New Discourses
New Discourses
Pursuing the light of objective truth in subjective darkness.
Agitation and Propaganda: The Battlespace of the 21st Century
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 159
By virtue of the technological world we inhabit, we live in a propaganda-saturated environment. In fact, whether we like it or not, we all live in a psychological warfare battlespace, which requires us all to prepare ourselves for that environment. As ever, preparation begins with understanding. In this deep-diving episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay pulls back the curtain on "agitprop," the combination of agitation an
The Road Away from Radicalization
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 158
Enough is enough. While there is much need for purposed action around the world to set our countries to right, we are rapidly realizing we've had enough radicalism. But radicalism, often in answer to radicalism, is still rapidly on the rise. These facts raise an important question: What is the road away from radicalization? How do we deradicalize generations? An answer can be found in the religious spirit cultivated by the Christian and Jew
We Are the Fake News Now
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 157
"We are the media now!" So we hear. Much of that media is social media, and social media is a psychological and political warfare battlespace. More than that, it's incredibly fake. What we see there is mostly a well-crafted illusion meant to distort our perceptions of social and political reality. In this short episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay walks you through some of the many ways what we see on social media simpl
Never Again Is Now
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 156
How in the world did people become Nazis? How could it have happened? These are questions we grew up with and, maybe, always hoped against hope we wouldn't be able to answer. There's a comfort in them remaining mysterious, but in that comfort we're vulnerable. How can we possibly make good on "Never Again" if we do not know how it happened? Sadly, today we're threatened with the same menace. Sadly, today, we're learning not how it could hav
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 111
In the fight against the Woke, there is so much to be done. Luckily, there are also many hands eager to help in the work. Personally, as I travel the country and speak and meet with thousands of everyday Americans, many express to me their fear that they're too small to make a difference. Nothing could be further from the truth! In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, I, James Lindsay as your host share an important message about how everyone, no matter how sm
America's Sons and the Dark Temptation of the Woke Right
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 155
America, we're losing our sons. A decade ago, the Woke Left arose rapidly in feminist circles and stole many of our daughters, and now the reaction is here, a "Woke Right" that is drawing our sons to Fascism, hatred, and Nazism. It can no longer be denied, and it must be confronted. What draws our young men, and also our young women, to this Woke Right monstrosity? Seductive lies fed into fear and pain. In this episode of the New Discourses
The Propaganda of Telling the Truth, Falsely
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 110
Our present circumstance is a political warfare battlefield, like it or not. That means we are inundated with propaganda from all sides. Propaganda, of course, takes many forms, and one of the most common, subtle, and effective is what can be called "telling the truth, falsely," or "being right, wrongly." In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay outlines this bread-and-butter propaganda tactic to help you become better able to see it and resi
Welcome to the Two-Front War Against Woke
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 154
It is upon us: the fight against Woke is now a two-front war. On our Left, we have Woke Marxism that hasn't gone away. Arising rapidly from our Right, we now also have a Woke Fascism that threatens to ruin everything we've accomplished. Those of us who love America now have to fight the battle against Woke on two fronts: Woke Left and Woke Right. In this free-ranging episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay discusses the cu
Leftism Means Coveting Power
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 109
There are many ways we could conceive of Leftism, and one of the best is that it is a covetous relationship with power. It's easy to understand how toxic and bad that is, if not evil. Yet here we are at a crossroads in world history, and we're being led toward precisely that pit. There's a popular line out there now that goes something like this: "the Left wants power, and conservatives don't. That's why conservatives always lose." The implication is that conserv
Our Present Choice: Catharsis or Civilization
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 108
America is at a crossroads, and how it chooses may affect the fate of the entire world. Though there are different ways to conceive of the choice that lies before us, one is that we will have to choose between catharsis and civilization. It's unlikely we can have both, so this choice is incredibly important and deadly serious. If we choose catharsis, a sweet release of all our anger and frustration from the oppression and chaos of Woke Marxism, we will likely ups
Drag Queens as Priests of Queer Theory
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 107
Queer Theory, which is to say Queer Marxism, is a religious cult, as discussed at length in The Queering of the American Child (https://amzn.to/40GX0i5). So what's the role of the drag queen in this cult? While much has been said on this issue to clarify for people that the drag queen in the presence of children is meant to be the purveyor of an initiation rite into Queer Marxism for the kids, a clear explanation of why they're chosen would be of use. In this epi
Socialism, Communism, Marxism; What's the Difference?
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 106
Socialism, Communism, and Marxism are clearly related ideas, but they're not identical. What's the difference? People ask all the time. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay explains each of these concepts and how they differ from one another while offering some insights into other related concepts like Fabian Socialism and Fascism. Join him to increase your clarity on these issues.
New book! The Queering of the American Child: https://qu
Korenizatsiya: Stalin's Soviet DEI Program
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 153
Did you know the Soviet Union ran a DEI program exactly like the Woke Marxist one of today? How about Mao's China? As it turns out, DEI isn't an American invention. It's a Soviet invention and Soviet export, designed, outlined, and implemented by Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin in the USSR in the 1920s. The results were predictable, of course: massively increasing ethnic strife arising from within the world's most widespread Affirmative Act
Why Communism Is So Deadly
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 105
We all know Communism is perhaps the world's deadliest ideology, but what makes it that way? As it turns out, there's a simple reason Communism leads to mass murder, starvation, and death, and it's this: Communists believe Communism can never be wrong. What this amounts to in practice is that when Communist programs start to fail, it cannot be that they were bad ideas in the first place. It can only be that someone failed to do them right, and, as it always happe
Panel: Why We Need New Discourses | Boghossian, Doyle, Lindsay, Nayna, O'Fallon, Pluckrose
In the Panel: Why We Need New Discourses, held on October 13, 2019, in London, panelists Peter Boghossian, Andrew Doyle, James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Mike Nayna, moderated by Michael O'Fallon, came together to critique the influence of social justice ideology on academia and public discourse. Each speaker addressed the effects of ideological capture, particularly in social institutions and education, arguing that social justice’s rigid worldview distorts reality and suppresses open conver
The Real Purpose of Safe Spaces
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 104
"Safe spaces" on college campuses are not new. In fact, they're now a very old, very tired topic. So is all of the "Coddling of the American Mind" (https://amzn.to/3O6nEtl) infantilization like we recently saw on campuses across America in the wake of President Trump's second electoral victory. The thing is, these obviously pathetic phenomena serve an educational purpose. That is, they're pedagogical. Their real purpose is to convince young minds that it is traum
Doing Social Justice Responsibly | Helen Pluckrose
In her talk, Doing Social Justice Responsibly on October 13, 2019 at the 'Speaking Truth to Social Justice' conference in London, Helen Pluckrose tackled the ideological excesses within social justice activism, offering a way to address genuine social justice issues without abandoning reason or liberal principles. She argued that the dominant framework in social justice today—rooted in critical theory and postmodernism—has transformed genuine concerns about power and privilege into a rigid world
The Hoax that Broke the Conservative Internet
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 152
On December 3, 2024, James Lindsay revealed to the world that he had perpetrated a hoax (https://newdiscourses.com/2024/12/a-communist-manifesto-for-christian-nationalists-testing-the-woke-right/) against the nominally "Christian Nationalist" magazine American Reformer in which he had rewritten a significant portion of the Communist Manifesto to flatter their "Woke Right" ideology. In the ensuing days, the hoax has caused quite a stir on th
Communism 3.0: Corporate Communism | James Lindsay
The EVILution of Communism Workshop, Session 4
Communism is a religious view that has evolved and adapted over the last two centuries, including right up to the present day. Understanding the developments and threats in our present world requires understanding what Communism really is, especially in its Marxist variants, and how it has developed and changed over the years. In response to this need, James Lindsay of New Discourses held a four-lecture workshop series on the EVILution of Communism
The Thing You Run Into When Your Beliefs Are False | James Lindsay
In this October 2019 lecture at the conference 'Speaking Truth to Social Justice' in London, James Lindsay presented a compelling critique of critical social justice and its ideological foundation in critical theory. He argued that this worldview fundamentally rejects objective truth, reason, and evidence-based methods, which are essential for genuine progress. According to Lindsay, critical theorists prioritize “strategic” theories over true or false ones, seeking to advance political agendas r
Is the "Woke Right" Really Woke? | OnlySubs with James Lindsay, Ep. 142
This episode of the OnlySubs Podcast with James Lindsay is available for FREE! To get access to all past and future episodes, consider becoming a contributor. Learn more: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/announcing-new-subscribers-only-podcast-james-lindsay/
What is the "Woke Right"? Does it really exist? Is it really Woke? If so, how? These are increasingly important questions in our present circumstances as a visibly radicalized Rightism is emerging from within the broader conservative coali
Communism 2.5: Social Communism | James Lindsay
The EVILution of Communism Workshop, Session 3
Communism is a religious view that has evolved and adapted over the last two centuries, including right up to the present day. Understanding the developments and threats in our present world requires understanding what Communism really is, especially in its Marxist variants, and how it has developed and changed over the years. In response to this need, James Lindsay of New Discourses held a four-lecture workshop series on the EVILution of Communism
Panel: Grievance Studies | Boghossian, Lindsay, Nayna, O'Fallon, Pluckrose
In October 2019, James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose, and filmmaker Mike Nayna gathered in London for a panel moderated by Michael O’Fallon to reflect on the infamous "Grievance Studies" project (https://grievanceproject.com/), often called "Sokal Squared." This provocative project involved writing and submitting intentionally absurd papers filled with ideological jargon to academic journals. Their aim was to demonstrate how deeply critical social justice ideologies had compromised
Woke for Dummies
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 151
What is "Woke"? What is its relationship to "Social Justice"? Why did so many people explain Woke as "Critical Social Justice" for several years? In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay takes you into the book that first opened his eyes to what "Woke" really is: Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo's Is Everyone Really Equal? (first edition) (https://amzn.to/4eHH5Ed). This book could truly serve as an eye-opening "Woke
Be a Leader or Be a Supporter
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 103
In the fight against Woke Marxism, there is no sitting out anymore. Too much is on the line. That means everyone who realizes what's going on in our countries and around the world has a simple choice to make: be a leader or be a supporter. Leaders have to lead, and they need supporters, not merely followers. It's up to you to figure out which one you have the capacities to be, and where, and to take up that mantle. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host
Communism 2.0: Industrial Communism | James Lindsay
The EVILution of Communism Workshop, Session 2
Communism is a religious view that has evolved and adapted over the last two centuries, including right up to the present day. Understanding the developments and threats in our present world requires understanding what Communism really is, especially in its Marxist variants, and how it has developed and changed over the years. In response to this need, James Lindsay of New Discourses held a four-lecture workshop series on the EVILution of Communism
What is the Woke Right?
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 102
Something is rotten in the state of the conservative movement. Namely, a broad and diffuse coalition of radical Right-wing elements has arisen and begun to mature bearing unmistakable hallmarks of Woke behavior while claiming Right-wing status and conservative values. Some have called it the "Woke Right," which in certain ways is a very good name for it, although "Right Hand of the Left" is also good. In this first introductory episode on the topic, host James Li
The Basics of Cultural Marxism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 150
Cultural Marxism is a challenging term that refers to a broad Leftist social phenomenon that took place in the West through the twentieth century into the present. Based upon but modifying the Communist religion of Karl Marx, Western (Cultural) Marxism sought to find a way to infiltrate and seize the means of production of Western Civilizational culture in the hopes of opening it up to socialism (or Communism). In the 1910s through the 1930
Communism 1.0: Theoretical Communism | James Lindsay
The EVILution of Communism Workshop, Session 1
Communism is a religious view that has evolved and adapted over the last two centuries, including right up to the present day. Understanding the developments and threats in our present world requires understanding what Communism really is, especially in its Marxist variants, and how it has developed and changed over the years. In response to this need, James Lindsay of New Discourses held a four-lecture workshop series on the EVILution of Communism
The DARVO Of "You're Divisive!"
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 101
DARVO is an acronym that refers to a particular abusive behavior that applies when the abuser is caught or called out. It stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender: DARVO. DARVO takes many forms, but in wedge operations it very frequently takes the form of being divisive and then accusing the people who call it out of being divisive. It fits the mold: Deny: "I'm not divisive!" Attack: "You're divisive!" in such a way that it Reverses t
Lenin and the State
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 149
Vladimir Lenin established the Bolshevik Party in 1912 to seize control of the socialist movement in Russia and to plan and execute a violent revolution against the Tsar, and by 1917 he was successful in this attack. Also in 1917, on the eve of his victory, he wrote his thoughts about the organization of the state and how the revolution should proceed, both to box out his socialist competitors and to establish a theoretical baseline drawing
21st Century Communism
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 100
Communism hasn't died, despite what many would have you believe. It has evolved and adapted for the 21st century. What you see under the CCP in China, that's the Chinese Communist Party, today and what we deal with under ESG and the UN Agenda 2030 in the West is 21st Century Communism, which appears to fulfill Marx, not contradict him, at least in certain ways. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay spends a few minutes to explain to you ho
Communism 3.0: The Succession of Capitalism and the China Model
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 148
Karl Marx characterized Communism as "the negation of the negation," which is a peculiar turn of phrase he borrowed from his theoretical predecessor G.W.F. Hegel. What that means is that propertied societies, whether slave, feudal, or capitalist, negate our innate Communist ("social") nature, and then Communism in turn negates capitalism as the highest form of development of the productive organizational modes of society. Well, the negation
Don't Trust Woke Language
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 99
If there's one trait that anti-Communists need more than others, perhaps aside from courage, it's discernment. The need to discern the true agendas of Marxists and even to discern the very meanings of the words being used by Marxists is an indispensable skill that must be learned and cultivated to deal with times like ours, which involve an attempted Communist revolution. Discernment in this regard begins with suspicion, though, particularly the suspicion that wha
The Unhappy Rebellion of Radical Joy
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 147
We're hearing a lot about "joy" now that the Kamala Harris and Tim Walz campaign have made it a byword of their project, so we have to ask what they mean by it. We all know, by this point, that Communists share your vocabulary but do not share your dictionary. So what might they mean by "joy"? Well, it appears what they mean by joy is "radical joy," which is a kind of religious ecstasy associated with believing they are going to accomplish
Woke Isn't Insane; It's Evil
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 98
We need a perspective shift. It's extremely common to hear people saying how "insane" or "crazy" Woke Marxism is, or to rhetorically ask "what are they thinking?" perhaps with a suggestion of "it won't work." Marxism is destructive, on purpose, and being befuddled about their destructive programs doesn't help us stop them. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay breaks down the simple idea necessary for this shift in perspective: they have di
Lenin and the Brutal Magic of Communism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 146
One of the great paradoxes of Communism is that in the end, the state is supposed to "wither away," leaving a stateless, classless society in which there is high functioning and little or no want. This circumstance is presented as different to the other stages of history, which are said to proceed through revolutionary overthrow of the existing system. In particular, socialism is meant to be born out of capitalism through a violent proleta
Teilhard de Chardin and the Religion of Progress
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 145
Leftism is religious. In fact, it's occult-mystical religious, a vast suite of denominations of "transformative" religions of "Progress." Progress toward what, though? Higher consciousness, in fact, collective consciousness, which is supposedly man's true but forgotten nature. The goal: to evolve humanity, collectively, to become master of the universe, which is to say God. This religion and its aspects are fully visible throughout all the
DEI is "Speaking Bitterness"
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 97
In Mao's China, the population was turned against itself through relentless campaigns known as "Speaking Bitterness." Of course, this was prompted and forced by the Communists, and it worked to their advantage by tearing apart the fabric of the communities they were "transforming." We have been doing the same thing here in the West, primarily at work and in our schools, under names like "DEI training," "unconscious bias training," "Social-Emotional Learning," and,
The New Law and Politics of Parental Rights
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 144
Leftists believe the state owns your children. Never has that been more evident than in the last few years, at least in Western nations, and the result has been a momentous pushback against them. The Parents Rights movement is the beating heart of the resistance to Woke Marxism, and it's changing the world for the better. The Woke Marxists, for their part, have noticed, though, and they're not just pushing back and "navigating parental resi
Pierre Trudeau, the Club of Rome, and the Degrowth of Canada
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 143
Canada is in a lot of trouble, but few of us realize how far back the trouble really began. In 1968, Canada was swept with a madness affectionately called "Trudeaumania," and a new prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, was swept into office with an interest in making major transformational changes to the Canadian circumstance. Though his ambitions were greater than what the political environment in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s could tolerate, th
James Lindsay Condemns the UN in Geneva
The United Nations is an evil organization, and it's time for us to recognize it. Fortunately, We Are The Change, part of the Inspired Network (https://www.theinspirednetwork.org/ ), put on a rally outside the United Nations headquarters in Geneva on June 1st to help the world do just that. Among the invited guest speakers to this huge rally, which had over 3,000 people in attendance, was James Lindsay, owner of New Discourses and host of the New Discourses Podcast. Lindsay delivered a short, fi
Reflexivity Leftism In The 21st Century
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 96
Dialectical Leftism doesn't just do the old Marxist thing anymore. There's a new dialectical game in town that allows Marxists worldwide to transcend classical Marxism, including in the Chinese Communist Party over the last few decades. That method is called "reflexivity," as it was outlined as a so-called "shoelace dialectic" by George Soros in his famous book The Alchemy of Finance (https://amzn.to/3XjXqJp). Host James Lindsay detailed the Soros method (https://
Do Your Homework!
