Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 353 | Our Kids Are Learning What?! | Guest: Chris Rufo

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

To start off the week, we're addressing recent allegations by Democrats that the Capitol riot could have been planned in advance. What does the evidence suggest so far? Then, a well-known critic of critical race theory, Chris Rufo, joins the show to explain what's going on with racial indoctrination in public schools and the Marxist roots of these new curriculums. And, we take a moment to honor Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy of nonviolence. -- Today's Links: Capitol riot: What we know about allegations of inside help from members of Congress https://bit.ly/3qxYK88  BLM activist egged on Capitol rioters http://dailym.ai/3oYZZg1  Feds Back Off Claim That Capitol Rioters Intended To ‘Capture And Assassinate Elected Officials’ https://bit.ly/3qBmvw3  Investigators pursuing signs US Capitol riot was planned https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/13/politics/capitol-riot-investigation/index.html  Chris Rufo reporting on CRT in schools: https://bit.ly/3bRPirN  Colin Wright reporting on CRT in schools: https://bit.ly/3qxVBVC   Colin Wright reporting on CRT in schools: https://bit.ly/3bYBvzI  The San Diego Unified School District has abolished its traditional grading system for middle schoolers. https://bit.ly/35RNLy9  Chris Rufo’s website: https://christopherrufo.com/ -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. So this is a big week. It's inauguration week. There's a lot going on. There are a lot of rumors about what's going to go on. There are even some conspiracy theories out there. We are going to talk about something that is not a conspiracy theory today. At first, it sounded like one, but it's been reported by a variety of outlets. And that is the notion that the Capitol riot that happened a couple weeks ago, was actually pre-planned. So we're going to go through some of the allegations and some of the evidence that points to that. And then I'm going to have a conversation

with Christopher Rufo. I've had him on this podcast before. He has been investigating how critical race theory and critical theory has been infiltrating our education system, has been infiltrating mostly public schools across the country. And the story that we are going to talk about today

is absolutely mind-blowing and hard. heartbreaking and gut-wrenching about what children. I'm talking eight and nine years old are learning about who they are, their identity, and their relationship with other people based on their skin color and their so-called privilege. And so this is a story that you really need to be aware of, especially if you are a parent. And so we're going to get into all of that today. And first, we are going to start with these allegations of the Capitol right being

planned. So when I first heard about this, when I first heard, in particular, the Democrats were talking about this, it sounded a little bit like a conspiracy theory in the same way that people saying bust loads of Antifa rioters were actually like imported into the Capitol and infiltrated the mob. I thought that sounded like a conspiracy theory too, and it turns out it wasn't actually true. Those were not Antifa members that were being bust into the Capitol to storm the Capitol. Now, there were, and we'll talk about this today, there were left wingers, verified left wingers that were a part of the mob that attacked the Capitol. And I've talked about this before. A lot of you, you send me articles because you are upset that I haven't confirmed the idea

that this was actually a left-wing insurrection rather than mostly Trump supporters. And that's because I don't see the evidence for all of the people who stormed the Capitol being left-wingers or even most of them being left wingers. But I have acknowledged the fact that there are certainly people on the far right and on the far left who have a common cause of wanting to see the world burn, of wanting to see the country burn. They want to go scorched earth. They want to see violence. They want to see anarchy. They don't like the people who are in power. And so they want to destroy. And they want to, they want to knock America down so they can. rebuild the future country that they want. There are people in the far right and the far left

that share that common cause. So I have no doubt that there were people across the political spectrum who stormed the capital. But this idea that this was a mostly left-wing riot, I'm just not buying it because I don't see a lot of evidence. But to y'all's points, who are frustrated that I haven't given more validity to that assertion, there were some people, even according to CNN, who were left-wingers, who were Black Lives Matter, who were possibly Antifa people who were also there. I have no problem believing that at all. There are plenty of crazy people on both sides of the aisle. But that is separate from this allegation and this assertion that the capital riot was actually planned. It sounds like something that

