Critical race theory is the right’s latest scare tactic and Fox News is eating it up and spitting back out its scariest takes on it to their audience.
Where did this theory come from, what is it and why the hell are conservatives talking about it right now? Historian Kevin Kruse has answers for all of the above, but first, he says, let’s get one thing straight.
“If it’s being taught to your kids, your kids are in law school,” he tells Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal.
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As for Fox lapping up the “controversy,” Kruse thinks it’s only because this is all they’ve got right now on Biden and the left.
“The Fox News Cinematic Universe tried to come up with a number of ways to hit the Biden administration and couldn’t. The COVID vaccine rollout went pretty well, even despite the push against vaccination in red states, the economy is coming back. So they had to kind of find a way to land a blow on him,” he says.
It’s ironic, he adds. If the right actually knew what this theory actually was, they might agree with it.
That being said, as Molly also points out, Republicans crying in the culture wars isn’t a new thing.
“This sort of hostility towards knowledge is really like a Republican trope at this point,” she says.
Plus! The two talk about the inevitable destruction facing red states that just might make the GOP care about climate change. And Kruse opines on how to fix “the disproportionate strength that Republicans have in the Senate.” Or, as Molly calls it, the “dystopia.”
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