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 95
To be successful at pushing back at Woke Marxism, you have to know some Woke Marxism and know it pretty well. It's not enough to have a tacit sense of what "Woke" or its programs are about. You have to be somewhat knowledgeable. Leftists are extremely good at discrediting their opposition by making them look dumb (or ignorant, or uninformed), evil, or crazy, and they will spring questions on unsuspecting activists to create this image. Preventing them the easy ent
Voting as a "Social Determinant of Health"
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 142
A Woke concept that doesn't get nearly the attention it demands is the concept of various "Determinants of Health (DoH)." They are institutions, systems, and societal structures that have health-relevant outcomes, and the Woke Marxists have a few objectives in pushing this perspective, which amounts to "society is preventing you from having optimal health and needs to be controlled by Woke Marxists." There are social determinants of health
The Political Definition Of Queer
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 94
Queer Theory is one of the most destructive ideas ever to have been loosed onto our society from the halls of academia, as we have documented in the recent book The Queering of the American Child (https://amzn.to/3K2HovQ ). But do you know the definition of "queer"? Do you know that it's not possible to be queer, only to act queer? Do you know it has almost nothing to do with gay people? Do you know it's virtually guaranteed by definition to encourage pedophilia?
The Global Pagan Theocracy of the United Nations
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 141
The more one looks at the United Nations, the weirder it gets, particularly when looking at Robert Muller. In a recent episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay exposed the fruitbat theosophical religion (https://newdiscourses.com/2024/04/occult-theosophy-united-nations/ )Muller urged that international organization to take up as part of its Millennium Assembly to define a new world order for the 21st century and 3rd millen
Woke Marxism Rejects Prosperity
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 93
Surely you've noticed that Woke doesn't work. Of course it doesn't. It's not just bad ideas put into operation by bad people and obvious grifters, though, that causes the problem. Woke Marxism isn't even interested in making things work. In fact, it's worse than that, even. Woke Marxism is, by definition, hostile to making things work. It is, as Herbert Marcuse put it in An Essay on Liberation (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1969/essay-li
Communists Are Good At Conquest
New Discourses Bullet, Ep. 92
There's an old saying about Communists that applies to all militant ideologies: they are good at conquest and bad at management. That's only half of the story. The fact is that because of their cult-religious nature, various strains of Communism aren't just bad at management; they're completely disinterested in management. That is, they don't want to make things work; they just want to control people and institutions to make more Communists. In this episode of New
Queer Theory Is the Doctrine of a Sex-Based Cult
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 140
Queer Theory is the doctrine of a sex-based cult that has very little to do with gay people and lots of interest in our children. We really need to understand that. Based on remarks James Lindsay delivered at the University of Pittsburgh in February 2024, in this episode of the New Discourses podcast, he makes even more clear why Queer Theory defines a cult and how it works as such, particularly to initiate our kids.
New book! The Que
Easter In The Woke Cult
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 91
Woke Marxism is a cult. It's not like a cult. It's not kind of a cult. It's a cult. Because it's a cult, and like the word "Woke" implies, becoming Woke means experiencing a rebirth into the social, emotional, and intellectual worldview of the cult's doctrine. In fact, fathers of Woke Marxist theory, like Paulo Freire, are explicit about this aspect of Woke Marxism in the starkest possible terms. For Freire, awakening to critical consciousness (becoming Woke) is a
The Lie Of Planned Spontaneity
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 90
Regardless of the issue (BLM, Drag Queen Story Hour, Pride, or a college uprising), the ideological totalism of Woke Marxism uses classic tactics to advance itself. One of those is a kind of manipulation through what is called "planned spontaneity," a clear oxymoron. Planned spontaneity is a "mystical manipulation," in the words of Robert Jay Lifton, that gives the totalizing cult the appearance of incredible, widespread, organic support, if not omniscience. The c
Digital Cattle
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 89
Our future, if the Woke Marxists prevail, may well be to be made into "digital cattle." What does that mean? It means that we will be led into a state of dependency, perhaps using a Universal Basic Income, and enter into a remade (distributist) economy based on social credit, which is to say compliance with the state's agendas for us. To make this system work, both practically and in terms of control mechanisms takes incredible amounts of data. Like cattle who ear
The Occult Theosophy of the United Nations
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 139
The United Nations is a religious organization, and the religion behind it is a cult. More specifically, it is a theosophical cult based on an "evolutionary" vision for mankind that it wants to control. This fact is revealed in a strange book by late UN big-wig and creator of the World Core Curriculum (Common Core in the United States), Robert Muller, from about 25 years ago titled 2000 Ideas for a Better World, which he published in fo
How Tyrants Force Compliance
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 88
Compliance can be extracted by tyrants from a population through a straightforward method of creating enmity between segments of the population. First, the population is split into those who comply with the tyrant's programs and policies and those who do not comply. If there are enough among the compliant, a demonization campaign we should call "hatecraft" is employed to pressure those dragging their feet to comply and to demonize those who refuse compliance. Perh
The Reflexive Alchemy of George Soros
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 138
George Soros has a theory of change, and his goal is to make and move history. That theory of change is easy to understand if we take the time. It is also explicitly dialectical and alchemical. For Soros, society moves "historically" during times of chaos when people are searching for guideposts for what the future will bring, and it proceeds through change by "fertile fallacies," which are the seeds of what has elsewhere been called ma
You Need To Love The Truth
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 87
We all know we have to tell the truth, especially in these trying times. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn told us that a single man telling the truth could bring down a regime. Well, how do you tell the truth against those odds? You need a lot more than knowing you should tell the truth. You have to love the truth (and fear it!) with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength, and then you need to tell your neighbor the truth as you would expect him
Staying Out Of Affordance Traps
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 86
One of the most potent techniques dialectal wizards make use of is setting "affordance traps." An affordance trap is a way to trap their targets into a very limited range of options (which are afforded to them), usually with the psychological effect of making it difficult or impossible to think of any other possibilities other than those offered. Breaking free of affordance traps is necessary to beating Woke Marxism and all other forms of dialectical manipulation.
China's Neoliberal Communism
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 85
How should we describe the system currently used in China? It's the CCP, Chinese Communist Party, so it's obviously a Communist nation, but look at the crazy-rich Asians and the huge corporations there. It's not Uncle Joe's Communism, that's for sure. So, what is it? Whether we want to call it Chinese Communism, Communism 3.0, or Neoliberal Communism, it's a Communist state that's operating with a controlled, Potemkin neoliberal "market" economy. In this episode o
Communism Marries a Truth to a Lie
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 84
"Communism marries a truth to a lie." -Julie Behling, author of Beneath Sheep's Clothing (https://amzn.to/3UDPwtc) and director of a forthcoming documentary (http://beneathsheepsclothing.movie) by the same title.
One of the most basic truths about how Marxism works is that it marries a truth to a lie. Another way that has been put is that "every Woke term conceals an agenda" (https://newdiscourses.com/2023/05/woke-terms-conceal-agendas). In order to combat Woke M
Love and Praise for The Queering of the American Child
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 137
"American education is in the grip of a religious cult." That's the first sentence of the newest book coming out from New Discourses: The Queering of the American Child (https://queeringbook.com), by Logan Lancing with James Lindsay. This religious cult, which is called Queer Theory and Queer Activism, represents the basis for the greatest child-abuse scandal in history, and it's time parents, grandparents, teachers, and citizens learn
How to Allocate Your Resources
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 83
Many of us are working tirelessly to fight Woke Marxism and its attempted takeover of our societies, but the question is whether we're working as effectively and efficiently as we can. Often, we aren't, and it's discouraging, frustrating, exhausting, and demoralizing. When we are, though, we get the opposite effects: morale builds, momentum is generated, and winning builds upon winning. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay introduces the "
The Corruption of Stakeholder Capitalism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 135
Stakeholder Capitalism is a scam. Though not particularly well-known outside of certain business circles, it is the model associated with Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. Its basic form is this: the purpose of the company itself has to change, not to serve customers and generate profit for shareholders but instead to "serve all stakeholders." Its mechanism is also unsurprising: ESG, Environmental, Social, and Governance scorin
The Real DEI Program
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 82
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are three words that symbolize a program that a rapidly growing proportion of people across Western nations recognize to be nefarious. Indeed, they are Communist, as has been amply discussed on this podcast and on others. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay breaks this fact down another way. In it, he suggests that "Diversity" represents politicizing, "Equity" represents redistribution, and "Inclusion" rep
Disability Studies and the Limits to Equity
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 135
We all know that equity is a form of socialism now, almost. We're also entering a new phase of the societal debate about the topic, so it's worth clarifying the issue. As it turns out, we do embrace and want to embrace certain forms of "equity" programs as it is actually defined, but only under certain conditions. Those limits to equity are most comprehensible by the many approaches to disability discussed in both the sane and the Woke-
How The Pendulum Really Swings
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 81
We all hear about the pendulum swinging in politics. We're also all aware that the pendulum is currently pushed very far Left, leading people to suspect it will swing back hard soon; indeed, maybe too hard. It's important to understand how Work Marxists and other Leftists throughout history have made intentional and productive use of the pendulum swinging. It is their style to arrange affairs so that when the pendulum swings back, it has also moved position so tha
DEI as Stochastic Entryism
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 80
Entryism (https://newdiscourses.com/2023/12/communist-entryism/) is the idea of infiltrating an institution with hostile subversives. It's a name for a variety of strategies for getting them in where they're not wanted. DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs achieve an entryist goal through an indirect method that involves a bit of randomness. That is, they're stochastic entryism. The way they work is to increase the probability of hiring people who are a
Understanding Reflexive Environments
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 79
A magic word for Woke Marxists and their shrewd handlers is "reflexivity." Reflexivity is the energy that makes revolutions go. Most of us, since we're not wizards who want to manipulate society to our own ends, don't think in reflexive terms, and so we not only fail to recognize the use of reflexive political warfare tactics against us, we also tend to fall for them. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay introduces the concept of reflexivi
The Need for Linguistic Discipline
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 78
Woke Marxists overwhelmingly take advantage of malicious language games. That means you cannot be linguistically lazy when trying to deal with their incursions. We have to start cultivating a habit of linguistic discipline to take apart Woke word magic. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay explains the need for linguistic discipline with several important examples. Join him to start training.
Get James Lindsay's new book, The Marxificatio
Fascism: Idolatry of the State
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 134
Fascism wasn't just a "bad thing" that happened in the first half of the twentieth century, and it's not just a bogus word the Left throws around today about everyone and everything it doesn't like. It was an explicit totalitarian ideology of state power that arose as a reaction to Communist provocation and libertine excesses in the 1920s and 1930s. That doesn't go far enough in describing it, though. It is, in fact, the dialectical ant
How The Woke Infiltrate
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 77
When Woke Marxists set their sights on an organization, there's a predictable pattern for how they'll get in and take over. Proceeding in five steps, it looks like this. First, they demand access. Once in, they demand accommodation, which will be weaponized according to their ability to take offense at everything. Then they'll demand a seat at the table, which is to say access to power. That will quickly expand to demanding to control the table and setting the rul
Communist Entryism
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 76
Communists have to get inside institutions to subvert and transform them. Getting into them requires tactics. The name for these tactics is entryism, or sometimes just entrism, and it describes how a hostile ideological force goes about getting inside an institution that wouldn't normally accept it. It's a key concept for stopping Woke Marxism, so in this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay breaks it down. Join him and understand this important W
The Problems with Classical Liberalism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 133
Classical Liberalism is in trouble. We can all see that. With it, the nations that have incorporated it as their operating model are also in trouble. We can all see that too. Today, post-liberal movements on both the Left and the putative Right see these problems and are calling for Classical Liberalism's demise. But do they see the problems we face clearly and accurately? James Lindsay, host of the New Discourses Podcast, thinks they d
Is CRT Anti-White?