is not true. It sounds like something out of some like dystopia novel, but apparently there is some validity to it. So this is according to USA today. Some members of Congress, including those who say they're trained to spot suspicious activity from their time in the military, said in the letter that they witnessed an unusual number of outside groups visiting the complex on January 5th the day before the riot. They allege some of those visitors may have been involved in the deadly insurrection the following day. The letter that they wrote also notes that these visitors appear to be associated with the Trump rally, but they didn't offer any other detail. So we don't actually know if that's true. Some members of Congress, the article goes on to say, grew suspicious because the only people who

could have facilitated such tours they contend are fellow lawmakers. And so these are some allegations that are being made in particular by Democrats in Congress that possibly there were Republican lawmakers who were in on this, who kind of aided and abetted the violence and the chaos that we saw at the capital. As of now, I don't think that there's any evidence of that. And I think partisan accusations like that actually muddy the waters. If this really was pre-planned, saying without evidence that there were Republican lawmakers that aided and abetted this, it just hurts your case, at least right now. Maybe there is evidence of that. And hey, I think Nancy Pelosi is right. If there were lawmakers who helped make this happen, who helped these people commit crimes,

and caused chaos in which people died, just private citizens died and also police officers died, then they absolutely should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That's terrifying that we would have people in Congress who would actually facilitate that kind of lawbreaking and that kind of anarchy. Now, CNN, like I said, also said that it wasn't just people on the right. They said that there was a BLM activist who egged on capital writers. he was a left winger who told CNN he was simply there to document the siege, but he was arrested after a video showed that he smashed a window. He wore a gas mask, told rioters he had a knife and shouted, we got to get this expletive burned.

So that also kind of contributes to this idea that this was, that there was foreknowledge of this going on. And there are also reports of this being organized on social media, on Twitter and Facebook, which I think, it's a fair question to ask if a lot of this was organized in particular on Facebook, why is it parlor that's being taken off the Apple App Store and the Google App Store? Someone asked this question, and I thought it was a valid one. If that's the case, if it's really Facebook that's to blame, then why are these big tech companies like Google and Apple and Amazon targeting Parlor? And that's because it doesn't actually have to do with the physical

threat of danger that Parlor poses, but they just don't want the competition and they certainly don't want a company with any kind of free speech values to compete against them. It's not because they really want to keep the public safe. If Amazon and Google and Apple, who all kicked Parlor off, really were doing so in the interest of public safety, then they would also be cracking down on Facebook and Twitter. You know how much unmoderated content and how much propaganda false information, doxing, abuse, pornography is pervasive on those two sites. And they're never punished for it at all. They're never taken off their servers. They're never kicked off the app store for that kind of misbehavior that happened on those websites. And so, of course,

it was targeted discrimination against Parlor because of the values that the founders have. It had nothing to do with public safety. But it does, it raises some questions about these social media companies and what their responsibilities actually are when it comes to the organization of violence. The Daily Wire also reports on the allegations that the writers were pre-planning this and the particular allegation that some writers were planning to capture or kill elected officials. They say this on the DailyWire.com. On Friday, federal prosecutors backed off their claim that the government had strong evidence that showed the unruly mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol last week intended to capture and assassinate elected officials. And so that is probably

not the case. We've heard that a lot that the writers were going to capture them, that they were going to tie their hands behind their back with zip ties, and they were planning to assassinate them. Apparently, that is hearsay, and that's a rumor. And right now, officials do not have evidence that that was going to happen. CNN reports that investigators are pursuing the signs that the U.S. Capitol was planned, according to the article on CNN.com. Evidence uncovered so far, including weapons and tactics seen on surveillance video, suggests a level of planning that has led investigators to believe the attack on the U.S.

Capitol was not just a protest that spiraled out of control, a federal law enforcement official says. So here's my question about these very, very, very. troubling allegations, how things like this could go on, apparently missed by the FBI or undeterred by the FBI and actually it actually be accomplished. I mean, the fact that this could have been very plausibly pre-planned and that violent rioters were able to get inside our nation's capital. I mean, that is mind-blowing. That is mind-blowing. And it is a reason for us to question the lack of security there.

