James Lindsay

James Lindsay regularly shares conspiracy theories about the supposed communist takeover of the world (especially the United States), promotes “groomer” rhetoric against the LGBTQ community and spreads the “white genocide” theory that Marxists want to eradicate the white race. With alarmism and fearmongering, Lindsay incites and segregates his base.

In His Own Words

Speaking about drag queens making themselves targets for violence:

“You guys remember George Floyd? The goal is to have ‘Drag Floyd,’ and the goal is to get you to give in so they get their way or overreact – and that's where I say ‘Drag Floyd.’ It's so important to understand that they want a drag queen to get attacked, and they want to make a huge amount of hay of it, and they want to create summer 2020 again off of a drag queen or a trans person or something like this.” -James Lindsay on Turning Point USA's Americafest Live Day 3, December 19, 2022

Series of tweets mocking George Floyd on anniversary of Jan. 6:

“Comment with what you hope the Ghost of George Floyd brings you for January 6!”
– James Lindsay on Twitter, January 5, 2023

“If you support justice for George Floyd, he brings you presents on Democrat holidays. Like Santa.”
– James Lindsay on Twitter, January 6, 2023

“You all laughed, but this showed up in the mail today. George Floyd is real! He will bring you nice presents on January 6 if you believe in him and fight for his justice. I'm for closing the border and shutting down fentanyl snuggling into the US, which is true justice for him!”
– James Lindsay on Twitter, January 6, 2023

“So, boys and girls, that's why we have to be good and send Ukraine another $100B to be laundered a year every year: so George Floyd will fly around and visit all the little Russian kids and take their toys and redistribute them to the poor Ukrainian oligarchs on January 6th-mas.”
– James Lindsay on Twitter, January 5, 2023

“Despite any evidence summoned against these claims, Critical Race Theory ultimately holds the view that ‘racism’ is the correct explanation for all disparity in outcomes from one racial group to another when ‘brown’ races and blacks underperform whites on average.”
– James Lindsay in Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis, 2022

“Social-Emotional Learning is the hypodermic needle that injects identity-Marxist social theories into our kids.”
– James Lindsay on New Discourses, May 5, 2022

“It is the vested interests of Queer Marxists to obliterate the normalization scale.”
– James Lindsay on New Discourses, August 18, 2022

“Woke Neo-Communism is the new slavery.”
– James Lindsay on Gab, January 13, 2023

Regarding the Rainbow/Pride flag;

“It's the flag of a hostile enemy.”
– James Lindsay on Gab, January 13, 2023

“Drag Queen Story Hour is an initiation rite into the cult of Queer Gnosticism.”
– James Lindsay on Twitter, December 28, 2022

“When I look at what's going on with the Queer activist cult and children, I really, really hope that millstones part of the Gospel is true.”
– James Lindsay on Twitter, January 17, 2023

(This refers to Matthew 18:6 in the Bible: “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”)

Regarding Drag queens filling the vacuum of male role models

“There should be male role models, should be female role models in people's lives. They have to see what these models look like, and when we don't have men that can act as men, and I don't mean this alpha crap all over the internet like this exaggeration this, this …this pastiche of masculinity, but I mean, actual men doing what they're supposed to do, you know, taking responsibility showing what it means to be masculine, to be real, to be present, to be responsible and to work with young people in a model that in their lives. You're going to have young people who don't understand that dimension of life and reality. And so it's just crucial that we start nourishing that again, we start trying to overcome these narratives that have boxed men out or lead men to be treated like as buffoons like, you know, Homer Simpson, or whatever, but also as creepers, and if it's a male who wants to be a role model, and so we have this vacuum of male role models and what do we have now? We have drag queens filling in the role. We have men pretending to be women, so they can be role models or groomers for kids. It's a problem.”
– James Lindsay on Brietbart (Youtube) January 16, 2023

Background

The grievance studies hoax

In 2018, James Lindsay, a former math instructor, was running a fusion massage therapy-martial arts business in his hometown of Maryville, Tennessee.⁸ He had played a small part in establishing the New Atheism movement, authoring several books on the subject: God Doesn't; We Do: Only Humans Can Solve Human Challenges; Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly; and Everybody Is Wrong About God.

In October 2018, the massage therapist gained national attention for his part in what became known as the “grievance studies” affair. Lindsay, along with partners Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose, coauthored 20 false, satirical papers on topics including fat studies, porn studies, critical race studies, sex roles and “rape culture” at dog parks. The papers were then submitted to peer-reviewed academic journals. Seven of the 20 were accepted and published.

According to Lindsay and his coauthors, these papers were a commentary on how political correctness has overtaken scrupulous scholarship in academia. Their goal was to prove that liberal, progressive movements, such as #MeToo, Gay Pride and Black Lives Matter, have no intellectual foundation or substance.

