Transcripts For CSPAN2 Mike Gonzalez The Plot To Change Amer

Moderate. So if you think of something youd like to ask either or both of them, please submit the question in questions box. Tell us your name and where youre tuning in from. Well answer as many questions as we can in the time we have. But before we get to the discussion between Mike Gonzalez and Michael Knowles i want to introduce a special guest to kick off the program. That special excess Heritage Foundation president , mrs. Kale coles james. Ms. James, the floor is yours. Well, good morning. I am so excited to welcome you to the Heritage Foundation and to our virtual book launch of the plot to change america. I want to thank you all but especially i want to think Michael Knowles for join us today. We are so honored to have you with us. We are so proud of Mike Gonzalez and the time and the research hat the has put into this tremendous book. Mike isnt afraid to point out what is happening to our beloved country, and he is not afraid to call out those who buy into the destructiveness of identity politics. Mike is often at the tip of the spear at heritage when it comes to these issues. And he does it because he is a true patriot and because he doesnt want to see our beloved country go any further down this treacherous road. Ladies and gentlemen, it was only in the 1960s when we were struggling to decreate the country and courageous whites and blacks were working to bring races together and ensure america live upped to its promise of liberty and justice and equal treatment for all people. Today, most americans live in racial harmony. We have had our first black president , we have had women and people of all colors and backgrounds in the highest ranks of American Business and government. And yet, and yet, our young people are coming out of our colleges and universities believing that grievance politics, identity politics, is the road to justice and equality. When in fact it will bring us right to a place where this nation is looking at a time in our history when we have never been more disrupted. This book couldnt be any more timely with the riots and the destruction of statues and monuments and the rewriting of American History in the classroom, the American People need to wake up to the insidiousness of identity politics. They need to understand what this has already cost our society and they need to understand how it will poisen our children and our grandchildren if we just standby and allow it to continue. We cant let that happen and we wont let that happen. So, mike, thank you for writing this important back and thank you mick for being here deafblind Michael Knowles for being here today to talk about that. Were all looking forward to the conversation. Thank you very much, mrs. James, it is an honor to be here at the Heritage Foundation, all beat virtually and not in the building, and its such a pressure to be joined by Mike Gonzalez and talk about this book, the mott to change america. , mike, i i dont want to accuse you of anything but when i look around today and i see roving bands of an nor kyes an nor kyes tearing town Founding Fathers using the resident rim of identity politicked some are selfproclaimed marxists. Cannot wonder if you hired this group of people as a Marketing Tool to promote the thesis in the book bus it seems as though were seeing that thesis played out horrifyingly in real time. Michael thank you for the introduction, thank you for being here. Im very happy that my book is selling well and my ideas are getting out but im not very happy at all the reason why. I tide not hire these people but everything we have seen today, everything, you just put your fixer on it. Everything we have seen from the an naarty in portland to the 69 team project to the blm organization, to robin de angelos socalled antiracism Training Sessions, all of this is at the heart of why i wrote my book. Little did i know as i wassiting a year ago that we were going to have the summer of 2020 whether im beginning to call the summer of hate. It is really cocoon sequence of the things we have done to ourselves. Its funny because you trace the origin of this identity politics back to the 60s when you might see the summer of love and i think a lot of people were skeptical of that designation at the time but now i think your description is apt. The fruit of the ideologies and it has led to the summer of hate. Thats one moment in the book that was surprising to me but it think youre absolutely right, which is that when people think of identity politics, and all of the affiliated pathologies, Political Correctness, intersectionality, when we think of it, a lot of people consider that to be just a sort of ebbs exsentries can i and we need to talk but the politics and the identity politics is on the side. What you says i much more specific and damning. You say they identity politics has become our national hardware. What do you mean by that . Its really the software of our culture, its everywhere. We have become divided into groups based on race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, gender, even disability status, and anything that conquers a degree of victimhood which can be used to claim respect or attention or rewards or compensatory justice, it from from in the moment you enterschool when your daughters principal is saying diversity is our friend, to then high school, when our kids are made to read howard zen, which does a wonderful job not of telling history because is it vest bad history about instilling grievances against the installs of grievances at the heart of this and needs to work that way. And then obviously the university cam puts are being taken over by this, but its might migrate over to