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 75
One of the more important questions about Critical Race Theory, and one of the only ones that still lingers now that we know that it's Race Marxism, is Is CRT anti-white? The answer seems to be obviously yes, but it's somehow inadequate or a crude oversimplification. This matters because that crude oversimplification, like most blunt instruments, is both popular and hard to avoid picking up in a fight. The real answer is more no than yes, and getting it straight m
An Introduction to Classical Liberalism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 132
The American system, Classical Liberalism, is under attack. In fact, it is at risk of failing. Its attacks come from both the Left and the Right, and they succeed, as Solzhenitsyn put it, "because we do not love freedom enough." If we truly love liberty, as we should, we would understand the philosophical underpinnings of our system like they're second nature. As is evidenced from the attacks upon it, though, few truly understand what C
How to Stop a Cultural Revolution | James Lindsay
With Liberty & Justice For All, Session 3 of 3
Leftism has a battle logic: dialectical political warfare. They have used it in the past and are using it now to launch a cultural revolution against the West. The question before us, since we find ourselves in the midst of one, is once one has started, is it possible to stop a cultural revolution, and if so, how? This is, in fact, the most pressing and important question in the world. In this lecture, Dr. James Lindsay of New Discourses begins to
Understanding Settler Colonialism
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 74
Recent events in the Middle East, namely between Israel and "Palestine," have thrust the Postcolonial Theory branch of Woke Marxism into stark and stunning relief in a very short time. The world is quickly learning that "decolonization" is always meant to be violent, and the Islamist jihad against Israel is a project supported by the whole of the global Left, including especially the Woke Marxist Left throughout the West. People are horrified, rightly, but what's
Critical Education Is Brainwashing
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 73
Critical Pedagogy is brainwashing. This isn't rhetorical flourish or poetic license. The entire school of thought called Critical Pedagogy, which is wholly dominant in all our schools of education and educational institutions now, is brainwashing. It's easy to see this by considering the words of people who use and promote Critical Pedagogy itself. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay takes you through three such people to make an irrefuta
Medical Lysenkoism in the American Medical Association
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 131
Medical Lysenkoism is the application of ideological, specifically Communist, doctrine to medicine, and it will kill tens of millions, maybe more, if it continues being put into practice. We say "continues being put into practice" here because, unfortunately, it isn't just hypothetical; it's well underway. In fact, not only are all the obvious manifestations of Medical Lysenkoism apparent, but also the American Medical Association (amon
The Current Thing Did Not Take Place
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 130
The issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution. The issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution. This is a core maxim of Marxist activist thought, and it explains so much. In the early 1990s, the French Postmodernist philosopher Jean Beaudrillard put it another way, though, in a sense. He provocatively published a book with the title The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (https://amzn.to/3QHprG9). What Baudr
Degrowth Distributism and the Well-Being Economy
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 129
Degrowth is a death cult. Degrowth means starving while you freeze to death in the dark. That said, Degrowth Communism is something more. Specifically, it's something that should be called "Degrowth Distributism," and it's the overarching plan of the United Nations, World Economic Forum, World Health Organization, and the rest operating under the brand name of the "well-being economy." In this long and detailed episode of the New Discou
Class Identity And Gnostic Election
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 72
Woke Theory, which is to say Woke Gnosticism, requires identification with the class. Marxist socialists must identify with the workers as a class; feminists must identify with women as a class; antiracists must identify with people of color as a class; and so on. This is because they're Social Gnostics. Not only must they identify with their class, then; they do so willingly and as the "true" representatives of that class. This is not only a persistent and import
How To Organize To Beat The Left
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 71
It's time to start winning. That requires knowing our enemy, which we're doing pretty well with, getting organized, and enacting a strategy to consolidate power for the Cause of Liberty to save our schools, towns, states, and nations. The strategy is actually pretty simple, though, and it's organizing to create a positive feedback loop between recruiting numbers, identifying and achieving specific objectives, and building and channeling momentum (including into fu
The Fraud Of Diversity And Inclusion
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 70
"Diversity" and "Inclusion" don't mean what they sound like they mean. People are catching on to this all around the world, but we need to go deeper. It's necessary not just to know something is wrong with these ideas and their implementation but also to know how and why they're wrong. Ultimately, this means grasping the Left's Woke Marxist mindset, namely the idea of cultural hegemony. You see, "Diverse" means "outside of the culturally hegemonic viewpoint," and
The Hard Truth About Struggle Sessions
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 69
Struggle session season isn't over. Even though we're starting to understand what they are and how to deal with them, they're still coming, sometimes with very high stakes. The point of a struggle session, ultimately, is to get you to confess to made-up crimes on contrived terms that you and others will adopt as a result of confessing. The hard truth of the struggle session is that there's no coming back from capitulating to one. People can understand the pressure
The Feeling Of Mystification
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 68
One of Marxists' favorite words to project onto their enemies is "mystification." Everyone, they insist, who isn't on board with their twisted program is "mystified" about the true nature of reality, which they have, of course, discovered and delineated in unique clarity (in their own estimation, anyway). As we know, the Iron Law of Woke Projection never misses. The fact is that Marxist ideologies mystify their targets. That is, they mug people of their ability to
Decolonization Is Violence
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 67
Given recent events in the Middle East, in which Woke Marxists throughout the world have indicated their total alignment with Palestine against Israel even in light of atrocities, the idea of "decolonization" is back in the center stage. Academics and activists across the West are not only celebratory of the violence in Israel; they are also mocking the general public for failing to realize that "decolonization" is intrinsically a violent, brutal process. What's g
Kindergarten and the Asylum: "Sanism" in Early Childhood Education
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 128
Woke Marxism has no limiting principles. It is, in fact, openly hostile to any such boundary on its own madness. As a result, it possesses no mechanisms to prevent the implementation of the worst possible ideas, as we often see, including in the education of young children. We have already seen this with drag queens, sex, sexuality, pleasure-based sex education, divisive Critical Race Theory in education, "gender affirming care" and tra
Reaction is the Real Action | James Lindsay
With Liberty & Justice For All, Session 2 of 3
Leftist activism is happy to take direct wins whenever it can get them, but that’s not always possible. When it can’t get direct wins through the front door, it is also more than happy to get its wins through the back door by exploiting what we can call an action-reaction dynamic. As an act of dialectical political warfare, which is their battle logic, Leftist agitators will provoke a reaction, control the framing around that reaction to a watchin
Queer Education Is Evil
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 66
It is a persistent myth and common lie that Queer Education (Queer Pedagogy) is meant to in some way help "LGBTQ kids," whether by fostering empathy, increasing visibility, providing role models, or whatever else. This is blatantly not true. In fact, it's blatantly not true in their own words. "Queer" is not an identity at all, and it has nothing in principle to do with any sexuality, gender dysphoria (or sex confusion), or any other real thing. Queer is explicitl
Resilience & Woke Brainwashing
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 65
One of the hottest topics in education (and beyond) right now is "resilience." Youth mental health initiatives are being launched and entrenched all over the country, not just through school counseling but also through Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) initiatives, and their goal almost always includes "fostering emotional resilience." What is meant by "resilience" in the Woke Marxist context, though? We know it must mean something. In this episode of New Discourses
Learning and Countering Leftist Strategy
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 127
Leftism, including Marxism, is operational. It is strategic. It knows what it's doing and how to do it. It might look crazy, but that's deliberate. In fact, Leftists proudly publish and disseminate activist guides for their agenda like the book Beautiful Trouble that spell out for anyone how to do "transformative" activism through deliberate and strategic troublemaking. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay t
American Maoism | James Lindsay
With Liberty & Justice For All, Session 1 of 3
The Left moves operationally and according to a battle logic known as “dialectical political warfare.” The dialectic is the operating system of the Left, and it works by marrying a truth to a lie. Political warfare is a method of conducting warfare in which political means are used with hostile intent to get an enemy to behave in a desired fashion—propaganda is a great example. Perhaps the greatest dialectical political warfare tactician in human
Marx's Strawman Of Capitalism
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 64
Capitalism is a Marxist creation. It sounds crazy to say that, but Marxists don't mean competitive market economies or even free-market economies when they say "capitalism." They mean an overarching ideology of limitless capital accumulation as the fundamental organizing principle of society, which most people who promote "capitalism" wouldn't recognize as what they mean by the term at all. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay shows you in
WTF is Christian Nationalism?
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 126
Can’t anything just be normal and organic? It doesn’t appear so. Unfortunately, in addition to having to deal with a Communist Cultural Revolution in America, we also have to deal with the rising reaction it deliberately provokes. That forces us to have to fight a two-front war if our desire is to preserve liberty and defend and maintain the United States of America. Not everyone, even on the “conservative” side of things, wants to do t
Degrowth: The West's Great Leap Backwards
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 125
The "Net Zero" and "Sustainability" movements, which no one outside of captured institutions and minds particularly likes or trusts, is advancing to a new initiative, whether we like it or not. That initiative is every bit as bad as it sounds: Degrowth. The idea is that the West has grown too big to be sustainable, so it is time to back off from growth, or to move "beyond growth," to draw another of their brands. This is little more tha
Degrowth Is Communism
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 63
What is "degrowth"? Well, that's simple. It's not just the newest brand name for the "Net Zero" environmentalist scam; it's Communism rebranded and newly organized for the 21st century. That is, it is death. It is the fulfillment of Critical Marxist Herbert Marcuse's vision for a synthetic fusion of capitalism and socialism outlined in One-dimensional Man (https://amzn.to/45hdLzs) and An Essay on Liberation (pdf: https://monoskop.org/images/2/27/Marcuse_Herbert_Es
Reactance
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 62
There is a psychological phenomenon called "reactance" that is triggered when someone is convinced they're likely to lose liberties and freedoms they currently enjoy. It's a powerful effect that motivates action and forces people to take a side, usually against the perceived threat to their liberty. Woke manipulators know this and use it frequently. They explain that their enemies, usually members of a free society, are "fascists" who want to "limit the rights" of
Dispositions on Being
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 124
What is the true nature of Being? That's one of those "big" questions that we probably cannot answer. Related to it is another huge question: how should we be disposed toward the fact of Being? That's a fundamentally religious, or even pre-religious, question, and it's important to answer. While we may not know the true nature of Being itself, of all of existence, we can say something about the mood of our relationship to it. In this p
The Gnostic Temptation
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 61
Why are Gnostic cults so tempting? Why do people get sucked into them? It's not because Gnostics go around telling people they're wrong. It's because they go around telling people they're limited. Your beliefs, maybe in science, spirituality, Christianity, politics, or whatever, aren't wrong; they're low-level. The Gnostics hold themselves out as people who know more about whatever you're into than you do, and they explain their superiority as being "liberated" fr
The American Library Association is Queering the Catalog
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 123
The American Library Association (ALA) is a fully captured institution headed by a Queer Marxist organizer named Emily Drabinski. That means it is time to do what we should have done a long time ago: break away from the American Library Association. The state of Montana has already done this at the state level, and other states should follow. Some already are. Local municipalities and districts, including school districts, should do so
Nullification
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 60
Virtually all Woke activism has the goal of nullifying its target (German: aufheben). What that means is putting the target in a position where he has to go along with Woke standards or be unable to productively resist against them. At best, a nullified target is irrelevant to the cause. Nothing they do makes progress because they're not regarded as a credible source. For instance, maybe they're "deplorables." At worst, a nullified target harms the cause against W
Exposing the Sustainable Development Goals
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 122
We are halfway through a plot to seize control of the world. It may seem like a conspiracy theory, but it's placed awfully prominently, and everywhere, to be such a thing. The United Nations Agenda 2030 is a sweeping program to take control of our entire world. It launched in 2015 with an ambitious "17 Goals to Transform our World" and 169 targets to hit by the year 2030. That was eight years ago, and we can get a sense of how it's goin
The Real Threat of ESG
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 59
Thankfully, the world is rapidly waking up to the threat of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) scoring for corporations and beyond. The nature of that threat and its contours are coming into view, and people are taking action. In truth, as menacing and dangerous as ESG is in what it's doing right now, the real threat of ESG lies elsewhere. The real threat of ESG is that it can be arbitrarily defined at the whim of a small number of unaccountable executive
An Open Letter to Woke Youth
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 58
If you are Woke, you are in danger, not from the people you think you need to fight every waking moment of your day but from the people you support. History teaches this. The philosophy you support indicates it. If you succeed, you lose. If your movement fails, unless you make some serious changes, you also lose. That's not an enviable position to be in. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay offers you this short open audio letter, hoping y
Beating a Struggle Session
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 57
In Mao Zedong's CCP-run China, citizens were bullied and brainwashed into accepting "socialist discipline" by the Communist authorities by means of a devastating tool called the "struggle session." Struggle sessions are nothing short of a form of psychological torture achieved through social means. They are unbelievably difficult to go through, and they can and will polarize and divide an organization while nullifying its best members. They must be understood and
How to Prevent Revolutions
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 56
One of the best things about reading Marxist literature is that they almost always tell you their weaknesses if you pay attention. A huge focus in the literature of Western Marxism has been on the fact that Western societies don't have Marxist revolutions because they are stable societies. This allows us to develop a kind of guiding light for fighting against Woke Marxism today: stability prevents revolutions. In practice, this means that anywhere we see instabil
Groomer Schools 5: Comprehensive Sexuality Education
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 121
Sex ed has come a long way, even if you don't realize it. What we used to think of as sex education has been slowly being transformed into Comprehensive Sexuality Education, an institutional monstrosity stemming from a partnership between UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) and the International Planned Parenthood Foundation. Yes, that Planned Parenthood... in schools. In this episode of the New D
On Life, Liberty, and Property
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 55
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson famously used a curious phrase to describe man's fundamentally inalienable rights: "among these, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What many do not know is that Jefferson was riffing off and augmenting a similar formulation from John Locke, who argued that we have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. Locke further argued that our right to property is meaningful in that the free use of
This is How We Fight and Defeat the Woke
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 120
Woke Marxism is an invasive, subversive force that seeks to usurp the authority of the society it infects and transform it into something under its own control. This tells us quite a bit about it and offers us an unlikely glimpse at a comprehensive strategy to fighting it. In this off-beat episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay describes a broad, comprehensive strategy for fighting Woke Marxism by analyzing it from t
All Men Are Created Equal
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 54