Now we did talk about last week, there are some assertions that, oh, the reason there was lack of security is because of white privilege, white nationalism, white supremacy, whatever it is. Well, we can actually look at the measures that were passed in D.C. and on the federal level

that actually really did lead to at least some of the lack of security that we saw on camera. So I think that was last Tuesday's episode. So make sure that you go check that out. There were very real steps that were taken and very real steps that were not taken by both local officials in D.C. and Congress that's possibly precipitated what happened at the Capitol. But here's my other question, this assertion by CNN, that this wasn't just a riot that spiraled out of control, but it was actually pre-planned. So does that mean that the president

isn't responsible for it? Because this whole time, Congress has been saying, he needs to be impeached because he incited violence. He incited an insurrection. That was the cause of the impeachment in the house. And they referred to some of the things that he said in the speech that I agree at the moment and considering the tenseness of the situation, him saying that you need to go go to the Capitol and show strength and fight and these things. I agree that that could have riled people up. And maybe he definitely should have chosen his words better. And I agree. that some of his tweets have been at the very least unhelpful and counterproductive. We've talked about all of that and covered all of that.

But if the reason for his impeachment was that he incited violence in the speech that directly led to what we saw at the Capitol, but now they're saying that it was pre-planned, then does that exonerate President Trump? Then why are you impeaching him? You can't have both. Like either it was a riot that spiraled out of control because Donald Trump said all of these crazy things that riled people up and incited people to violence. That's what Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are saying, or it was pre-planned and it didn't really have anything to do

with what President Trump said. You can't just say, well, you know, this probably has to do with President Trump, even though it was planned before he had a speech. This probably still has to do with his tweets. This probably still has to do with things that he said. I mean, that violates every free speech principle that we have in this country. Last President Trump actually said, here's the violence that you need to execute. Here's what you need to do. Here's the physical fight and the physical threat that you need to pose. Here's how you need to infiltrate the capital.

Then it's a very hard case to make that he directly and explicitly incited insurrection and incited violence. If this was planned, especially if this was planned before his speech. But even if it hadn't been planned before his speech, you still have to outline how in his speech, directly called for that violence. It becomes this slippery slope. It becomes this very low standard that anything anyone says could possibly be seen as inciting violence. And we talked about this last week as well.

I think last Wednesday, we talked about censorship and how there's a trend of people on the left saying that everything that someone says on the right is inciting violence or is domestic terrorism. Lilo Rose saying that abortion is violence. And abortionist said this is domestic terrorism. me saying, hey, Christians, like you should influence positively and kindly and boldly every sphere of influence in which you occupy. A leftist told me that was domestic terrorism. And so we do see this trend on the left of slapping anything, any kind of disagreement as

domestic terrorism or as violence or as inciting violence. And that's a real problem. I think that we have to be able to say, look, if this represents your view, look, I really disagree with what President Trump said. Look, I think that he shouldn't, he shouldn't have said that, and that was wrong. You can say he was reckless. You can say he was irresponsible. You can say that he pushed conspiracy theories. You can say whatever you want to say about what you think may have indirectly influenced people to do crazy things. But in order to be honest and to have any level of integrity, you have to hold people on the other side to that same standard. As we've talked about so many times. Like, this is not the first or the only act of terrifying violence that we've seen in the

past year. And I'm not trying to minimize what happened at the Capitol. I'm not trying to say what about or look away or distract or detract from that at all. I'm just saying, look, like, let's consistently be against political violence. And if you're going to say that anything that someone on the right incites violence and domestic terrorism, anything they say incites those things, then you have to wonder what people on the left said to incite the violence that we've seen across America's cities. I would rather take a step back and say, you know what, unless someone directly calls for violence, unless someone is purposely ratcheting up the aggression and purposely raising the temperature provably in order to incite violence,

that we probably need to back off that kind of allegation on the left and the right. Because remember there was a man who shot up a baseball field trying to kill Republican lawmakers, and he said the reason why he did it was because Bernie Sanders said that Republicans were going to kick 24 million people off of their health insurance. Did we hold Bernie Sanders liable for that? No, we didn't. And I think it's good that we didn't. And the same thing with Maxine Waters, telling people to get in people's faces, Nancy Pelosi saying that there should be uprisings across the country. Iona Presley saying there will be unrest in the streets as long as there is unrest in our lives.