In an essay explaining the project, Lindsay, Boghossian and Pluckrose wrote that after working on the project for a year, they became experts in liberal and social justice causes and could say that “these fields of study do not continue the important and noble liberal work of the civil rights movements; they corrupt it while trading upon their good names to keep pushing a kind of social snake oil onto a public that keeps getting sicker. For us to know anything about injustice in society and be able to show it to those who are unaware or in denial of it, scholarship into it must be rigorous. Currently, it is not.”

Attempting to add to their credibility on this point, they also self-identified as liberals, although Pluckrose would go on to publish an essay titled, “Why I No Longer Identify as Feminist,” and Boghossian has had several public associations with far-right white nationalist and white supremacist Stefan Molyneux, appearing on his podcast, Freedomain Radio. Additionally, Boghossian wrote the forward for Molyneax's book, Against the Gods: A Concise Guide to Atheism and Agnoticism.³⁰ Molyneux, in turn, wrote a glowing review of Boghossian's book, A Manual for Creating Atheists.

Lindsay also eventually shed his liberal views. Although claiming to have opposed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, Lindsay announced his support for the former president in 2020, attributing his flip to an aversion to the left’s supposed illiberalism and “wokeness” -- a term he uses to refer to any attempt to create an equitable, inclusive society.

Anti-communism crusade

Lindsay mainstreams his ideas and reactions to world events via his social media accounts on various platforms. He also now runs the website New Discourses, which is owned by Michael O’Fallon, president of Sovereign Nations, a Christian nationalist organization.^1,10 The site features podcasts, articles and videos, as well as a Social Justice Encyclopedia with “translations from wokish,” definitions of common social justice terms such as systemic racism, BIPOC and intersectionality, along with commentary on these definitions by Lindsay.

In an August 2022 interview with right-wing provocateur Andy Ngo, Lindsay confirmed his changing views, arguing that in 2019-2020, “woke stopped being fun and just this stupid but dangerous thing that happened primarily in academia.” Lindsay told Ngo he began to reject everything that supports the woke agenda, which he claimed has become ubiquitous in American society. Still, he said he does not consider himself committed to Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology.

His primary focus is “to renew America back to a constitutional republic as opposed to something that's undergoing a communist revolution.” He claimed the U.S. currently uses what he called “nudge theory,” like modern-day Russia, China and Korea, to pressure citizens to comply to Marxist ideologies.

Through his multiple communication channels, Lindsay continues to spread his various conspiracy theories and aversion to what he deems as “wokeness.” Most of his rhetoric focuses on the specter of cultural Marxism/communism, a supposed white genocide and the alleged indoctrination of children by sinister forces.

Lindsay promotes the New World Order conspiracy theory, which alleges a communist plot to create a totalitarian world government. He has repeatedly attacked the World Economic Forum (WEF) for its attempts to highlight inequality and change social structures through programs like environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, as well as social emotional learning in education. Social emotional learning is an educational method that incorporates social and emotional skills into the curriculum. It aids in developing self-awareness, self-control and interpersonal skills to better help students cope with challenges in the classroom, at home and in the community.

Denying systemic racism and oppression, Lindsay took aim at a statement by Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the WEF, declaring that “inequality defines our time.” Instead, Lindsay argued that the WEF and its partner organizations fund “a lot of woke Marxism, a lot of this identity politics that makes people angry and makes them perceive inequality and injustice. And then that same organization happens to point out ‘look how angry people are, look how dissatisfied people are because of the inequality that we are actually stoking.’” He argued that the WEF created social and income inequality that didn’t exist so that it can demand social changes.

Lindsay has admitted that the concept of ESG was born from corporate responsibility but eventually “got hijacked into this tool of totalitarianism,” forcing companies to accept supposedly communist concepts, such as social justice activity, identity and belonging programs and hiring highly paid diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) “commissars.”

In an educational video on social emotional learning on his site, New Discourses, Lindsay also warns, “know if you have just one minute to have listened to this is that the people who are implementing social emotional learning on purpose belong in prison, because it is advocating that teachers practice psychology without a license in unregulated nontherapeutic spaces on groups of children.”

In line with his quest to save the world from a New World Order, Lindsay is acutely concerned with a communist takeover in America.

In his book Cynical Theories, cowritten with his grievance studies affair partner, Helen Pluckrose, Lindsay explains that the extreme left and extreme right are in an intense culture war. He argues that extreme right populists are desperately fighting to preserve liberalism (political democracy, universal human rights, legal equality for all adults, freedom of expression, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, etc.), while the far left is advocating revolution.

