is intersectional.
Since society is racist by construction, any objection to CRT must be either ignorant or made in bad faith. Suggesting that something isn’t racist is racism. Providing evidence that racism is not present is racist. Anything outside of CRT is invalid by the presuppositions of CRT itself. Everything is taken as evidence that CRT is correct. Nothing is seen as a refutation of CRT. In short, it is unfalsifiable.
I’d lastly point out that CRT shares this basic structure with all so-called critical theories, with race substituted for whichever marginalized group is being considered (class in Marxism, sex in feminist theory, gender in queer theory, BMI in fat studies, etc.).
With this basic understanding in place, I noticed some striking similarities both to the recent COVID craze and to climate hysteria. And that’s when it hit me. Climate change is a Critical Theory! Call it Critical Rain Theory.
(Quick aside: I do not mean to comment here on the real possibility of human activity having an effect on climate, anymore than a critique of Critical Race Theory automatically denies the existence of racism. This kind of motte and bailey is one of the typical tricks of Critical Theories. Do not fall for it.)
Critical Rain Theory is Marxist class theory, with climate replacing class, just as Critical Race Theory is Marxism with race replacing class. What could be more important, after all, than the ultimate fate of the environment? How could it not be “centered”? All commerce, politics, conflict, and thought must be reconsidered in light of the affect on climate.
The goal of Critical Rain Theory is the transformation of society to a Utopian one where we live in perfect harmony with nature, using “clean energy” and reducing our carbon footprint. How this Utopia will defy the laws of physics and supply and demand is unclear (like most Marxist theories, it involves a lot of human suffering and death), but to transition to this Communist Utopia, first requires strict statist control. Call it a dictatorship of the environmentalist.
Critical Rain Theory implicitly assumes humanity in inherently in opposition to the environment. They often won’t say this part out loud, but the agenda is explicitly anti-human. What is more explicit is that it is anti western civilization.
It isn’t enough to drive less, or find alternate energy sources (nuclear anyone?). Society must be remade according to the “experts” and that can only be done through socialist control.
Critical Rain Theory is surprisingly intersectional, as well. Never mind that it will supposedly end life on earth and cause the suffering of billions, it will also hurt oppressed victim groups.
This carries with it all the usual baggage of intersectionality and allows the unification of groups with nominally different objectives but the same goal: control over you and the ability to remake society as they see fit.
Opposition to Critical Rain Theory is accused of either being in bad faith (“you must be funded by big oil!”), ignorant (“93% of scientists agree, you must be anti-science”), or the result of not having a critical consciousness of rain. Because the conclusion they would normally seek to prove is implicit in the theory, Critical Rain Theorists cannot be proven wrong. It’s hot out today? Clearly evidence they are correct. Cold? You don’t know the difference between weather and climate. More intense storms? Evidence. Fewer? Also evidence. Models failing to predict the suspected warming for decades? Clearly the extra heat is going somewhere, so things are actually going to be even worse than we expected. I guess climate change, like racism, can become systemic, making it even more powerful and even more pernicious.
A few distinguishing features of Critical Rain Theory before I conclude, many of which portend it being an even more dangerous tool than the theories that preceded it. First, while most Critical Theories focus on an existing social minority to isolate and radicalize (Women, African Americans, the morbidly obese) Critical Rain Theory takes as its oppressed group some union of future generations and the entire planet. In the first case, children make an insidious target for radicalization, working to turn them against their parents and relying on their naivete about who can be trusted. But even more impressive is that Critical Rain Theory avoids one of the biggest PR obstacles Critical Theory faces: members of the alleged victim group who don’t want to go along with their dogma. Happy, willing stay-at-home moms and successful black conservatives make a mockery of the Theory.
In the case of Critical Rain Theory, the victims, be it your children’s children’s children or trees and fish and polar bears and all the creatures of the earth quite literally cannot speak for themselves. This is the Critical Theorists greatest dream: a victim group who cannot complain that you claim to speak on their behalf.
The other differentiating quality is the veneer of scientific rigor. Despite the protestations of academics in those fields, no one really looks at the output of Critical Race Theory or Queer Studies and thinks that it is scientific. Indeed, the Grievance Studies Affair and Sokal Hoax made a point of mocking the standards of rigor in these fields. Critical Rain Theory is different. It has become quantitative. Researchers can take measurements and perform experiments. They can design models and make falsifiable predictions. We can objectively measure the temperature or count the number of tornadoes. Despite some hilarious efforts to the contrary, we can’t measure racism.
This has made intrusion into the relevant academic discipline the most difficult for Marxists. Taking over an Education department didn’t require any real skill or competency, you just needed the assent of your colleagues. Breaking into a quantitative scientific field is more difficult; you have to look like you know what you are talking about. I won’t get into the myriad ways that has been accomplished here, but the result is an authority that other Critical Theories could only dream of. For all the talk of scientific socialism, no one has really pretended it was scientific since Lysenko.
Until now.
Critical Rain Theory
Check out some more interesting ideas about 'climate change' here:
https://capost2k.wordpress.com/2022/09/03/brace-yourself-were-all-gonna-die-in-12-years-alexandra-ocasia-cortez-a-former-bartender-said-so-in-2019/
Thanx for your excellent reporting.
mr. c.a. post
This is interesting. You claim that you are not commenting on whether climate change is real or not, but then heavily imply that it isn’t, and that anyone who thinks it is is a sucker for SJW thought policing.
You must see the danger of the precise contrary to wokeness here-you can also be so fixated on wokeness and cultural Marxism that any genuine concern becomes framed in the context of the culture war, and to take it seriously is automatically to be on the wrong side, regardless of what the evidence suggests. Hopefully you would agree that the only thing that actually should matter is evidence for and against the truth of a premise, not who happens to agree with it or not. So what do you actually believe?