AOC saying protesters are supposed to make, or protests are supposed to make people feel uncomfortable. This is in the midst of cities burning to the ground. This is in the midst of that arson and the looting and the rioting and the rioting and the murder of children that happened across cities in this country for the past six plus months. These lawmakers and these Democrats and these left-wing commentators were saying things like riots or the voice of the unheard justifying it. So again, if you are going to hold president. Trump's speech or people on the right speech to that standard, then be consistent and apply it to the

other side or do what I think that we should do. Take a step back and stop holding people to that standard. Should we be careful with our speech? Yes, I do. I think we should be exact and specific and try to avoid hyperbole when we can. I think we should be kind and we should be gentle and truthful in everything that we say. But we also have to be gracious and understanding and faith. towards other people and the standards that we hold them to and the accusations that we level against them. So again, if this was all pre-planned, which it's looking like there are, there's pretty good evidence that at least it partly was, then you at least somewhat have to take President Trump off the hook for inciting this insurrection. You can't have both.

It's either one or the other, I think, in my opinion. All right. That's all I've got on. that. Now I want to get to this conversation with Christopher Rufo about the craziness that is going on in our public schools. Chris, thank you so much for joining me. Had you on the podcast before, and it was a super popular episode. Everyone loved hearing your insight about how critical theory and critical race theory are infiltrating our education system and even our federal government, frighteningly enough. This time I want to talk to you specifically about how it's infiltrating some levels of our public education system and specifically about this tweet thread that you put out, I think, a week or two ago about a Cooperino Elementary School that forced third graders

to, quote, deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and then rank themselves according to power and privilege. Can you explain a little bit more about what this was? Yeah, this was a third grade class in Cooperino, California. Yeah, you know, Cupertino is famously home to Apple and other tech companies. The median home price is $2.4 million. I think it's safe to say that very few or possibly no people in Cupertino are oppressed. And yet they're perpetuating the ideology of kind of culture and race-based Marxism. And in this class, during a math class, the teacher taught a lesson where they read a book about intersectionality theory to eight and nine-year-olds

and then ask them to create an identity map to break down their race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, language, and then create essentially a self-hierarchy of their power and privilege. The teacher said that certain parts of your identity and certain people in this class hold power and privilege over others, and certain of you are oppressed. So essentially dividing eight and nine-year-olds who I think would have a very hard time even conceptualizing this into oppressors and oppressed along racial and sexual lines. And the parents were frankly outraged. And luckily, a number of Asian American parents pushed back and were able to shut it down.

But I think it's really just the tip of the iceberg on these kind of programs within public schools. And what were the complaints that these parents leveled against the school? It's quite interesting. A number of these parents were Chinese American immigrants. And they told me anonymously for fear of, you know, people lashing out at them, they said, you know, we lived through the cultural revolution in China. And these kind of training sessions, dividing people, turning student against student, turning children against parents was a core tactic of kind of Mao's cultural revolution. And it started with these kind of word games and intellectual games and ended up with millions of people being butchered.

So they took it very seriously. And they told me we've seen this play. We've seen this story before. We came to this country to get away from it. And we're not going to let it happen here. Do you think the purpose that's driving these kinds of sessions in school is division? Or do you think the people perpetuating it and even the people who kind of came up with it truly think that this is a vehicle for progress and a vehicle for reconciliation and unity? Yeah.

