August 13, 2026 • 13 mins
He's an author, a mathematician, and a critic of wokeness--James Lindsay joins Joe Getty to talk about critical theory, western Marxism, the red/green alliance and more!
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have a local city councilman that has this.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Saying woke one was crazy crazy. What a perfect lead
into a conversation with James Lindsay, author, mathematician, woke culture critic,
critical clown theorist. You probably heard of James at first
in the famous and hilarious Grievance Studies affair with Peter
(00:25):
Bagosi and Helen pluck Rose in their fabulous hoax papers
having to do with the dog parks and rape culture
and the conceptual penis as a social construct. He also
James also, along with Helen Pluckrose, co authored the book
Cynical Theories that I consider absolutely invaluable to read, at
(00:45):
least the first several chapters. You will read them and
you will say, oh my god, now I get it
about the modern world. James joins us, Now, how are you, sir?
Hey are how are you good? Good? The connection seems
really weird. We'll see how it goes. But I was
going to say, I know how busy you are, so
thanks for spending a couple of minutes to reinforce this
front in the same war you've been fighting.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah. Absolutely, I'm always glad to help out here, all.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Right, Cool? So I'm going to start the chat non
traditionally with a quiz and we'll see how you do
on it. James lindsay, what links the WNBA's current woes
the Smithsonian National History Museum becoming an anti American museum
and people insisting that two plus two can equal five?
(01:33):
What is the common thread?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
You guys probably call it woke, But the answer is
modern Western Marxism.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Right based on in large part critical theory, which you
talk about in cynical theories help people understand. Is woke
not the most useful termer? Or what is this thing
shaped like?
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well? I mean, woke is a great term because the
way that this actually works is the people involved feel
like they woke up to a different understanding of reality
that they were asleep just accepting reality as it's handed
to them. And then now they've seen behind the curtain,
and what they see behind the curtain is systems of
power that are dominated by privileged groups ruling everything. So
(02:18):
woke is a great term. In fact, it's the term
they gave themselves. It's not an academic term or a
technical term. Critical theory, like you just said, is the
technical term in critical theory? Is this idea that the
society is designed to reproduce itself over and over and
over again. This goes back to the first essay written
about the subject in nineteen thirty seven by Max Horkheimer.
He says, the society just reproduces itself. It works to
(02:40):
make everything better all the time. And he says, but
we question what they mean by better, because something qualitatively
different is necessary to have better. And by qualitatively different,
he means no freedom, he means no capitalism, he means
socialism and central control.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So I think a lot of people, perhaps those who
don't listen to this show, think Marxism. Wait a minute,
that's about workers of the world and the proletariat and
that sort of thing I don't understand, right.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
So that's the magic word that I threw in when
I said Marxism a moment ago, and I said Western Marxism.
So in the nineteen tens, Marxism split into two schools.
One took over the Soviet or Russia and became the
Soviet Union. That same one went on into China. That's
Eastern Marxism, which effectively went to peasant societies and overthrew
(03:35):
them and installed dictatorships. Western society had a problem. It
was capitalist, it was successful. There was a rising middle class,
and the middle class was stable and conservative and didn't
want to overthrow its culture or its economy or its politics,
and Marxism wouldn't take off. But that's what Marx said
would actually happen, is that capitalist societies, not peasant societies,
(03:57):
would overthrow and become communists. So a new school of
thought that attacks cultural institutions in order to transform the
values of society outside of the workers, particularly arose, and
that's called Western Marxism. The thing we call woke is
a century of that developing to where it's become a
very sophisticated cultural revolution weapon against countries like the United States.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I've got so many avenues I want to pursue with
you as a true or well freak. The part that
really disturbs me about critical theory and about what you've
been discussing is the way they aggressively twist language and
terrify people into not saying anything at all.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, there's kind of tell us that. One is that
they collect all the good words to themselves and project
all the bad words onto their enemies. And what they've
done is systematically spent most of the twentieth century in
beginning of the twenty first century figuring out words like
racist and homophobe and transphobe that will paralyze their opposition
and let them get away with literally almost anything. People
(05:05):
are literally giving a look at the I know it's
Britain not America, but look at this Pakistani rape gag
scandal in Britain. Scandal is a funny word for over
two hundred and fifty thousand girls, white girls being raped
by Pakistani Muslims in systematic ways. And this whole thing
gets shoved under the rug, It gets downplay, it gets ignored,
(05:26):
it gets covered up because nobody wanted to get called racist.
