In Context

Where has the current Great Awokening come from? The most important place to start is America in the 1960s, which was host to the most famous and influential of the Marxist-inspired Frankfurt School intellectuals, Herbert Marcuse. Through Marcuse’s influence, a Marxist critique of Western civilization became popular among university students and activists, and then filtered into university departments and schools more generally over the following twenty years.

Critical Race Theory (CRT), Black Lives Matter (BLM), diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) departments, and a general revolt against Western civilization as patriarchal, racist, and homophobic have their clearest origins in the New Left Marxism of the 1960s. Rufo ends by calling for a “counter revolution” that undermines the philosophical presuppositions and institutional domination of today’s radical leftists.

Big Ideas

• Neo-Marxism, aka, critical theory and cultural Marxism were largely imported to America by German intellectuals fleeing Hitler’s Germany
• Herbert Marcuse is the most important figure in the story of the rise of Neo-Marxism in America, and the godfather of wokeness
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is the institutional expression of Neo-Marxism
• Wokeness is essentially the latest attempt by Neo-Marxists to bring about a cultural revolution in the West
• A counter-revolution is underway

Herbert Marcuse and the Radical 1960s

If there is a candidate for the part of Godfather of the Great Awokening today, it is the German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse’s most influential years were from the mid-1960s to the early-1970s, when he was a professor in Southern California. His books sold in the hundreds of thousands, with his most famous book, One Dimensional Man, quickly selling 100,000 copies and being translated into sixteen languages. [19]

Think of the impact New Left Marxist thinking had on popular culture by reflecting on the lyrics of one of the most celebrated songs of the twentieth century: John Lennon’s Imagine. Imagine there’s no “countries” (borderless world), “possessions” (abolition of private property), “religion”, and “above us only sky (atheism). Lennon’s Imagine is a Marxist anthem inspired by the New Left ideologies having influence during the late-1960s.

A key member of the Marxist-inspired Frankfurt School, Marcuse wrote books diagnosing the problems of 1950s and 1960s America as a product of “late capitalism”. In other words, the racism, emerging nihilism in the youth, supposed sexual repression, and adventurism – the Vietnam War, in particular – were ultimately caused by capitalism. The solution, in true Marxist style, was a violent revolution overthrowing capitalism. But how to bring this revolution about? At first Marcuse advocated for the radicalization of the poor and, especially, the African American. This led to Black Power organisations such as the Black Panthers, not to mention other organisations that also used terrorist strategies, such as The Weathermen Underground. These organisations were proudly responsible for several bombings and murders around America in the name of liberation. [29-32]

But once it became clear that this strategy was only having very limited success, Marcuse accepted that the best long-term strategy was “to gain control of ‘the great chains of information and indoctrination.’” [37]. In other words, for radicals to take over the education systems at all levels and brainwash a nation. This is what the Marxist activist Rudy Dutschke famously called “the long march through the institutions.”

Marcuse also advocated something that would come to characterise the modern woke movement: the silencing and censorship of all non-left wing speech. In his 1965 essay ‘Liberating Tolerance’ Marcuse said that to tolerate conservative and right-wing views was, in fact, to tolerate views that there essentially intolerable because they set back the project of liberation. Thus, said Marcuse, “Liberating tolerance” means “intolerance against movements from the right.” [22] Here we have the origins of leftist cancel culture.

In the end, as Rufo says, Marcuse “had built a cadre of intellectuals, activists, and revolutionaries [which] laid the ideological foundation for the revolution to come.” [67] “Where did all the sixties radicals go?” asks one historian, “to the classroom.” [41]

The Rise of Critical Race Theory

Marcuse’s most famous student was the radical black activist Angela Davis. Davis came from a middle-class black family that was steeped in Marxist ideology. The product of private schooling, Davis studied under Marcuse at the University of San Diego and would eventually be charged but acquitted for being an accomplice to the murder of a judge and others in a courtroom taken hostage by black liberationists. The guns they used to commit the murders were purchased by Davis just days earlier. In true New Left style, where does a woman who routinely advocated violence and was implicated in the murder of a police officer end up? In a tenured university position teaching the youth and future leaders of America.

Although CRT was a term coined and popularized in law departments from the 1980s onwards, it derives from the Marxist race-relations analysis that came out of the 1960s and 1970s, of which Davis was a central figure. The essence of CRT is the assertion that America is racist all the way through, and therefore its institutions must be exposed as racist and radically reformed. The most important institution to reform is the educations system, because it is that system more than any other that shapes minds.