At the very beginning of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Progressives, Communists, and the Woke have used this phrasing to drive a wedge in American society for over a century, provoking precisely the type of reaction they need to car
Why Bud Light and Target are Pushing the Woke Agenda
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 119
ESG scoring is a financial racket, and we're starting to learn how it works. The unfolding saga with huge American corporations like Anheuser-Busch (Bud Light) and Target are showing us a glimpse of what's going on behind the curtain with this cartel scam that's trapping our corporations. One tool of this cartel is the Human Rights Campaign's "Corporate Equality Index," which is concerned with "LGBTQ+" issues and is used as a scoring m
Name the Dynamic
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 53
When you understand that virtually everything with Woke Marxism is (a) impossible and (b) a strategic provocation, it leads you to think about engaging with it differently. (And engage with it we must!) A powerful technique for breaking free of Woke magic spells and manipulation is simply to take a step back and name the dynamic. This is a powerful technique from mediation and negotiation that can break through many stuck situations, but it's crucially important
Woke: A Culture War Against Europe | James Lindsay at the European Parliament
On March 29, 2023, James Lindsay delivered a short address before a conference at the European Union Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. This speech has been widely recognized as making the nature of the Neo-Marxist Cultural Revolution engulfing the West extremely clear, with a sharp warning to Europe not to follow in the footsteps of the Anglophone countries. In the two months since, this speech has gone viral and received incredible praise and feedback for its clarity and ability to articulate th
Post-Liberalism, Left and Right
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 118
One of Mao Zedong's most famous pieces is a short command from 1937 titled "Combat Liberalism" (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_03.htm ). Contrary to what many conservatives would have us believe, Communism is not the completion of liberalism but one of its mortal enemies, the fruit of a Leftwing, Romantic Reaction to the Enlightenment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the program offered by the reac
Woke Terms Conceal Agendas
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 52
Every Woke term conceals an agenda. That's a crucially important fact to understand. Yes, you may be familiar with the actual words in use, words like "diversity" or "resilience," but the Woke are misusing them and tucking an agenda in them, every time. You have to ask. Every time. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay covers this simple fact and gives you some strategies for what to do about it. Join him so you can counter this form of Wo
Maoism with American Characteristics
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 117
Intersectionality is a Woke standard, but what is it? Where does it come from? The history of the concept isn't that hard to trace, and where it leads us is back to some of the worst regimes in history. Kim Crenshaw tends to be credited with Intersectionality, but she got it from the radicals in the Combahee River Collective. They put the idea together, in their turn, from the advocacy and activism of Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse was copyi
How to Fight a Tyrannical Movement
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 51
How can we fight a tyrannical movement trying to take over our society or mislead people into traps? One key thing to do is to understand how people relate to such movements and organize our messaging and activity in a way that targets them for where they are. Adopting a model from a recent talk, in this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay discusses five primary (and a few secondary) dispositions with regard to tyrannical movements and how to ta
Absolute Zero and the Western Holodomor
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 116
You have probably heard of "Net Zero," the unrealistically ambitious target of having no net greenhouse gas emissions by some point in the relatively near future (2030, maybe 2050 at the latest). A report filed in 2019 by the prestigious government-funded UK organization of engineers and scientists, UK FIRES (https://ukfires.org/), thinks Net Zero is not enough and is pushing for an insanely aggressive program called "Absolute Zero" (h
Cult Language of Woke
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 50
Woke Marxism is a cult. In being a cult, it operates like an "initiate society," and the initiation into the cult is largely but not wholly accomplished through its deliberate misuse of language. As it turns out, this is a pretty consistent feature of cults, especially gnostic cults like Woke Marxism is. In technical language, gnostic cults are esoteric cults, and their language often has two meanings at once. One of these meanings is the everyday meaning they wa
James Lindsay Goes to Oxford
Imagine my surprise. Late last summer, I got an email from the Oxford Union formally inviting me to debate the proposition “This House Believes Woke Culture Has Gone Too Far.” Then, a month or so after I accepted, while on a flight across the country to Southern California, I happened to stumble upon the Oxford Union debate schedule page a few hours after it was posted only to discover that the house had placed me in the opposition to the proposition. That is, Oxford Union had deemed that I do n
As Below, So Above | James Lindsay
The Secret Religions of the West, Session 3 of 3
In the Esoteric Religion known as Hermeticism, there are a number of core principles of operation, perhaps most famously the Principle of Correspondence. It's often worded "As above, so below," but this is only half of the principle. The full expression is "As above, so below; as below, so above," which outlines a snake eating its own tail as a driver of Hermetic alchemical magic. In his third lecture for the Mere Simulacrity conference in Phoeni
The Structure of Cults
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 49
Cults have a structure. The Woke Marxist cult is no exception: it is structured too. In general, there are three types of layers in cults, though each of these might have various levels or ranks within it. Those are the "Outer School" of initiates who are committed to the cult but don't yet understand it, the "Inner School" of adepts who are deeply committed to the cult and do understand it, and the "Inner Circles" of disciples and leaders who are leading and gui
Sand in the Gears
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 48
One of the most powerful tactics against totalitarianism, one that worked to stop regimes from taking over and that broke existing regimes from within, is the simple strategy of "throwing sand in the gears," as it's said. What this means is going out of your way to make their programs bulky, slow, dysfunctional, and inefficient by deliberately underperforming, asking difficult questions, speaking up, and getting in the way. Do your job, if you must, but do it ine
The Gnostic Parasite | James Lindsay
The Secret Religions of the West, Session 2 of 3
In his first talk at the Mere Simulacrity conference in Phoenix, Arizona, in December 2022, James Lindsay introduced the idea that there is a long, running current of "Secret Religions" in the West. These are the Modern and Postmodern manifestations of the Esoteric Religions like Gnosticism and Hermeticism as they developed through what we might consider the Middle Age's "New Age" period, famously codified by G.W.F. Hegel. In the second lecture i
When to Stand Up
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 47
When is it time to stand up against Woke Marxism? Yesterday. Actually like five years ago. The next best time is right now. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay goes through the simple but important argument that as totalitarianism rolls out over your country, fighting back gets harder, not easier, with every additional day you wait to start. It's hard to stand up now, but as time goes on, you'll not only feel like you need to stand up mo
The Negation of the Real | James Lindsay
The Secret Religions of the West, Session 1 of 3
If you want to impose a totalitarian system, you have a problem on your hands: reality. The real is in your way and will eventually veto your project. Far sooner, people who can perceive reality will step in and prevent you from taking society over a cliff. Therefore, the only way to install a totalitarian system is to negate the real in the minds of those over whom you would rule. This is accomplished by creating an interpretive frame that delib
The Power of Opting Out
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 46
Maybe about a fifth of American adults decided not to get the shot (you know, THE shot). Maybe it was a quarter. Either way, that's not very many, it seems, but it was enough to stop the rollout of shot-based passports that could control our behavior and movement, in addition to the digital ID and tracking system that would come with it. That's the power of opting out of the totalitarian system they're trying to foist upon us, mostly by gaining our consent throug
The Role of Consciousness and the Evolution of the Gospel of Marxism | James Lindsay
The Theology of Marxism, Session 3 of 3
In that Marxism is a theology that gives birth to a religion of Communism, it has to also have a process of conversion. That process was not well-developed under Karl Marx, but it grew over the intervening century and a half and came to be known as “conscientization.” As Marxism entered its cultural turn in the 1920s, Theorists like Gyorgy Lukacs recognized that “class consciousness” unfolds in stages and is educable, though the last steps remained elusiv
Feminism Is Feminist Gnosticism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 115
In Simone de Beauvoir's famous work The Second Sex (https://amzn.to/43I96q7), she wrote one of the most famous lines in feminist thought: "One is not born but becomes woman." This statement, and her articulation of what it means, outlines the modern-turned-postmodern Gnostic cult we know as feminism. Her point is that women, meaning people who are female, have two choices in how they "become woman." They can follow the social expectati
Anti-Communist Education
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 45
Know what the Woke Marxists really don't want? Anti-Communist education in our schools. They do not want our children to learn about the true history of Communism and its atrocities. They do not want our population to be able to recognize Communism for what it is, regardless of what it's called. We can know that's true not only because we have such thoroughly "redwashed" education in this country, which avoids teaching about Communism honestly, but because the De
Marx’s Ontology of Man and the Telos of History | James Lindsay
The Theology of Marxism, Session 2 of 3
In this session of Sovereign Nations’s “The Theology of Marxism” conference, James Lindsay addresses the titular theme of the conference: The Theology of Marxism.
For a century and a half, people have failed to recognize Marxism for what it is, a theology. Marx’s emphasis on Atheism and strict materialism in all things have obscured from view what Marxism really is. Well, it is not a social theory. It is not an economic theory. It is a theology that sees
Two Wolves of Christian Nationalism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 114
What in the world is "Christian Nationalism," and how in the world is it supposed to work? For those who don't yet realize, there is a major reactionary push brewing in the Christian Right that seeks to seize the present moment of uncertainty and frustration and take it into some "Christian Nationalist" direction. What is meant by "some 'Christian Nationalist' direction," though? That's a good question, and there appear to be a wide va
Thought-Terminating Clichés
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 44
A powerful tool in the Woke Marxist toolbox is something called a "thought-terminating cliché." These are short, pithy statements, demands, or slogans that are designed to stifle thought in their targets as well as in those saying them. "Check your privilege!" is a good example. So is "Trans women are women!" or "Believe all women!" No doubt, you will have been on the receiving end of hundreds of examples of this kind of damaging non-speech over the last several
The Dialectical Faith of Leftism | James Lindsay
The Theology of Marxism, Session 1 of 3
Marxism is a theology, and its religion is Communism. That we have failed to understand this fact over the 175 years since Marx wrote the early drafts of what he originally called the Communist Confession of Faith and published in by the title The Communist Manifesto is indisputably one of the most damaging analytical errors in human history, if not the single worst. It’s time to set the record straight. Marx laid out an evil theology, and the practice of
The Queer Gnostic Cult
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 113
Queer Theory is the doctrine of a cult. Strange as this gender ideology may seem, perverse as it is, it can only be understood in terms of the esoteric cult religious structures called Gnosticism and Hermeticism. That is, Queer Theory is Queer Gnosticism, and the Queer Gnostic cult is consuming our society. Building upon his recent discussion of Gnosticism in the Modern West (https://newdiscourses.com/2023/02/gnosticism-in-the-modern-w
Mao, Criticism, And Unity
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 43
Mao Zedong wanted to thought-reform, that is, brainwash, the whole Chinese population, and he had a formula (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_58.htm) for doing it: "Unity - Criticism - Unity." That is, he sought to induce in people a "desire for unity" so they would join his socialistic cult, and then once that desire was strong enough, criticism and struggle sessions (https://newdiscourses.com/2022/12/surviving-a-mode
The Marxist Roots of DEI - Session 3: Inclusion | James Lindsay
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives have taken over the country, reaching into every aspect of our work, school, and lives. What is "DEI," though? New Discourses founder James Lindsay explains the idea and its history in unprecedented depth in this new series from an in-person workshop in Miami, Florida, breaking down each of the three letters in detail. What we'll find is that it's a contemporary and managerial repackaging of socialism.
In this third and final episode in the series, L
DARVO
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 42
There's an abusive tactic commonly used by abusers, both intentionally and unintentionally, that goes by the name "DARVO." DARVO is an acronym that means "Deny, Attack, Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender," and it is very common with narcissists, psychopaths, and borderline personalities. A huge amount of Woke Marxist activism and Theory is DARVO, hence the solidity of the "Iron Law of Woke Projection." In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James
The Marxist Roots of DEI - Session 2: Diversity | James Lindsay
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives have taken over the country, reaching into every aspect of our work, school, and lives. What is "DEI," though? New Discourses founder James Lindsay explains the idea and its history in unprecedented depth in this new series from an in-person workshop in Miami, Florida, breaking down each of the three letters in detail. What we'll find is that it's a contemporary and managerial repackaging of socialism.
In this second episode of the series, following
Mid-Level Violence
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 41
A key tactic in the Woke Marxist activism toolbox is an unconventional warfare technique known as "mid-level violence," or, in other words, strategic provocation. In this strategy, agitators will engage in behavior that, if accepted, moves one of their mass-line agendas along or that, if resisted, provokes a reaction that can be framed as an unjust overreaction ("wound collecting" or "crybullying"). They are masters at this. In fact, it's Antifa's bread-and-butte
The Marxist Roots of DEI - Session 1: Equity | James Lindsay
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives have taken over the country, reaching into every aspect of our work, school, and lives. What is "DEI," though? New Discourses founder James Lindsay explains the idea and its history in unprecedented depth in this new series from an in-person workshop in Miami, Florida, breaking down each of the three letters in detail. What we'll find is that it's a contemporary and managerial repackaging of socialism.
In this first episode of the series, Lindsay div
Fighting DEI Training
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 40
So your job is making you take a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training, an "unconscious bias" training, or maybe a "Sustainability," ESG, or SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) meeting. In other words, your job is forcing some kind of Neo-Communist brainwashing on you. What should you do? At this point, while laying low is understandable, many people realize they need to fight back. How can they, though? In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host J
Lies, Damned Lies, and SEL
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 112
Like virtually everything in Woke Marxism, Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is sold through lies and deception. The packaging is always pretty. What's in the box is always a catastrophe. While this rule is consistent across everything Woke, it reaches something of a staggering peak where it comes to SEL. "It's just about teaching kids to manage their emotions and develop the social skills necessary to succeed in the workplace of the fut
The SEL Cycle
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 39
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is a dangerous scam being forced into our education system at every level and in every possible way. How are they doing it, though? Among the techniques they're using to ram SEL deeper and deeper into school districts against all sense and without real evidence is what might be called the "SEL Cycle." What happens in this fraudulent circular approach is that SEL is used as a justification to gather survey data from students in thei
Ideological Totalism in the Woke Cult
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 111
Woke is a cult. In fact, Woke is a cult in exactly the same way Maoism was and is a cult. There's only a little daylight between them, as we recently explored here on the New Discourses Podcast. Ideological cults like Woke and Maoism operate in an environment Robert Jay Lifton labeled "ideological totalism," which he described in depth in his book 'Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China' (http
Lysenkoism
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 38
One of the most notorious names almost nobody in the West remembers is Trofim Lysenko. His horrific ideas about agriculture and biology, derived mostly from crackpot Marxist Socialist and Soviet Theory, led to the starvation and deaths of tens of millions of people in the Soviet Union and Communist China. Opposing or challenging his ideas was a one-way ticket to cancellation, reeducation, or destruction. Lysenkoism, therefore, is the enforced application of an id
Woke, Mao, and the American Cultural Revolution
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 110
It's time to be plain. Actually, it's long past time. What's happening in America today and throughout the West is a Maoist cultural revolution, just like happened in China under the CCP from 1966 to 1976. This is plain to see for those who know what to look for, from the struggle sessions, to the ideological totalism, to the separation of families, to the brainwashing in schools, to the destruction of statues, curriculum, and culture.
