Republicans and conservatives have been depending for a long time on a truism with an ambiguous source: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

The anti-Critical Race Theory movement has fully committed to this strategy; just lie quickly and then spend most of your time ranting as if the lie is true.

Here is but one of many examples:

While the claim here is a blatant lie, we should note that anti-CRT advocates are the ones who repeatedly conflate “whiteness” with “racism.”

Not My Idea, by Anastasia Higginbotham, in fact, goes to great lengths to recognize white people throughout history who have stood firm against racism; in other words, one of the strongest messages of the book is “not all white people.” The title and motif of the book is that white children are not the ones who created racism, “not my idea”—“Racism was not your idea. You don’t need to defend it.”

And here is the real issue: The book makes a strong case not for rejecting whiteness, but for rejecting racism when you are white.

As is the case is almost all efforts to censor, people have likely never read the book. So here you are, listen and hear the truth:

If you have to advance your beliefs through lies, you should interrogate those beliefs.

The anti-CRT movement is built on lies.