the work force. Hr telling people to put a sign on their difficults that say im an ally. An ally . Are we in a time of war . So it has ware did is really have come to believe a jugular issue of high crimes. Not every group gets to claim identity politics, grievance status, because even though as you can see on the camera i have relatively swathery skin from any sis sallan heritage sicilian heritage and i do not qualify and other people do not qualify. How does one get to claim this privilege of being considered oppress pressed . Yes, this is a we decided in the 60s to siphon off a group of people and call them minorities. Hadnt done this before. Could have done this in the 1920s when we had a huge number of air meanans or syrians or lib niece or sicilians in your case or jewish people, people seen as could by identified by pinot type, we could have keene seen know type. We chose to say, no, lets have all of these immigrants coming in joint the melting pot and become americans through assimilation. And the 1940s you have social scientists who believe to associate the victimhood, veins of vimhood, collective discrimination with a the term minority and then the term minimum north as we know it today comes into the fdirt fee tuned in webster 1961 in the definition we to the of today, that has an association with victimhood. This so we divide all these people into minority groups and they have this sense of grieve vanses, of victimhood, and it is that which they then use to say, well, the country is system systemically racist, so we must change all the institutions and all the structures in the system itself. You mentioned the social scientists. You mention the institutions. I think in the popular imagination, identity politics is something that was developed from the grassroots. People spontaneously taking to the streets and coming toward a kind of consciousness as a group of people and demanding their rights in the face of oppression. Thats the official left wing narrative at least by the people pushing identity politics. You say the origins are a little bit different. You say the origins were much more specific. It involved the small group of people and it was highly intentional. So, which is is it and who is behind it . Is not at all a grassroots effort. In fact, it was driven by elite activist who ideologies, who then formed the bureaucracy to create these groups who then instill promoted at universities and the 1960s, the Ford Foundation gave a great deal of money actually, of hundred thousand or so, to ucla researchers to go into the southwest and canvass Mexican Americans and came back with horrible news for the activists, Mexican Americans did not feel they were minorities, did not feel they were victim a victim group did know they were doing they faced discrimination which they did but they thought they could solve their own problem at an individual level. They could use their own individual agency to overcome their problems. Food news for the ucla researchers and the Ford Foundation which undertook a process to instill to create identities. The Ford Foundation was giving money, even already in the late 60s to instill identities into groups, the Ford Foundation then creates laraza, the Mexican American Legal Defense fund and the Ford Foundation begins to really support all of this group creation. Behind all this is the thinking of post modernistsistsd the Frankfurt School that wanted to remace the narrative in terms of post modernest to use [inaudible] and replace what you and me as the american dream, the american story, which has obviously were nat perfect country by any means but which can be perfected, improved by using our ideals. It is these theories that you see themselves may over again and again and again, out on the people who create the groups, who create the ethnic groups and, pan ethnic groups and create identities. You mentioned antonio, who founder of the italian communist party, the most significant marx philosophyer. Including karl marx so you have a marxist with these ideas critical theory and me modern university. You have people claiming the mantle of identity politics who describe. The as train marxist, specifically the leader of the blm organization. The Common Thread seems to be karl marx, people who are say vowedly communist and win you races that specter in the out people say thats a crazy Conspiracy Theory. Oh, youre seeing communist everywhere. Thats a red scare. So, is thats Conspiracy Theory or is its conspiracy . He comes up with the idea, the fascist tend to prison to stop his brain working. Very bad idea, as we know from the apostle st. Paul, people do a lot of good thinking in prison and good writing, so he begins to think in the late 20s in and 30s why revolutions havent happened. Only succeeded in one place, back water of europe, russia, in 1719, but they failed all the revolutions have failed since 1848. Theres no determined soviet, theres no italian soviet. The german revolution failed. And he begins to say, well, the reason is that the worker has become his ohno presser, has seasoned all the cultural given odd of the socalled oppressor class and kept to the family, religion, the economic system, and all the institutions. So, antonio this is his theory. We need to destroy the hegemonic narrative and replace it with a counternarrative. This what were seeing today, as you said, were seeing creator november the 1619 project says this is pout replacing the narrative of america. Further refinement come width the Frankfurt School, which second president writes a become in 1937, with which pronounces that the first the critical theories unremitting attack on all the norms of the west. Martin jay who wrote a very good book on at the