THE LEFT’S “LONG CON”: INSTITUTIONAL CAPTURE, MARXIST-SOCIALISM, SOCIAL DIVISION, AND REVERSE-RACISM

The Ultimate Goal Is Total Control

David Barnhizer

We Face a Very Difficult Future

In writing about what he considered the current state of American society, historian Ken Burns stated:

“The present day is one of the worst times in American history. … “It’s really serious. There are three great crises before this: the Civil War, the Depression, and World War II. This is equal to it.”

Although there has been enormous progress over the past sixty years in the creation of opportunities for many black Americans and others who have suffered unfair discrimination, the harsh reality is that we have defaulted on our obligations. We have allowed generations of young black and Latino individuals to be undereducated, under-supported, undertrained, underemployed and unemployed.

In this process, however, we face a potentially intractable challenge. It is, how can we deal with the consequences of a tragically inadequate policy that segregated our cities, provided and is still providing poor and inadequate education to a large number of black and Latino students. That system is sending many of those students into the world totally unprepared to participate in a productive and fully integrated way.

This is America’s shame. But it is also the shame of two generations of black political leaders. They have almost total control over our larger cities, and our urban school systems. They have control over who is hired to fill critical jobs at levels of quality that advance black and latino children in need of wisdom and guidance. They also enjoy a complete and almost totally unsupervised and non-accountable control over how the vast sums allotted by federal, state and local governments are spent and who benefits.

Fanaticism Is the Rule of the Day

In Man Against Mass Society Gabriel Marcel warned of the improbability of having effective discourse in a politically polarized environment, adding:

“The … fanatic never sees himself as a fanatic; it is only the non-fanatic who can recognize him as a fanatic; so that when this judgment, or this accusation, is made the fanatic can always say that he is misunderstood and slandered .”

Whether we are Liberal or Conservative, “Progressive”, Marxist, Socialist, Leftist or Tea Partier, a business actor or Environmentalist, Black Muslim, Black Lives Matter activist, White Supremacist or Klan member, a pervasive and disturbing pattern of behavior has emerged throughout American society. In the Radical Left’s execrable act of projecting their own behavior onto others, we have become bigoted, angry, hate-filled and ignorant fanatics. A result of this pervasive societal pandemic is that we can only shout at each other, and condemn anyone with different views. We have lost the ability to communicate intelligently with each other.

What has been happening for more than four decades with growing intensity and sweep is that the radically Progressive and Marxist/Socialist Left has been running a “Long Con” against America. If we are speaking of evaluating the ability to design and implement a lengthy strategic campaign aimed to “destabilize, transform and control” a complex society, it has been a brilliant and highly coordinated strategy. In another sense, however, it is an unbelievably destructive Marxist-based strategy to undermine and weaken the America I love.

The Marxist/Socialist Left has done this through an amazing exercise of patience. This includes the stimulation of a moralistic fervor among moral and well-intentioned American citizens—including young students seeking understanding and meaning from the authority figures who introduce and control their thoughts and understanding in K-12 and universities for close to 20 years.

I started my career as a Federal legal services and civil rights lawyer, spent years training hundreds of civil rights lawyers throughout the country, and represented large number of disadvantaged poverty level clients through clinical education programs at Harvard and Cleveland State University. Following Georgetown University, I launched the second program in the US in which law students taught “Street Law” to students in Cleveland’s public schools. I am a law professor, a civil rights lawyer, and longtime activist and advocate for social justice. I have taught, worked in, and visited with some degree of intensity at least 35 countries, and worked with people from twenty or thirty more, including India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Mongolia, Mexico, Ecuador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Colombia, along with Western Europe, the United Kingdom and Russia. Each represents a collection of differences that makes it an insult to lump them all together under a singular label that is nothing more than cynical “power play” politics. Anyone who thinks, for example, that the collective term “Asian” stands for a unified ethnicity for four billion people spread across an incredible number of countries is operating under a delusion.

I include the above note on my social justice activities because I was and remain fully committed to the struggle against injustice. This personal commitment has continued throughout my life. But years ago when I was called by a friend I had worked with at Harvard and asked to join the “Movement” and that it was based on Socialism and Marxism, I said no and lost several friends. But radical Leftist and Marxist politics and beliefs are something I have always detested.