I take people, you know, at their word in general, I think that's a pretty safe default. You actually have to just listen to people. And I think they're genuinely kind of true believers. They're committed to this idea that the United States is an inherently and irredeemably racist society. And that's what critical race theory, that's the cornerstone really of critical race theory, right? That's it. That's the foundation. It all kind of emanates from that.

And they are, you know, I think in many cases, a lot of people, especially working in the public sector, are genuinely interested in kind of advancing, you know, African Americans, advancing other kind of marginalized peoples. But I think what's happened is that they've bought into an ideology that starts there, right? It starts with the idea that let's kind of help people, let's advance people who have been historically marginalized. But they do it in such a way, and their analysis is based on these presuppositions, that make it extremely divisive, extremely toxic. And I think that the theoreticians, the people who originated a lot of these concepts,

they're well aware of this. And they're well aware that the implications of their theories, they're well aware that they fundamentally oppose America as an idea, as an institution. And their philosophies operate on the principle of negation. So the principle of denying, of tearing down, of destroying, there's very little that is optimistic or unifying or kind of uplifting in these philosophies. And I think a lot of the people who are in the field, whether they're diversity trainers or teachers or corporate people, they don't have the understanding and the kind of analysis to see where these things can go wrong.

And you end up in a third grade classroom, you know, deconstructing the sexual identities of elementary school students. Yeah, which is also just on top of. everything you just said, very creepy to kind of force young kids into this mindset that they don't naturally go into, to have an adult guide them into deconstructing their sexuality, something that like you said at the beginning, they can probably not even conceptualize because they're emotional and mental and physical maturity just isn't there yet. Do you think that there are consequences to placing what are very, I don't even know if you call them adult ideas, but academic ideas and these kind of racial and sexual ideas into

children at such a young age. What do you think the consequences of that could be? Yeah, I mean, it could be devastating. And we're frankly seeing the consequences in a city like Portland, Oregon, where the education system from kind of pre-K all the way through high school has bought into critical race theory. They teach explicitly critical race theory as part of the curriculum. And what you see in Portland is that once you pump these ideas into young people, year after year after year, when you train them not for education, but for activism, you get kind of 200 days of riots and civil disorder. You know, I think at least 18 minors were arrested in the Antifa riots in Portland. At least five public school teachers were arrested as

Antifa in Portland. So you're going to get, essentially, you're going to get what you're aiming for. You're going to get a group of young people who are convinced that the system is out to oppress them, that the institutions that they grow up in are evil, and that only no kind of violence, negation, and resistance, and have built up very little a sense of history, a sense of continuity, a sense of the good. And that only has. only goes one way, and I think you're starting to see that happen in a number of cities around the United States. So they're teaching hatred of your country. They're teaching hatred of yourself, possibly, depending on what your identity is and the more unoppressed you are, according to

the intersectionality scale. You might be taught to resent your family, especially if you hear that heteronormativity, for example, is something that is oppressive, or the patriarchy is oppressive. you as a child might start to view your family as something that is part of oppression. And you might start resenting the way that you were raised if your parents are Christians or, you know, a religion that intersectionality says has been traditionally oppressive. You start hating the values that in which your parents have placed in you. And, you know, I heard a woman the other day say, I didn't know that my daughter had been radicalized by what she had been learning, this kind of stuff in

public school, until she was a junior in high school. You know, we're a Christian family, we're a normal family, we're a stable family. All of a sudden, I start talking to her about politics and values, and she comes back at me with stuff that I've never heard before. So unfortunately, some of this can be very, it can, I think that it can infiltrate curriculum in our kids' education, especially in the public school system, without, parents even being aware that it's happening. Do you think that's true? Yeah, it's absolutely true. It's kind of like, you know, that game, I think it's called three-card Monty, where they hide the,

they hide the little ball under the cards or the cups. It's really like that. And what they do is a language game. They change the kind of labels and euphemisms that they use to hide a critical race theory, to hide kind of Marxist analysis. And they call it culturally responsive, culturally competent. They call it ethnic studies. They call it all of these things that if you're a parent kind of glancing at the curriculum and say, yeah, culturally competent, that sounds great. Empowerment. You know, I saw a great curriculum coming in the other day into my email box that it was saying,

