- FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE - Hugh Fitzgerald - APRIL 6, 2023 -
After a father filed an emergency appeal against Critical Race Theory (CRT) in his son’s classroom, the Berlin Administrative Court has ruled that the racist theory is permitted in Berlin’s classrooms.
The naked discrimination
of Critical Race Theory.
This just in! Germany, whose last encounter with similar stuff led the Germans to murder six million Jews, has just upheld the right of its schools to teach anti-white racism. More on this victory for the naked racism of Critical Race Theory can be found here: “Germany: Berlin court rules anti-White Critical Race Theory can be taught in schools,” by John Cody, Remix News, March 29, 2023:
After a father filed an emergency appeal against Critical Race Theory (CRT) in his son’s classroom, the Berlin Administrative Court has ruled that the racist theory is permitted in Berlin’s classrooms. The court argues that children should “basically be expected to be confronted with the views and values of a pluralistic society – despite a possible contradiction to their own convictions.”
Of course. Always a good idea to “be confronted with the views and values of a pluralistic society.” And the more disturbing those views, why then the more challenging will be our confrontation with them, and the braver we will show ourselves to be. What was it John Milton, the famous author of Paradise Lost, said in his Areopagitica? “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue.” But why stop there, with giving the go-ahead to teaching Critical Race Theory? Why not follow the same line of thought and reintroduce those theories that truly challenge us, that we in Germany have been censoring for so long? I mean, of course, antisemitism, that hasn’t allowed to make its case since 1945. Why should we shut out of careful and sympathetic consideration such an important aspect of modern thought, that has had such a profound effect on our societies, without allowing its proponents to make their cases so that then, having been exposed to what today we are not allowed even to hear or read about, we can make our own judgements as to its worth? We don’t need the nanny state telling us that we aren’t allowed to even hear the case for antisemitismus. That’s why we have free speech! To hear the speech that makes us most uncomofortable. And Critical Race Theory, that now can be taught to our children, makes us quite uncomfortable. What could be a better expression of a free and independent people?
Critical Race Theory, first popularized in the United States, comes in various permutations but is overall defined as anti-White hate theory, which posits that White societies are inherently racist and systematically oppress minorities. The theory arises in the U.S. despite programs like affirmative action, trillions funneled into inner cities to improve minority outcomes in education over the last decades, programs from universities and corporations to recruit minorities to the exclusion of Whites through Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) schemes, government discrimination against Whites, and even preference in medical care for minorities over Whites. Although CRT is not as widespread in Germany [as it is in the US], it is increasingly incorporated into classrooms, especially by activist teachers influenced by progressive trends in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
Several decades ago, American teachers of literature, tired of close reading, went off the deep end by embracing French literary theorists – Hélène Cixous, Tzvetan Todorov, and others associated with the journal Tel Quel. Literary theory replaced literature, and the theory-bound pedant replaced the tweeds-and-pipe old-fashioned professor who encouraged students to caress the words, thus taking all the pleasure, the frisson, the fun out of the whole enterprise. As one consequence, all those people who might once have become enthusiastic teachers of literature, sickened on a surfeit of Judith Butler and Gayatari Spivak, and instead of continuing to teach about the literature that they loved, headed instead for law school and the Uniform Commercial Code. Now Americans have returned the favor, exporting to Europe our most recent contribution to the world of thought, Critical Race Theory. The Europeans, excited as any Shi’ite beating himself with a chain at Ashura, are learning to flagellate themselves for the crime of being White.
In the U.S., books like “Not My Idea” have been promoted in classrooms, which explains to readers that “whiteness” is what drives White people to make “deals with the devil” for “stolen land, stolen riches and special favors.” The book also claims White people get to “mess endlessly with the lives of your friends, neighbors, loved ones, and all fellow humans of color for the purpose of profit.”
The original critical race theorist, in a sense, is Louis K. Farrakhan, the spawn of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who from his mansion in Southside Chicago has for decades been instructing his followers that White People are Devils, which is even stronger than merely “making deals with the Devil.”