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OAN Guest Commentary – Kenin M. Spivak
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
To remake America, progressives have centered on a strategy of rewriting history, distorting current events, changing language, and using false allegations of disinformation, malinformation (facts progressives believe are presented out of context), and racism to censor and suppress centrists and conservatives.
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By undermining confidence in American values, progressives have considerably advanced their efforts. They have controlled the White House and at least one House of Congress for 12 of the last 16 years, and the Supreme Court for nearly all of the last 70 years. Almost all major media outlets and reporters are in lockstep with progressive goals, lies, and omissions. Most report only about events and views that benefit the progressive agenda, and mischaracterize or suppress news, information, and opinions that may impede it. Progressives also control most federal agencies, many state agencies, leading universities, school boards, professional organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association, most leading think tanks, and many corporate boards.
As the COVID pandemic raged, progressives spoke hopefully of a new world order in which experts would tell us how to live. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, often refer to this chaos as the “rules-based international order.” They and other progressives, including Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, see the U.S. as just one among many countries. That is why they oppose immigration controls, support global compacts, subordinate the United States to the United Nations, and believe the U.S. can use economic or military power only when supported by an international coalition.
In a recent article for RealClearPolicy about progressives’ crude ad hominem attacks on conservatives, I explained that progressive dogma is a fierce, culturally Marxist philosophy that: (1) demands all policies, resources, and opportunities be allocated in accordance with a benighted view of oppressors and victims centered on race, sex, and sexual orientation; (2) believes children are wards of the state to be indoctrinated by educators, while physically cared for by parents; (3) represses religion for being what Karl Marx described as “the opium of the people;” and (4) places a green agenda, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and the rights of criminals above free speech and assembly, the judicial process, and rights of petition. Progressives deny that ISIS and Hamas are terrorists, oppose Israel’s right of defense because Jews are “oppressors,” and believe children may select irreversible gender reassignment surgery without parental consent.
To achieve their goals, progressives must overcome deeply held American beliefs in individual freedom, merit, hard work, and pride in their country.
Curricula based on The 1619 Project, which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery…at the very center of the United States’ national narrative,” Critical Race Theory (CRT), which teaches that all whites are guilty of bias, and Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria (ESG), which features progressive doctrine on DEI, climate change, and workers’ rights, has been infused into K-12 schools through action civics.
The National Association of Scholars has identified at least 45 state-level education standards in 25 states that incorporate these radical expressions of anti-American animus. Departments of education, accreditation agencies, university administrations, professional licensing organizations, and teachers unions mandate ideological training and DEI goals, and then coerce compliance as a condition of employment, promotion, and appointment to governing boards. Last year, the State Department announced that it will condition promotions and raises on an employee’s loyalty to DEI.
Eliminating or distorting teaching about Western civilization, American exceptionalism, and liberty leaves students uninformed about America’s unique story. An Echelon Insights poll highlights the cumulative impact of this indoctrination. Sixty-six percent of high schoolers viewed the U.S. as exceptional and unique, compared to 47% of college students; 63% of high-schoolers were proud of the U.S., compared to 40% of college students; and 58% of high-schoolers were patriotic, compared to just 35% of college students.
Concurrently, progressives are remaking the acceptable lexicon. They corrupt language and norms to deprive us of the ability to express nuance and understand distinctions.
Leading institutions, including government agencies, professional organizations, and universities, proclaim that our language is replete with hidden racism and genderism that must be cleansed with a new vocabulary featuring ideologically-laden phrases. Among the words that trouble the American Medical Association are “disadvantaged,” “equality,” and “disparities.” The politically acceptable terms are “historically and intentionally excluded,” “equity,” and “inequities.” Similarly, “ex-con” or “felon” are to be replaced with “returning citizen” or “persons with a history of incarceration,” and “fairness” with “social justice.”
“Illegal alien,” the term used in federal law for those who enter the U.S. without proper visas or overstay their visas, first became “undocumented alien” and then “non-citizens,” who somehow deserve all benefits to which citizens are entitled.
The American Dream of “equality” is replaced by “equity.” Instead of seeking fair opportunities, we are to seek outcomes in which so-called marginalized minorities receive benefits at least in proportion to their percentage of the relevant population. According to Ibram X. Kendi, if a person embraces DEI and allocates opportunities by race, he is “anti-racist;” otherwise, he is racist. Whites cannot be the victims of racism, because only members of marginalized minorities can be victims. Over the last several years, dictionary definitions of racism have been stealth edited to conform to this new paradigm.
