So, now I’ve written well over 8000 words on the stupidest topic I could possibly have imagined ever having to write about, but it matters—and there’s a point to take away from all this. It is that postmodernism, particularly in the hands of the ideology of Critical Social Justice, is not at all interested in truth. It is only interested in power, which it will establish through its attempted revolution, which it in turn knows it can only achieve by turning otherwise intelligent, well-meaning people into “accomplices” by manipulating their good will, charity, fear of being disliked or ostracized, and, especially, unawareness of what is actually going on beneath the rhetorical tricks they’re being served up with intentionally limited context.

“Freedom is the freedom to say that 2+2=4. If that is granted, all else follows” -George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four

Occasionally in the course of human events it becomes necessary to have to explain something no one would ever have expected to have to defend. In the present moment, we find that circumstance to be the case and that thing to be that two and two do, in fact, make four. Further, it must be reasserted, against all reasonable expectation, that this claim about the sum of two and two being four is not merely some subjective determination or, more insidiously, an assertion of hegemonic power. So it is that such a need might arise in such a time in which irrational subjectivity becomes so desperate to defend and assert itself that no truth, no matter how simple or basic, can be considered safe from the ravages of people who have a vested ideological interest in its being wrong.

I have to confess responsibility for this bizarre moment, which in some sense might be one of the greater achievements of my life thus far. There’s an excellent case to be made that I have led a significant number of professionals who definitely should know otherwise—as effectively every six-year-old in a community with a school does—to dig deeply into tortured defenses of the proposition that two and two do not make four.

What in the World…?

“He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the earth goes round the sun; to-day, to believe that the past is inalterable. He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him: the horror was that he might also be wrong.” -George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four

Let me be clear about a few things up front before telling you how this seems to have happened and what’s going on with this ridiculous moment of academic history—for academic and academic-only it is. This, tedious and difficult to understand as it is, turns out to be centrally important to the present moment and this ridiculous episode, which is but a starkly clear microcosm of a far broader phenomenon by which academic disciplines are being colonized and conquered from within. I contend that this phenomenon represents a potentially existential risk to advanced modern civilizations, and, by the same actors insisting that two and two don’t necessarily make four, am being mocked for saying so. I now hope to convince you otherwise through several thousands of words no one ever should have had to write.

To elaborate, while the most popular assertion being made to counter “2+2=4” happens to be “2+2 can equal 5,” this coming from people including from self-described mathematicians and genuine math educators, among others, the Critical Social Justice activists’ point isn’t that 2+2=5 any more than it is that two and two represents any particular quantity. Their point is that 2+2 can equal 5, though it doesn’t have to. That is, their point is that the objectively true statement “2+2=4” can be deconstructed by means of claiming that it is possible that, in fact, other things can occur too. This allows them to sidestep accusations like that they’re denying that “2+2=4” even while they do it, and (we have to admit) fairly enough because their whole point has literally nothing to do with what two and two add to equal.

The activists’ point comes in three stages. First, it is that a statement like “2+2=4” is just one mathematical truth among many, and this seems to be a point that many mathematicians who should know far better are eager to help them make. Second, it is that “hegemonic narratives” don’t get to decide it objectively, and thus that nobody can say that “2+2=4” is objectively true, which is, of course, patently ridiculous. Third, it is that narratives that have been considered hegemonic in the past or present (e.g., “2+2=4”) should be regarded with extreme suspicion going forward into the future, and people who can make a claim to being oppressed by “hegemonic narratives” at all get to have the say on how we should think about those narratives and their specific contents, including simple matters of quantity. That is, the activists are seeking a radical rewriting of the entire rational project, and any reason that doesn’t forward their favored actors as the sole arbiters of what is true and correct needs to be deconstructed by rhetorical tricks and marginalized by moral and, perhaps, physical force and intimidation. They’re seeking a revolution.

This is meant to be accomplished via a distinctly postmodern approach that deliberately removes any sense of stable meaning to anything. In few examples could it be more stark than in the effort to argue that two and two aren’t necessarily four that the objective of the postmodernism at the heart of the present Critical Social Justice (or “Woke”) movement is to destabilize any sense of solidity and meaning and then to use the ensuing confusion to advance a particular form of radical politics.