That's what they've managed to do with the bad words,
and then they call themselves good words that people don't understand.
They twist like democratic socialist. Well they don't tell you
when they say democratic socialist that democratic means only the
people who have the right ideology count as the people
(05:47):
and therefore have free speech or political suffrage to get
to vote or even at the end of the day,
end up if they get power, having full access to
private property. That there's two kinds of people, the privileged
and the oppressed, and only the oppressed have political rights.
They don't tell you that's baked into their definition of democracy,
that that's the way that Vladimir Lenin, who they take
(06:07):
is their inspiration, used the term, wrote about the term,
explain the term in speeches, And the same thing with socialism.
They try to portray it in these men on the
street videos that oh, it means we're going down to
the bar and watching the game and hanging out because
we're all having things in common. It's like socializing. And
that's just a lie socialism that you cannot voluntarily do.
(06:29):
Everybody has to participate. You can just choose to be
socialist in your lifestyle. The only way you can have
a socialist lifestyle style is if everybody has a socialist lifestyle,
and that the state, with its guns secures a socialist
lifestyle for everybody. Right.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
One of the twists of language that a lot of
folks noticed was the whole that's not free speech, that's
hate speech, and hate speech shouldn't be free speech. Speech
is violence, but then acts of violence or speech. And
you know, if there's an overarching point of this conversation,
it's that a lot of people thought, Wow, those people
are just crazy academic and they don't realize there's a
(07:07):
huge there's a whole philosophical underpinning to what they're doing.
They're not doing it accidentally because they're wacky. They have
a deliberate purpose. To your point about the Britain rape gangs,
which is, for what it's worth, mister Lindsay did not
exaggerate one ioda in the horror of that story. Need
(07:27):
there be anything else said about the Red Green Alliance?
How Islamists and Marxists work together at overthrow Western civilization
then fight it out afterward, or do you think that
covers the top?
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I mean, yeah, there is. Actually I think there's something
very important. People ask all the time, like we have
this movement here in the West, Queers for Palestine. People
think that's funny because they all know that the radical
Giatis will throw gay people off of roofs and openly.
Now we're saying, you know, we're not with you, guys, Instill,
the Queers for Palestine are behind them, this Red Green Alliance.
(07:58):
Why are Muslims radical Muslims and communists or you know,
democratic socialists working so closely together. Why is this on
Piker so influential. Why do we see these you know,
radical Muslims rising in like Michigan, this lsied guy or whatever,
Why is this happening? And the answer, actually, the interesting
thing is the answer from the communist side is on
(08:20):
the last page of the Communist Manifesto. Marx on the
last page of the Communist Manifesto says that the Communists
always and everywhere will take the side of any revolutionary
movement that's trying to overthrow the existing order of things.
So the Communists will always, always ally themselves. Marxists will
always ally themselves with anything that's socially disruptive. The other
(08:41):
side is that the principle of common enemy works as
the principle of common enemy for both sides. So the
Muslims are more than happy to play the game, just
like they played the game in Iran in the late
nineteen seventies to establish the you know, the Shia regime
that has been in power ever since. The President Trump
is now trying to dismantle. So they're more than willing
to make frenemies with each other. It's explicitly coded in
(09:06):
the Communist Manifesto as a means of opportunism, and the
radical Muslims see the same exact means of opportunism, and
they've been working together closely for a long time to
take down America, take down the West.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Well, in nineteen seventy nine in Iran, how'd things go
for those college educated, dewey eyed young Marxists who helped
the Iatola come back?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Maybe we should ask them, Oh wait, we can't. They
killed all of them. Oh yeah, it didn't work out,
that's right. And the only interesting question about the entire thing,
because the Islamists, the Shiah killed them all, all the Leftists,
all the Communists that helped, is whether or not the
Soviet Union let it happen in kind of a conspiracy
theory way, because it would be more advantageous to their
(09:50):
interests not to have another communist state arrive and to
let the Molas run things to their own benefit without
it being explicitly communists. It's the only question. But the Communists,
whether they were sacrificed by their own headquarters in Moscow
or whether they were just the end result of the
Mullas taking over, are all dead or got kicked out
(10:11):
if they were able to flee for their lives, but
they were completely put down.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
We're talking to author James Lindsay and James, I know
your time is limited, so just one or two more
quick questions, and again this is you know, through the
lens of orwell, but why is it so important that
these folks infiltrated the schools number one and are teaching
American history in the way they're teaching it.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Well, you know, it's very interesting because normally, when you
go to give an answer about communists, you stick to
the communists, and you can talk about Lenin saying, you know,
if he's given the youth for a few years, you'll
plant the seed so deep you'll never uproot it. But
the best answer actually comes from a national socialist, namely
the national socialist that Off Hitler. A lot of people
don't know he wrote a book in nineteen twenty eight
(10:57):
after mindcomf It never got published early called I'm Not
Joking My Secret Book. And in his secret book he
actually has a chapter where he explains that the older
population will never go for this radical proposal of national
socialism the way he's laying it out. And then he says,
in the last few words of that particular chapter, but
(11:17):
what we can do is that we can get the youth.
