Economist
Thomas Sowell says left's use of phrase recalls 'propaganda tactics of Joseph
Goebbels'
Economist and author Thomas Sowell told "Life
Liberty & Levin" in an interview that
the left's claim that America is beset by "systemic
racism" has no definitive meaning and cannot be "tested" in
any empirical manner.
"You hear this phrase, 'systemic racism'
[or] 'systemic oppression'," host Mark Levin told
Sowell. "You hear it on our college campuses. You hear it from very
wealthy and fabulously famous sports stars. What does that mean? And whatever
it means, is it true?"
"It really has no meaning that can be specified and
tested in the way that one tests hypotheses," answered Sowell, who
added that the currency of the phrase reminds him of the "propaganda
tactics" of Nazi Germany, where Sowell claimed that if a lie was
"repeated long enough and loud enough" it would be widely
believed.
Sowell agreed with Levin's theory that most who have
taken part in protests across America in recent months do not live in the
communities they claim to support, but only go there to "hand out
turkeys" at Thanksgiving and live among the people they claim are
oppressors.
"They're absolute hypocrites," the host
said. "They claim they want equality for all. They claim that
there'll be the withering away of the ... police departments ... and yet
every time you look at a Marxist state, it is an authoritarian, top-down,
centralized police state."
Sowell chimed in that while activists claim to be casting
off racial and class differences, they only end up creating their own
"nomenclature" and establishing their own hierarchies.
"If the election goes to [Joe] Biden," he
added, "there's a good chance that the Democrats will control [Congress]
and considering the kinds of things that they're proposing, that could well be
the point of no return for this country."
_________________
RELATED
ARTICLE
5 Arguments Against 'America Is a Racist
Country'
By Dennis
Prager | Townhall.com.
Source: AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer
The left-wing charge that America is a racist country is
the greatest national libel since the Blood Libel against the Jews. America
is, in fact, the least racist, multiracial, multiethnic country in world
history.
Neither the claim that America is a racist society nor
the claim that it is the least racist country can be empirically proven. Both
are assessments. But honest people do need to provide arguments for their
position. I have found every argument that America is racist, let alone
"systemically" racist, wanting. For example, the police almost never
kill unarmed blacks, and on the rare occasions they do (about 15 times a year),
there is almost always a valid reason (as in the infamous 2014 case in
Ferguson, Missouri); police kill more unarmed whites than blacks; the
reason there are proportionately so many more blacks in prison is that blacks
disproportionately commit violent crimes; and so on.
There are very powerful arguments against the
charge that America is a racist society.
No. 1: If there is so much racism in America, why are
there so many false claims of racism and outright race hoaxes?
I offered 15 recent examples. Moreover, there were
probably no racist hoaxes when America really was racist, just as there were no
anti-Semitic hoaxes in 1930s Germany, when there was rampant anti-Semitism. You
need hoaxes when the real thing is hard to find.
No. 2: The constant references to slavery.
If there were a great deal of racism in America today,
there would be no reason to constantly invoke slavery and the Confederacy. The
very fact that The New York Times, the leader in racist dishonesty, felt it
necessary to issue its "1619 Project," which seeks to replace 1776 as
the founding of America with 1619, when the first African slaves arrived in
America, is a perfect illustration of the point. The fact that "The
1619 Project" was labeled false by the leading American historians of that
era (all of whom are liberals and at least one of whom led a campaign to
impeach President Donald Trump) adds fuel to the argument. Even regarding
the past, the promoters of the "America is racist" libel need to lie
to paint America as bad as possible.
No. 3: The reliance on lies.
"The 1619 Project," which will now be taught in
thousands of American schools, is based on lies. All Americans who care
about America and/or truth should inquire if their children's school will teach
this and, if so, place their child in a school that does not.
Two of the biggest lies are that preserving slavery was
the real cause of the American Revolution and that slavery is what made America
rich.
Even the charge of endemic racist police brutality is a
lie. There are undoubtedly racist police, but racism does not characterize
police interactions with blacks.
No. 4: The large African immigration to the United
States.
Nearly 2 million black Africans and more than
1 million blacks from the Caribbean have emigrated to the United States in just
the last 20 years. Why would so many blacks voluntarily move to
a country that is "systemically racist," a country, according to the
promoters of the "America is racist" libel, in which every single
white is a racist? Are all these blacks dumb? Are they ignorant? And what about
the millions more who would move here if they were allowed to? How does one
explain the fact that Nigerians, for example, are among the most successful
immigrant communities?
No. 5: The preoccupation with
"microaggressions."
According to the University of California's list of
racist "microaggressions," saying, "There is only one race, the
human race," is a "racist microaggression." This is, of
course, Orwellian doublespeak. Anyone who believes there is only one race
is not, by definition, a racist. If everyone in the past had believed there was
one race, the human race, there would never have been racism, let alone a slave
trade based on racism.
The very fact that the left came up with the intellectual
farce known as "microaggressions," like the race hoaxes, proves how
little racism there is in America -- because the entire thesis is based on the
fact that there are so few real, or "macro," aggressions.
The race riots, the ruining of people's careers and lives
over something said or done at any time in their lives, the ruining of
professional sports (especially basketball and football), the tearing down of
America and its history, the smearing of moral giants like Abraham Lincoln --
all of this is being done because of a lie.
As I wrote in a column
three years ago: "The Jews survived the Blood Libel. But America
may not survive the American Libel. While the first Libel led to the death of
many Jews, the present Libel may lead to the death of a civilization. Indeed,
the least oppressive ever created."
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated
radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in
May 2019, is "The Rational Bible," a commentary on the book of
Genesis. His film, "No Safe Spaces," came to theaters fall 2019. He
is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
