Foucault - Patron Saint of Child Indoctrination | Logan Lancing

You know, I did a study at Harvard that we never published. When piercing and tattooing became common in the 1990s, I did a study with a fellow psychopathologist looking at whether the proclivity to tattoo and pierce, which was still kind of countercultural at the time, was an indication of psychopathology. We found out that it wasn't; it was just associated with the trade openness. It was just an expression of creativity.

The blue-haired woke type, that hair coloring with the piercings, that's a reflection of openness. The pathological ideology of the anti-normative radicals does also appeal to creative young people because they actually do have fluid identities and they don't fit in. That's another place where the oversimplifying lie finds a ready audience. Of course, if you're a creative young person, you're going to feel that you're at odds with the heteronormative CIS patriarchy, because you are.

Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be grateful for the fact that you're not scrabbling around in the dirt like a peasant from the 13th century. But unless someone has sat you down carefully and explained that to you, and that's certainly not going to happen in the education system, you're just going to feel that the world is arrayed against someone with your generative talents, which of course it is. Normal society never incorporates the creative because it's a one-size-fits-all solution.

I should add that children are easier targets for obvious reasons. They just don't have a model of the world; they have no way of orienting themselves correctly in the world. They're just too young; they don't have the experience. They're supposed to have adults in their lives that help with that. But I will also add that, especially in the domain of queer theory, the abuse is intentional. One of the people we quote in the book, Kevin Kumashiro, he's one of these queer educators.

I should, before I continue with that, define what I mean by queer because that's something people immediately get wrong. Our definition, which we use in the book—we use the word over 1300 times; it may be a Guinness record—our definition we take directly from David Halperin in his 1995 book "Michel Foucault: Towards a Gay Geography," where he's essentially trying to make Michel Foucault a gay saint. In his book, he says that would be the Michel Foucault who had a proclivity to take young boys into graveyards and have his hedonistic way with them.

That saint, Foucault, the gentleman who bent his IQ of 180 his entire life in service of justifying the perversions that he was absolutely unable to control, even when he had AIDS, even when he knew it— that Foucault. So, I just wanted to make sure that we were talking about the same person. That's the same Foucault who is the most cited scholar in the world, that's right, right? That Michel Foucault—okay, well good, so we're definitely talking about the same stellar guy.

The definition we use is that it’s that Foucault, David Halperin's, and it is the definition that all of queer theory recognizes. Even though when you read their papers they say it escapes definition; it can't be categorized. Of course, that's what they're going to say because that's the whole program. But David Halperin says that queer is defined in this way: he says, “Unlike gay identity, queer identity need not be grounded in any positive truth or in any stable reality. Queer acquires its meaning from its oppositional relation to the norm. Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence.”

That's the definition we're going with. It has essentially nothing to do with being. It’s right away, unlike gay—nothing to do with it. It's actually antithetical towards it because these anti—sure, sure! Gay is a stable identity. It's stable. You lose the revolutionary potential if you happen to be gay and you're living a great life and you're happy. You fit into a well-functioning, prosperous society. They've lost the resentment. You're not going to work. Get out of here!

So, before I continue, I just wanted to clarify that point because that's a point that requires clarification. Yeah, yeah, that’s crucial because otherwise, it sounds easy for people to presume that queer is just a minor variant of gay. No, and if that definition doesn’t send chills down your spine, you’re dangerously naive. Because that’s an identity that’s predicated on the negation of identity as such, both psychologically and socially.

That also means technically that it’s—and this is relevant to the observations by Jonathan Haidt and others—that the radical progressive agenda is associated with a market increase in mental illness. An unstable identity dooms you to a dirge of positive emotion—that’s hopelessness—and an excess of negative emotion—that's anxiety. An unstable identity, a self-questioning, antithetical identity is indistinguishable from psychological suffering and social disunity. They’re the same thing.

So, it’s a celebration of, well, there’s your postmodernism for you—that would be a fractionation of the meta-narrative all the way down to the microscopic. Nothing unifies anything, right? And it’s not even—I would even just brutal—I would even add that it’s not an identity at all because there’s no essential quality to it. What it is, is it’s a spiritual position. It’s a stance you take. It’s an orientation in the world against anything considered normal, anything considered legitimate.

