There is a word for this kind of politics and this kind of theory when it is fully and completely realized, and it is totalitarian.

From A Glimpse at the Intersectional Left’s Political Endgame by Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan is writing a thumbnail review of How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. In doing so, it serves as platform for a larger, and I think accurate, observation. A long excerpt. The last three paragraphs are the core observation, everything preceding it, the predicate for the conclusion.

The book therefore is not an attempt to persuade anyone. It’s a life story interspersed with a litany of pronouncements about what you have to do to be good rather than evil. It has the tone of a Vatican encyclical, or a Fundamentalist sermon. There is no space in this worldview for studying any factor that might create or exacerbate racial or ethnic differences or inequalities apart from pure racism. If there are any neutral standards that suggest inequalities or differences of any sort between ethnic groups, they are also ipso facto racist standards. In fact, the idea of any higher or lower standard for anything is racist, which is why Kendi has no time either for standardized tests. In this view of the world, difference always means hierarchy.

Kendi writes that there “is no such thing as White blood or Black diseases or Latinx [sic] athleticism” — which certainly has some truth to it. But there really are subtle genetic differences between subpopulations, which means that a doctor should be alert to diseases that are much more common in blacks than whites, like sickle cell anemia. And there are real cultural differences that are not at all racist or hierarchical. To flatten our mysterious and diverse human world into this crude structure misses so, so much. And surely a man who has lived Kendi’s life knows this.

He’s capable of conveying the complicated dynamics of that violent mugging on a bus, but somehow insists that the only real violence is the structural “violence” of racist power. After a while, you realize that this worldview cannot be contradicted or informed by any discipline outside itself — sociology, biology, psychology, history. Unlike any standard theory in the social sciences, Kendi’s argument — one that is heavily rooted in critical theory — about a Manichean divide between racist and anti-racist forces cannot be tested or falsified. Because there is no empirical reality outside the “power structures” it posits.

So, for the reader who is not interested in entertaining doubts, what does it take to become an anti-racist? Kendi finishes his book with a bathetic, platitudinous list of must-dos. Here’s one: “Invent or find antiracist policy that can eliminate racial inequity.” Here’s another: “Deploy antiracist power to compel or drive from power the unsympathetic racist policymakers in order to institute the antiracist policy.” He never gets more specific. Again, it’s hard not to notice that there is no room for changing minds and hearts in his worldview. The point is to get and use power. You do not vote racist politicians out of office, or persuade others to do so in a liberal democratic process. You “compel” them or “drive them from office” with “antiracist power.” And one is left to wonder what he could possibly mean by that?

Kendi is careful not to say the quiet part out loud. Hence the vagueness at the end of the book. But in a recent Politico symposium on how to fix inequality in America, Kendi did get more specific. He supports a constitutional amendment “that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principles: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals.” This is how he thinks it would work:

“It would establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.”

There is, of course, no conceivable way such an amendment would succeed in the grueling process that is amending the Constitution. And this amendment is completely incompatible with many other core tenets of the American Constitution. But it really is a revelation to see the goal Kendi sets.

He wants unelected “formally trained experts on racism” (presumably all from critical race-theory departments) to have unaccountable control over every policy that won’t yield racial equality in every field of life, public or private. They are tasked with investigating “private racist policies.” Any policy change anywhere in the U.S. would have to be precleared by these “experts” who could use “disciplinary tools” if policymakers do not cave to their demands. They would monitor and control public and private speech. What Kendi wants is power to coerce others to accept his worldview and to implement his preferred policies, over and above democratic accountability or political opposition. Among those policies would be those explicitly favoring nonwhites over whites because “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Every now and again, it’s worth thinking about what the intersectional left’s ultimate endgame really is — and here it strikes me as both useful and fair to extrapolate from Kendi’s project. They seem not to genuinely believe in liberalism, liberal democracy, or persuasion. They have no clear foundational devotion to individual rights or freedom of speech. Rather, the ultimate aim seems to be running the entire country by fiat to purge it of racism (and every other intersectional “-ism” and “phobia”, while they’re at it). And they demand “disciplinary tools” by unelected bodies to enforce “a radical reorientation of our consciousness.” There is a word for this kind of politics and this kind of theory when it is fully and completely realized, and it is totalitarian.

All the key elements of the Classical Liberal criticism of totalitarianism are there in those few paragraphs.

The focus on coercing rather than persuading.

Manichaean division rather than collaborating.

Monomaniacal focus on group identities rather than individuals.

A philosophical theory structured in order to be untestable.

A clear desire to overturn all the attributes of the classical world in order to achieve undemocratic totalitarianism.

Inherent anti-scientism.

Inherent racism.

Inherent violence of radical leftism.

Inherent antipathy for democracy and individuals.

Ideological exclusion.

I take that back. There is nothing in there about the inherent anti-semitism of the radical left. But everything else, pretty much.