Is Critical Theory A Conspiracy Theory (Part 2 of 2)?
Young people grappling with fear and anxiety require support confronting these fears, not affirmations that intensify them.
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About the Authors
Julian Adorney is a columnist at Reality’s Last Stand and the founder of Heal the West, a substack movement dedicated to preserving liberalism. He’s also a writer for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). Find him on X: @Julian_Liberty.
Mark Johnson is a trusted advisor and executive coach at Pioneering Leadership and a facilitator and spiritual men's coach at The Undaunted Man. He has over 25 years of experience optimizing people and companies—he writes at The Undaunted Man’s Substack and Universal Principles.
This is the second of a two-part series examining the extent to which Critical Theory (the overarching theory behind Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Postcolonialism Studies, etc) is a conspiracy theory. In Part 1, we laid out our case for the conspiratorial nature of the Critical Theory worldview. Part 2 will show how this worldview may be worsening the mental health of (especially young) people who adopt it.
Read Part 1 ↓
3) Critical Theory Induces Unwarranted Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Shame Among Those Who Adopt It As Their Worldview
In Part 1 of this series, we laid out our case for the conspiratorial nature of the Critical Theory worldview. Critical Theory takes what could be useful insights about the problems in society, exaggerates the pervasiveness of these problems to an extreme degree, and then insists that any disagreement merely underscores the very systemic problems it aims to expose.
But so what—why does all of this matter? One major reason is that we believe this kind of conspiratorial worldview imposes real costs on the people who espouse it. It makes them more fearful, guilty, angry, and ashamed. In short, it damages their mental health.
One reason that adopting a Critical Theory worldview may be detrimental to young peoples’ mental health is that its core tenets amount to what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Greg Lukianoff call “reverse CBT” in their book The Coddling of the American Mind. CBT is short for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Traditionally, CBT equips individuals with tools to build resilience, alleviate anxiety, and foster healthier interactions with the world. This involves identifying and countering cognitive distortions—faulty thought patterns that intensify feelings of fear, guilt, anger, and shame.
Unfortunately, a Critical Theory framework often amplifies these cognitive distortions rather than mitigating them, potentially reinforcing the very mental struggles it seeks to expose.
For instance, saying that racism is ubiquitous and present in every situation is a textbook example of the cognitive distortion known as catastrophizing. This involves “believing that you’re in a worse situation than you really are or exaggerating your difficulties.” The unfortunate truth is that, while racism does indeed exist in society, telling minorities that it pervades every aspect of their lives is encouraging them to perceive their world as far bleaker than it truly is. Young people, particularly those already grappling with fear and anxiety (as many are), require support confronting these fears, not affirmations that intensify them.
The Interest-Convergence Hypothesis is an example of another cognitive distortion: mind-reading. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Los Angeles describes mind-reading as “assuming what someone else is thinking without having much to go on.” For example, when Bell asserts that white Americans “continue, consciously or unconsciously, to do all in their power to ensure their dominion and maintain their control,” he assumes knowledge of their internal thoughts—i.e., mind reading. Similarly, when DiAngelo asserts that all white Americans are as racist as her and Donald Trump, she too is engaged in mind-reading. These assumptions paint a bleak portrait of the inner lives of 197 million white Americans based on scant evidence. When these views trickle down to young minorities, they may foster harmful assumptions about millions of their fellow citizens, sowing seeds of anxiety, anger, and paranoia.
When Critical Theorists tell students that racism (or whatever prejudice the relevant branch of Critical Studies focuses on, such as anti-gay prejudice, sexism, etc.) is present in every single interaction, they are tacitly encouraging emotional reasoning. Emotional reasoning is another cognitive distortion that, According to Psychology Tools, is an “arbitrary interpretation in which individuals make predictions or draw conclusions based on their feelings, intuitions, and hunches.” For instance, if a black student feels discriminated against by John, they might conclude, through emotional reasoning, that John is racist.
Critical Theory supports emotional reasoning (which it calls “lived experience”) as a legitimate source of insight into the world. However, emotions are often biased and relying on them can lead to inaccurate conclusions. This is particularly worrisome given that nearly half of Americans aged 18-24 report symptoms of anxiety or depression. These mental health challenges can severely color our perception of the world and of how other people think of us. When we suffer from depression, for instance, we are more likely to believe that other people dislike us even if that isn’t actually the case.