We can convince young people that this is the way
the world is supposed to be. We can convince young
people that this is the ideology, even if we can't
get the old people, and the next generation coming up
will displace the generations that came before, and so this
strategy applies. The theory in communism is called socialization. They
(11:38):
believe everybody learns how to be who they are through
a social process. There's no there's no genetic component or anything.
You socialize people to be how they are. So our
society socializes them to be capitalists, to believe in freedom,
and that's a huge problem. But if we had a
socialist system, it would socialize people to be socialist. So
(11:58):
what you do. The easiest people to the socializes are children.
You take the children, You get control of the schools,
you get control of the curriculum, you get control of
the young people's minds, and raise them to believe that
they were brought up in the wrong kind of society,
with the wrong kind of values, with the wrong kind
of parents, with the wrong kind of faith in church.
And you get them to turn against that society by
showing them how rotten and evil and unfair and unjust.
(12:20):
It was, even though it traumatizes them. That's actually to
the advantage of the leftist educator because that trauma can
be used to restructure their value system. It's actually called
borrowing off of Nietzsche a transvaluation of values, which is
written about in the leftist literature as well. So you
go after the young people because it works because older
(12:42):
people have roots, have understanding, had wisdom and won't take it,
but the younger people don't, so they steal people's children
on purpose as a strategic way to overthrow the existing society.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
James Lindsay's fabulous book with Helen Pluckrose's cynical Theories. James
also a great follow on or whatever social.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Media you like.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
James, we sure appreciate the time you spent today and
if there's anything we can ever do to help you,
please let us know that we're serious about this. It's
a huge fight and it's really important. So thanks a Milian,
keep up the good work.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Oh absolutely yeah, James Lindsay. Everybody, Wow wow wow, more
to come.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
He
I have a local city councilman that has this.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Saying woke one was crazy crazy. What a perfect lead
into a conversation with James Lindsay, author, mathematician, woke culture critic,
critical clown theorist. You probably heard of James at first
in the famous and hilarious Grievance Studies affair with Peter
(00:25):
Bagosi and Helen pluck Rose in their fabulous hoax papers
having to do with the dog parks and rape culture
and the conceptual penis as a social construct. He also
James also, along with Helen Pluckrose, co authored the book
Cynical Theories that I consider absolutely invaluable to read, at
(00:45):
least the first several chapters. You will read them and
you will say, oh my god, now I get it
about the modern world. James joins us, Now, how are you, sir?
Hey are how are you good? Good? The connection seems
really weird. We'll see how it goes. But I was
going to say, I know how busy you are, so
thanks for spending a couple of minutes to reinforce this
front in the same war you've been fighting.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah. Absolutely, I'm always glad to help out here, all.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Right, Cool? So I'm going to start the chat non
traditionally with a quiz and we'll see how you do
on it. James lindsay, what links the WNBA's current woes
the Smithsonian National History Museum becoming an anti American museum
and people insisting that two plus two can equal five?
(01:33):
What is the common thread?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
You guys probably call it woke, But the answer is
modern Western Marxism.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Right based on in large part critical theory, which you
talk about in cynical theories help people understand. Is woke
not the most useful termer? Or what is this thing
shaped like?
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well? I mean, woke is a great term because the
way that this actually works is the people involved feel
like they woke up to a different understanding of reality
that they were asleep just accepting reality as it's handed
to them. And then now they've seen behind the curtain,
and what they see behind the curtain is systems of
power that are dominated by privileged groups ruling everything. So
(02:18):
woke is a great term. In fact, it's the term
they gave themselves. It's not an academic term or a
technical term. Critical theory, like you just said, is the
technical term in critical theory? Is this idea that the
society is designed to reproduce itself over and over and
over again. This goes back to the first essay written
about the subject in nineteen thirty seven by Max Horkheimer.