Why is it so clear here? There’s no other reason to deny something so fundamental as “2+2=4” than to generate precisely this kind of confusion, and then into that confusion it is repeatedly asserted that “objectivity” in mathematics, even elementary arithmetic, is the kind of illusion that the powerful delude themselves and others into believing so that they can exclude other possibilities. This statement, of course, divorced from the specific context of what two and two add to equal is a remarkable political tool that could justify literally any double standard or abuse. The name for this approach to manipulating meaning is “deconstruction,” hence my use of this specific term so far, and as it arises explicitly from the poststructuralist ramblings of Jacques Derrida, its postmodern roots cannot reasonably be denied.

How Did This Happen?

“He picked up the children’s history book and looked at the portrait of Big Brother which formed its frontispiece. The hypnotic eyes gazed into his own. It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you – something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses.” -George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four

As strange as this turn of events is, the whole affair demands a proper account of how it came to be. The story actually starts in a private text dialogue with someone who was asking me specifically about how postmodernism thinks about objective claims about the world. She asked, at some point, what postmodernists would say about “2+2=4,” specifically asking me if postmodernists would say “2+2=5.” The answer, I told her, is no. The answer is “2+2=doesn’t matter, so long as what it equals isn’t constrained by hegemonic discourses.”

In some sense, the postmodern understanding is “2+2 can equal whatever people want it to equal, and we should be very skeptical of the idea that it equals 4 because so much political dominance is already built into that answer and how it is obtained.” To paraphrase a key point of Michel Foucault, the postmodernist avatar, whether or not a truth claim is actually true or false misses the point that a political process leads to making that determination. For the postmodernists, and their ideological descendants, it is only being radically skeptical of this political process that is of relevance, thus arriving at the formulation I gave. This is, of course, what the activists in the present case are doing, being radically skeptical of the alleged “politics” of mathematics when the whole program is viewed as a “cultural process.”

This particular radical effort, incidentally, is taken further by the new, more critical (as in, based in Critical Theory) ideology that has adopted postmodern tools, which would take the additional step of classifying a “hegemonic” solution as being indicative of some underlying systemic oppression, particularly exclusion of “other ways of knowing” (like “lived experience”) and “other knowledges” that might say otherwise. That is, in the conceptual operating system underlying Critical Social Justice (i.e., Woke) thought, 2+2 might sometimes equal 4, but we have to understand that accepting this as an objective statement of basic arithmetic contributes to a system of oppression that, in other corners of its existence, oppresses racial, gender, and sexual minorities, women, the overweight, the disabled, and people outside of the “Western context,” which is accused of accepting statements like “2+2=4” in an “uncritical” way (which means without using the favored Critical Theory of the relevant moment).

Pause to breathe. The activists behind this really think like this, and one of the weirder battles of the culture war of the day rages around that fact.

Anyway, to get back to the story, I proceeded to take this thought from my messages to the public in the form of a “Woke Mini,” a line of satirical quips roughly imitating dictionary entries with the goal of exposing and highlighting the inanity of the Critical Social Justice worldview. One of them is for the entry “2+2=4,” and it reads:

“2+2=4: A perspective in white, Western mathematics that marginalizes other possible values.”

I tweeted that particular card for the first time on June 8 of this year, and, hopefully, you get the joke. It seemed humorous enough and made my point, so I was content with it, as were many of my followers. What I underestimated, however, was the fact that in cutting far too close to the bone, I had inadvertently introduced a conceptual virus into the Woke Matrix. What happened next is what led us to the present moment in the course of human history.

As it happens, it appears someone put this Woke Mini into the employ of satirically replying to Nikole Hannah-Jones on the fifth of July in response to her tweeting, “I wonder if folks always talking about ‘standards’ ever stop to consider that it’s their so-called standards that are the actual problem.” Hannah-Jones decided to make fun of me by quote-retweeting this delightful troll, including the image of the “2+2=4” Woke Mini, and adding the comment, “Using Arabic numerals to try to make a point about white, Western superiority is just so damn classic.”

For those who don’t realize it, Nikole Hannah-Jones is the architect behind the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize winning critical historiography called the “1619 Project,” so she’s no small potatoes. It got some attention, not least from people who seem to have dedicated much of their spare time to hating me on the internet in a semi-professional capacity.