The “Brilliant” Implementation of the Marxist-Socialist Stealth Strategy

In any event, I admit the Marxist/Socialist Left with which I strongly disagree has nonetheless brilliantly implemented a stealth strategy that Sun Tzu described in his The Art of War. That strategy is one where you carefully maneuver your forces in ways that do not reveal your intention, use stealth tactics to occupy key positions over time, and “forage on the enemy” by using his resources for your own purposes. Only then do you attack when everything is set. The goal is to win a “war of attrition” without any real response by the defeated enemy.

Amazingly, that is not simply theoretical “claptrap”. It is what has taken place. The academic world offered a long term “soft” target because most academics and administrators don’t have a great deal of practical experience and tend to trust or simply ignore their colleagues. Many academics at least psychologically really do live in an insulating “Ivory Tower” that pampers them so it never occurred such a transformation in their “world” could actually take place. I, in fact, knew several colleagues on my own faculty who were professed Marxist and Communists but most academics simply considered them “jokes” or “nutcases”. We fell for the “Con” and let it happen as the radicals, extreme Leftists and Marxist-Socialists filled administrative and faculty positions in steadily growing numbers.

The process of institutional takeover accelerated dramatically as our communications and message shaping skills expanded in what can only be described as exponential during the “Internet Era”. This has greatly expanded the ability to network, engage in propaganda, and mobilize action. One result is that the ability to manipulate our beliefs, values and awareness has reached a level where emotive messages using powerfully “framed” stereotypes are being embedded deeply within our psyches without ever coming into contact with our rational minds. They operate on the level of “feelings” rather than keen analytical thinking. For several decades this is what we has often been transferred to university and K-12 students rather than fact-based critical thought as highly politicized curricula and faculty agendas on the Left gained progressive broader and deeper hold.

The Intended Purposes of Education: MLK, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Alveda King and Shawntel Cooper

A fundamental statement made by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is one he delivered in a speech at Morehouse College in 1948.

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But ... intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”

American civil rights leader Malcolm X eloquently described the purpose of education as follows. I very much like his urging that:

“Education is our passport to the future, tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” “We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.”

The incredibly courageous South African civil rights and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela offered an equally powerful insight into the vital importance of teaching critical thinking, wide-ranging knowledge, personal empowerment, and vital skills. Mandela states:

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Education is the first step for people to gain the knowledge, critical thinking, empowerment and skills they need to make this world a better place.”

Dr. Alveda King, MLK’s niece, describes the growing divisions in America:

“When we forget that we are one race — the human race — we begin segregating ourselves and creating division in our nation. Perhaps most concerning is the effect it has on education. … Both unity and victory have been undermined by critical race theory.”

Shawntel Cooper, a Black woman concerned with what her daughter is being taught, states:

“We never said don’t teach history – we are fighting to ban CRT. My ancestors did not fight for segregation to be played out again or to indoctrinate little children to alter their natural growth to love without seeing color.”

The Corruptions of “Grifters, Haters, and Destroyers”

In the words of civil rights icon Booker T. Washington a century ago for which he was lambasted but unrelenting, the Grifters deliberately stir up racial hatred and shout accusations of “Racism” and “Racist”. This is because that is how the “Snake Oil Salesmen” of Grift keep expanding their power and wealth.

In 2026 the Neo-Marxist and allied “Grifter Movements” have coalesced into a powerful and intolerant force attacking the Ideals and people of America. The projected rage, bitterness, hate, and desire for power they project and allege was unfairly denied them has combined into a distorted worldview where they are projecting their own rage and motivations onto opponents because they are obstacles to their achieving greater power and profit.

The challenge is that many Democratic politicians and supporters have projected their own beliefs and actions onto a poorly constructed “racist” caricature of their own invention, one that is discriminatory and racist. The race-based turmoil they are continually stirring up is the “lifeblood” that provides them with power and profit.

