
The Counterweight Handbook
Principled Strategies for Surviving and Defeating Critical Social Justice - At Work, in Schools, and Beyond
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Helen Pluckrose
-
By:
-
Helen Pluckrose
About this listen
The stated goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are often reasonable, if not noble—to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment for all. Yet, as more and more people are discovering, DEI as commonly practiced isn't a natural extension of past civil rights movements or an ethical framework for opposing discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, etc. Rather, it is inextricably connected with an illiberal and authoritarian ideology—Critical Social Justice—that demands adherence to its tenets and punishes any dissent from its dogma.
Even the mildest questions about Critical Social Justice claims—that all white people are racists, that all underrepresented minorities are oppressed, that sex and gender differences have no biological basis, that censorship is a necessary good—are regularly met by DEI trainers and HR officers with pat commands: "Educate yourself," "Do the work," "Listen and learn." At work, raises, promotions, and future employment often depend on our nodding approval of such claims. At school, grades, nominations, and awards are often contingent upon our active agreement with these beliefs.
When facing a choice between silent submission and risky if ethical opposition, what is a person to do? The Counterweight Handbook is designed to help people address Critical Social Justice problems in the most ethical and effective way possible. It not only offers principled responses to the main claims of Critical Social Justice but also teaches individuals what to do when they are asked to affirm beliefs they do not hold, undergo training in an ideology they cannot support, or submit to antiscientific testing and retraining of their "unconscious" minds.
In short, it is for all of us who believe in freedom of speech and conscience, who wish to push back against the hostile work and educational environments Critical Social Justice has created, and who want to stand up for our individual liberties and universal rights.
©2024 Helen Pluckrose (P)2024 Little, Brown Book Group LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Unprotected Class
- How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart
- By: Jeremy Carl
- Narrated by: Chris Reilly
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While political and media elites hysterically condemn an imaginary epidemic of “white supremacy,” in the real world, white Americans are often openly discriminated against. Indeed, anti-white policies have become so interwoven in the fabric of American life that we often fail to recognize them.
-
-
Brave and Important Book!
- By Daniel on 05-31-24
By: Jeremy Carl
-
The Queering of the American Child
- How a New School Religious Cult Poisons the Minds and Bodies of Normal Kids
- By: Logan Lancing, James Lindsay
- Narrated by: James Lindsay
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this book, The Queering of the American Child, Logan Lancing and James Lindsay explain what Queer Theory is, where it comes from, how it got into schools, and what it's doing to children nationwide. The cult of Queer Theory preys on children, and it must be understood if we are ever to stop the madness.
-
-
Know what’s happening and the motivations
- By Grant on 08-31-24
By: Logan Lancing, and others
-
On Settler Colonialism
- Ideology, Violence, and Justice
- By: Adam Kirsch
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since Hamas's attack on Israel last October 7, the term "settler colonialism" has become central to public debate in the United States. A concept new to most Americans, but already established and influential in academic circles, settler colonialism is shaping the way many people think about the history of the United States, Israel and Palestine, and a host of political issues. This short book is the first to examine settler colonialism critically for a general audience.
-
-
A surprisingly balanced perspective on the politics of ‘settler colonialism’.
- By Anonymous User on 11-25-24
By: Adam Kirsch
-
The End of Race Politics
- Arguments for a Colorblind America
- By: Coleman Hughes
- Narrated by: Coleman Hughes
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As one of the few black students in his philosophy program at Columbia University years ago, Coleman Hughes wondered why his peers seemed more pessimistic about the state of American race relations than his own grandparents–who lived through segregation. The End of Race Politics is the culmination of his years-long search for an answer.
-
-
common sense approach to racism
- By Amazon Customer on 02-25-24
By: Coleman Hughes
-
Cynical Theories
- How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody
- By: Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay
- Narrated by: Helen Pluckrose
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only White people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed to challenge the logic of Western society? In this probing volume, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields.
-
-
Vast Amount of Jargon Lost Me
- By P. Jackson on 10-23-20
By: Helen Pluckrose, and others
-
Mao's America
- A Survivor's Warning
- By: Xi Van Fleet
- Narrated by: Ava Wong, Xi Van Fleet, James Lindsay
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Xi Van Fleet lived through the horrors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution as a schoolgirl. Forced to the countryside with other young Chinese for re-education after high school, she later escaped communism and found freedom and new a life in America. But more than 30 years later, Xi disturbingly sees signs of the same Cultural Marxism that ravaged her birth country of China threatening to destroy the America she now calls home.
