Book Review: American Marxism, By Mark Levin 

In 2009, constitutional lawyer and syndicated radio host Mark Levin published Liberty & Tyranny, a runaway bestseller that galvanized the conservative movement. Now, he has published American Marxism, putting a name to  — and tracing the ancestry of — the movement that is sweeping away our rights and freedoms.

As he admits, this is Levin’s longest book, because it is his most comprehensive. The reader is taken through the evolution of the nefarious, anti-democratic ideals that have seized control of America’s institutions and are tearing down society.

Reading the philosophers of totalitarianism of yesteryear — Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx — seems like an exercise in tedium. Yet their reasoning has echoed through time — even if the (in Levin’s phrase) “zombie-like ’woke’ drones” don’t know where their dogma came from. “Ultimately,” Levin writes:

The Marxists’ disdain for individualism is omnipresent throughout its history. The same is true of attitudes toward the common man. Levin points out the similarities in the way the American Marxist speaks of the hard working, blue collar American and the way the Soviet Union in the time of Stalin spoke of the “backward” Russian and Ukrainian peasant (who would suffer a genocide in the name of collectivization). Like its Soviet counterpart, American Marxism is “laced throughout with raw bigotry, antagonism, and hate.”

One of Levin’s favorite sayings is that even as Communism was defeated in the Soviet Union, it is thriving in American universities. It was from his perch in academia that Marxist pseudo-intellectual Herbert Marcuse “hatch[ed] the Critical Theory ideology from which the racial, gender, and other Critical Theory–based movements were launched in America.”

Marcuse, Levin writes, argued that “tolerance is actually a ploy instituted by the powerful and conniving forces of the bourgeoisie against the unsuspecting proletariat, in which the masses are duped and programmed to support their oppressors. In short, tolerance is used to suppress the people … if American society does not tolerate its own demise or overthrow at the hands of Marxist ideologues and movements, it cannot be said to be truly tolerant. Therefore, Marcuse insists that a society is not truly tolerant if it does not sow the seeds of its own demise by Marxist revolutionaries … since a republic would not consent to its own subversion and dissolution, thereby rejecting true tolerance, Marxists must resort to other means to overthrow it, including violence.”

In sum, “Marcuse was urging the violent overthrow of American society in which the ‘established hierarchy’ was using tolerance to perpetuate oppression against the minority.” It’s nonsense, and yet it is the root of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

In discussing Critical Race Theory, Levin borrows a description from Professor George R. La Noue:

CRT begins with the presumption that race is the primary way to identify and analyze people and consequently posits a racial hierarchy that supposedly exists with whites on top and blacks at the bottom. Individual behavior is insignificant because everyone in America functions within a society of systemic racism, structural racism, and institutional racism. … According to this perspective, efforts by public and private organizations to enforce civil rights laws in employment, housing, contracting, education, etc. are either insufficient or pointless.

Levin explains:

In other words, CRT undermines and exploits America’s unique and very successful fusion of diversity and cultural assimilation, and considers all issues in the context of past societal imperfections—regardless of enormous struggles and efforts in creating a more perfect society, including a civil war, massive economic redistribution, and groundbreaking legal changes. Even more, it incorporates and advances an increasing list of causes as new or additional reasons for eradicating society and transforming the country. Indeed, CRT repositions what is the most tolerant and beneficent society on earth as a miserably dark and impoverished nation, from its beginning to today. 

Furthermore, “For CRT advocates, counter-speech, more speech, and the marketplace of ideas are all poisoned by white dominance and privilege. Of course, this leads to repression, censorship, and today’s ‘cancel culture.’”

Levin does not mince words: “Having laid the foundation for revolutionary change in multiple areas of our society and culture, the banning, canceling, and silencing have begun in earnest. Repression, not engagement; compliance, not speech; conformity, not independence; and subjugation, not liberty, are all hallmarks of American Marxism.”

Yet for all the grim straight talk, American Marxism also offers a message of hope. Levin closes the book with a call to action. Boycott the enemy’s businesses, pressure institutions to withdraw investments in woke movements, have your state and local governments end all funds for or involvement in wokeness. And most importantly, never, ever give up. In the final pages, Levin returns, as he often does, to America’s founding for inspiration — citing the words of Thomas Paine:

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

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