“Infrastructure” has always meant roads, buildings, bridges, and the like. But progressives have implausibly expanded that term to include paid leave, child care, and caregiving. They falsely described the Biden-Harris $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan as an emergency COVID stimulus plan, even though 90% of the plan had nothing to do with COVID.
Contrary to the Associated Press’s adoption in 2015 of “they” as a singular pronoun, there are only two biological sexes, and an individual has never been a “they.” Just 0.6% of Americans identify as transgender. Yet, insisting there are only two sexes is now hate speech. Multiple professors have sued to retain the right to properly address their students. Columbia University threatens to terminate employees who don’t bow to the fiction that there are multiple genders, and the Biden-Harris Administration allows an “x” to be used as a gender on a passport.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s selection of three conservative Supreme Court justices, progressives advocated court packing by increasing the number of justices. They justified doing so by falsely asserting that Trump’s selection of justices based on their political leanings also was court packing. Dictionary.com changed its definition of court packing to “the practice of changing the number or composition of judges on a court, making it more favorable to particular goals or ideologies, and typically involving an increase in the number of seats on the court.” Here, “typically” supplants “always,” which is the threshold condition of court packing. Selecting justices based on their views is not court packing—it is what all presidents do. This is not mere semantics. This is a ploy intended to overcome the opposition of majorities of voters in both parties.
As progressives erase and change language, history, and values to create a foundation to change America’s way of life, they also corruptly fabricate, suppress, and misrepresent recent and current events to confuse voters, shield accountability for their failures, and disparage their opponents. The following is a list of recent political hoaxes promoted by progressive elected officials, bureaucrats, and major national media (my thanks to Breitbart News for identifying many of these):
Hiding Biden’s cognitive impairment took dozens, if not hundreds, of staff, family, elected officials, and reporters. That hoax was revealed only when replacing Biden became imperative to defeat Trump. In lockstep, the progressive media complex abandoned its cover-up of Biden’s impairment and called for his replacement.
Harris’s and Tim Walz’s campaign became the second act of this hoax. With few exceptions, they refuse to discuss their records or beliefs, and falsely claim to have changed both. They willfully misstate Trump’s positions and falsely attribute to him sponsorship of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (yet another hoax, as even USA Today and CNN have acknowledged).
A complicit media purports to fact check Trump, but seldom checks Harris or Walz. During the candidates’ debate last week, ABC’s moderators checked Trump in real time on six occasions (at least two of which were wrong), but never checked Harris, who repeatedly made false statements. Since then, a few mainstream media outlets have acknowledged some of Harris’s misstatements, though most give her the benefit of the doubt while blasting Trump for every imprecision or contentious assertion.
When the New Yorker’s fact checker, Susan Glasser, was caught pretending that Harris had never spoken in favor of taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgery for illegal aliens, rather than correct her article, she claimed that she intended to question “the political advisability of bringing up these things in a national debate.”
As Harris runs from her record, the media often scolds Republicans for pointing that out, or for tying her to the Biden-Harris Administration. That went too far even for White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who explained that Harris has been a full partner in administration policies. And, last week, The New Republic reported that “much” of the new issues section on the Harris-Walz campaign website was lifted from Biden’s campaign website.
Though conservatives may win an occasional battle, there should be no illusions about the power and effectiveness of progressive deceptions, or the arc of recent history. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, and the strong consumer opposition to Bud Light’s woke capitalism, opponents of DEI won a few battles, but DEI is simply going underground with a name change. Some states have rolled back genital mutilation of children, men in girls’ sports, and CRT in schools, while other states and the Biden-Harris Administration have gone in the other direction.
More than 90 corporate leaders have endorsed Harris—who strongly supports DEI, reparations, increasing corporate taxes, taxing unearned income, censorship, and the full range of progressive policies. If she wins, the pendulum will swing strongly to progressive victories, as America moves ever-closer to an Orwellian dystopia.
Any conservative who believes that progressives have ethical limits is naïve. If conservatives have any hope of changing course, Republicans will need to win the presidency, control of both houses of Congress, gubernatorial elections, and state legislatures. To do so in November, and then to keep winning, conservatives must understand the ruthlessness and entrenched power of progressives, and must respond with equal or superior tactics. Marquess of Queensberry rules won’t do.
Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and has served as a director and C-suite officer of public and private companies. Spivak has written for National Review, the National Association of Scholars, and Huffington Post. He was chairman of the Editorial Board of the Knowledge Exchange Business Encyclopedia, and a long-time director of the RAND Corporation Center for Corporate Ethics and Governance. He received his A.B., M.B.A., and J.D. from Columbia University.
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