transplant Forward School notes that the almost ignored, completely ignored the soviet union, no a tacks on stalin, even at the height of the famine, the all the massacres. Its really nonremitting back on the western norms and american norms, and whether you have today on campus you have critical theory, something that has infiltrated every faculty. If you are in law school outcome have to study critical legal their rhythm if youre in other places you have to study Critical Race Theory, all the ethnic studies departments which were started in the sixes in by thing a in the steps in actually by these activists are about replacing the narrative, angela davis, the former black panther, member of the communist party u. S. A. Who was thought at brandeis. A guru of the new left, she says that ethnic studies are the spell electric to all arm of the revolution. She knows what shing saying and saying is openly. So, i think that we should take it seriously when we see today what is happening repeating the same phrases that these neomarxists, cultural marxists used in the 20s in and 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s. You can trace as you just did, as you outline trace this evolution this, intellectual revolution that overflows into this crazy Politics Around us. One interesting point in the book is you did not dedicate a chapter to black identity because of the unique role of black people in the history of the United States, obviously legal slavery, then jim crow and then everything that accompanies those institutions. What you point out is identity politics attempts to conflate the experience of other minority groups as the continue to be created day by day with the black experience in america. So, just as matter of chronology even, how too these minority groups develop . Perhaps we could begin with hispanic or latino or i think the new term that the identity politics people want to use is lattin x. An x at the end. I dont know how to pronounce that so i wont try. Notice your last name is gonzalez, so what is the hispanic identity and assuming people dont did not buy into it when it came out, why has it stuck . Installize ago the unique black experience that is especially specious and they did it on purpose. This National Organization for women and other feminists were talking in terms terms of jane t the time. To make a Clear Association with jim crow. Thurgood marshall said in a decision that he said, no, look, our experience is unique and so i say in my book, he plot to change america, im not going to have a chapter on africanamericans because they are a unique experience. Dont think that it is healthy to fill the hearts and minds of africanamericans with resent and hatred but i think that slavery happened, jim crow happened, segregation happened. In fact, i fight so hard because i dont want to go back to the era of separate but equal and slowly very rapidly going back to separate but equal with identity politics. The hispanic model is a very clear one. The fared tried to organize in the 40s with the election of at the Los Angeles City council, organized Mexican Americans who did not think were organized enough in a voting bloc and then the Chicano Movement comes in and has this believes that mexicans should be considered a race, obviously mexicans is a nationality. There are many mexicans who are european origin, mexicans who are indigenous origin, mixes laugh, even mexicanafrican mexicans. Then they too have this association of mexicans, then the begin to realize we want to expand this coast to coast and bring in cubans, puerto ricoans and thats when they start to calm if we that idea of hispanic which the activist begin to almost intimidate, work the bureaucracy into creating the burcracy finally throws in the towel in 1977. The office of management and bug comes occupant with a policy directive number a whichs the hispanic identity and is then three years later it gets introduced into the census of 1980, the first census that hat this hispanic identity and has asia americans which is another huge pan Umbrella Group that brings together of many different origin, picks, china, korea, so americans with very different groups of very different cultural indicators brought in under this umbrella of asianamerican. The same thing as hispanic americans. People listening to this would be surprised to hear that hispanics were concocted about the bureaucracy and they will think that this has been around forever. In fact its a writer, professor at the university of california system, Christina Mora who wrote about this and said there will be collective amnesia. People will accept it as having existed always and want to do with the middle ee east north africa, create another Identity Group, arab americans or persian americans. The development of mina, which im pleased to say i think we collective amnesia about mina chills a new Identity Group that the left tried no foison us during the Obama Administration and never took off. So win one for the good guys because theres not one more grieve vans group concocted. Arabs consider considered white for the vast majority of our history. You name a number of very wellknown arabs including, mitch daniels, former for of indiana or other people, steve jobs, not particularly opress on the basis of his race. That raises this question of White Privilege which we hear but today. Best selling books written on the subject. You cant take a job or go to a School Without attending a Training Session where you are castigated for your White Privilege but raises a question. If one receives a special privilege by virtue of being white, then i would aring atyivities clamoring to remove their designation as white and create a new identity politics