oh, this is our curriculum of empowerment. It sounds great. It's about developing skills, developing mastery, except they define empowerment as overthrowing the existing oppressive power structures. And so you have to really dig in to. to what kids are learning, I think that state legislators should have a requirement that teachers and school districts post the curriculum publicly in its entirety. So parents can easily browse what their children are learning because they play this really duplicitous game. They take radical

ideas. They take extremely destructive ideas. And then they mask them in this kind of anodyne language in the language of kind of personal development or empowerment or cultural cultural competence. But what's inside is exactly what your friend saw. It's, it's, you know, and five years ago, 10 years ago, I would even hesitate to use the words, but it really is a kind of 1960s Marxism style concept that is being repackaged for education. Yeah. And, you know, I saw someone say, someone with a lot of followers has a big influence someone asked them, do you think that we are right to be worried about Marxism, not just in relation to our children, but also legislation. And this person said, well, you know, there's no legislation that is trying to take away private property.

So you don't need to be worried about Marxism. Not understanding that Marxism shows up in a variety of different ways before Congress says or before a resident says, yeah, we're going to take away your private property. And a lot of people, I think, hear the term Marxism today. and they say, oh, that's just a right-wing buzzword. We don't even need to listen to that. But the fact of the matter is is that things like critical race theory, intersectionality, pitting class against class, race against race, it does go back to Marx and the Frankfurt School and this idea of pitting people against each other

based on either perceived or actual privilege. And it is something we should be concerned about. Yeah, I think, you know, both are true. And I think that the right has to update its language. We used to, in the kind of Cold War times, we were really fighting socialism, which was government control of the means of production, centralized economic planning. That obviously collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and yet you find a lot of mainstream conservative institutions still kind of worrying about socialism.

And those debates are frankly very easily won by the left. What we really need to worry about is kind of, you know, capital M Marxism. And the Marxists in the 1960s, when they saw that everything really had collapsed in the communist states, they said we need to update our approach. And we think that we can achieve the outcomes of kind of revolutionary Marxism, the outcomes of overthrowing capitalist society, not through the direct kind of means of production control, but by dismantling the culture that upholds those systems and institutions. And that's what we're seeing right now. And frankly, I think it's, I think it's, it's a worse threat because, you know, people can take your property. You can move. You can buy new property. You can kind of, you can, you can, you can reconstitute your wealth, right? It's much harder to do when someone destroys your culture, when someone destroys your family structure, when someone destroys your community. To me, it's actually a deeper threat. And, and again, to your point, it also includes at some point the kind of seizure

of property. If you look at a kind of foundational text and critical race theory by a law professor named Cheryl Harris, it's called whiteness as property. Her argument was that our right to property and other constitutional rights are essentially part of the white supremacist system. And what we need to do is break down those conceptions into law and eventually reorder society through large-scale wealth siegers and redistribution along the kind of African decolonial model. So all of these things go together. We need to be very smart in how we fight it and what we prioritize. And I think, you know, you already touched on one of the reasons why this is so difficult for a lot of people is because of the language. In Cupertino, for example, they were going through

the book. This book is anti-racist. Well, I've seen very well-meaning people who would not call themselves Marxists say, I want to be anti-racist because of course you do. Of course you do. That sounds good. If you don't want to be a racist and you're hearing from people, it's not enough to not be racist, but you need to be anti-racist. Well, you know, if you're a well-meaning person who truly does love the people around you, you're not a racist, you might just think, sure, I need to embrace that language. I'm going to embrace the teachings of Ibramax Kendi. I am going to listen to marginalized voices, and I want my child to be oriented around this

kind of language and perspective as well. What would you say to people who are just now kind of waking up and realizing, oh, okay, this is not as innocent as I thought it was. But I still, you know, I still want to do good. I still want to prove that I'm not racist. How do I walk that line? What do I throw out? What do I keep?