Demoralization
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 37
Demoralization is the destruction of one's morale, in every possible sense. It's also a Communist tactic being used not only on our society but on our children. At the end of the demoralization road, people can't tell true from false, right from wrong, real from fake, or who to trust, and they completely lack hope outside of the vague hope that the state, institution, or cult will deliver them from their increasing misery and confusion. We must understand demoral
Is Michael O'Fallon a Christian Nationalist? | OnlySubs with James Lindsay, Ep. 118
This episode of the OnlySubs Podcast with James Lindsay is available for FREE! To get access to all past and future episodes, consider becoming a contributor. Learn more: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/new-subscribers-only-podcast/
According to my (fairly hilarious) Wikipedia entry, my friend and business associate Michael O'Fallon is a "Christian Nationalist." Of course, that's not true! Just look at how he's one of the leading voices challenging the new idiotic push for a "Christian Nation
Stakeholder Capitalism and the End of History
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 109
In 1844, Karl Marx explained that Communism, "as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement" is "the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution. In 2016, 172 years later, Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum put forth a bold future-casting video proclaiming that by the year 2030 "you will own nothing, and you will be happy." These, of course, are the same assertion. Flashing back, in
Woke "All" Means Some
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 36
In Woke Marxism, "all" means "some." Not just any some, but a very specific some: the some that the Woke holds out as suffering from systemic oppression. You see, Woke Marxism maintains that society is contoured entirely by systemic power, and that creates an "unlevel playing field" that they have to "level" through redistribution schemes like equity and inclusion. When they say they want to devise an education system that benefits "all students," then, for exam
Gnosticism in the Modern West
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 108
Marxism is not a philosophy. Neither are its derivatives, like "Wokeness" (Woke Marxism). These are a strain within a broader category of cult religious movements that pose as economics, sociology, and politics. The broad name for these Esoteric cult religions is "Gnosticism," but that's a confusing label for a number of reasons. The first of these reasons is that "gnosticism" as a term, either as a descriptive or proper noun, means se
Action, Reaction, and Beautiful Trouble
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 35
What if I told you the Woke have a manual for their direct action and you could read it online for free today and learn how to spot their operations and call them out in real time? Well, they do. It's called Beautiful Trouble (https://beautifultrouble.org), and you need to know about it. It's the twenty-first century update to Rules for Radicals (Saul Alinksy), as they shamelessly report for themselves, and fighting the Woke when they engage in direct action (a M
Narrative Arc Fitting
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 34
A common operational tactic of Woke Marxists is to weave a long narrative arc about what's happening in society through media and education and then to give "proof of worldview" by plugging useful events into that mythology to spur mass line activism and direct action. That is, they fit events into narrative arcs that have been strategically laid ahead of time. If you can spot the narrative arcs and how they work, not only can you refute them, you can also predic
(Theoretical) Lensing
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 33
Woke works through reframing, and much of the reframing occurs by passing every bit of relevant information through what they refer to as "theoretical lenses." These "lenses" might include Theories like Critical Race Theory or Queer Theory, agendas like Sustainability, or focuses like diversity, equity, and inclusion. This lensing effect distorts perception and comprehension and enables Woke manipulation, like seeing the world in a fun-house mirror. Understanding
A Homily to Young Men
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 32
Young men have had it rough for a decade or more now. How are young men and adolescents growing to become them supposed to navigate the world they find themselves in today? Honestly, the basic advice hasn't changed. Take responsibility, get to work, learn to be a strong, powerful protector and work to serve. In this longer-than-usual episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay offers a homily to young men in the world today and talks about the importanc
The Dialectic of Social-Emotional Learning
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 107
Nothing Woke stays the same. The revolution must be perpetual, and the advances of yesterday are the new right wing of today. This is true even in Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), which has now already developed through several different iterations and implementation styles to arrive at CASEL's "systemic" implementation of "Transformative Social-Emotional Learning," which is explicitly Freirean and Marxist. Even though it only emerged
Gnosticism, Modern and Postmodern
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 31
Woke Marxism might more accurately be called Woke Gnosticism, which is technically redundant. Gnosticism is one of the ancient "Esoteric" religions that has spawned cults, some weird and some dangerous, since Antiquity. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay gives a brief introduction to the Gnostic mindset and why it is the best characterization for the Woke phenomenon, Marxism, and all the rest. Join him to gain unprecedented clarity on t
The NEA Goes Sustainable
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 106
Did you know the focus in education is about to change again? It is. While we've rightly been focused on fighting CRT, Queer Theory, SEL, DEI, and all manner of issues in the schools to protect our kids, a big shift has been being prepared and is likely to be about to launch. Schools in the coming year or two are very likely to lurch into direct instruction into activism to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United
Operational Preparation of the Environment
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 30
Woke Marxism isn't just a bunch of crazy academic Theory. It's also very practical. It's meant to be put into practice to "transform the world" by taking over institutions through activism. In order to do that, it wages unconventional warfare, particularly narrative warfare. A key technique employed by these activists, especially in media, is what is known as "operational preparation of the environment" (OPE). In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James
The Violence of Decolonization
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 105
We hear so much about "decolonization" nowadays. Whether it's decolonizing the curriculum, decolonizing science, decolonizing Shakespeare, decolonizing the nation, or whatever; whether it's decolonizing education following from Joe Kincheloe's project on Paulo Freire; wherever we hear it, it means something. So it can be better understood, in this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay takes a dive into one of the ke
The People
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 29
Marxists use linguistic tricks. "Communists share your vocabulary but they don't share your dictionary" is a common way of putting it. One of the dirtiest of those tricks is on the word "people." Whether it's in establishing "Democratic People's Republics" or championing "the people's movement," Communists are always subtly telling us that the only people they count as people are Communists. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay explains th
Dialectical Inversion
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 28
Understanding Woke Marxism means more than just understanding their Theory. It also requires understanding their activity, which also helps you counter it. One of the most pervasive techniques used by Woke Marxism is "dialectical inversion." In dialectical inversion, the authority in a situation is inverted by applying the dialectical trick of seeing two things that are opposed to one another as parts of the same whole. Then the good thing is diminished, allowing
Surviving a Modern Struggle Session
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 104
One of the most famous and most evil techniques of Maoist Marxism is the "struggle session" (dòuzhēng, 鬥爭; or pīpàn dòuzhēng, 批判鬥爭, “critical struggle”; or sometimes just pīdòu, 批鬥; also called “denunciation” sessions). They were made famous during Mao's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but they were utilized in the Chinese thought-reform (xǐnǎo, 洗脑, lit. "wash brain" or brainwashing) prisons starting in the early 1950s under the CCP.
WTF is SEL?
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 103
What the F is Social-Emotional Learning? It's a serious question. Behind all the flowery language is a history, and that history demands looking at. Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and its chief lobbying organization, CASEL (the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) emerged in the mid-1990s from a place called the Fetzer Institute. What is the Fetzer Institute, though? Created by a twentieth century radio magnate
Introducing The Marxification of Education
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 102
Education has been stolen from our society and from our kids. This should be intolerable. Doing something about it, as we're learning, requires understanding how this robbery has occurred and how it keeps running. Fortunately, that's comprehensible and can be summarized in a single short sentence: our kids go to Paulo Freire's schools. You may not know who Paulo Freire was, but his theory of education (critical pedagogy, as it came to
What Radicalized You, James Lindsay?
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 101
James Lindsay, host of the New Discourses Podcast, gets asked all the time about what really got him started in his campaign against Woke Marxism. Invariably, the conversation includes a discussion of the Grievance Studies Affair, but what triggered that? Before the Grievance Studies Affair (https://newdiscourses.com/2020/01/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/ ), there was "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Con
The Strange Death of the University, Part 4: The Strange Death of Knowledge
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 100
We all know academia is in trouble. In fact, we’re not even sure it can be saved. To put it simply, the university is dying. To be sure, it’s a strange death, however, because the university is in some sense going back to its roots, returning to being theological seminaries, though in a completely new religion. That religion is the transformative religion of Dialectical Leftism, and its materialist watchword in the 21st century is “Sus
Marxism and Holistic Thinking
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 27
Holistic thinking isn't just a feature of the weird New Age and spiritualists; it's also a centerpiece of Marxist thinking. For Marxists (like all Hegelians), the goal is to understand the parts in terms of the whole in which they are a part, and this is what's meant by "holistic" thinking. What Marx and Hegel mean by this form of dialectical thought is that they understand the whole, like the whole of History itself including its purpose, and you don't. Thus, th
The Strange Death of the University, Part 3: The Strange Death of Science
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 99
We all know academia is in trouble. In fact, we’re not even sure it can be saved. To put it simply, the university is dying. To be sure, it’s a strange death, however, because the university is in some sense going back to its roots, returning to being theological seminaries, though in a completely new religion. That religion is the transformative religion of Dialectical Leftism, and its materialist watchword in the 21st century is “Sust
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) | James Lindsay
The Marxification of Education Workshop, Session 4 of 4
The hottest buzzword in education today is Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), but it's not just a buzzword. It's a huge program with almost universal installation (thanks to the Every Student Succeeds Act, ESSA, of 2015) and billions upon billions of dollars behind it. What is it? Where did it come from? Should we trust it? To the last of these questions, there are excellent reasons to believe that we shouldn't. In fact, we shouldn't want it
The Theft of Education
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 26
Education is being stolen from our kids and our society. In fact, for the most part, it has been stolen already. The way it's being and been done is through using something that is known as the "generative themes" approach, which derives from the work of the Marxist educator Paulo Freire. Generative themes are supposed to generate particular kinds of political conversations in the context of presenting some other kind of educational lesson. In this episode of New
Can We Trust Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)?
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 98
Schools all across the United States and wider Western world are rapidly incorporating Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) into all aspects of the educational experience and environment. Can we trust it? There are excellent reasons why we shouldn't (https://newdiscourses.com/2022/08/the-dark-truth-about-social-emotional-learning-sel/). Everyone seems to be pushing it, though. Not just our state and federal government, and governments throug
"Groomer Schools" | James Lindsay
The Marxification of Education Workshop, Session 3
The word of the year in education and regarding our children has been "groomer," which is widely banned across social media now as a result (along with James Lindsay from Twitter for calling this problem out). In the Marxification of education, which is its remaking into a system of Marxist conscientization, schools can be said to have been transformed into groomer schools. Specifically, while the terms "thought reform" and "brainwashing" have
Totalitarianism and the Progressive Impulse
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 25
With the possible exception of our would-be overlords, we all know Nazis were bad. Fewer of us, especially in the younger generations, understand that Communists are also bad. Do you understand these two movements and how they're actually both bad because they're actually both part of the same current of thought? That current of thought is progressivism, especially of the collectivist-socialist kind, which is more broadly an actionable manifestation of the Romant
Paulo Freire’s “Critical” Method of Education | James Lindsay
The Marxification of Education Workshop, Session 2
How on Earth did education get so messed up and stolen from our society and our kids? While the critical turn in education enabled this "transformation" of our education system, the crucial piece that allowed it to happen is the work of a Brazilian Marxist by the name of Paulo Freire. Paulo Freire completely transformed education, not least by Marxifying it. That is, in addition to creating the conditions to swap out actual education for polit
Systemic Trauma And Harm
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 24
Trauma and harm. Trauma and harm. Harm and trauma. It seems virtually everything Woke these days is justified on the back of some obviously nonsense appeal to "trauma" or "harm." Schools are arranged as being "safe and welcoming" and "places where everyone feels like they belong" in response to the pervasive "trauma" and "harm" of everything else in society. What's going on? In Woke Marxism, like everything else, trauma and harm are understood systemically. They'
The Critical Turn in Education | James Lindsay
The Marxification of Education Workshop, Session 1
Education has been stolen from us and from our children. Yes, stolen. It was deliberately transformed from within into something that is barely education at all anymore. Instead, it's a systematic program of thought reform (brainwashing) into neo-Marxist belief and activism. How has this been accomplished? The formal name for the transformation is "the critical turn in education," which "turned" education from traditional models of pedagogy to
What Does It Mean to Be Freirean?
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 97
We have devoted a lot of time on the New Discourses Podcast to breaking down the work of the Brazilian Marxist "educator" Paulo Freire, who proved to be a pivotal figure in the history of Marxism in several ways at once. This work needs to continue, so it will continue. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay offers a summary of what it means to be "Freirean" in education, following from his detailed explanatio
Data is the New Oil
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 23
You have probably heard the quip: "data is the new oil." What does that mean, and what does it imply? In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay walks you through the concept, making it clear that data, like oil and gold before it, are not just extremely valuable commodities but can also serve as the basis for the next iteration of our currency. This has profound implications for life in the coming digital era if we don't get ahead of it now by
The Strange Death of the University, Part 2: A New Sensibility
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 96
We all know academia is in trouble. In fact, we're not even sure it can be saved. To put it simply, the university is dying. To be sure, it's a strange death, however, because the university is in some sense going back to its roots, returning to being theological seminaries, though in a completely new religion. That religion is the transformative religion of Dialectical Leftism, and its materialist watchword in the 21st century is "Sust
"Lived Experience," Explained
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 22
We've all heard it and done everything we can to avoid rolling our eyes now. "It's my lived experience!" as though that's evidence or, actually, even better than evidence. "Lived experience" is a particular result of Leftist dialectical thought, however, that allows them to convince people that whatever they say is right and whatever anyone else says is dumb or bad. It is, in fact, the dialectical synthesis of evidence and the Leftist phenomenological interpretat
The Strange Death of the University, Part 1: The Red Thread
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 95
We all know academia is in trouble. In fact, we're not even sure it can be saved. To put it simply, the university is dying. To be sure, it's a strange death, however, because the university is in some sense going back to its roots, returning to being theological seminaries, though in a completely new religion. That religion is the transformative religion of Dialectical Leftism, and its materialist watchword in the 21st century is "Susta
Understanding the Dialectic
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 21
Leftist thought for at least the past 250 years has taken a particular form that is not the usual form of thinking and understanding we know and love. It's something completely different. The Left, perhaps since Rousseau and definitely since Hegel, has been dialectical in its thinking. It is the Dialectical Left. What is the dialectic, though? What is dialectical thinking? In short, it's the fusion of opposites in a way that understands them from a higher-level p
How Paulo Freire Made Marxism Stupid
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 94
Paulo Freire is a Brazilian Marxist who is responsible for "Marxifying" education (https://newdiscourses.com/2022/05/paulo-freires-marxification-of-education/), thereby ruining it. In effect, what he did was created a Marxist Theory of being educated (https://newdiscourses.com/2022/05/paulo-freires-schools-new-discourses-bullets-ep-7/), and what this did, in turn, was create a Marxist Theory of knowledge and knowing. Who gets to be cons
The Dialectic of Global Citizenship
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 20
There are certain advantages to understanding not just how the Dialectical Left (including Marxists and Wokeness) think but how their thought evolves over time. Theirs is a wholly Leftist religion that operates through a completely dialectical faith. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay spends a few minutes unpacking the dialectic and how it works. He then uses this information to trace the development of Leftist thought over the last 260
Critique and the Linguistic Transformation of Society
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 93
Redefine the words; redefine the society. That's the basic idea of "critique" and the way so much of Marxist activism proceeds. Recently, James Lindsay explained this phenomenon in an essay (https://newdiscourses.com/2022/09/three-terms-communists-redefined-to-subvert-society/) on New Discourses with relation to three key terms that allow a subversion of society: "inclusion," "democracy," and, most concerningly, "citizenship." In this e
On Individual, Corporate, and Social Buying
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 19
Apparently a lot of young people believe not only in something nonsensical but also specifically in socialism. I recently heard an example of a young woman talking about how all the necessities of life both "should be free" and "should be paid for by the government." Obviously, if they're paid for, they're not free, but she means that they're free for her and paid for by everyone, thus partly her, through the intermediary of the State. This is a terrible idea. To
The Dark Truth About Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 92
We have to talk about Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). It's not the first time it's been addressed here on the New Discourses Podcast, but the full picture hasn't been painted for you yet. Social-Emotional Learning is evil and must be stopped. It isn't a nice little program to help at-risk kids deal with the difficulties of learning. It's the central pillar of a nefarious attempt to remake and control society. Host James Lindsay walks y
What is a Woman?
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 18
What is a woman? That's the question of the year, it seems, and we're all aghast. The thing is, almost nobody understands what that particularly nasty bit of confusion is about. Luckily, the most high-profile case of the problem, which occurred in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Kentanji Brown Jackson, gave us the answer. She said she didn't know what a woman is (while being a woman) because she's not a biologist. In other words, to know what a woman i
Paulo Freire and the Marxist Transformation of the Church
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 91
The churches are under attack, not just from without but also from within. Marxist subversion has been brought deeply into them, and they are already falling. The model for how this is being accomplished mirrors the model used to steal education, so it's little surprise that the Brazilian Marxist educator Paulo Freire is at the bottom of it. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay picks up out of the Critical E
The Normalization Scale
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 17
Woke Marxists talk endlessly about the need to "destigmatize" this, "normalize" that, "affirm" this other thing, and "celebrate" whatever they say is best. They want you to think that these things are all the same, though, and any one who doesn't take the slider all the way from "destigmatize" to "celebrate" on any of their causes célèbre is somehow a conservative (or a bigot or a "Nazi"). In fact, these gradations are necessary to a healthy society, and their bo
Paulo Freire's Marxist Easter for Educators
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 90
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 20
This episode of the New Discourses Podcast continues a long miniseries exploring Paulo Freire’s landmark 1985 book The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (https://amzn.to/3IJ4ZOT), and it is embedded in the broader Critical Education Theory series (https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/). In the previous part, James Lindsay presented the ideas in the ninth c
Queer Theory Is Queer Marxism
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 16
Thanks to Drag Queen Story Hour, groomer schools, and all other things sex, gender, and sexuality pushed by today's out-of-control Woke Marxist Left, Queer Theory has been pushed front and center in the public consciousness, but what is it? Simply put, Queer Theory is Queer Marxism, which is a Marxist Theory about a form of sociocultural "property" called "normalcy," "normality," or "normativity," that it believes to have been unjustly created and in need of dest
Paulo Freire and the Critical Theft of Education
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 88
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 19
This episode of the New Discourses Podcast continues a long miniseries exploring Paulo Freire’s landmark 1985 book The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (https://amzn.to/3IJ4ZOT), and it is embedded in the broader Critical Education Theory series (https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/). In the previous part (https://newdiscourses.com/2022/07/paulo-freire-a
James Lindsay on His Lifetime Twitter Ban
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 89
Twitter finally dropped the hammer and banned James Lindsay. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James spends half an hour telling the story behind the ban and walking through his initial thoughts and reactions to it. Join him to begin the process of questioning the very logic of social media and the tyranny it enables.
Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support/
Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/concep
21st Century Re-Education, The Digital Gulag
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 15
Most people do not understand what a gulag is. They think of the Nazi concentration camps and therefore miss the point. Gulags, utilized directly and by that term in the Soviet Union under Lenin and then Stalin and without the term in Maoist Communist China, are re-education camps, not merely labor camps or concentration camps. That is, they have an ideological goal, and that goal is to brainwash people into becoming Communists. They're also mid-20th century tech
Critical Education Violates the First Amendment
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 87
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 18
Critical Pedagogy in our public schools unambiguously violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The reason is simple. As Critical Pedagogues themselves say, it has ambitions that can only be framed in religious terms, describes a fundamental concept of man and the world, and gives rise to duties of conscience. According to well-established First Amendment law (https://scholarshi
Queer Theory and "Cripping Incest Discourses(s)"
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 86
Queer Theory has no bottom. No matter how bad you think it is, it's worse. No matter how bad you think it is now, it will get worse later. In that spirit, we at the New Discourses Podcast present to you yet another "academic" paper rooted in Queer Theory: "Cripping Incest Discourse(s)" (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-021-09856-3). You probably didn't think it was an act of latent genocide to be against incestuous sexua
The Social-Emotional Learning Bait-and-Switch
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 85
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 17
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is a key battleground topic in education today. Parents across the country are rightly very upset that what sounds like and could be a very useful program for kids who struggle in certain ways at school has far less wholesome purposes. On the one hand, they're noticing that SEL tends to be misapplied in classrooms and through other subjects, not in controlled the
Paulo Freire and Learning to Remake Man
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 84
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 16
This episode of the New Discourses Podcast continues a long miniseries exploring Paulo Freire’s landmark 1985 book The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (https://amzn.to/3IJ4ZOT), and it is embedded in the broader Critical Education Theory series here (https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/). In the previous part, James Lindsay presented the ideas in the se
The Process of Marxist Consciousness
One does not merely arrive at a Marxist consciousness. In fact, conscientization is a process of awakening a Marxist consciousness, and it is a deliberate practice of cult grooming. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay walks you through the eight stages of Marxist conscientization, as he has understood them from Cultural and Critical Marxists in the 20th century. Join him to learn about the Marxist grievance cult initiation in a clear step-by-step way.
Support New Disco
Paulo Freire's Perpetual Cultural Revolution
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 83
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 15
This episode of the New Discourses Podcast continues a long miniseries exploring Paulo Freire’s landmark 1985 book The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (https://amzn.to/3IJ4ZOT), and it is embedded in the broader Critical Education Theory series here (https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/). In the previous two parts, James Lindsay presented the ideas in t
A Social Contract for the New World Order
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 13
Klaus Schwab is the Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, which openly seeks to remake the world and its economies into a "stakeholder" model of his own creation. In his 2022 book, 'The Great Narrative for a Better Future' (https://amzn.to/3QvkcrU), Schwab explains that the existing "shareholder"-based social contract has expired, and it's time for a new one. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay walks you through a few paragraph
Groomer Schools 4: Drag Queen Story Hour
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 82
Before the last year or so, two terms you wouldn't have expected to encounter together are "drag queen" and "early childhood education," but we're now about three years into a full-fledged Communist revolution in the Western world, which has made it not only commonplace but shoved all in our faces. Here we are in the midst of June, "Pride Month," 2022, and the Leftist collision of drag queens and young children has been center-stage all
Leninism, Maoism, and Stakeholder Capitalism
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 12
Two of the most infamous figures of the 20th century are two of its most notorious Marxist dictators: Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong. Each had his own methods. Speaking broadly, Lenin's Bolshevik approach could be considered top-down, imposed by government and its seized industries, and Mao's "Marxism-Leninism with Chinese Characteristics" might be considered bottom-up, a youth rebellion, and inside-out, a cultural revolution ushered in by his radicalized youth. T
The Queer Subversion of Feminism: Gayle Rubin's "Thinking Sex" Part 3
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 81
Thinking Sex Series, Part 3 of 3
In the previous two episodes of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay reads through the first two thirds of Gayle Rubin's shocking 1984 essay, "Thinking Sex" (https://sites.middlebury.edu/sexandsociety/files/2015/01/Rubin-Thinking-Sex.pdf), widely regarded as the first essay in Queer Theory. In it, as Rubin's subtitle indicates, "Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality," she take
Critical Thinking versus Critical Theory
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 11
One of the most common words we run into today thanks to the incredible spread of Woke Marxism is "critical." This is because Woke Marxism comes out of the Critical Theory tradition, which is the tool of a mid-20th century Marxist project called "Critical Marxism." We run into this term especially often in education, where the Woke Marxist objective is to use the pun on "critical" that exists between "critical thinking" and "Critical Theory" to advance their agen
Gayle Rubin's "Thinking Sex" Part 2: Erasing Boundaries
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 80
Thinking Sex Series, Part 2 of 3
In the previous episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay presented the first third of the first Queer Theory paper to have been written, Gayle Rubin's shocking 1984 essay "Thinking Sex" (https://sites.middlebury.edu/sexandsociety/files/2015/01/Rubin-Thinking-Sex.pdf). In this episode, he continues with a second part of Rubin's essay in which it becomes clear that Queer Theory is all abo
Marx's Unreal Realities | New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 10
In the Marxist literature, you run into the words "reality," "realities," and "actual" all the time. This is no mistake. Marxists believe they, and they alone, have hacked the system and come to the only true or scientific understanding of reality. Everyone else sees reality through an ideological distortion, and they can use their "critical" methods to see through it. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, James Lindsay cuts through their mystification and makes it clear that when Marxists
The Origin of Queer Theory: Gayle Rubin's "Thinking Sex"
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 79
Thinking Sex Series, Part 1 of 3
People have very rapidly realized, whether in Groomer Schools, marketing, or so many other corners of society that we've been suckered into supporting Queer Theory under the banner of a gay and lesbian civil rights movement. We've also figured out very quickly that Queer Theory is a branch of Identity Marxism: Queer Marxism, which takes "normalcy" as its special form of bourgeois property to abolish thr
Life in Herbert Marcuse's World | New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 9
Probably the most influential Marxist thinker of the 20th century was the Critical Marxist Herbert Marcuse. His ideas were so influential that I commonly find myself saying "we live in Herbert Marcuse's world" today. Virtually everything crazy you see going on, perhaps except in schools, thanks to Woke Marxism and its corporate partners can be traced back neatly to Herbert Marcuse's neo-Marxist Theory, whether "Repressive Tolerance (https://newdiscourses.com/2021/01/how-not-to-resolve-the-parado
Woke Private Schools and the Elite Leninist Vanguard
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 78
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 14
We spend a lot of time talking about the Woke Marxification of North America's public schools, but what about private schools? As many who send their kids there can tell you, they're just as Woke, if not Woker. Critical Education Theorists (Critical Pedagogs) have not ignored private schools, just like they haven't ignored elite private universities that these schools primarily service, but how
Historically Marginalized Is Forever | New Discourses Bullets, Ep.8
Here's a quick public service announcement for policymakers about a simple manipulation everyone keeps falling for: the concept of "historically marginalized" groups. Whether using the phrasing "historically marginalized" or "traditionally marginalized" groups, this little manipulation enables a grab of power and resources in a truly tricky way, and it's "feel good" phrasing that appears in policy everywhere today. What's the trick? Join James Lindsay for a few minutes in this episode of New Dis
What Is Racial Literacy?
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 77
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 13
A common term of art in the current educational milieu is racial literacy. In fact, here is the giant and influential educational company Pollyanna, Inc., talking about how central racial literacy is (https://pollyannainc.org/k-8-curriculum/) to their K-8 education programs. What is racial literacy, though? As you will not be surprised to learn, it is the racial repackaging of Marxist education
Paulo Freire's Schools | New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 7
Anywhere in North America, chances are our kids go to Paulo Freire's schools. Who is Paulo Freire? Paulo Freire is a Brazilian Marxist and Liberation Theologian who remade literacy education according to his ideological programs (https://newdiscourses.com/2022/04/paulo-freires-politics-of-education/) and thereby ruined it. His ideas were imported to North America in the 1980s and have been steadily colonizing education ever since. Now, his work has been so influential on the "Critical Pedagogy"
Paulo Freire and the Birth of Groomer Schools
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 76
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 12
This episode of the New Discourses Podcast continues into a second part a long miniseries exploring Paulo Freire's landmark 1985 book The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation, and it is embedded in the broader Critical Education Theory series here. In the previous part, James Lindsay presented the ideas in the first half of the sixth chapter, wherein we see how Freire Marxified
The ESG Cartel | New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 6
How do you control the Bull on Wall Street? Simple: you put a ring through its nose. The name of that ring is ESG: Environmental, Social, and Governance scoring for financing and investment. Allegedly, ESG is supposed to provide a measure of a company's long-term sustainability and profitability, but it is, instead, the tool of a small number of so-called "stakeholders" who are actually technocrats. The tool enables big investment firms like Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, and other
Social-Emotional Learning Explained | New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 5
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is one of the hottest scams in academia, but what is it? It is a psychological grooming mechanism used to open up children through "social" and "emotional" means to Woke Marxist ideology and praxis. It is clinical psychology practiced without a license in uncontrolled, non-therapeutic spaces on groups of children with no mental disease. It is a data-mining scheme used to probe our nations' children so they can be better propagandized in the future. Join James Lind
Paulo Freire's Marxification of Education
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 75
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 11
This episode of the New Discourses Podcast continues into a second part a long miniseries exploring Paulo Freire's landmark 1985 book The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (https://amzn.to/3IJ4ZOT), and it is embedded in the broader Critical Education Theory series here (https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/). In the previous part, James Lindsay presented
Your Kids Go to Paulo Freire's Marxist Schools
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 74
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 10
Here on the New Discourses Podcast, we are deep into our sprawling series (https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/) on Critical Education Theory (Critical Pedagogy) and the Identity Marxist corruption of our schools, and at the same time, we're still being gaslighted about whether or not Critical Race Theory is even present in American schools. In this episode of the podcast, J
Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, & Maoist Education | New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 4
At present, schools throughout North America are reproducing the youth radicalization program utilized by Communist dictator Mao Zedong. They're doing this by combining Critical Race Theory, Gender Theory (gender ideology), Queer Theory, and the other Critical Theories of Identity (Identity Marxism) to funnel kids into politically active, radical and revolutionary personal identities. They're doing it because it works: Marxism is the what, and Maoism is the how. In this episode of New Discourses
The Social Work of Education
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 73
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 9
This episode of the New Discourses Podcast continues into a third part a long miniseries exploring Paulo Freire's landmark 1985 book The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (https://amzn.to/3IJ4ZOT), and it is embedded in the broader Critical Education Theory series here (https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/). In the previous parts, James Lindsay presented t
The School Choice Trap | New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 3
School choice is an important component not only of liberty and improving educational outcomes but also of defeating the Woke Marxist influence in our schools and upon our children. It isn't so easy as making the money follow the child or the backpack however. School choice legislation has to be smart, and it has some challenges in need of clever solutions before we blunder ahead into a trap the Woke Marxists are setting for us. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, James Lindsay spends a f
Paulo Freire: Educating to Proclaim the World
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 72
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 8
This episode of the New Discourses Podcast continues into a second part a long miniseries exploring Paulo Freire's landmark 1985 book The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (https://amzn.to/3IJ4ZOT), and it is embedded in the broader Critical Education Theory series here (https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/). In the previous part, James Lindsay presented t
Equity and Justice | New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 2
We hear about equity all the time but are rarely told that it's shorthand for Social Equity, or even "Critical Social Equity." We also hear all the time about Social Justice, which is sometimes referred to as Critical Social Justice. What are these concepts, though? In Woke Marxism, they are the rebranding of Socialism (Social Equity) and Communism (Social Justice), meant to be achieved through Critical Theory. That's it. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, James Lindsay explains Karl Mar
Paulo Freire's Politics of Education
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 71
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 7
Just as we have learned here on the New Discourses Podcast that we live in Herbert Marcuse's world (https://newdiscourses.com/2021/01/how-not-to-resolve-the-paradox-of-tolerance/) today (and that's why it's so messed up), we also need to understand that our children all go to Paulo Freire's schools. Therefore, we have to spend some time getting to know Paulo Freire and his approach to education,
DEI Explained | New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 1
The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industry under Woke Marxism is easy to understand. Equity is a rebranding of Socialism: an administered economy that makes outcomes equal. Diversity and Inclusion are tools used to install political officers and to censor and remove dissidents, respectively. In other words, the Woke Marxist DEI industry is a racket designed to install commissars for its ideology. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, James Lindsay breaks this vital concept down in quick,
Queer Theory is Gender Marxism, Et Cetera
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 70
We often hear that Woke Marxism is a new ideology in the world. I've even said so. Well, it isn't. It's just an old one repackaged in various ways without any essential changes made to it at all. Critical Race Theory is Race Marxism in the same way as what we usually call Marxism is Class Marxism. Radical Feminism is Sex Marxism. Gender ideology and Queer Theory are Sex, Gender, and Sexuality Marxism, or just Gender Marxism or Sexual Ma
What to Do About Critical Race Theory | James Lindsay
Resisting Critical Race Theory Workshop, Session 5 of 5
What is Critical Race Theory? What does it believe? Where does it come from? How does it work? And what can we do about it? These are core questions to understanding our times. In this series of lectures, originally delivered in Tampa, Florida, in July of 2021, James Lindsay, the founder of New Discourses, gives thorough, deep answers to these questions.
In this fifth and final lecture in the series, Lindsay offers a stirring alternativ
How Critical Race Theory Operates | James Lindsay
Resisting Critical Race Theory Workshop, Session 4 of 5
What is Critical Race Theory? What does it believe? Where does it come from? How does it work? And what can we do about it? These are core questions to understanding our times. In this series of lectures, originally delivered in Tampa, Florida, in July of 2021, James Lindsay, the founder of New Discourses, gives thorough, deep answers to these questions.
In this fourth lecture in the series, Lindsay steps away from Theory and into praxi
Critical Education: Transformative Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 69
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 6
Possibly the most important topic happening in education, at least if you care about the well-being, health, and safety of children and the future of this country, is "Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)." Social-Emotional Learning is the psychologizing of schooling, and, as one might expect, it comes in a variety of forms. The most contemporary and relevant form is the most Marxist form because the
The Deep Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory | James Lindsay
Resisting Critical Race Theory Workshop, Session 3 of 5
What is Critical Race Theory? What does it believe? Where does it come from? How does it work? And what can we do about it? These are core questions to understanding our times. In this series of lectures, originally delivered in Tampa, Florida, in July of 2021, James Lindsay, the founder of New Discourses, gives thorough, deep answers to these questions.