He says, the society just reproduces itself. It works to
(02:40):
make everything better all the time. And he says, but
we question what they mean by better, because something qualitatively
different is necessary to have better. And by qualitatively different,
he means no freedom, he means no capitalism, he means
socialism and central control.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So I think a lot of people, perhaps those who
don't listen to this show, think Marxism. Wait a minute,
that's about workers of the world and the proletariat and
that sort of thing I don't understand, right.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
So that's the magic word that I threw in when
I said Marxism a moment ago, and I said Western Marxism.
So in the nineteen tens, Marxism split into two schools.
One took over the Soviet or Russia and became the
Soviet Union. That same one went on into China. That's
Eastern Marxism, which effectively went to peasant societies and overthrew
(03:35):
them and installed dictatorships. Western society had a problem. It
was capitalist, it was successful. There was a rising middle class,
and the middle class was stable and conservative and didn't
want to overthrow its culture or its economy or its politics,
and Marxism wouldn't take off. But that's what Marx said
would actually happen, is that capitalist societies, not peasant societies,
(03:57):
would overthrow and become communists. So a new school of
thought that attacks cultural institutions in order to transform the
values of society outside of the workers, particularly arose, and
that's called Western Marxism. The thing we call woke is
a century of that developing to where it's become a
very sophisticated cultural revolution weapon against countries like the United States.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I've got so many avenues I want to pursue with
you as a true or well freak. The part that
really disturbs me about critical theory and about what you've
been discussing is the way they aggressively twist language and
terrify people into not saying anything at all.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, there's kind of tell us that. One is that
they collect all the good words to themselves and project
all the bad words onto their enemies. And what they've
done is systematically spent most of the twentieth century in
beginning of the twenty first century figuring out words like
racist and homophobe and transphobe that will paralyze their opposition
and let them get away with literally almost anything. People
(05:05):
are literally giving a look at the I know it's
Britain not America, but look at this Pakistani rape gag
scandal in Britain. Scandal is a funny word for over
two hundred and fifty thousand girls, white girls being raped
by Pakistani Muslims in systematic ways. And this whole thing
gets shoved under the rug, It gets downplay, it gets ignored,
(05:26):
it gets covered up because nobody wanted to get called racist.
That's what they've managed to do with the bad words,
and then they call themselves good words that people don't understand.
They twist like democratic socialist. Well they don't tell you
when they say democratic socialist that democratic means only the
people who have the right ideology count as the people
(05:47):
and therefore have free speech or political suffrage to get
to vote or even at the end of the day,
end up if they get power, having full access to
private property. That there's two kinds of people, the privileged
and the oppressed, and only the oppressed have political rights.
They don't tell you that's baked into their definition of democracy,
that that's the way that Vladimir Lenin, who they take
(06:07):
is their inspiration, used the term, wrote about the term,
explain the term in speeches, And the same thing with socialism.
They try to portray it in these men on the
street videos that oh, it means we're going down to
the bar and watching the game and hanging out because
we're all having things in common. It's like socializing. And
that's just a lie socialism that you cannot voluntarily do.
(06:29):
Everybody has to participate. You can just choose to be
socialist in your lifestyle. The only way you can have
a socialist lifestyle style is if everybody has a socialist lifestyle,
and that the state, with its guns secures a socialist
lifestyle for everybody. Right.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
One of the twists of language that a lot of
folks noticed was the whole that's not free speech, that's
hate speech, and hate speech shouldn't be free speech. Speech
is violence, but then acts of violence or speech. And
you know, if there's an overarching point of this conversation,
it's that a lot of people thought, Wow, those people
are just crazy academic and they don't realize there's a
(07:07):
huge there's a whole philosophical underpinning to what they're doing.
They're not doing it accidentally because they're wacky. They have
a deliberate purpose. To your point about the Britain rape gangs,
which is, for what it's worth, mister Lindsay did not
exaggerate one ioda in the horror of that story. Need
(07:27):
there be anything else said about the Red Green Alliance?
How Islamists and Marxists work together at overthrow Western civilization
then fight it out afterward, or do you think that
covers the top?
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I mean, yeah, there is. Actually I think there's something
very important. People ask all the time, like we have
this movement here in the West, Queers for Palestine. People
think that's funny because they all know that the radical
Giatis will throw gay people off of roofs and openly.
Now we're saying, you know, we're not with you, guys, Instill,
the Queers for Palestine are behind them, this Red Green Alliance.