In his interview with Andy Ngo, Lindsay claimed Antifa (or the anti-fascist movement) and far-left organizations are merely “self-fulfilling prophecies,” who create hysteria that prompts groups like the Proud Boys to have to show up because they’ve made a big deal of things that no longer exist. In his words: “Their idea that systems and structures are indefinitely self-perpetuating, which is a Marxist belief about how the bourgeoisie rig society and dictate ideologies to keep themselves in power to exclude certain other voices … which is again why as political prostitutes they should really think twice about what they’re supporting.” 

His concentration on combating communism and cultural Marxism in America earned him prominence in the reactionary anti-student inclusion movement that rapidly gained traction throughout the country at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Cynical Theories examined several critical theories, such as queer theory, disability studies and fat studies, Lindsay's self-published Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis focuses solely on critical race theory (CRT).

Among the top fearmongers of critical race theory, Lindsay often plays on the terrors of concerned parents, preaching about the indoctrination of students. Speaking at conferences and meetings across the country, in addition to media on his own site, Lindsay raises fear among parents and groups with statements such as, “they’re going to present critical race theory through Ruby Bridges and statistics lessons.”

Chris Rufo, who credits himself with bringing CRT into mainstream America’s spotlight, credits Lindsay with being an expert on studying and making theoretical explanations that he can then follow up with more populist calls to action, saying, “James is really the theory expert. James is an encyclopedia of theory connecting all the dots laying out the case … creating this giant content to guide all of us into this world. And then I think I come in as a complement to what James is doing, really following his lead with the praxis or the practice, which is translating the theory into the realm of practical politics and then translating this kind of esoteric knowledge that school moms and school dads can use at school board meetings and hammer their school boards with.”

Lindsay has become a featured speaker at conferences across the country, where he speaks on his ideas against CRT and promotes his book. He has also done several media appearances on podcasts and television shows. On the Dr. Phil show, he appeared alongside proponents of CRT, as well as some opponents, including a representative from Moms for Liberty.

In Race Marxism, Lindsay uses an oversimplified definition of critical race theory to inflame his base by flipping the concentration of CRT to focus on hatred and racism toward white people, scapegoating them for all of society’s problems. He attempts to simplify CRT, stating, “more simply, Critical Race Theory can be understood to be a vast conspiracy theory which argues that white people, both historically (which has some truth behind it) and into the present (which does not), have organized society specifically so that it produces disparate outcomes (“systemic racism”) that advantage themselves over everyone else, especially Blacks.” Notably, Lindsay rejects most tenets included in CRT, including systemic racism and oppression.

 Lindsay attempted to prove the nonexistence of systemic racism and oppression in an interview, pointing to formerly enslaved abolitionist Frederick Douglass' famous speech from July 4, 1852. That speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” called out contradictions in the U.S. Constitution, specifically the line that “all men are created equal.” Douglass questioned this statement’s validity given slavery’s existence. Lindsay then notes, 10 years later the constitutional promise was fulfilled with the abolition of slavery.

Lindsay then pointed to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for equal rights in the 1960s, arguing that promise was fulfilled by the Civil Rights Act: “In other words, we did. We started to live up to that promise, but that promise had to be there, and it had to be made stable and something to appeal to in order for us to be able to live up to it and appealing to living up to it rather than tearing it apart is what enabled us to make progress consistently and steadily over painful decades and painful centuries and to get to a place. … I mean, except for our lunatic fringe, undeniably better for literally everybody.”

He has also attempted to explain the “whiteness as property” tenet of CRT, which is a concept that white people are automatically afforded privileges and benefits solely because of their race. Lindsay states, “It’s so stupid. And so for, say people to go to Africa or to South America or to anywhere in the world that doesn’t have science and try to teach them science is literally a colonial act of trying to change their culture to value white and Western things, rather than just trying to teach them very effective methods to understand the world. Coming to Africa to teach them to rely on reason, if that’s what it was, would be seen as an act of colonial aggression that tries to erase African cultures that have always thought differently. In some sense in that way, very f---ing conservative because it’s like, no, leave the noble savages alone, don’t change anything about them, even if it would be to their benefit, you can’t change that because that’s … even if it would be to their benefit you can’t change that, because that’s, as they say, colonialism.”

Self-appointed founder of the modern-day groomer movement

According to a September 2022 report released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Human Rights Campaign, between January and July 2022, tweets mentioning the derogatory, anti-LGBTQ social media phrase “ok, groomer” increased 2,465%. In Lindsay's interview with Andy Ngo, he indirectly took credit for this boom: “I can't claim that I was the first person to do it, but I think that I can credibly claim that I was the one who popularized it and kind of drove it into the mainstream.” In the report, Lindsay ranked second in the list of most-viewed hateful tweets, coming behind only U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

When Twitter previously cracked down on this type of hate speech, Lindsay switched up his messaging but maintained the same sentiment, responding to a tweet from a transgender Harvard instructor with “ok child sexualization specialist,” as opposed to his signature “ok groomer.” For this, he received a lifetime ban on this personal account, prompting an outpouring of sympathy from his supporters.

