ACT Party hosts "intellectual leader of the far-right"

The ACT Party's "Free & Equal" rally will feature a speaker who promotes the cultural Marxism conspiracy theory

James Lindsay at AmericaFest in 2022. Photo by Gadge Skidmore

In the press release issued by ACT promoting their annual "Free & Equal" rally they described their international guest speaker, James Lindsay, as “a globally recognised advocate for free speech, open inquiry, and classical liberal values.” Salon.com investigative reporter Kathryn Joyce has described him differently, as an “intellectual leader of the far right”.

Lindsay’s 2022 book ‘Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Practice’ took aim at Critical Race Theory (CRT), an academic field that examines social conceptions of race and ethnicity, and how these conceptions impact on, among other things, laws, and mass media. A review of Lindsay’s book published in The Social Science Journal summarises its central theme:

According to Lindsay, proponents of CRT call everything that needs to be controlled “racist” in order to bring it under their control. At the same time, Lindsay portrays CRT as a Marxian conflict theory of race which is based on the belief that members of the white race have constructed racism as a basic organizing mechanism within society in order to benefit from it

According to the review, Lindsay has engaged in a “selective reading” of the 1995 paper he constructs his argument on. When read in its entirety “it becomes evident not only that race is only one amongst other factors such as gender prejudice or even Marxist notions about class to be linked to inequalities but also that race is considered significant as a factor because it impacts multiple categories (for e.g., education)”

Matt McManus writing in Jacobin describes Lindsay as having “a shallow understanding not just of Marxism or racism in the US but the classical liberal tradition he seeks to defend.” Although, according to McManus, Lindsay has no doubt “read more critical theory generally and critical race theory specifically than your average conservative firebrand” he fails to provide counterarguments to the theories he’s highlighting, seemingly believing that bringing attention to these theories is in and of itself is sufficient refutation. Race Marxism, he concludes, is “a very strange, very bad book — one as light on real arguments as it is heavy on snide exposition and American exceptionalism.”

The bar for being an intellectual leader on the far-right it seems, is incredibly low. But Lindsay’s audiences, including those attending ACT’s “Free & Equal” rally, are not interested in being intellectually challenged, they want to have their own worldview repeated back to them.

Lindsay’s promotion of the cultural Marxism conspiracy theory extends beyond issues of race relations. An episode of his podcast entitled “Groomer Schools 1: The Long Cultural Marxist History of Sex Education,” which argues that sex-ed classes aren’t “just a fluke of our weird and increasingly degenerate times” but “a long-purposed Marxist project reaching back into the early 20th century.”

“This goes back to the first Cultural Marxist, Georg Lukács,” he told the audience of a livestream he appeared on with the far-right commentator Sebastian Gorka, “who became deputy commissar for education, and what did he implement? Comprehensive sex education. Exactly the stuff we see with the gender theory, the queer theory, these very perverted books in the school library teaching children to become sexually active and sexually aware. Why? Because what are they going to do? They’re going to become, frankly, little perverts”. He has claimed that "Queer Theory is the doctrine of a cult" and described the pride flag as being “the flag of a hostile enemy”

Anne Campbell, a spokesperson for the Pōneke Anti-fascist Coalition told RNZ that it was "really troubling" to see these ideas brought into New Zealand and further "stoke that kind of hatred". Acknowledging that Lindsay may not directly be "doing damage to minorities himself" but was "poisoning the well of political discourse and turning it further right".

Aotearoa has recently seen an uptick in the targeting of LGBT+ related events, including a violent protest against an event in West Auckland that left a teenager concussed and an instance in Christchurch where a group of men broke into a space where a pride month event was happening and filmed attendees while chanting homophobic slurs, then vandalised rainbow stickers on cars outside on their way out. That happened, confidently, the same night James Lindsay was speaking in the city, hosted by the Free Speech Union.

Dismissing the Pōneke Anti-fascist Coalition as a "pretty obscure extreme left so-called Anti-Fascist group," Seymour said he hadn’t heard Lindsay’s comments on the pride flag belonging to a hostile enemy "I march in the Pride Parade most years myself, so I wouldn't say that I agree with this.”

If he has [said that], it doesn't really bother me, because I've got lots of friends I disagree with, and I think it's healthy. If I agreed with everything that everybody I associated with had ever said, we'd have a very boring place or maybe no friends.

A modicum of research into Lindsay before booking him as a speaker would have likely revealed his comments about the LGBT+ community. Lindsay has even taken credit for popularising the term “groomer” as a slur used to suggest LGBT+ individuals, particularly drag queens and transgender people, pose a threat to children. He has also claimed that drag performers “make provocations” of violence against themselves.

“It is really telling that this is the person that David Seymour is aligning himself with, but sadly perhaps not that surprising,” Campbell said in a press release issued before Seymour responded to Lindsay’s comments on LGBT+ issues. “He and James Lindsay are compelled to label the most powerless groups in society as threats in order to divert attention away from the extreme poverty, inequality and homelessness their ideologies create.

“These people have nothing more to offer than the same interchangeable far-right neuroses and hatreds that we’ve already heard ad nauseam, Aotearoa deserves better than what they’re desperately trying to sell us.”