With apologies to Winston Churchill, whose statue is likely to be pulled down someday soon anyway, the following observation appears in order: “Never have so many been made to feel so guilty by so few.”
The national shaming campaign that has seized the microphone in the past couple of months wants you to know that America is systemically racist, that America is hateful and phobic and is a house hopelessly divided. This message is not true. What it is, instead, is a purposeful plan being carried out by those favoring a more Marxist or totalitarian worldview, very likely with the shadowy support of foreign governments.
That there are elements of racism and real racists in this country is undeniable. Black Americans suffer in many ways in America. Even where there is no overt racism, there can be a kind of indifference or apathy that keeps one’s conscience dulled to the hurtful experiences of others. The Black Lives Matter message, at its core, resonates with people of good will across the races. Unfortunately, this message is being hijacked and used for cover by violent pawns of America’s far left who want a different form of government than the one we have today.
Here’s what years of intelligence collection by the FBI and other parts of the intelligence community have long determined: China and Russia know they cannot defeat the United States militarily or economically. Yet, the elimination of the U.S. as a superpower that impedes their communist vision remains their goal.
Both China, which has thieved its way to faux prosperity, and Russia, with its perpetual inferiority complex fueling its tiresome resentments, have pinned their hopes on dividing Americans, on pitting us against each other as a means of breaking a unified national will and rendering us dispirited, unable or unwilling to respond to their future hegemonies. And disinformation campaigns accentuating America’s faults historically have been a favored strategy, particularly by Russia.
Both of those countries are well aware that the most convenient way to divide Americans is along racial lines, since the United States is orders of magnitude more racially diverse than any nation on earth. Americans are hyper-sensitized to charges of racism because ours has been a long struggle to create a country where an unprecedented collision of races, creeds and cultures could coexist under an ideal of individual liberty. Given mankind’s history, it’s a miracle we’ve had any success at all.
And so, accusations of racism in our country are a damning cudgel, an effective wedge to both arouse suspicions and chill dissent. There is no greater shame today than to stand accused of committing the mortal sin of racism.
That is why we are seeing an expansion of the definition of racism and “hate speech” by a class of accusers who really don’t have racial justice as their primary goal. Charges of racism have become the most effective way to eliminate resistance and to censor or cancel voices opposed to a totalitarian worldview.
Accordingly, racism now ostensibly exists in the packaging of products, in tweets about the national anthem, and in how images of Jesus are depicted. The Smithsonian Institution recently asserted that evidence of racism is found in traditional values, such as delayed gratification and the nuclear family. If that’s true, then, yes, racism is surely systemic — it’s in the very air we breathe. But it is not true. It is a lie told by those who want us to believe that America is broken and needs to be replaced.
Who are these people who have wrested away legitimate racial justice narratives in order to advance their own agenda? They are the discredited remnants of failed economic Marxism who have pivoted to a vision of cultural Marxism that no less subjugates the rights and freedoms of individuals to control by the state. They have scurried from the wreckage of pure communist ideology into academia and various media, powerful platforms to indoctrinate minds and control narratives.
Their young proxies are the radical or anarchist interlopers such as antifa, surfing on the backs of actual racial justice protesters. These black-clad, masked marauders of the far left showed up to suck media attention from legitimate protesters by starting fires, destroying businesses and attacking police. Their demographics are readily noticeable: young, mostly white, many from privileged suburban families and fresh from college campuses that filled their minds with false tales of totalitarian nirvana. After exercising their destruction, they Uber back to their own safe neighborhoods, far from the ones they just helped destroy.
They are a failure-to-launch generation who are angry but without fully knowing why. Most of them, it’s a sure bet, couldn’t accurately define fascism, the very thing they are supposedly “anti-.” Many are children of affluence who have never known deprivation, and yet they have been persuaded that America is evil. (The pampered often have weak, easily manipulated minds and weak, untethered characters.)
The violence now before us has provided the FBI ample justification for investigating antifa as a violent criminal enterprise using RICO and other federal statutes to dismantle its organizing processes, identify and eliminate its funding sources, and arrest and imprison the main players. The FBI has a “particular set of skills” in this regard, skills that have proven effective many times before. Antifa will not exist in any familiar semblance within two years — if the FBI is allowed to do its job.
The FBI, normally, also would work to determine the extent of foreign influence or material support of antifa and other radical elements. Experienced counterintelligence agents will tell you it’s not a question of “if,” it’s a question of “how, and how much.” Antifa likely will prove to be, in no small measure, a foreign-influenced operation seeking to sow division and weaken national resolve.
The agitators shaming America as racist, capitalist, imperialist and whatever other “-ist” they decide is now bad are, in reality, few in number. But they enjoy amplification and a long leash by leftist politicians willing to imperil whole communities to advance their political agenda, as well as a left-leaning press that softens and filters their violent words and actions.
If truth were to be given a fair voice, these relatively few accusers who strive to impose guilt on the blameless would be easily exposed and wilt in the face of the overwhelming majority of Americans who wish for the good of all their fellow citizens, who are not remotely racist, who carry genuine concern for neighbor and even stranger, who want fairness and economic security and happiness for everyone.
We do not need to be shamed by an angry-at-the-world few who are running plays out of communist-country playbooks designed to divide the many. They, like the philosophy they embrace, will only know failure.
Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He independently consults with private companies and public-safety agencies on strategic mission technologies.