Judicial Watch Fights West Point Stonewall on Racist Propaganda

“Critical race theory” is suddenly, weirdly, everywhere. Schools, Congress, the law, the media, big business are abruptly awash in the CRT gospel that U.S. institutions are inherently, irredeemably, “systemically” racist, and must be destroyed to be saved. One day in the not-too-distant future someone will write a fascinating study of how this insanity came upon us, and not for the first time. But for now, the deluge.

Now the storm has reached a citadel of American democracy, the United States Military Academy at West Point. For months, Judicial Watch has been investigating tips from West Point sources about shocking CRT teachings that divide, not unite, our future military leaders.

In April, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Defense Department for all West Point material related to CRT. The Defense Department ignored our request. So last month, we sued them.

“Critical race theory is racist, anti-American, and repackaged Marxism,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It has no place in our military, let alone the storied heights of West Point. The Pentagon needs to immediately follow the FOIA law so the American people can fully understand and stop the extremist indoctrination of the U.S. Army’s rising leadership at West Point.”

In June, in an extraordinary statement on Capitol Hill, the chairman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the highest-ranking military officer in the U.S.—defended CRT at West Point. “I want to understand white rage,” said General Mark Milley, “and I’m white.”

Milley called on members of the military to be “open-minded” and compared CRT to the classroom study of communism. “I’ve read Mao Zedong,” he said. “I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what’s wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding, about the country for which we are here to defend?”

What’s wrong of course is that a radical dogma like CRT has goals far beyond the classroom. It seeks to exploit liberal good will, “open-mindedness,” to undermine, divide and ultimately destroy the country. It’s a tactic Mao and Lenin understood well.

Congressman Mike Waltz, a former Green Beret, also has been investigating CRT at West Point. In a letter to the superintendent of the military academy, Rep. Waltz noted that he received reports from cadets and families about CRT-inspired racist teachings.

One mandatory seminar for cadets, according to the Waltz, included a workshop on “Understanding Systemic Racism” and featured a presentation by Dr. Carol Anderson of Emory University on “Understanding Whiteness and White Rage.”

Rep. Waltz noted that Anderson “is a controversial, partisan academic, who has made no secret where she stands politically.” She has written that the “trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is the problem: rather, it is blackness with ambition, drive, purpose, aspirations.”

According to reports received by Waltz, the entire cadets corps was required to attend a stadium assembly that included testimony from a fellow cadet about her “white privilege” and how she “felt guilty for the advantages of her race.”

It’s obvious why CRT at West Point is so alarming. “A fundamental pillar of military training has been it doesn’t matter what race, what religion, or whether one’s family was rich or poor before entering the military,” Waltz writes. “This is why every soldier’s head is shaved and every soldier wears the exact same uniform.”

Critical race theory takes aim at this pillar of American democracy, pitting “cadets against one another through divisive indoctrination,” writes Waltz. CRT at West Point teaches our future military leaders “that they should treat their fellow officers and soldiers differently based on race and socio-economic background. In a combat environment, where every soldier must equally share the burden of danger, I cannot think of a notion more destructive to unit cohesion and morale.”

Make that: more destructive to the American experiment writ large.

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Read the Judicial Watch lawsuit against the Defense Department for West Point CRT documents here.

Read Rep. Michael Waltz’s letter to West Point Superintendent Lt. General Darryl A. Williams here.

Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: [email protected]

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: [email protected]