Document Interview | James Lindsay: Kamala Harris is a Communist

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have a mindset that is radical and communist, and the right wing underestimates Harris when they mock her for being dumb—she is razor-sharp and hides behind her cackling laugh, says James Lindsay, American author and academic.

In a conversation with Documents’ Kathrine Jebsen Moore, Lindsay discusses the authoritarian currents shaping politics in the US, the UK, and the rest of the West, reflecting on whether we have reached "peak woke" and how we can stand up to this in an increasingly restrictive space for free expression.

James Lindsay is a well-known name to many and has been active on the American right as a commentator and author since he gained attention with "The Grievance Studies Affair"—an experiment in which, along with academics Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian, he wrote bizarre articles for academic journals on topics such as rape culture in dog parks (!) and a chapter of Hitler’s Mein Kampf with feminist language and phrasing. The experiment demonstrated how skewed academia had become due to postmodernism and intersectional feminism. Since then, Lindsay has published several books, appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast multiple times, and spoken to thousands of people around the world, particularly in the US and Canada.

Lindsay has been highly critical of figures such as UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Their politics and ideas must be understood in the context of their ideological backgrounds, he argues. He points to the British Fabian Society, a socialist movement that has greatly influenced Starmer, which advocates for revolution, but in an English manner—that is, without resorting to violence. Harris is also much smarter than people give her credit for and knows exactly what she means, and she has the most left-wing agenda of any Democratic presidential candidate, according to Lindsay.

James Lindsay runs the website New Discourses, a comprehensive resource on everything related to critical theory, woke culture, and identity politics, and also collaborates with Prager U and others on the American right