In this third lecture in this eye-opening series on Critical Race Theory, Lindsay go
Critical Race Theory Is Race Marxism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 68
James Lindsay recently released a new book titled Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis (http://racemarxism.com) that shot up to #14 on the Amazon.com bestsellers list in its opening week. As many will know, that book seeks to expose Critical Race Theory and follows a series of lectures Lindsay gave in Tampa, Florida, in July of 2021 (https://newdiscourses.com/tag/resisting-critical-race-theory-workshop/). Since
The Proximate Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory | James Lindsay
Resisting Critical Race Theory Workshop, Session 2 of 5
What is Critical Race Theory? What does it believe? Where does it come from? How does it work? And what can we do about it? These are core questions to understanding our times. In this series of lectures, originally delivered in Tampa, Florida, in July of 2021, James Lindsay, the founder of New Discourses, gives thorough, deep answers to these questions.
In the second of these insightful lectures, Lindsay takes us into the "proximate ide
What is Critical Race Theory? | James Lindsay
Resisting Critical Race Theory Workshop, Session 1 of 5
What is Critical Race Theory? What does it believe? Where does it come from? How does it work? And what can we do about it? These are core questions to understanding our times. In this series of lectures, originally delivered in Tampa, Florida, in July of 2021, James Lindsay, the founder of New Discourses, gives thorough, deep answers to these questions.
In the first of these lectures, Lindsay dives into a pressing question: what is Crit
Introducing Race Marxism
Order James Lindsay's new book Race Marxism now! http://racemarxism.com
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 67
It's time the unvarnished truth about Critical Race Theory is told in full. That truth is simple: Critical Race Theory is Race Marxism, that is, Marxian Theory reinvented with race as "the central construct for understanding inequality" in place of economic class. That conclusion is unavoidable after reading this new, groundbreaking book from James Lindsay: Race Mar
Critical Education: What Is Culturally Relevant Pedagogy?
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 66
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 5
Fancy buzzwords proliferate around the fight in education, especially now that Critical Race Theory has been exposed so thoroughly [as Race Marxism (https://racemarxism.com)]. Terms like Ethnic Studies, Social-Emotional Learning, and all manner of "culturally" something teaching seem like they have cropped up out of the ground in just the last few months, but they're actually old. Culturally rel
Paulo Freire's Prophetic Vision for Education
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 65
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 4
Perhaps no Marxist has had more influence on the Western world than the Brazilian crackpot educator Paulo Freire, who is most famous for his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (https://amzn.to/3IRRe0N), which is the third most-cited work in the social sciences and humanities in the history of the world and a mainstay in all education programs today. Understanding Freire and his influence is ther
The Southern Baptist Convention & The Subordination of Scripture | OnlySubs w/ James Lindsay, Ep. 80
This episode of the OnlySubs Podcast with James Lindsay is available for FREE! To get access to all past and future episodes, consider becoming a contributor. Learn more: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/announcing-new-subscribers-only-podcast-james-lindsay/
In April of 2019, the famously conservative Southern Baptist Convention adopted an infamous resolution, Resolution 9, bringing into the Convention both Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality "as an analytical tool subordinate to Script
The Theology of Marxism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 64
Most people think of Marxism as an economic theory or, perhaps, a social theory. This isn't sufficient. Marxism, strange as it may sound, is a theology, the basis for a religion. This isn't to say that Marxism or Communism is like a religion. It is to say that it literally is a religion. The basis of the Marxian theology is work, or, as they tend to have it, the work. You must do the work. The work is the basis of the Marxian theology i
Paulo Freire's Politics of Education and a New Hope
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 63
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 3
How did Wokeness come about? Here on the New Discourses Podcast, we've dedicated hours and hours to uncovering the roles of neo-Marxism (or, Critical Marxism; or, Critical Theory), postmodern Theory, Marxism, Hegelianism, and other dimensions of Leftist thought. The role played by Critical Pedagogy, and in particular the Marxian Theory of Paulo Freire, has not been fully discussed, however. The
Why Every Day Is January 6 Now | OnlySubs with James Lindsay, Ep. 77
This episode of the OnlySubs Podcast with James Lindsay is available for FREE! To get access to all past and future episodes, consider becoming a contributor. Learn more: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/announcing-new-subscribers-only-podcast-james-lindsay/
On January 1 of this year, the New York Times told us that "Every Day is January 6 Now." That's obviously absurd, hyperreal, pseudo-real, but it's also an echo from the past. While many have rightly made the comparison between that farce
The True History of Intersectionality
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 62
Intersectionality is usually credited to Kim Crenshaw, who coined the term as well as "Critical Race Theory" in 1989. It has an older history, however. Listeners to the New Discourses Podcast will have heard earlier episodes in which James Lindsay articulates how intersectionality arose from the Critical Marxist Theory of Herbert Marcuse in the late 1960s, but there's another link in the middle of the twenty-five year span between 1964,
How Education Turned Critical
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 61
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 2
Something is rotten in the state of Western education. The name for that rot is "Critical Pedagogy," which could also be called "Critical Education Theory," the infusion of Critical Theory into all aspects of education. How did this happen? Rather, how was it allowed to happen? Activists have been tirelessly working for over 50 years to make their way into the American, Canadian, and other Weste
Groomer Schools 3: The Creation of an American Red Guard
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 60
More and more people are waking up every day to the fact that our schools have become an undeniable catastrophe, and they're starting to realize alongside that fact that it isn't an accident. It is purposed. It is intentional. It is a strategy, and it uses our children as pawns for achieving a nightmarish agenda, no matter how much damage it does to them to achieve it. In this Groomer Schools series on the New Discourses Podcast, James
Five Key Points to Understand About Critical Race Theory
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 59
The movement taking on Critical Race Theory is now in full swing across the Western world, and not a moment too soon. Over the course of the last year and a half, people have learned enough about this Neo-Communist menace to be ready, willing, and able to stand up and fight it in schools, institutions, companies, and communities all across our societies. What's necessary now is a simplification. Critical Race Theory flourishes in part b
Education's New Marxist Commitments
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 58
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 1
Over the last fifty years, a monumental change in the North American education systems has been taking place. The name for that change is "the Critical Turn in Education," which is, in brief, how Critical Theory has crept into education and education theory (pedagogy) and slowly perverted it from within. The madness in today's schools, then, is not some unhappy accident of the last year or even
Meaning and the Necessity of Theology
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay. Episode 57
What is the University? It's the center of intellectual life in civilizations in the broad era we might call Modernity. And what is the purpose of the University in its essence? If we turn to the 19th century Catholic thinker John Henry Newman and his iconic The Idea of the University, we see that it is to teach all knowledge. The Universities were originally seminaries, though, and theology sat at their heart. Newman, in this iconic an
A Brief History of Identity Marxism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 56
The ideology that is most conveniently identified as "Wokeness" is much more accurately described by the phrase Identity Marxism. That is, Wokeness is a Marxian approach to identity politics for similar aims to those Marxism has always touted. In this regard, Critical Race Theory is Race Marxism; Critical Gender Theory is Gender Marxism; Queer Theory is Gender, Sex, and Sexuality Marxism; Fat Studies is Fat Marxism; Postcolonial Theory
Groomer Schools 2: Queer Futurity and the Sexual Abuse of Your Children
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 55
In the previous episode of the New Discourses Podcast (https://newdiscourses.com/2021/11/groomer-schools-1-long-cultural-marxist-history-sex-education/), James Lindsay revealed the long history of the problem of Groomer Schools, and horrible as it is, it barely communicates just how bad things really are. In this follow-up episode, Lindsay reads through an academic paper at the intersection of early childhood education and Queer Theory,
Groomer Schools 1: The Long Cultural Marxist History of Sex Education
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 54
Through brand names like "comprehensive sex education" and one of its parent programs, "Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)," our government schools have been turned into Groomer Schools, and parents are beginning to notice. What many will not understand, however, is that this isn't just a fluke of our weird and increasingly degenerate times. It is, in fact, a long-purposed Marxist project reaching back into the early 20th century. In this
Introducing Counter Wokecraft
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 53
Order Counter Wokecraft: https://amzn.to/3r1y0Ak
New Discourses is excited to present the first publication in its book imprint, Counter Wokecraft: A Field Manual for Combatting the Woke in the University and Beyond, by Charles Pincourt with James Lindsay. This short, accessible guide presents the idea that Wokeness isn't just a philosophy but also a practice that is used to infiltrate and take over institutional settings, particularly
Protest and Paranoia
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 52
Surely you've noticed that the Woke movement doesn't build anything or accomplish anything productive. There's a reason for that. The only thing they bring to the table is protest, which is to say destruction. Disrupt, dismantle, deconstruct, subvert, and then "reimagine"; that's their whole program. This has been summarized here on the New Discourses Podcast under the slogan "Communism doesn't know how" (https://newdiscourses.com/2021/
Welcome to the Second Enlightenment
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 51
You may have noticed that times are turbulent and that something very nefarious seems to be afoot. You're not wrong, of course. That's exactly what's happening, and it presents a dangerous time for humanity. The question is why it's happening because the answer to that question informs us significantly on our prospects going forward. On the one hand, and this is correct, a global push for a kind of communo-fascism is underway: a power g
Sustainability: The Tyranny of the 21st Century
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 50
Sustainability is going to be the buzzword of the century. Everywhere we turn, we hear about sustainable practices in business and industry, sustainable foods and agriculture, sustainable energy, and so on. Businesses and governments sign on to "Sustainable Development Goals," and so civil responsibility is framed in terms of this seemingly simple idea: sustainability. What does sustainability entail, though? What informs it? In this ep
The Birth of Identity Marxism as Critical Theory's New Proletariat
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 49
Critical Theory evolved out of a pathological hatred. This hatred isn't just what you expect. Yes, the Critical Theorists hated capitalism, like all Marxists, but they hated something new about capitalism compared against their predecessors. They hated that capitalism works. Critical Theory, the tool of neo-Marxism, therefore grew out of the pathological hatred of the fact that "advanced capitalism," as they call it, which is protected
Herbert Marcuse and the Catastrophe of Solidarity
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 48
Liberation Series, Part 4 of 4
We live in Herbert Marcuse's world. In a previous series on the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay made that clearer than ever by reading through all of Marcuse's 1965 essay "Repressive Tolerance" (https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html), which served as a basis for the strong double standard enjoyed by radical Leftism today (check out the first part
The Only Thing That Isn't Systemically Racist
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 47
Systemic racism is said by Critical Race Theorists "ordinary, not aberrational—'normal science,' the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color in this country." As such, virtually everything is systemically racist, from schools to the SAT to businesses to every policy they can think of to teachers to hobbies like walking, hiking, and being outside to books to birds, fish, and even rocks. Ev
Marcuse's Subverting Forces in Transition
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 46
Liberation Series, Part 3 of 4
The more one reads of Herbert Marcuse, the father of the New Left, the less there is to recommend his ideas and more there is to recommend learning about them. This is because thanks to the New Left that he spawned, we live in Herbert Marcuse's twisted world, which may now be in the early stages of collapse. This episode of the New Discourses Podcast features James Lindsay taking us through the third part
How to Make a Critical Theory Out of Anything
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 45
Critical Theories are almost embarrassingly simple. There's almost nothing to them. A Critical Theory of anything can easily be made by one of two routes. One: Take an existing Critical Theory of something, substitute the domain-specific jargon of some other thing, and then publish. You're a genius revolutionizing (pun intended) your field! Two: Just understand the basic anatomy of a Critical Theory and do the same thing. In this episode
Herbert Marcuse's "New Sensibility"
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 44
Liberation Series, Part 2 of 4
Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential Leftist thinkers of the 1950s and 1960s, and for that reason he is often regarded as the father of the "New Left," which is reaching something of a crescendo in the Woke Movement of today. His goal was straightforward: liberation. In 1969, he wrote an influential essay (or short book) called "An Essay on Liberation" in which he explains what liberation looks li
Critical Race Praxis and the Weakness of Liberals
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 43
What's happening in our schools? It's obvious to everyone that Critical Race Theory (and the other Theories of Critical Social Justice) have been incorporated into them at virtually every level and in most subjects all across the nation, but the line is that "Critical Race Theory isn't being taught in our schools." To unpack this lie, we have to understand that Critical Theories require praxis, so while the formal and narrow theory of Cr
The Woke Manipulation of Democracy
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 42
Many of you will already be very familiar with the fact that the Woke manipulate language, often by meaning more than one thing by a term. One meaning will be quite milquetoast; the other quite radical. Much of Woke activism works by equivocating between these two meanings in a strategic way: boring everyday meanings to gain access and win arguments; specialized meanings to do their activism once they have the power. Among the words that
Why Critical Race Theory Is Un-American | OnlySubs with James Lindsay, Ep. 49
This episode of the OnlySubs Podcast with James Lindsay is available for FREE to everyone! To get access to all past and future episodes, consider becoming a contributor. Learn more by clicking here: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/announcing-new-subscribers-only-podcast-james-lindsay/
Critical Race Theory tries to bill itself as the continuation of the Civil Rights Movement, which was a true achievement of the American Experiment, but is it? Of course it's not (https://newdiscourses.com/2021
A Biological Foundation for Socialism?