Massive expenditures coupled with an enormous amount of wisdom and the keen use of strategic planning and implementation will be required to even significantly fix the societal crisis we have allowed to develop. This is due to the widespread betrayal of generations of minority youth done by the very people who were in positions to save them. Many of those betrayed young Americans have been incarcerated in numbers significantly greater than their proportion of the population. This does not mean that the crimes that were committed are not real, but that we have consistently avoided identifying and implementing the intelligent and tough policies required to remedy the sins that we “have wrought” with our minority communities.

Ranting Ideologues Know That Critical Thinking Is a Corrosive Danger to Their “Revolution” and Engage In Propaganda and False Narratives to “Dumb” Us Down

Mao Zedong wrote in a 1937 tract that open-minded, thoughtful and critical Liberalism was a threat to his “Revolution”. Mao condemned Liberalism because he understood it empowered people to question authority. He wrote:

“Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension.”

The institutions we have long considered essential to the civic virtues and knowledge central to our nation’s identity and meaning have been transformed and corrupted. We need to look at the reality of what is occurring in K-12 education as well as America’s universities. Honest analysis demands a strong and clear review of how America’s system of journalism intended to be advance and nurture a sacred and honest media system dedicated to Truth and granted Constitutional privileges and special powers has grossly defaulted on its obligations.

The problem for the Woke, Critical Race Theory advocates and Radical Progressives, as well as the rising tide of Marxist-Socialist “revolutionaries” behind much of the America’s growing corruption, is that development of our children’s minds through a full, balanced, and intensive educational process creates an obstacle to what they are trying to achieve. Tragically, in their own words—that radical objective is the wholesale “dismantling” and transformation of American society and its institutions. Our children needed to be made “dumb” in order to serve the “Revolution”.

What we are now understanding about many educational situations would please Chairman Mao greatly because the system produces products with superficial and obedient minds and eliminates those who question, wonder and challenge. They are “wasted” on the narcotic of radicalism and the opportunity of being part of a “revolution”. Winning the hearts and minds of young “soldiers” while simultaneously eliminating future opposition is why education was a principle target that needed to be “captured”. It is also why much of America’s media outlets, including most of the mainstream media was a primary target that needed to be infiltrated and converted into the kind of propaganda system Vladimir Lenin considered essential to his Marxist revolution.

It is also why the Left has taken care to primarily control the algorithms and linguistic filters of the Big Tech companies and AI systems. That insidious control allows the radicals to shape the information available to, not only children—although they remain a key target—but to “educate” citizens with structured messages that advance the radical agendas. It is why an intense and punitive “hate speech” and “cancel culture” system grew so rapidly—making sure that people conform or suffer harsh consequences. A result is that a substantial majority of Americans admit they are afraid of saying things that are likely to draw the wrath and condemnation of an aggressive group of activists. On these topics see, David Barnhizer, “Un-Canceling” America (Amazon 2021) and David Barnhizer, Conformity Colleges: The Destruction of Intellectual Creativity and Dissent in America’s Universities (Skyhorse 2024).

After Decades of Progress Since the 1960s, Racism Is Rearing Its Head Again: We Have to Reverse Its Momentum

A telling fact is that over the past sixty years or so there has been an overwhelming reduction in instances of overt racism. This means that to a wonderful extent there has been fundamental breakthroughs in removing real racism from American society. Racism that comes from all directions and in all forms still exists but, except on the worst social media sites, it has become far less prevalent and even largely unintentional when it does occur. A result is that the accusations by the numerous Identity Groups complaining about racism, and chanting that America is a racist society, are very often not based on actual instances of individual bad behavior.

This meant that the “Transformative Radicals” needed to invent alternative theories to fuel their machinery of anti-racism. Those theories are the ideas of collective guilt and original sin. Because overt, undeniable, and obvious racist behavior had become far less frequent, the Identity Groups created alternative strategies to justify and support their quest for power. This is because “guilting” and “shaming” were the critical weapons they could wield against those they sought to overcome and supplant in the quest for power.

