Mark Levin discusses best-selling new book
'Life, Liberty & Levin' host dissects 'American Marxism' on ‘Special Report’
Former Reagan Justice Department official Mark Levin, host of "Life, Liberty & Levin," and author of the blockbuster bestseller "American Marxism" joined "Special Report" on Thursday to lay out exactly how the the "American" brand of European Marxism came about.
Levin also laid out how movements like the "de-growth Green New Deal" and critical race theory are the venues of choice through which proponents seek to install this system of governance.
He told anchor Bret Baier that, in writing his book, he scoured stacks-worth of other books and included 400 footnotes to back up his explanations.
"People say to me ‘Who are these Marxists?’ -- I have stacks and stacks of books. I have read their stuff. I have read what these professors have written. I read what they teach. I read the National Education Association the American Federation of Teachers [literature]. I look back at the history," he said.
That history, he explained, began in the former Weimar Republic as the politics of philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who was born in Berlin in 1898. Marcuse traveled to Freiburg in 1928 to study under fellow German philosopher Martin Heidegger – the latter of whom went on to join the Nazi Party.
Marcuse, however – as Levin explained – later fled Hitler for the United States, and became a "very prominent professor" at Columbia University in New York City.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Marcuse sought to develop what has been named "Heideggerian or phenomenological Marxism."
"When you look at the background of critical race theory, this comes out of critical theory. Where does that come from? It comes from the … Frankfurt School out of Berlin: These are a group of Marxists," Levin said, noting Marcuse as one of the Frankfurt School's "members."
"[Marcuse] was the founding father, basically, of ‘critical theory’. Critical theory was the basis for the New Left Movement, Weather Underground, the SDS, and all the rest," Levin explained.
Following Marcuse's prominence was a well-known Harvard professor named Derrick Bell, who died in 2011 at age 80.
"Then you have a gentleman Derrick Bell at Harvard Law school. He takes this idea (of 'critical theory'), which I will get to quickly, and he racializes it," Levin said, adding that conservative economist and scholar Thomas Sowell reportedly labeled Bell "a kook" in some of his writings.
A Heritage Foundation piece quotes Bell as notably declaring that "we use a number of different voices, but all recognize that the American social order is maintained and perpetuated by racial subordination."
"It's a fringe ideology," Levin concluded on "Special Report." "Critical race theory – just to put it in plain English – is basically Louis Farrakhan dressed up as scholarship."
"That's what it is: Hate-America, Anti-Semitic. Anti-White. And so, we try to put some kind of historical perspective on it -- the perspective is that 'anything White is bad because that's the dominant culture'. You dehumanize people. You don't treat them as individuals," Levin added, pointing to the Marxist dogma of "Oppressor versus Oppressed."
"It is a Marxist ideology brought here out of Berlin, because they want … to have [socioeconomic] classes," he continued.
Levin added that parents across the country helped sound the alarm on American Marxism and critical race theory because the coronavirus pandemic forced them to stay home and often supervise their children's cyber-learning:
"They are watching what their children are being taught and they are going, ‘What in the world is going on here?’ That is what is going on," he said.
The syndicated radio host added that more contemporary critical race theorists like Ibram Kendi, though having written high-profile books about it, didn't invent the leftist ideology.
"This ideology was invented half a century ago. And the idea that it's in our schools is unbelievable," he said.
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Levin later added that he is not simply calling political opponents "Marxists" but that the Marxist theories outlined in "American Marxism" are alive and afoot in America's institutions from government to education and so on.
"What is it when you are teaching to destroy our monuments, to destroy our books, to destroy our history to push a racist ideology, you talk about taking down the economic system," Levin said.
Marxism infamously declares the present day as essentially Year Zero, dismissing and essentially dismantling history and beginning anew.
"When people self-identify as Marxists. What am I supposed to call them -- the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts?" Levin asked.
"American Marxism" debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and reportedly also appears at No. 1 on a major Canadian list.
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