Usually, conservatives are happy to turn back the clock. But not always. At present, it is the calendar that is turning backwards to the year 1984, and we don’t much like it. Why? Because in the novel with that title, anyone who dares defy the state ideology is in trouble and that ideology demands that everyone live a lie.

In our case, the ideology is cultural Marxism, Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms, largely by the Frankfurt School. Just as under economic Marxism, all members of the bourgeoisie are inherently evil and must be “reeducated,” so the same is now true for anyone white, male (or non-feminist female), and straight. An op-ed from the October 1 Wall Street Journal by a registered nurse, Laura L. Morgan, shows where we are:

[block]I was fired from my nursing job this year for refusing to take “implicit bias” training. After 39 years of providing equal care to all my patients without regard to their race, I objected to a mandatory course grounded in the idea that I’m racist because I’m white. I fear every healthcare professional will soon be forced to make the same awful decision I did: Falsely admit to being racist or abandon the medical field.[/block]

The situation Nurse Morgan describes is the work of “critical race theory” (CRT). When schools went virtual during the Coronapanic, many parents got to see how their children were being programmed with CRT in public schools. Rightly, many were outraged. But CRT is only one part of something larger, Critical Theory, which is now shaping school curricula. 

Critical Theory, another baleful product of the Frankfurt School, is something of a play on words. What is the theory? The theory is to criticize. To subject every element of traditional societies to unending criticism with the goal of delegitimizing them. The family, the church, cornmunity, race (if you are white or Asian), American history, the list is endless. If you dare defend any aspect of traditional society and culture, you are a “thisist” or a “thatist,” a condition that can only be redeemed by endless, groveling apologies and self-criticism—exactly what Nurse Morgan refused to do. So she was fired.

I knew it was coming, but I was still devastated when I was fired in February.  I went from a six-figure job to zero income. When I tried to find a new healthcare job, no one would hire me. No doubt if they contacted my old employer, they were told why I was let go.

The cultural Marxists focus their Critical Theory efforts on those who are least able to resist: school children. Again, it is a mistake to think this is restricted to Critical Race Theory. Critical Theory shapes every aspect of public school. History becomes a history of what a horrible country American has been since its founding. In English classes, ungrammatical English is not only tolerated, it is required (the pronoun farce), and the great books of English literature are replaced with contemporary trash. Not even mathematics escapes. Right answers are labeled an aspect of “white supremacy,” which suggests the cultural Marxists don’t think black people can add or subtract. Any student who rebels against Critical Theory is on his way to the principal’s office.

As Nurse Morgan and many others have discovered, cultural Marxism now rules in the workplace, too. Defy it and you are not only fired but blackballed. Joe McCarthy is rolling with laughter in his coffin.

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As Marx himself would say, the question facing conservatives is praxis: what do we do about it? A friend suggests we turn 1984 and the left’s supposed desire for “transparency” against them by mandating every public school classroom have a camera parents can tune into live or watch later. The teachers’ unions will scream, but after Virginia’s Democratic governor was beaten because he told parents to butt out of their kids’ schools, few politicians will want to make the same mistake. It’s safe to say that, once parents see the bilge being crammed down their kids’ throats, a lot of Republicans will be elected to school boards.

As to the workplace, there is an easy answer several conservatives have promoted: add “political views” to the list of forbidden discriminations in both state and federal law. This too the left will have trouble fighting, because doing so will reveal more about their goals than they would find convenient—and some people on the left will join conservatives on this one.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, I thought the danger of 1984-style tyranny in this country was dead. We were heading for Brave New World instead—as we still are, at breakneck pace. Critical Theory has proven me wrong. The cultural Marxists are using all the terror they can muster, in self-criticism sessions like the one Nurse Morgan spurned, in school expulsions, in firings and blackballings, to make everyone cower before their “woke” clay god. Should they get the opportunity to do so, they would go full Stalin, sending dissidents to the psychiatric hospitals, labor camps, and execution grounds. Some video monitors and a small change in anti-discrimination laws would help stop them.