Critical Race Theory Was Not Responsible for the Holocaust

Misbar’s investigation found no evidence connecting the Holocaust to critical race theory. Critical race theory is an academic concept that first emerged in American law schools in the 1970s and 1980s. The last of the Nazi death camps were liberated by May 1945. Therefore, critical race theory did not exist as a concept until around 30 years after the end of the Holocaust.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, critical race theory is “based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color.” And that “the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites.”

On the other hand, the Nazi ideology that led to the Holocaust was based on a belief in the superiority of the “Aryan race.” The Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race that was destructive to the purity of the German “Aryan race” and thus needed to be exterminated. The Nazis also targeted Roma, Sinti, Slavs, Poles, and the disabled, considering all of these groups to be a racial threat.

Therefore, critical race theory’s central idea of race being a social construct and not being a natural or biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups is directly antithetical to the Nazi ideology around race that led to the Holocaust.