Well, you know, I mean, first of all, to the people who are perpetuating the kind of ideology of anti-racism, you can never prove that you're not racist. Because that's the key kind of psychological and social control they have over you and they're not going to let it go. I mean, even people, you know, even people who are very well-intentioned and very bought into this ideology, they'll tell you, well, you can never truly be not racist. You know, you're always going to be racist. That's what defines you. And you have to kind of submit to our program in totality in order to atone for your kind of inner essence of evil. And this is really destructive. And I would tell people, think of it as a kind of cult. I saw a document that I'm going to be reporting. later where they were going through the kind of eight stages of white identity development. And what they're trying to do, and this is from a school district, and again, you know, in a public school funded by public dollars, they're saying essentially we need to break down

our white students. We need to disorient them. We need to disintegrate their existing personalities and implant into them, this ideology of anti-racism, and then create these series of kind of guilt traps, of shaming, kind of shaming rituals in order for them to fully break themselves down and adopt this new revolutionary personality. And, you know, I think we just have to show parents what's happening. And I think all kind of right-thinking people, once they actually see the details of what's happening, will rightly kind of recoil and ask what they can do to push back. Yep, absolutely.

And speaking of that, my last question, you talked about how some of these Chinese American parents of students in this Cupertino elementary school, how they did push back. I think you said that this particular program or curriculum was taken out. It was removed because of how they stood up. There are other parents across the country that are suing school districts or suing their schools for things like compelled speech, for compelling young students to say, you know, I'm privileged, I'm an oppressor or whatever it is. Can you talk about some of those tactics and encourage any parents out there who are like, okay, I'm ready. I want to do something to try to push back on this in a way that's effective.

Yeah, I think there's two things you can do. You can join a kind of growing grassroots movement against critical race theory in schools. And you can push back directly against teachers, principals, school boards, school districts. But second, kind of above that and kind of abstraction is These are going to be kind of, I think, pivotal lawsuits in the coming years. And I can't share a lot. I can't share details right now. But, you know, the President Trump passed an executive order banning critical race theory from federal institute, federal government agencies.

And Joe Biden, I think, without a shadow of a doubt in the coming weeks, will actually get rid of that executive order. And I'll be making a major announcement on the heels of Joe Biden getting rid of it. You know, there are some very smart people, very smart attorneys that are now mobilizing. And we're going to be making a major announcement on that because these programs are clearly illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They traffic in racial stereotypes. They create a hostile work environment.

They compel speech. There's a number of avenues that they're falling afoul. And I think that would be a good avenue for change. Yep. They create some of that implicit bias training. I've heard in some workplaces actually creates implicit bias that people didn't actually have before because it kind of, you know, it divides people by their various superficial identities. And so I'm very glad for the work you do and for the encouragement and equipment that you give people.

Please tell people how they can support you. Yeah, you know, I think one of the best things I'm going to be doing a series, a 10-part investigative series on critical race theory in schools. And you can sign up for my news. for free, it's at Christopherrufo.com slash newsletter. Just Christopherrufo.com slash newsletter. I'll be doing this series and you'll get a taste of exactly what's happening within the classroom, within the schools, and then some kind of best practices on how to fight back.

Awesome. Well, we will include that link in the description for this podcast, YouTube, wherever people listen. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. I really appreciate your insight. And again, all of the work that you're doing. Thank you. Okay, guys, I want to end with a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. This is MLK Day and what he represented and the words that he taught and what he preached

came from a place of love and positive progress and actual reconciliation and unity that I think has been lost on so many people today. And so much of what he said was founded in the truth that we find in God's Word and is really the antithesis of what we see in something like critical race theory that unfortunately is infiltrating so many sectors of society and is doing the exact opposite of what we want as a country. It's not bringing people together because it's very nature, it's very purpose is to divide, is to split people up, to pit one class against another class, to pit one race against another race. If we believe that racism is a sin, which we do, because 1 John is very clear,