The legitimacy of their continuing existence, along with that of governmental bureaucracies and the “sensitivity” and diversity awareness and training apparatus that has been created, depends on continuing to develop new justifications to survive. This strategy produced sweeping allegations imposing “collective guilt” and a secular version of “original sin” imposed on anyone of the “white” ethnicity. This has been particularly aimed at males because women were seen as more likely to seek a collective identity than men and desiring to be part of a social movement they “felt” was “virtuous” and “enlightened”.

Lacking the clearly discriminatory individual actions that characterized the pre-Civil Rights era that began in the 1960s, the all-encompassing “collective guilt” assaults on “white” people—wherever found and whenever the person might have been born—has been a brilliant strategic and political invention. Some have claimed that whites are inevitably and naturally racist. One idiot went so far as to claim a racist “virus” is located in all whites’ brains. These issues will be discussed in some detail in a subsequent chapter.

As Columbia University’s John McWhorter suggests, the “all whites are racist” allegations are themselves a racist thought process and a cynical and divisive strategy. It is aimed at redefining the allowable language of American society and socially re-engineering the people and the institutions of America. In that sense, it should be no surprise that many of the actors in this unfolding scenario trumpet their Marxist, Socialist, Communist, and Anti-Capitalist convictions. The recently released “menu” of the Democratic Socialists of America, for example, has nothing to do with what could be termed “democracy” and is a very clear outline for how the DSA and Marxists can create an authoritarian system in which a small group at the top of the movement control the entire society.

Rather than being legitimate attempts to improve society, these efforts are strategies to acquire power. Instead of fostering healing within the American community, they deliberately produce increasing divisiveness—all the while using the tactic of psychological projection and blaming others for what they are deliberately implementing. This is creating and intensifying the very resentment, hatred, discrimination and hostility the identity groups purport to fix.

An interview John Stossel conducted with Larry Elder, a talk show host and former candidate for California governor, offers important insights.

“Anti-Racist Racists”, John Stossel, 8/12/20. https://www.theepochtimes.com/anti-racist-racists_3458404.html.

“Black Lives Matter protests led many people to want to do something useful to reduce racial injustice. Racial justice groups are being flooded with money. Big companies made multimillion-dollar donations. “Bad idea,” says black radio host Larry Elder in my new video. “It is condescending… and not helpful. I urge white people to chill. Stop helping us, because you’re making things worse!” Making things worse, he says, because it supports the activists’ claim that “Blacks are victims of racism. (But) … Racism has never been more insignificant a factor in one’s success than right now.”

[Stossel asks] “It must be a huge problem or there wouldn’t be all this protest!”

“Well, they’re being lied to,” Elder responds. Teachers, black activists, and the media give “young people the impression that racism remains this huge problem in America when it is not.” It’s not, he says, because today any person who does three things can succeed: “Finish high school, don’t have a kid until you get married, get a job. Do those things, you will not be poor.”

Larry Elder continues:

The biggest problem facing the black community today, says Elder, is the absence of fathers. In the 1960s, most black children were raised in two-parent households. That changed when our government’s War on Poverty began. The handouts sent the message that it’s the government’s job, not your responsibility, to take care of you and your kids. “A mother with two children makes more money than she would make on minimum wage because of all the goodies she gets through the welfare state!” Now, he says, Black Lives Matter actually encourages the breakup of families. Their website does say, “disrupt the Western-prescribed, nuclear family.” That’s a Karl Marx idea straight from “The Communist Manifesto.” Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors proudly describes herself as a “trained Marxist.”

The Strategy of “Collective Guilt” and “Original Sin”

The thinking of the Marxist-Socialists and other fanatics is “Original Sin worked for Christianity for centuries so why not try it here as a way of rationalizing and justifying “cancelling”? Britannica defines Original Sin as:

[T]he condition or state of sin into which each human being is born; also, the origin (i.e., the cause, or source) of this state. Traditionally, the origin has been ascribed to the sin of the first man, Adam, who disobeyed God in eating the forbidden fruit (of knowledge of good and evil) and, in consequence, transmitted his sin and guilt by heredity to his descendants.

Accusations of racism, “genderism” and attacks on social class and wealth are weapons. This involves canceling, shaming, and ostracizing anyone who challenges your dominant narrative. Parents concerned about what is being taught to their children as early as Kindergarten become “terrorists”.

