China literally has state-mandated “affirmative action” for ethnic minorities, so the whole argument is utter nonsense to begin with.

It’s just a way for chuds to push the usual narrative that caring about minorities is the problem, and for PatSocs and other right-deviationist clowns to use it as an opportunity to promote their own heavily revisionist and reactionary version of Marxism-Leninism.

Someone on Twitter…

Yes, it’s nonsense.

The only thing I know is to be wary of people who agree with Fox News anti-woke grifters under any pretext.

https://monthlyreview.org/9781685901363/

Presumably they mean Critical Race Theory because that’s the one that gets the backlash relating to the term “woke” (which as I understand it, originated as a positive term among black people in the US, as in becoming aware of systemic racism and how it works - then later became a derogatory term used by the right to describe anything and everything they don’t like*).

If CRT tries to be capitalism-friendly, I’ve never heard of such, but it wouldn’t shock me either. All I know is it has something to do with studying systemic racism in the US, which is enough to set off the racists. And from some cursory searching and reading just now to look for signs of things being off, it does get described in at least one place as criticizing liberalism for being unable to address racism properly, so that seems like a good sign to me. As someone else pointed out, it could get co-opted by western academia, which is no different than Marxism in general getting co-opted and diluted.

*For this reason, I don’t trust anyone at the offset who is anti-woke. Even in this context of saying to do ML instead of woke. Anti-racism is an important part of liberation and ML without it in the US context is gonna look something like patsoc horseshit. China doesn’t need CRT or things like it for domestic liberation efforts because they don’t have a systemic racism problem. The US needs it explicitly acknowledged and understood.

So back in the 1920s, some German, Austrian and French philosophers (for the most part) advanced what is known as The Frankfurt School, or Critical Theory.

The core idea is:

• All systems have a structure of relationship, and a collective knowledge/culture

• These relationships always benefit the dominant group within the system and allow the suppression of the subordinate groups.

• The collective knowledge/culture is curated by the dominant group to further enable the oppression of the subordinate groups.

• To change a system, one has to identify the relationships and the pillars of knowledge/culture and challenge those first.

While influenced by Marxist theory, most of the Frankfurt School main figures had declared their thought as an alternative to “orthodox” communism (and years later the “authoritarianism of the USSR”). Supposingly, their effort was to move away from the economic focus of Marxism and focus more on the social aspects of Marxism. Most of them espouse post-modernist and liberal elements in their writings.

Personally, I find them a bit too revisionist for my taste, but I wouldn’t discount them as allies in at least some important issues. I also have a problem with their methodology. The central tenet is to assume everything is wrong, ignore existing methodologies, come up with your own, see if it works. In other words, re-inventing the wheel until something sticks. As a result, critical theory has produced a lot of quite ridiculous stuff over the years, along with some useful and novel ways to think about things. I can’t deny it works sometimes, but as a scientist, it rubs me the wrong way when people try to apply it to the hard sciences. I can’t attest to this bit, but it is said that in the US critical theory is a bit like anarchism in the UK, i.e. it’s promoted as the cool alternative to Marxism-Leninism.

Critical theory is prominent in cultural studies, and critical culture theory has had some influence in the writings of the latest wave of feminism. Critical race theory has been well adapted by black liberation thinkers in the US. Critical theory writers have had some very good arguments to make about liberalism and its failures to effect social justice.

People like Jordan Peterson, Candece Owens, Charlie Kirk, Sargon of Akkad, etc, have used critical theory as a strawman to advance their own arguments. Mainly, because it’s easy to make it seem like a conspiracy theory, where The Frankfurt School had hatched a plan to destroy Western civilization by capturing its culture. When rightoids argue that their films, TV series, video games, books, etc, are being filled with homosexuality, negative stereotypes for white males, representation, etc etc, they are usually alluding to the part of critical theory that talks about challenging the culture of a system, and that this is a result of a conspiracy between philosophers, university professors and their student graduates. It’s also far easier to debunk various aspects of critical theory, than to debunk Marx, therefore they tend to spread the idea that all leftists are Frankfurt Schoolers and that this is Marxism. (NOTE: If you ever had the misfortune to witness the debate between Zizek and Jordan Peterson, you might remember well that Peterson has absolutely no idea what Marx had said about anything, despite claiming he spent his entire youth reading Marx).

On the other hand, people like Jackson Hinkle use cultural theory in a similar vein. Jackson Hinkle tries to present critical theory as the prevailing ideology on “the left”, and then pushes his own silly revisionist and reactionary rhetoric, while presenting himself as “a part of the progressive left”.

Right-wingers exaggerate its influence, interpose it on anyone who disagrees with them, and paranoically feel that it’s what convinces people to be have any other sexual orientation or identity from the one they approve of. Funnily enough, they probably know more about critical theory than the average leftist.