Media Matters: Andrew Breitbart’s Attack on Critical Race Theory ‘Appears to be Working’

Media Matters: Andrew Breitbart’s Attack on Critical Race Theory ‘Appears to be Working’

Joel B. Pollak2 Jul 2021 Media Matters for America, a George Soros-funded organization that attempts to censor conservative media, complained Thursday that Andrew Breitbart’s original 2012 attack on Critical Race Theory “appears to be working,” nine years later. Media Matters’ Spencer Silva notes that today’s backlash against Critical Race Theory in communities all across America began with Breitbart News drawing attention to the doctrine, then a “little known academic study of systemic racism.” Critical Race Theory is a doctrine that claims all the political, social, and economic institutions of the United States are inherently racist because they were developed during a time when black people could be owned as slaves. According to Critical Race Theory, capitalism itself is racist, because black people could once be held as private property. Events like Emancipation and the Civil Rights movement merely obscure the persistence of white supremacy, the theory holds. Before his untimely death in 2012, Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart had linked then-President Barack Obama with Harvard Law School professor Derrick Bell, one of the founders of Critical Race Theory, whom Obama admired. Silva recalls: “As Joel Pollak, then-editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, would tell CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, ‘Derrick Bell is the Jeremiah Wright of academia. He passed away last year, but during his lifetime, he developed a theory called critical race theory which holds that the civil rights movement was a sham and that white supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown.'” Silva then embedded (part of) an infamous, and viral, CNN panel discussion on the topic: (The full segment is available here.) Silva claims that the “smear attempt” — i.e. to vet a president whose background had been largely ignored by the media — failed. But now, he says, “[r]ight-wing media and activists, as well as their peers at conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute, seem to know exactly what they are doing because they have dusted off the same playbook from 2012.” He concludes: “Nearly a decade later, Breitbart News’ failed smear of critical race theory is back — and this time it appears to be working.” https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/2012-breitbart-tried-use-critical-race-theory-take-down-obama-it-failed