Using the “wrong” word can destroy a career. We are experiencing a carefully planned propaganda system of “deadening the mind”. This involves radicalizing, and “guilting”. These states of a corrupted and limited mind are achieved by feeding students a one-sided and dishonest diet of emotional angst, victimization, and hate.

The “Neo-Racist” Movement I am describing has reached a new level of absurdity. Statements have been casually thrown about that “all whites are racists” from birth, or “whites have a racist virus in their brains”, or “confront your privilege”, or any other of the sweepingly overdone and inaccurate proclamations that have been made.

It isn’t that some of the statements can’t be defended as having a scintilla of proof or logic. The tragic flaw is that their “truths” uttered by strategic and power-oriented radicals are being proclaimed as accurate “across the board” in all aspects of their potential meanings. For example, African tribes in control of specific areas on the continent’s West Coast, including what we now call Ghana made a fortune for capturing and selling captives from other tribes. Others on Africa’s East Coast profited by capturing and selling into the Islamic slavery network that existed six or seven centuries before the emergence of the European slave trade. It seems fair to conclude that those Black dominant tribal groups with the power to dominate and capture other Africans and sold them into slavery must have had a “mind” virus or propensity for subjecting Africans into enslavement.

Or, we might say, “Wait a moment”! I thought that “stuff” was something done only by those nasty “white” guys. That kind of thinking (or non-thinking) is how stupid, dishonest and sick much of the power-directed Marxist-Socialist, CRT and Radical Progressive political rhetoric is today. It is “Fake Racism” done for the purpose of power, profit and privilege. I detest the dishonesty of those who are using this tactic for political purposes, for personal gain, and to create social division.

Original Sin

The tragedy is that in the views and/or attack rhetoric of many in the more radical minority identity groups—including many “Critical Studies” or Critical Race Theory” and “Gender and Sexuality” advocates teaching in universities—whites are saddled with a form of “Original Sin”. The foundation of that assertion is that because some long dead people collectively labeled “white” for strategic and political advantage purposes committed the horrid obscenity of slavery and racism, and therefore all people of that genetic identity are inherently and inevitably racist due primarily to the fact they exist.

This absurd position applies across-the-board to tens of millions of people who came to the country long after the Civil War, including those who fought and even died to free people from slavery. In its worst variations it applies to those just born, or even those who will be born in the future. It applies even though the nation’s economic, political, social, educational and demographic systems have changed continually over the past 150 years with completely different forms replacing others. The “Original Sin” somehow remains attached and penetrates the “White psyche” to its deepest levels.

It is a strategy to impose “white guilt” and to brainwash. It is also an incredibly destructive form of the “new” racism engaged in by the same people claiming to be concerned about racism. The strategy may have the short term effects of allowing the new “Antiracism” racial bigots to draw others to their professed cause and to intimidate and shame others into silence or collaboration, but they are divisive and destructive.

The immediate response of many who have been brainwashed in the current political climate is to dismiss all attacks on their “new speak” as racist. After all, they would say, unless you have lived our experiences and shared our pain, you are incapable of unbiased thought and behavior to the point of having prejudices that are inevitable elements of “your” culture.

The logic of this position leads to the totally obvious conclusion that: “If I can’t understand you because I haven’t “lived” your experience”, then “You can’t understand me because you haven’t “lived” my experience”. I totally reject this idea that humans lack the empathic ability to learn from each others’ experiences and condemn that assertion as a convenient and foul political device.

Creating an “Enemy” Is at the Heart of All Marxist Revolutions

I am occasionally a “colorful” person. But I am not “White”. Sometimes I am red-skinned, other times tan even to the point of a darkish tinge. There are times I have been sort of “gray”—after all, I had Stage Four cancer fourteen years ago and survived—contrary to the expectations of my oncologist. But I am not “White” because that designation is a deliberate artificial political construct and historical artifact. It is something the supposedly “Antiracist” con artists have used to create their dreaded “enemy”. Their point is to generate the “division, shaming and guilt-tripping” they need to feed their “Divide and Conquer” strategy. For too many people it has worked.