you cannot love God and hate your brother. So you cannot hate your brother for any reason, whether it's skin color, ethnicity, nationality, whether it's because of their age or ability or disability, whatever it is, the people of God are called to love. First, the Lord, with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor, all of our neighbors as ourselves. And that love that we are called to is not defined by the world. We hear a lot of people saying, oh, you know, you're just, you're supposed to love your neighbor. That means that you're not supposed to say anything uncomfortable. You're not allowed to disagree with them or you're not allowed to talk about sin and repentance

and things like that. We reject that worldly idea and definition of what love is because 1st John also says that God is love. And if God is love and he says what's right and what's wrong and what's good and what's bad, then we are also being loving by saying and living those things. But we love our neighbor, not just by speaking truth, but by serving them, by wanting what's best for them by putting their interests above our own. And don't let anyone tell you that that is not enough. All of these books about how to be an anti-racist are packaged in a way that sounds good.

It might even sound biblical, but will ultimately tear you apart from the inside out. It will tear your family apart. It will tear your community apart. It will tear your school apart. It will tear your church apart because these are worldly ideas that say that they bring reconciliation and unity and only bring division and resentment and hate and further bias. That's not what we want. And from what MLK said in his own speeches, it doesn't sound like that was his goal either. From his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, he said this, violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.

violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. I believe that unarmed truth, an unconditional love, will have the final word in reality. This is why Wright temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I think this is true. And look, we can acknowledge that parts of the church failed on this in the civil rights era of the 1960s, that they did not uphold the banner of unconditional love and unarmed truth. But that doesn't mean that in order to rectify the mistakes that the church may have made then, that we have to adopt worldly definitions of justice and reconciliation when the gospel is still the answer. Unarmed truth and unconditional love is still the answer.

God still says what love is. He still says what right is. He still says what our responsibility is, which is to love. love him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as our self, don't let anyone tell you that that, the two greatest commandments, according to Jesus, is not enough. It is enough. So whenever you feel like you're not doing enough, like you're not enough of an activist, or you're not adopting all of the new woke language, or you're not reading all the right books, God tells you what to do. Love God and love your neighbor.

James 3.13 through 18 says this, and I think that it's very pertinent for what we're talking about. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but it is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be, disorder in every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere, and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Critical race theory and the tenets

that it purports causes disorder, it causes dismay, it causes division. The people who purport it you've probably experienced in your own life are not gentle. They're not peaceable. They're not open to reason. They're not full of mercy. They're actually very eager to execute cancellation. It does not bear good fruits. The tree of CRT bears bad fruits because it's a bad tree. It's bad at its roots. It is never going to bear anything that's good when I hear people say that there are some good things to CRT. There are some things that we should take from it. And there are some things that we shouldn't take from it. You can't do that. Jesus says that a tree is known by its fruit. It's a bad tree. And this is not just a leftist problem. There are plenty of bad trees on the so-called

right as well. And so we have to reject what causes people to not be open to reason, to refuse to be full of mercy, and to not bear good fruits. CRT, it's encouraging. the jealousy and selfish ambition, as we saw in this curriculum taught in these elementary schools that is earthly, unspeiritual, and demonic. And where it exists, just like every other worldly ideology, no matter which side of the aisle that it's on, there will be disorder and every vile practice. And so we have to remember where the truth exists, where our inspiration for love exists, where our order, our instruction for reconciliation and unity exists, how we're going to come together. It's not by teaching kids to hate themselves and to resent

one another and to hate their family and to hate their values and to hate their country. Love is not going to come from hate. I think Martin Luther King, Jr. was very effective and very clear about that throughout his life and throughout his ministry. And so, let us remember that today. Let us remember that the word of God is enough that the commandments that God gives us is enough. It is enough for obedience. It is enough for holiness. It is enough for righteousness. It is enough for justice. All right. That's all I got for today. I will see you guys back here tomorrow.