In November 2022, Twitter reinstated Lindsay after Elon Musk acquired the platform. Upon the revocation of his ban, he told the Post Millennial: “I don't know how I feel about this. I don't think platforms like Twitter should be where the big conversations happen, but we have to work with the world as it is.”

Nonetheless, Lindsay has returned to the platform, naming himself in his Twitter bio as the “leader of the Christian right” (despite his fervent atheist views), posting several times a day, promoting his site and continuing to spread groomer rhetoric, now unrestricted.

 Lindsay has also contributed to the “groomer” narrative, often warned against what he calls “groomer schools,” schools that have supposedly adopted Marxist principles to groom and brainwash children. He reiterates this conspiracy theory in his most recent book, The Marxification of Education.

Lindsay has also railed against drag queens and their performances, claiming that they are also groomers and threaten to fill the void of male role models that society is currently pushing out, saying, “We have this vacuum of male role models and what do we have now we have drag queens filling in the role we have men pretending to be women, so they can be role models or groomers for kids, that's a problem.”

He has also claimed drag queens “make provocations” of violence against themselves, recently stating that their goal is to recreate the summer of 2020, saying, “This is an unconventional warfare tactic to provoke. The goal – you guys remember George Floyd, the goal is to have Drag Floyd. And I'm serious, this is deadly serious.”

White genocide: ‘Ideally, we just start saying no and push them out with legal means.’

 On top of perpetuating the conspiracy theories of a communist takeover and groomer indoctrination, Lindsay also spreads rhetoric related to white genocide, a theory that maintains there is a deliberate effort by people of color to erase the white race from existence.

Lindsay sometimes makes this point by once again summoning the evils of critical race theory (CRT). In CRT, the tenet of whiteness as property generally refers to white privilege as social benefits and advantages that come with being a member of the dominant race. However, in Lindsay’s oversimplification of concepts, coupled with his signature fearmongering, he calls up white genocide theory in Race Marxism when claiming that “Critical Race Theory frames whiteness as a type of ‘property’ that it would seek to abolish.”

In Race Marxism, Lindsay also likens critical race theorists to Nazis, saying, “I do not think Critical Race Theory can be understood without realizing it seeks to establish Völkisch nationalism in which races are considered like their own separate nations and into which ‘patriotic’ members have considerable investment.”

Lindsay then points sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, from whom many pioneering critical race theorists drew inspiration, claiming that he too championed Völkisch ideology in his work, harping on Du Bois' use of the word “folk” in some of his work, such as The Souls of Black Folk and The Gift of Black Folk. Lindsay claims that, "This mode of thought is considerably important to understanding the otherwise odd word ‘folks’ in Critical Race Theory, which constantly refers to ‘black folks,’ ‘white folks,’ and ‘brown folks’ (and any of the above “folx” if intersectionality queer at the same time.) The Volk, in German, is the relevant “folks” here, and it refers to a people or a nation bound by similar cultural heritage. Critical Race Theory, largely following from DuBois, is very racially folkish (that is, Völkisch).”

Lindsay cites Du Bois’ well-known concept of double consciousness, introduced in the Souls of Black Folk. Here, Dubois spoke about inequity, inequality, racism, intersectionality and systemic oppression that Black people faced while also being Americans. Lindsay, however, interpreted and presented this as admissions of his Völkisch ideology.

Lindsay goes on to make further claims of there being little difference between Nazism and Marxism, as he labels the critics of racism. In his analysis, those who call out racism are "scapegoating" white people like Hitler did with Jews. Recalling that no systemic injustices exist in Lindsay's view, he paints white people as victims, warning that if CRT is not reigned in or stopped completely, whites – deemed the “usurping class” – will ultimately be abolished.

Attempting to make this point, Lindsay writes, “There’s not much daylight between Marxism and Nazism here. In both ideologies, the point of the scapegoating, by race for Hitler and by class for Marx, is to seize the property of and ultimately abolish those seen as the usurping class of society. In Critical Race Theory, this is explicitly racial, however, which is a point that Hitler hammers home repeatedly (and with tremendous racism) throughout Mein Kampf.”

Lindsay has also pushed this narrative of white genocide on Twitter, warning: “If this ideology isn't stopped, one way or another, there will be. Ideally, we just start saying no and push them out with legal means. Their funders might liquidate or mass incarcerate them when they seize power too, which is way less good but avoids it.”