And what makes the teaching of this to children, I wanted to add to this, is it's not just that kids are easier to brainwash, let’s say; it’s that the queer theorists are very specific that their program is abusive to children. They’ve got a program that’s designed to pull social and emotional levers to make children accept this.

So, the person I was talking about earlier, Kevin Kumashiro, queer activist, he wrote a few papers that will just floor you. His paper against repetition was the reason I wrote this book. I read that paper and I said, “Okay, that’s it. Now, this is the book to write. People have to know.” He said that educators have a responsibility to pull children into crisis— a responsibility—so that that crisis can be resolved productively.

What he means by this from within the context of queer theory is that queer theory argues that kids want to be normal, of course they do. If they're desiring to be normal and to plug into a society that’s working—a well-functioning society—then they can’t experience the queer, the definition we just discussed. They can’t experience it if that’s what they’re desiring. So, you need to interrupt that desire to fit in with something, and that something is crisis.

What he says is one of the ways you do this is you explain to kids that they may hold racist beliefs that they weren't aware of. You might hold homophobic beliefs that you weren't aware of and then you've got this special knowledge coming from the queer theorist about all of the isms and phobias that no one can perceive but them—just like a cult guru or a cult leader. They've got this Gnostic insight, this special knowledge that you need to be initiated into. They drive cognitive dissonance into the child. The technical term is trauma bonding.

They traumatize the child. “You’re a racist; you don’t know it. You’re a sexist; you don’t know it.” The kid wants to resolve this trauma, and then, to Kevin Kumashiro's words, “We help them resolve it productively.” So, we help use that to resolve it. Well, resolve it in what?

Okay, I want to ask you that. Let me take part of a couple of things that you said. Okay, so the first thing that we should point out is that there is no difference between being socialized and being normal and fitting in; those are the same thing, right? And so the technical way of thinking about that is that, well, if you’re socialized, you can play a game with other people. Those concepts are indistinguishable.

Now, if you can play a game with other people, well, first of all, that means you can play a game, and it also means you can play, and it means that other people can stand you and that you can interact with them peacefully when you cooperate and when you compete, and that you can organize yourselves with others to pursue a joint aim. So that's all in the notion of play.

Okay, well, of course you have to be normal and fit in because if you all are playing a game, you all follow the same rules because otherwise, you're not all playing the same game. Okay, now, it's obviously the case—and this would be the grain of truth—is that you can subjugate that creative essence that might enable you to discover a better game if you're too much of a conformist.

But it's still the case that your primary goal as a child from the age of two to eighteen is fitting in. That’s what your goal is, right? Because that’s what it means to be socialized. Now, you can understand why that would grate against the conscience of someone whose fundamental orientation was creative because they’re going to be the ones that pay the biggest psychological price for that, in a sense.

But at least they’ll be able to play games with others, to cooperate, to compete, to take aim with other people, and to have friends. Like, that’s not nothing. Plus, it’s also what social stability itself depends on. Right? So, we have to be very clear about what it is that’s being critiqued here. They're actually critiquing socialized maturity itself.

Right, okay. Now, the curious thing would be though, okay, so now you put the child in crisis. Now, you could justify that by saying, well, there’s no learning without pain. The question is, what’s being offered as a resolution? Because if the stance is, only the identity that opposes—so that’s like right out of Milton’s "Paradise Lost" because Satan himself is the spirit that opposes—that's his definition. He’s nothing but the spirit that opposes.

So, it’s a very good way of understanding that at a theological level. There’s no unity in the spirit that opposes. You can’t rectify an existential crisis by identifying with the spirit that opposes. If you identify with the spirit that opposes, you end up in hell, metaphysically speaking, well, practically speaking for that matter, and perhaps even theologically speaking.

So, what the hell is the resolution supposed to be? There is none from the outside; there is none. But the way it is sold is the resolution is you find your true self; you find your gender identity. It’s whatever you feel it is because, again, it’s the way—so that basically puts you at the whim of your emotions, your moment-to-moment emotions.