Angela Davis was part of a broader movement of identity politics that popularized terms such as “whiteness”, “systemic racism”, “structural racism”, and the very loose use of “white supremacy”. [120] Ultimately it was greatly inspired by her teacher Herbert Marcuse, but it all took on a long life of its own via Davis’ activism, public speaking, and decades of university teaching. By the mid-1970s there were upwards of 500 Black Studies departments around America. Today, 91% of American public universities have Black Studies programmes teaching Marxist-inspired CRT ideology. [111]

The Woke Revolution Today

The culture-forming institutions have been well and truly taken over. For example, in America, 24% of social science professors identify as “radical”, 21% as “activists”, and 18% as “Marxists”. A study of forty leading universities found the ratio of leftist to conservative faculty members was 8:1 in political science, 17:1 in history, 44:1 in sociology, 48:1 in English, and 108:0 in race and gender studies. [43] The agenda of much academia is now preoccupied with critical theory, especially gender theory and CRT. A search of academic journals will yield 609,000 results for “identity politics”, 107,000 results for “anti-racism”, 92,000 results for “institutional racism”, and high-number results for other terms associated with critical theory. [111]

DEI initiatives have also led to a massive increase in university bureaucracies. Between 1987 and 2012 500,000 administrators were hired in universities, and by 2015 the total number of administrators was rapidly approaching 1000,000. Universities have become hives of radical administrators pushing a radical agenda onto students. [48]

The revolution has also hit federal agencies. In the 2020 election employees at the Department of Justice sent 83% of all political contributions to the Democrats. Other departments sent similar percentages, and the Department of Education sent 93% of all political donations to the Democrats. [58-59]

This has all had its effect on wider culture, with schools becoming indoctrination camps for young people. One incredible example comes from a school in California, which set out to “challenge the dominance of white Christian culture in America”:

In pursuit of this goal, the state curriculum encouraged teachers to lead their students in a series of indigenous songs, chants, and affirmations, including the “In Lak Ech Affirmation”, which appealed directly to the Aztec gods. Students clapped and chanted to the deity Tezkatlipoka – whom the Aztecs traditionally worshipped with human sacrifice and cannibalism – asking him for the power to become “warriors” for “social justice”. As the chant came to a climax, students performed a supplication for “liberation, transformation, [and] decolonization,” after which they asked the gods for the power of “critical consciousness”. [164]

Universities and schools have become seminaries for the “pedagogy of the oppressed” ideas of Paolo Freire, also discussed at great length in the book. Also, 79% of school districts of more than 100,000 students have hired a “Chief Diversity Officer” to implement DEI policies. [167] But these policies do nothing to help children learn and therefore function successfully in wider society. In fact, studies show that the DEI turn has been abysmal in terms of student capabilities outcomes. [184]

There is also the BLM movement, which was responsible for 22 deaths and $2 billion worth of property damage during the 2020 riots, which was founded and driven by self-proclaimed Marxists. [116, 124]

Commentary

Where has the current Great Awokening come from? Rufo’s America’s Cultural Revolution is easily the best answer to this question published to date. Rufo says that a counter-revolution is necessary and already in underway. The first step has been in operation for some time now: expose the superficiality of the philosophy of neo-Marxist critical theories, whether CRT, Queer Theory, or others. James Lindsay and other scholars have done a lot in this regard. For example, after the critical theorists are done accusing Western civilization of being racist and patriarchal, “they are unable to propose anything but platitudes” in place of what exists. “Abolish the police” led to spikes in crime in cities that did just that. In other words, the solutions offered by the revolution lead to misery as they encounter reality outside of classrooms and lecture theatres. Excellent discussion of this are Coleman Hughes’ The End of Race Politics and John Anderson’s interview with Professor Glenn Loury of Brown University.

The second step is to reseize institutions. The author is no mere armchair analyst. In 2020 Mark Rufo successfully led a movement that resulted in banning CRT in the public school systems of twenty-two states. This was also made possible by a sympathetic president in the White House – Donald J. Trump. In fact, the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 election is the opportunity needed to begin this counter-revolution. This will require purging the government bureaucracies of leftist radicals bent on imposing a Marcusian agenda on America, not to mention making reforms in the schools and universities. For example, universities found to teach and implement racist DEI policies and ideologies may have their funding cut. President Donald Trump has vowed to do these very things. Time will tell whether his administration is able to succeed.