May 1, 2024
Marxism and Cowardice are the Hallmarks of America’s Colleges and Universities
By
Steve McCann
The campuses of America’s colleges and universities are awash in Marxist ideology and tolerance for Fascist/Nazi tactics as well as cowardice and lemminglike groupthink by professors and presidents. The chaotic and perilous end-product of these mindsets is what Americans are witnessing today in the virulent antisemitism, support for Islamic terrorism, and anti-Americanism at so many colleges and universities.
Thirty-five years ago, the
New York Times published an
article entitled “The Mainstreaming of Marxism in US colleges” describing how, despite unmitigated failures and the collapse of Marxism around the world, Marxist ideas were becoming mainstream in the halls of American universities.
The Marxists in America, recognizing that the traditional class conflict argument would not work in the United States, instead promoted one simplistic tenet-- the world is divided into the oppressors and the oppressed. Therefore, the oppressors must be overthrown by any means possible if there is to be a “just and equitable” society.
A brilliant blueprint which plays on the American national proclivity to invariably cheer for the underdog. The key element of this strategy is to indoctrinate students to see every social relation or interaction through the lens of oppression and conflict.
Who, then, are the oppressors and who are the oppressed?
The United States is an apex oppressor nation due to its slavish devotion to capitalism, the Judeo-Christian underpinning of its founding, slavery, and supposed unbridled colonialism. Thus, the “White” race, and in particular heterosexual White men, are irredeemable oppressors. Jews, due to their societal success and religious traditions, are and always have been oppressors. Consequently, Israel, along with the U.S., is an apex oppressor nation as are virtually all the nations of Europe and their indigenous populations.
Race was the initial critereon of being oppressed in the United States. The history of African-Americans was maliciously falsified, exploited, and manipulated by the Marxists in their opening salvo accusing the nation of being an irredeemable oppressor. Within a few decades, African-Americans were essentially cast aside as they had served their purpose. Being oppressed was, per the plan, evolving into an extraordinarily expansive group encompassing over 70% of the population.
A tidal wave of groups vying for oppressed status flooded the college and university campuses. Race was no longer a primary criterion, as all women were included among the oppressed as were all members of the gay and lesbian community. Virtually anyone not self-identified as a member of the “White” race was granted oppressed status. In order to also be considered among the oppressed, self-styled “transexuals” were also granted unconditional oppressed status, as at the right time will
pedophiles.
After September 11, 2001, American Muslims, on the pretext of alleged rampant Islamophobia, were welcomed into the fold and conferred the highest level of oppressed status. Beginning in the 1990’s, Islamic factions from the Middle East saw an opportunity to take advantage of this mindless Marxist movement and successfully cast the Palestinians as being tyrannized at the hands of the triumvirate of apex oppressors-- Israel, the Jews, and the United States. The Palestinians instantly became a cause célèbre on college campuses.
Today’s cultural upheaval can be directly traced to the success of the Marxist movement on college campuses. So-called “wokeness,” victimhood, cancel culture, identity politics, the DEI movement, and the self-righteousness of destroying property and livelihoods stem from American Marxism’s distorted fixation on oppression and conflict.
It is not just the indoctrination of the students that underlies the ongoing chaos at America’s colleges and universities, but the cowardice and groupthink of presidents and faculty who are also products of these same institutions. Their lemminglike reaction to the most catastrophic event of this century, the collective response to Covid-19, revealed the depth of their cravenness in the face of adversity.
Per the Department of Education, in 2018-19 there were nearly
4,200 degree granting two and four year colleges and universities in the United States. There are
1.5 million on the faculties at these colleges and another 260,000 designated as senior executive administrators.
Bill Rice of the
Brownstone Institute investigated the response to Covid by America’s so-called institutions of higher learning. He wrote:
One question that interests me is how many of America’s approximately 4,200 colleges and 1.5 million faculty members criticized the lockdowns, the myriad non-pharmaceutical interventions and then the nonstop effort to vaccinate the entire world population?
Among America’s 4,200 or so colleges, the only college that pushed back against these measures or the “authorized narratives” regarding Covid was Hillsdale College in southern Michigan (which has only 2,600 students.)
I could probably name 10 to 20 American professors who went against their peers and consistently shared criticism in interviews, speeches, and articles or scientific papers.
In other words, 99.999 percent of colleges and 99.99999 percent of faculty members either accepted bogus conventional wisdom or were too afraid to publicly challenge myriad false or dubious Covid claims.
These so-called leaders were actually all followers and they followed -- accepted as infallible truths -- the wrong bureaucratic guidance, and relied on questionable or incorrect data, which caused them to embrace mandates that caused irreparable and incalculable harm to society.
It is this lemminglike mindset that has allowed Marxist ideology to take root, infest virtually all of America’s colleges and universities, and permits threats and violent activity to go unpunished and thus encouraged.
These institutions annually receive over
$1.1 trillion from government and non-government funding sources, making post-secondary education the third largest revenue collecting entity in the nation, after the federal and state governments. Of that amount, American taxpayers contribute over
$260 Billion in the form of direct payments, grants, investments, and loans (the federal government $150 Billion and the states $110 Billion).
The only means of forcing America’s colleges and universities to stop promoting Marxist ideology and cease tolerating threats and violence on their campuses is to dramatically reduce their annual revenue. All federal and state funding should be severely curtailed and eventually eliminated for those institutions that refuse to abandon the pervasive sponsorship of Marxist ideology and abide Fascist/Nazi tactics.
If this nation’s colleges and universities are not drastically reformed, then the United States is facing an extremely bleak future in light of the education America’s future leaders are and will continue to receive.
caitlinjohnstone.com.au