(07:58):
Why are Muslims radical Muslims and communists or you know,
democratic socialists working so closely together. Why is this on
Piker so influential. Why do we see these you know,
radical Muslims rising in like Michigan, this lsied guy or whatever,
Why is this happening? And the answer, actually, the interesting
thing is the answer from the communist side is on
(08:20):
the last page of the Communist Manifesto. Marx on the
last page of the Communist Manifesto says that the Communists
always and everywhere will take the side of any revolutionary
movement that's trying to overthrow the existing order of things.
So the Communists will always, always ally themselves. Marxists will
always ally themselves with anything that's socially disruptive. The other
(08:41):
side is that the principle of common enemy works as
the principle of common enemy for both sides. So the
Muslims are more than happy to play the game, just
like they played the game in Iran in the late
nineteen seventies to establish the you know, the Shia regime
that has been in power ever since. The President Trump
is now trying to dismantle. So they're more than willing
to make frenemies with each other. It's explicitly coded in
(09:06):
the Communist Manifesto as a means of opportunism, and the
radical Muslims see the same exact means of opportunism, and
they've been working together closely for a long time to
take down America, take down the West.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Well, in nineteen seventy nine in Iran, how'd things go
for those college educated, dewey eyed young Marxists who helped
the Iatola come back?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Maybe we should ask them, Oh wait, we can't. They
killed all of them. Oh yeah, it didn't work out,
that's right. And the only interesting question about the entire thing,
because the Islamists, the Shiah killed them all, all the Leftists,
all the Communists that helped, is whether or not the
Soviet Union let it happen in kind of a conspiracy
theory way, because it would be more advantageous to their
(09:50):
interests not to have another communist state arrive and to
let the Molas run things to their own benefit without
it being explicitly communists. It's the only question. But the Communists,
whether they were sacrificed by their own headquarters in Moscow
or whether they were just the end result of the
Mullas taking over, are all dead or got kicked out
(10:11):
if they were able to flee for their lives, but
they were completely put down.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
We're talking to author James Lindsay and James, I know
your time is limited, so just one or two more
quick questions, and again this is you know, through the
lens of orwell, but why is it so important that
these folks infiltrated the schools number one and are teaching
American history in the way they're teaching it.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Well, you know, it's very interesting because normally, when you
go to give an answer about communists, you stick to
the communists, and you can talk about Lenin saying, you know,
if he's given the youth for a few years, you'll
plant the seed so deep you'll never uproot it. But
the best answer actually comes from a national socialist, namely
the national socialist that Off Hitler. A lot of people
don't know he wrote a book in nineteen twenty eight
(10:57):
after mindcomf It never got published early called I'm Not
Joking My Secret Book. And in his secret book he
actually has a chapter where he explains that the older
population will never go for this radical proposal of national
socialism the way he's laying it out. And then he says,
in the last few words of that particular chapter, but
(11:17):
what we can do is that we can get the youth.
We can convince young people that this is the way
the world is supposed to be. We can convince young
people that this is the ideology, even if we can't
get the old people, and the next generation coming up
will displace the generations that came before, and so this
strategy applies. The theory in communism is called socialization. They
(11:38):
believe everybody learns how to be who they are through
a social process. There's no there's no genetic component or anything.
You socialize people to be how they are. So our
society socializes them to be capitalists, to believe in freedom,
and that's a huge problem. But if we had a
socialist system, it would socialize people to be socialist. So
(11:58):
what you do. The easiest people to the socializes are children.
You take the children, You get control of the schools,
you get control of the curriculum, you get control of
the young people's minds, and raise them to believe that
they were brought up in the wrong kind of society,
with the wrong kind of values, with the wrong kind
of parents, with the wrong kind of faith in church.
And you get them to turn against that society by
showing them how rotten and evil and unfair and unjust.
(12:20):
It was, even though it traumatizes them. That's actually to
the advantage of the leftist educator because that trauma can
be used to restructure their value system. It's actually called
borrowing off of Nietzsche a transvaluation of values, which is
written about in the leftist literature as well. So you
go after the young people because it works because older
(12:42):
people have roots, have understanding, had wisdom and won't take it,
but the younger people don't, so they steal people's children
on purpose as a strategic way to overthrow the existing society.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
James Lindsay's fabulous book with Helen Pluckrose's cynical Theories. James
also a great follow on or whatever social.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Media you like.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
James, we sure appreciate the time you spent today and
if there's anything we can ever do to help you,
please let us know that we're serious about this. It's
a huge fight and it's really important. So thanks a Milian,
keep up the good work.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Oh absolutely yeah, James Lindsay. Everybody, Wow wow wow, more
to come.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
He
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