There is no monolithic “Brotherhood” or “Sisterhood” of ethnic groups. The People of Color “alliance” is a political ploy. It exists only in relation to its opposition to the hypothetical alliance of “Colorless People”. The People of Color aggregation is a temporary strategic artifact that contains no substantive common core amongst its alleged membership. It is sustainable only in the moment and only when it is used in an oppositional strategy based on the Maoist and Marxist “game” of creating an “enemy class” of people claimed to have unjustly treated anyone not of their “class”.

This is what is occurring in America through the magnification of “hate” rhetoric and attacks on the wealthy or property owners who have more than others. In fact, “hate laws”, “hate speech” and Cancel Culture itself are tactics created by the worst among the racism and gender activists to highlight their demands and to impose shame and guilt on those they needed to manipulate.

Peter Takirambudde, a Ugandan born Executive Director of Human Rights Watch for Sub-Saharan Africa and a former professor at the University of Botswana, made the tactic of shaming clear to me in a global social justice and sustainability conference I created and held in Cleveland. That fantastic meeting brought together 300 or so human rights activists from all over the world to explain strategies of reform. Some of the strategies, including ways to shift perception and power, are collected in David Barnhizer, “Strategies for Sustainable Development” (Global Tomorrow Coalition 1989).

At this point, even as I see the core ideals of the Rule of Law, of pursuing the development of the best that we can be as individuals while also contributing to the health and growth of a truly and widely diverse community, I keep hearing those ideals being overwhelmed by the impassioned rhetoric of Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin, Mamdani, Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and too many others. They are shouting meaningless and unachievable slogans that have long been tested and have always failed. This includes Marx’s: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” As we see today in the Socialist rhetoric these include: “Free drugs. Free transportation. Free food. Free childcare, a Universal Basic Income.”

We are experiencing the creation of a “Hive Mind” mentality in our students that ensures that the authoritarian cabals that always rule Marxist/Socialist systems remain in complete control. A guaranteed basic income or UBI, free education, free retirement—all in an endless chain of “FREE”. And, if you somehow ignore that authority, you will suffer the fate of Alexei Navalny, the murdered Russian hero who challenged Vladimir Putin and was killed in Russia’s worst gulag. Voice your disapproval of the CCP and Xi Jinping and you will be falsely charged, convicted and imprisoned like the patriotic Chinese hero Jimmy Lai who has been imprisoned for the free speech and criticisms and is nearing death.

“Identity Group” and “Marginalized” Are “Political Action Committees”

At this moment we are caught in a divisive period in which Identity Groups have defined the world in ways that serve their political agendas but dissolve the communities of which they are a part. The situation is already changing more toward what I think of as a healthy “mongrelization”. I love that fact and hope that we are able to survive the insanity that currently exists on the way to actually becoming a fully integrated “human race”.

One of the main strengths of America has been its ideal of the “melting pot” in which immigrants enter the nation and seek to become part of its culture, in the process adopting the country’s fundamental values and creeds even while retaining elements of the culture from which they came. In that process there could be a merging of faiths, identity, physical genetics and cultural beliefs. This reflected the American ideal of an assimilation of the “new” into the “old” with the whole being improved, energized and enriched.

That ideal has been rejected by political Identity Groups to the point the nation no longer has a common core of beliefs. As far as I know, my ancestry includes Welsh, Irish, English, Scot, German, Dutch, and Norman French that suggests a hint of Scandinavian. I am a mongrel, and I love it because it brings so many diverse elements into play. My point is that I love the mixture and “mongrelization” of people, interests and values. The combination of different elements and ideals makes us stronger stronger and more diverse in the true sense of the interactive sharing of qualities and cultures.

For humans, having a fixation on ethnic “purity” or identity makes it far harder to be part of a sharing interaction with an appreciation of the “Other”. Creating or maintaining rigid Identity Group lines no matter where you are in the world, produces discord and an “otherness” that undermines us because another term for “Identity” and Marginalized” is “Political Action Committee”. Tribalization and Identity cabals inevitably produce self-interested motivations for “your” group or PAC against others you think are seeking the same resources and social goods. This produces resentment and competition between self-defining groups PACs as well as an increased potential for hostility and violence.