If a black student suffers from depression, she might perceive that most people dislike her. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy would urge her to challenge this perception and seek disconfirming evidence. This approach could allow her to perceive glimmers of hope, even amidst the gloom she senses looming over her. Critical Theory would encourage the opposite: if the black student feels disliked, then it’s likely a result of the pervasive racism or sexism in her environment. According to this theory, she should trust her emotions and let them color her experience of the world. It’s easy to see how such a worldview might lead already depressed students deeper into depression and loneliness.
In fact, all of this may be starting to show up in the data. In a blog post titled “The mental health consequences of social justice fundamentalism,” Greg Lukianoff and Andrea Lan show data suggesting that the “reverse CBT” of Critical Theory may be doing some real damage to young people. Their analysis draws on data from FIRE’s 2024 College Free Speech Rankings survey, which asked 55,102 students from 254 schools questions about their mental health. Here are the questions:
How often would you say that you feel…
Anxious?
Lonely or isolated?
Depressed?
Like you have no time for yourself?
Stressed, frustrated, or overwhelmed?
Participants were able to answer ‘Never,’ ‘Less than half the time,’ ‘About half the time,’ ‘Most of the time (nearly every day),’ and ‘Always.’
By categorizing the responses according to students’ ideological leanings, Lukianoff and Lan uncovered a stunning correlation.
There’s a clear relationship between how liberal a student is (which serves as a good proxy for how much Critical Theory has affected their worldview) and how poor their mental health is. Here’s how Lukianoff and Lan put it:
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests show ideology is a statistically significant predictor of mental health. Post-hoc tests demonstrate it predicts in the direction as shown: more liberal, worse mental health. So far, the data is consistent with the findings of others (Zach Goldberg and Jon Haidt using Pew Research’s data, and Gimbrone et al.), and supportive of the hypothesis that 'social justice fundamentalism' [our note: Critical Theory is the intellectual backbone of social justice fundamentalism, and in this case we think that the terms can be used relatively interchangeably] can be contributing negatively to the mental health of those who adopt it.
It gets worse. The expressed goal of Critical Theory is to improve the lives of those living at the margins of society. But in this case, more marginalized students suffered more the further left they were.
We haven’t seen data with students broken up by race, but the mental health of those who identify as “non-binary” is telling. Queer Theory, which primarily aims to support those with “non-binary” identities, may inadvertently correlate with declining mental health in this group as they embrace more of its tenets. This decline could stem from the narrative that they exist in a heteronormative patriarchal discourse in which every facet of society—including science and our understanding of sex and gender—has been set up to oppress them.
Of course, there’s a huge caveat here. The data referenced above are correlational, not causal. It’s possible that the arrow of causality is reversed—perhaps students with poor mental health are disproportionately drawn to ideologies like Social Justice Fundamentalism and Critical Theory (that would make a certain amount of sense, as we explain here). Alternatively, both the trend toward poorer mental health and left-leaning political views might be influenced by a third factor, such as familial environment, which both nudges them toward leftist ideologies and is detrimental to their mental health.
Nevertheless, while the data is correlational, it is also highly suggestive. Perhaps telling young minorities that the world is out to get them and there’s nothing they can do about it is, in fact, encouraging them to live in greater fear. Perhaps telling young white people that their motives are suspect and they’re probably both racist and fragile induces unnecessary guilt and shame. Perhaps both of those encourage worse mental health among the young people who sign on to this ideology.
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I think it was Marcuse who said that the way to instigate a Communist revolution in the West, where people were generally too prosperous and happy to want to overthrow everything, is to induce mass psychpathology -- in modern terms, increase the number of people with serious mental illness. All of this is intentional.
There are a couple of reasons:
1-People incapable of managing their own lives will demand the state manage their lives
2-People convinced that everyone is against them are willing to commit atrocities, especially when they believe that everyone everywhere is trying to screw them over.
3-The only way to overthrow the most free and prosperous civilization in the history of the world is push enough people into seeing the world with a tragically distorted view of reality.
I would presume that different proponents of CRT have differing motivations, and that there are many true believers. But it must be opposed. It is doing too much harm.