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 41
The Critical Theorist and neo-Marxist Herbert Marcuse was one of the most influential radical Leftist thinkers of the 20th century, and this fact is evident throughout his writing. The depth of his radicalism can be seen quite clearly in several of his essays, including his 1965 "Repressive Tolerance" (https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html), which has been featured on the New Discourse
The Virus of Critical Social Justice
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 40
It is not normally appropriate to liken one's ideological opponents to something like a virus, but what should we do when the people who hold that ideology liken themselves to viruses like HIV, Ebola, and SARS? This circumstance may seem strange and unlikely, but it is exactly what we encounter with Critical Social Justice. In 2016, two feminist scholars, Breanne Fahs and Michael Karger, both of Arizona State University, published a biza
Why You Can Be Transgender But Not Transracial
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 39
One of the more peculiar features of the Theory of Critical Social Justice for many people is why it is acceptable under Theory to be trangender but absolutely forbidden to be transracial. The short answer to this question, which is sometimes given (usually after someone steps on the landmine of thinking they can pull off a transracial argument or identity), is that Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory approach the issue of identity dif
A Summary of Neo-Marxism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 38
At the heart of the "Woke" (Critical Social Justice) movement is the abuse of language, which is perpetrated in order to abuse power. Therefore, at the heart of the New Discourses project is a Critical Social Justice Encyclopedia, Translations from the Wokish (https://newdiscourses.com/translations-from-the-wokish/), that documents these abuses and helps to decode them so that everyday people won't be taken in by them. One of the project
Hegel, Wokeness, and the Dialectical Faith of Leftism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 37
Is Critical Race Theory Marxist, as many insist, or is it not? What is the relationship between Marxism, neo-Marxism (Critical Theory), and Wokeness? All three criticize one another, and yet all three have a great deal obviously in common. Is there some common underlying thread between these clearly similar yet obviously different worldviews? The answer is yes, and by tracing back to one of the most influential speculative idealist philo
Bourgeois Overproduction and the Problem of the Fake Elite
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 36
Elite overproduction is a concept that was forwarded by the anthropologist Peter Turchin to attempt to explain some part of why we face growing social instability in today's society. This is an insightful concept that deserves serious consideration in our present circumstances. It is characterized by a society engaging in practices, like sending too many people to college or for advanced degrees, that create conditions for potential elit
How to End Vaccine Hesitancy
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 35
Not gonna lie, the title of this episode of the New Discourses Podcast is a bit of a bait-and-switch, so I hope it doesn't put you off. The thing is, there is a principled reason to be hesitant on the Covid-19 vaccine, and, far from positioning people as "anti-vaxxers" for holding that position, it is perfectly reasonable and needs articulation. Put simply, it's this: people should have to be convinced, not coerced or forced, into accept
The Woke Rejection of the Reasonable
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 34
Society depends upon the people in it being able to rely upon expectations about how it and the other people in it will function. This requires a sense of what is and isn't reasonable. Some of this is, as the Woke contend, socially constructed, perhaps even partially arbitrary and up for debate. Much of it isn't. Wokeness doesn't agree, however. By having adopted a strict adherence to Critical Theory and the social constructivism of post
Equity and the Unmaking of UT Austin
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 33
Following in the footsteps of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, the University of Texas, Austin, has initiated a campus-wide plan to force diversity, equity, and inclusivity into the administrative operation of the university, particularly in hiring, promotions, recognition, and awards. This is a bold step by the university administration in making the university functionally religious and, more importantly, unmaking th
Authenticity and the Woke Crisis of the Real
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 32
Wokeness exists in a crisis of authenticity. This is no surprise since both of its main philosophical predecessors, neo-Marxist Critical Theory and postmodernism, are both their own forms of reaction to a perceived crisis of authenticity in the world. For the postmodernists, the real is remote, inaccessible, and simulated. Meaning is infinitely deferred. Authenticity, which is to say being who you are when you're not attempting to be any
Communism Doesn't Know How
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 31
At the heart of communist and communistic thought is faith in a kind of historical trajectory toward utopia that's driven by social alchemy. There are many reasons why this fails in practice, but the simplest thing to say is that communism fails because communism doesn't know how communism will succeed. The fundamental belief driving communists is that once enough people become true believers that the communist utopia lies on the other s
The Woke Goal: Everything Serves Theory
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 30
What is the end-game of the Woke ideology? It's a hard question to answer, mostly because it's hard to tell where it will stop, but a proximate answer to that question is easy and needs to be understood. The immediate goal of the Woke agenda is to turn everything into a Woke organ. That's it. This is more alarming than it may sound, however. You may be Catholic or Protestant, a scientist or a doctor, a rockclimber or a musician, but if t
A Values-Based Approach to Leaving Wokeness Behind
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 29
If we are fortunate enough to leave Wokeness and Critical Theory behind us, we need a map. We need to know what a post-Woke world would look like and, more importantly, which values will get us there. In a recent essay (https://newdiscourses.com/2021/03/values-post-woke-world/), James Lindsay presented four values he thinks are core to the establishment of a post-Woke world, which can repel Wokeness anywhere they are adopted. These are t
The Dawn of Medical Lysenkoism
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 28
The agriculturalist Trofim Lysenko should be a household name throughout the world in roughly the same way that Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong are or should be. That is, Lysenko shouldn't be known for his successes, which are none of his legacy, but for his catastrophic failure. He was the agriculturalist of the Soviet Union, first under Stalin, and his ideological biology (Lysenkoism) led directly to the deaths of tens of mi
The First Worthy Criticism of Cynical Theories
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 27
There is a fair amount of criticism of my recent book Cynical Theories (https://amzn.to/3sEJF5X) (written with Helen Pluckrose) out there now, mostly from philosophers who aren't up to the task. It is both fair and correct to say that the book isn't perfect. Given their inability to criticize the book adequately, however, I decided to take matters into my own hands and am discussing the issue at length in this episode of the New Discours
There Is No Good Part of Hitler's Mein Kampf
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 26
As most New Discourses fans will know, back in October 2018, James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose burst onto the scene with a scandalous expose of Critical Social Justice scholarship within academia. This effort to show the world what was going on in the humanities and (to lesser extent) social sciences research literature was billed the "Grievance Studies Affair" (https://newdiscourses.com/2020/01/academic-grievance-stud
The End of Civil Rights in Kimberlé Crenshaw's "Mapping the Margins"
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 25
In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay continues his abridged reading of Kimberlé Crenshaw's famous (or infamous) paper, "Mapping the Margins," which appeared in the Stanford Law Review in 1991. While not the birthplace of intersectionality, this paper is the first full-throated appeal for its application, not just in the world but also in the movements from which it was born: radical feminism and black liberationi
Forging the Woke One Ring: Kimberlé Crenshaw's "Mapping the Margins"
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 24
"Mapping the Margins," by Kimberlé Crenshaw, is an academic law paper that changed the world (abridged pdf here). It was published in the Stanford Law Review in 1991 and makes the case for putting intersectionality into all cultural analysis. It is also more or less unambiguously the birthplace of Wokeness, as in this paper, Crenshaw indicates explicitly that, to her, intersectionality is "a provisional concept linking contemporary polit
Aufheben der Dr. Seuss
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 23
Aufheben is a German word that, in Critical Theory, means to "abolish" or to "negate" in the way that Critical Theorists do. It's a somewhat complicated term in that it means both to abolish and to keep or to keep safe, and the Critical Theory use taps into the so-called dialectical process to attempt to use aufheben to tear apart and, as the Marxists translated it, "sublate" whatever cultural artifact they are targeting onto a "higher"
NO! Critical Race Theory Does NOT Continue the Civil Rights Movement
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 22
Critical Race Theorists like to claim that they have inherited and continue the noble legacy and justice work of the Civil Rights Movement, but this is an abject lie. In this episode of James Lindsay OnlySubs, my subscribers-only podcast, I take about half an hour to make the case definitively that, while they are content to portray this illusion, it is a grotesque distortion of reality, using their own words. By exploring the book Criti
How the Woke Fail the Paradox of Tolerance
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 21
In 1945, even as the Nazis fell from power, Karl Popper told us how to find the line where free, liberal societies are in imminent danger in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies, most simply summarizing a crucial part of the argument in a short footnote about "The Paradox of Tolerance." There, Popper lays out a short summary of when a free society should and must not tolerate intolerant movements if it is to survive. It is not only
Critical Theorists as Grand Inquisitors: The Logic of "Repressive Tolerance"
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 20
Repressive Tolerance Series, Part 4 of 4
In this fourth and final part of his four-part lecture series about "Repressive Tolerance," James Lindsay takes the reader from the darkest point of the essay, which was the exciting climax of Part 3, through the end of Marcuse's argument. In this part, Marcuse dedicates the rest of the original 1965 essay to explaining why it is him and people like him (that is, Critical Theorists) who get to dec
Repressive Tolerance: Left Good, Right Bad, What Could Go Wrong?
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 19
Repressive Tolerance Series, Part 3 of 4
In this third part of James Lindsay's lecture series on Herbert Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance," we see how the essay takes a particularly dark turn. Having set up the framing of the essay in the first part and explaining the condition of the "administered society" in the second, Marcuse now turns to answering the question of what a Repressive Tolerance should look like, including what it must su
One Pill, Two Pill, Red Pill, Blue Pill: Herbert Marcuse and the Administered Society
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 18
Repressive Tolerance Series, Part 2 of 4
In this second part of his annotated reading of Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance," James Lindsay reads and explains the portion of the essay where Marcuse defines the "administered society" that he claims we live in. The listener will find striking parallels to today's world, which certainly qualifies as the type of "administered society" far more accurately than the world that Marcuse inhab
How Not to Resolve the Paradox of Tolerance
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 17
Repressive Tolerance Series, Part 1 of 4
We live in a crazy world today that seems to have gone off the rails. That's because it is being driven by a broken logic, and, for all the flaws on the right, that broken logic is centered in the no-longer-tolerant left. The logic of the left today is overwhelmingly rooted in a single essay published in 1965 by the neo-Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse. That essay is "Repressive Tolerance.
Antonio Gramsci, Cultural Marxism, Wokeness, and Leninism 4.0
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 16
If you want to understand the present moment, especially how similar Wokeness seems to Mao's Cultural Revolution, you have to understand the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci wrote a series of essays and books while imprisoned by the Italian fascists in the 1920s and 1930s that are referred to as his Prison Notebooks. These are the birthplace of Cultural Marxism, which James Lindsay argues has evolved into "Identity Marxism"
The Birth of a New American Mythology
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 15
We are witnessing the birth of a new national mythology in America, and it is not good news. Imperfect as it was, the old one was better, warts and all, and it needs to be fought for. This new mythology turns the story of America on its head, positioning it not as having been born in the pursuit of freedom and liberty in 1776 but in slavery and evil in 1619. It has mainstreamed itself since the 1960s but especially over the last five yea
The Nature of Pseudo-Reality
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay - Episode 14
In a recent long-form essay on New Discourses (https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopathy-origins-totalitarianism/), James Lindsay explained the origins of totalitarianism in a single word: psychopathy. There, he explained that totalitarianism arises from people who cannot cope with reality as it is, and yet who are content to manipulate others, constructing a "pseudo-reality" in service to a vision of the world that serves their nee
The Next Chapter of the American Story
Human beings think in stories. We understand ourselves and the world, societies, social groups, and contexts we live in that way. One type of story is a national story, and in this episode of the New Discourses podcast, James Lindsay makes the case that Americans have, by and large, forgotten the totality of their own story. This has happened by placing too much focus and too much emphasis on one valuable and important part of the American story, which is equality. All men are, in fact, created
Biden Is Not The Room
James Lindsay recently said on Twitter that he will vote "unhappily" for Republicans including Trump in these troubled times after seeing an argument that the left should work to abolish the Constitution. Join him on this episode of the New Discourses Podcast for an explanation of his thought process on this issue as it has unfolded over this tumultuous summer of 2020.
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Understanding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
We live in an era of unprecedented pressure for ideologically based organizational trainings: anti-racist, racial sensitivity, unconscious bias, cultural awareness, and, perhaps most commonly, some combination of "diversity, equity, and inclusion." We're also rapidly waking up to the fact that in this era, the basic terminology describing and informing these training programs cannot be trusted to mean what it seems to on its face. What's needed, then, is clarity around these terms and these idea
How Social Justice Silences | Peter Boghossian
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Two and Two Make Four
We have to talk about 2+2. Unfortunately. Most unfortunately. This is because what looks like a simple and profoundly stupid Twitter fight must be understood in the full context in which it is playing out. This context is, in fact, the most important and least reported part of the origin story of the Great 2+2 War of 2020, and few realize that this ridiculous discourse didn't come out of a vacuum. It arose in reaction to something James Lindsay posted on Twitter, as has been reported, but more s
Saying No to Critical Race Theory
I want to explain Critical Race Theory to you. I just want to help you understand it, so I sat down with my microphone and no real plan except to talk through the claims, history, and thought of Critical Race Theory, highlighting where it came from and why it's a terrible way to think about race and racism, in its own ideas. So, this episode of the New Discourses podcast is a little different. It's just me sitting down with you through my microphone to make a seemingly complicated thing clear. I
The Evolution Of Postmodern Thought | Helen Pluckrose
Helen Pluckrose develops the definition of "Social Justice" as it is used in the academic literature in this tradition, explains its connections to identity politics and the political correctness movement, and then shows the relevance of the original postmodernists to this Theory in some detail. She does this to elegantly describe the progression of these ideas from Theory to activism to the streets by describing how these ideas originated, evolved, and were built upon by successive generations
In Defense Of The Status Quo
Join Lindsay in this episode of the New Discourses Podcast for a little over an hour of common sense in his liberal defense of the so-called "status quo."
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Staying Sane in an Age of Narratives
In my line of work taking on Critical Social Justice and other forms of increasingly dominant societal insanity, I get asked a lot of questions. If there's one question I'm asked more often than any other, it's how don't I go crazy looking at this stuff every day? To be fair, I've flown pretty close to that sun, but I didn't fall in, and so I've reflected quite a bit on it. I thought it might help people to spell out some of the answer. -James Lindsay
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Stealing the Motte: Critical Social Justice and the Principle of Charity
There is a rhetorical strategy called the “motte and bailey” that is getting increasingly famous lately. This is because it is one of the central tools of the Critical Social Justice movement. In that strategy, named after a kind of castle, a highly defensible “motte” position, like “we just want to treat people more fairly,” is maintained while also pushing a more radical “bailey” position, like “we need to radically remake our school systems so that no one can fail.” Activists advance the bail
Age of Narratives and the Postmodern Democratic Political Regime
On this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, your host James Lindsay explores the concept of political regimes through American history. From Washington, to Lincoln, to Roosevelt, right up through W and Obama, the “US of A” has seen a broad spectrum of political ideals displayed under the common framework known as “Modernity.” But where are we now? Considering the rise of Trump, the media's explicit bias, and the prevalence of critical social justice theory throughout culture, Lindsay suggests
How the Woke Virus Infects Academia and Our Covid-19 Response
Critical Social Justice operates like a virus. I’ve said it about them; they say it about themselves; we’re all in agreement. It infects liberal institutions and liberal-minded people (philosophically speaking, whether on the left, right, or center), perverts “critical” as in “critical thinking” into “critical” as in “critical theory,” which means something completely different. It then turns those institutions and individuals into woke cells that produce more Critical Social Justice and spread
Why Professors Fear to Livestream Critical Social Justice Classes
James lindsay takes a few minutes to dig deeply into the mindset of Critical Social Justice to explain exactly why its proponents are so reluctant to be seen applying their work in administrative and educational spheres.
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Coronavirus Life: Will Things Be the Same Again?
“Life will never be the same again.” We hear this over and over again with regard to the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic is having on us, even though we’re only weeks into the pandemic. Is that true, though? Won’t most of us “regress to the mean,” as it’s sometimes phrased, as we move forward and get this crisis in our rearview mirror? I think we will, more or less, and I think we need to remember that.
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The Way Forward | Peter Boghossian
New Discourses convened in October of 2019 in the National Liberal Club of London for a day-long conference titled Speaking Truth to Social Justice. There, Portland State University philosophy professor Peter Boghossian gave a rousing talk about the need to “speak truth in the face of danger,” parrhesia, as the Ancient Greeks called it, as this applies to Critical Social Justice.
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The Truth About Critical Methods | James Lindsay
Dr. James Lindsay in his talk, “The Truth About Critical Methods,” makes very clear that Critical Social Justice is not the same thing as social justice. He argues that the branding of social justice, which is how Critical Social Justice promotes itself, misleads people about the nature of that movement.
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James Lindsay Discovers Decolonizing Graphic Design
In February, I discovered an article on Twitter about “decolonizing graphic design,” published in the summer of last year. These sorts of articles are incredibly useful for showing exactly what’s going on in the Critical Social Justice mindset once you know how to read them, and this one doesn’t disappoint. After quickly threading about the article on Twitter to show it and explain it to my followers, I grabbed my microphone for an impromptu discussion of what I read.
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Satire in the Digital Age | Andrew Doyle
In October of 2019, a small group of genuinely liberal-minded people gathered together for a day of speeches, panels, and community in the Gladstone Library in the National Liberal Club of London. The conference had a title that succinctly described its purpose: Speaking Truth to Social Justice. Over the course of the day, even as the Extinction Rebellion protest raged outside just a block away, we gave seven talks and held two panel discussions, all with the intention of recovering and restatin
The Cost of Speaking Up for Your Beliefs | Peter Boghossian
Peter speaks with Conor about if there's anything he believes but doesn't say because people will think he's a bad person. Then the conversation shifts into whether or not we should stand up for what we believe.
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