Commentary

More than 120 U.S. colleges and universities have hosted tent encampments by anti-Israel student protesters and other supporters. They chant neo-Marxist slogans of intersectionality, solidarity, and anti-colonialism in defense of true bigotry and terrorism, calling for freedom and liberation for a regime that was the sole instigator of the Hamas–Israel war. The same regime also squashes women’s rights, violently penalizes dissent, and criminalizes same-sex marriages.

While the public watches in bewilderment the unraveling of illogical far-left activism at the hands of our nation’s privileged yet clueless youth, their far-left professors and college administrators, who overrun our higher education institutions, are celebrating. After all, a new generation of progressive foot soldiers has graduated to take up the ideological torch.

Even many Christian church leaders, bowing to the cultural tides of “wokeism,” are now openly supporting Hamas in their apostatic reading of the Bible, twisting the word of God to condemn Israel’s “settler colonialism” and affirm their allyship with the cause of “Palestinian liberation.”

It may seem that the left’s long march through the institutions, both secular and religious, is bearing fruit in America.

But we should not submit to cynicism and despair. Here in America—and only here, where the liberty to disagree (and not be stoned to death) is fundamentally guaranteed by a brilliantly devised colorblind document called the U.S. Constitution—forces countering the far-left’s stronghold on our society are emerging and converging.

We can and must march back through the institutions, only if we make wise judgments and take strategic moves. Virulent anti-Semitism on today’s college campuses, like anti-Asian discrimination in college admissions and white-shaming diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices, is only a symptom of a much bigger problem plaguing our nation. At the root of the issue is an ideology predicated on identity balkanization, racial divisions, and sexual immorality. Whether you call it wokeism, leftism, or neo-Marxism, this radical doctrine is incompatible with America’s founding values of equality and liberty.

Nonetheless, through false testimony, deception, and other shoddy schemes, this fringe ideology has overtaken major public institutions, invaded corporate America, and usurped far too many churches throughout America. While the dogma of race-based thinking, divisive identity politics, and transgenderism has a cultish following, most of the followers are just “useful idiots,” a term ironically used by former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.

The backbone of the woke movement consists of a minority group of die-hard fans of Marxism, who are far-left academics and scholar-activists, and a slightly larger group of snake-oil salesmen, who reap financial benefits from promoting the dogma in the free marketplace facilitated by the Western-style capitalism they have hypocritically chastised. For the sake of analytical precision, let’s call them “ideologues” and “grifters.” To march back through the institutions, we must contend with these two groups by confronting the former and exposing the latter.

Many of these ideologues want Americans to buy into the idea that “anti-racist” discrimination is justifiable and equitable. Proponents of critical race theory cast doubt on the very foundations of classical liberalism, rational thinking, equality, legal reasoning, and constitutional neutrality. We have to confront them with facts, data, and sound reasoning.

The allure of these neo-Marxist hypotheses is a sandcastle that cannot withstand the test of common sense or empirical evidence. Fighting discrimination with discrimination demeans the intended beneficiaries with the soft bigotry of low expectations while simultaneously harming hardworking individuals who are labeled by “overrepresentation.” Inculcating young children into race-centric thinking and the harmful transgender ideology moves too far to the left from the dead bull’s-eye sensible center where the American majority lives. A June 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center found that half of U.S. adults disapproved “of selective colleges and universities taking prospective students’ racial and ethnic backgrounds into account when making admissions decisions.” The public consensus against race-based college admissions is backed by more than three decades of polling data and state ballot history.

The grifters simply need to be exposed every single time they commit the grift. The DEI industry is raking in as much as $8 billion in annual revenues, while DEI snake oil salesmen are reinventing the grift with new terms and euphemisms such as cross-cultural learning, neurodiversity, and multigenerational diversity. Sunshine is the best disinfectant for exposing them.

Independent journalists are also uncovering an intricate web of professional demonstrators and radical political operatives who have infiltrated the pro-Palestinian student movement. These anarchists, Antifa activists, and radical leftists supply the “useful idiots”—student protesters in this case—with real-time analyses of campus protests, share their activist knowledge and actively recruit a new class of professional protesters willing to cause chaos and disorder.

When pressure from the confrontation and exposure builds up to a sufficient level, the “useful idiots” will eventually distance themselves from the woke orthodoxy. Even The New York Times, a progressive icon in the press business, appears to be dialing down its support of woke radicals.

With time and effort, we will prevail.