… you might recognize key elements of the political disorder in America today. Abe Greenwald makes that argument in the latest Commentary magazine cover story.
[W]hat we’re witnessing is not a temporary surge in extreme ideas. It’s the cultural triumph of those ideas and their institutional enforcement, sometimes with the imprimatur of the government. It is, in our own domestic form, an American version of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Unlike Mao’s campaign, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, our revolution hasn’t been engineered from the top down. It has progressed upward from within the population. Like the Cultural Revolution, however, it is primarily aimed at the leading institutions of the political left. It seeks to remake in its own image the Democratic establishment and those sectors of society associated with present-day liberalism. As it succeeds in this aim, it imposes its writ on the rest of us.
The revolution’s left-liberal targets, in the media and the academy and mass entertainment, have been quick to adapt—some out of genuine sympathy with the cause, others hoping to protect their political standing, and still others out of abject fear. … And the broad acceptance of the revolution in liberal institutions has resulted in a widespread pressure campaign of accusation, confession, and reeducation.
Mao sought to eradicate what he labeled the Four Olds: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas—the established mental life of the country. Our own pressure campaign is shaped by similar goals. The revolutionaries have deemed American customs, culture, habits, and ideas racist. … [T]hey have Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, which shows them all the hidden places where racism is to be found and rooted out.
It turns out, that means everywhere. In July, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture issued guidelines announcing that the scientific method, the importance of hard work, Judeo-Christian belief, respect for authority, planning for the future, protection of private property, and politeness were all manifestations of white dominance.