In fact, as many people who follow me regularly will know, I have a veritable cottage industry of petty, envious academics who follow me around on Twitter specifically to hate me and to try to discredit everything I do. So far as I can tell, it’s their only hobby, and they’re genuine enthusiasts. One of these, Michael J. Barany, of the Science Technology and Innovation Studies department (read: critical science studies) of the University of Edinburgh, who had previously tweeted (in January of 2019) “1+1=2 is a hegemonic discourse and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” replied to “enthusiastically co-sign” to Hannah-Jones’ attempted takedown of my too-on-the-nose satire. (You’ll notice that Barany couldn’t disagree with or refute my claim in the Woke Mini, as he had made the same claim himself some 18 months prior and drew attention to it, so he could only sign on to a problematization of the fact that I would dare expose this fact about the critical-theory mindset.)

Soon after, also on July 5, “teacher, scholar, social justice change agent” and Ph.D. student Brittany Marshall joined in, apparently not understanding that she was making my point for me. She insisted, “Nope, the idea of 2+2 equaling 4 is cultural and because of western imperialism/colonization, we think of it as the only way of knowing.” This, if you don’t know, is the actual Critical Social Justice view of a “hegemonic discourse” like standard mathematics (including elementary arithmetic). You’ll notice that it’s significantly different than the idea currently being rabidly defended by well-meaning obfuscators on social media and now beyond, who have unwittingly (we hope) adopted the roles of useful idiots, that mathematics just admits a wider range of ways of approaching questions than the basic axioms of number theory. The point really is to create a complete Critical Social Justice revolution in mathematics and mathematics education by undermining any stable sense of reason or meaning. As you can read from a leading scholar-activist in this endeavor, Rochelle Gutiérrez,

Much of what currently counts as scholarship in mathematics education assumes we will work within the given system or expand what we currently count as the status quo. Within mathematics education, we have convinced ourselves that “equity” is a strong enough agenda when maybe revolution should be the goal.

Who goes on to observe that the co-optation of useful idiots in the form of real mathematicians is a necessary part of her revolutionary project:

One thing that has been underscored from this attack is that we cannot create a revolution by ourselves; we need accomplices (not allies) in this work. That is, we need people who are willing to stand with us, around us, so that those who attack us will need to go through them (first). Having accomplices is different than having allies who support with solidarity, cheer loudly from the sidelines, or who safely stand on the sidewalk with their signs. Accomplices do what Delores Huerta called for when organizing for the rights of Chicano farmworkers: “Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk.” Mathematicians are one group who are showing some promise in the arena of being our accomplices.

She then quotes the following passage about what “accomplices” are expected to do before explaining a litany of ways that even by 2017 mathematicians had become “accomplices” in advancing this revolutionary work: betray their institutions and, presumably, their fields themselves, by leveraging support for the “liberation” (this means Critical Theory, specifically neo-Marxism, by definition, by the way) effort.

An accomplice as academic would seek ways to leverage resources and material support and/or betray their institution to further liberation struggles. An intellectual accomplice would strategize with, not for, and not be afraid to pick up a hammer. (Indigenous Action, 2014, p. 5)

Speaking of picking up a hammer to take to mathematics, and as a notable interlude in this already weird “2+2” affair, on July 10, an ethnic mathematics teacher and councilperson for the Washington state Ethnic Studies program, Shraddha Shirude, jumped in on the discussion after discovering someone saying something to the effect of adding two apples plus two oranges equals four pieces of fruit—as though the need to group by like units is at all mysterious—is an eye-opening way to challenge people who are rightly criticizing her ethnomathematics (yeah, that’s a word now) program. She wrote explicitly, “This is one of my favorite things to happen upon. Help me respond to all those haters who said my ethnic studies framework claimed 2+2=5… how can we turn this into a true statement?” And, so, the project to make “2+2=5” into a “true statement” began in earnest.

One would hope that the whole thing would have puffed up, been funny and terrifying for a week, and died from there, but such people underestimate two things: first, the fact that the Woke really do think this way and hate for normal people to be able to see it clearly, even though they say it themselves constantly, and second, because I am helping people see their game clearly for what it is, that I must be wrong, problematic, and, above all, discredited completely at all costs. Thus began a relentless attempt by a band of petty Crits to discredit me that has included a professional and academic defense of “2+2=5” that has been raging through the entire month of July 2020. Now, at the time of writing in early August, it seems to have begun to make the leap into the mainstream, necessitating this silly explanation.

What Are They Saying?

“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.” -George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four

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