-
-
Communism Clearly Explained
- By clh5090 on 04-28-24
By: Xi Van Fleet
-
The Unprotected Class
- How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart
- By: Jeremy Carl
- Narrated by: Chris Reilly
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While political and media elites hysterically condemn an imaginary epidemic of “white supremacy,” in the real world, white Americans are often openly discriminated against. Indeed, anti-white policies have become so interwoven in the fabric of American life that we often fail to recognize them.
-
-
Brave and Important Book!
- By Daniel on 05-31-24
By: Jeremy Carl
-
The Queering of the American Child
- How a New School Religious Cult Poisons the Minds and Bodies of Normal Kids
- By: Logan Lancing, James Lindsay
- Narrated by: James Lindsay
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this book, The Queering of the American Child, Logan Lancing and James Lindsay explain what Queer Theory is, where it comes from, how it got into schools, and what it's doing to children nationwide. The cult of Queer Theory preys on children, and it must be understood if we are ever to stop the madness.
-
-
Know what’s happening and the motivations
- By Grant on 08-31-24
By: Logan Lancing, and others
-
On Settler Colonialism
- Ideology, Violence, and Justice
- By: Adam Kirsch
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since Hamas's attack on Israel last October 7, the term "settler colonialism" has become central to public debate in the United States. A concept new to most Americans, but already established and influential in academic circles, settler colonialism is shaping the way many people think about the history of the United States, Israel and Palestine, and a host of political issues. This short book is the first to examine settler colonialism critically for a general audience.
-
-
A surprisingly balanced perspective on the politics of ‘settler colonialism’.
- By Anonymous User on 11-25-24
By: Adam Kirsch
-
The End of Race Politics
- Arguments for a Colorblind America
- By: Coleman Hughes
- Narrated by: Coleman Hughes
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As one of the few black students in his philosophy program at Columbia University years ago, Coleman Hughes wondered why his peers seemed more pessimistic about the state of American race relations than his own grandparents–who lived through segregation. The End of Race Politics is the culmination of his years-long search for an answer.
-
-
common sense approach to racism
- By Amazon Customer on 02-25-24
By: Coleman Hughes
-
Cynical Theories
- How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody
- By: Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay
- Narrated by: Helen Pluckrose
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only White people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed to challenge the logic of Western society? In this probing volume, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields.
-
-
Vast Amount of Jargon Lost Me
- By P. Jackson on 10-23-20
By: Helen Pluckrose, and others
-
Mao's America
- A Survivor's Warning
- By: Xi Van Fleet
- Narrated by: Ava Wong, Xi Van Fleet, James Lindsay
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Xi Van Fleet lived through the horrors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution as a schoolgirl. Forced to the countryside with other young Chinese for re-education after high school, she later escaped communism and found freedom and new a life in America. But more than 30 years later, Xi disturbingly sees signs of the same Cultural Marxism that ravaged her birth country of China threatening to destroy the America she now calls home.
-
-
Communism Clearly Explained
- By clh5090 on 04-28-24
By: Xi Van Fleet
-
The New Puritans
- How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World
- By: Andrew Doyle
- Narrated by: Andrew Doyle
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leading a cultural revolution driven by identity politics and so-called 'social justice', the new puritanism movement is best understood as a religion - one that makes grand claims to moral purity and tolerates no dissent. In The New Puritans, Andrew Doyle powerfully examines the underlying belief-systems of this ideology and how it has risen so rapidly to dominate all major political, cultural and corporate institutions. He reasons that, to move forward, we need to understand where these New Puritans came from and what they hope to achieve.
-
-
Hero speaking truth
- By Victoria Eriksson on 10-12-22
By: Andrew Doyle
-
Social Justice Fallacies
- By: Thomas Sowell
- Narrated by: Brad Sanders
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The quest for social justice is a powerful crusade of our time, with an appeal to many different people, for many different reasons. But those who use the same words do not always present the same meanings. Clarifying those meanings is the first step toward finding out what we agree on and disagree on. From there, it is largely a question of what the facts are. Social Justice Fallacies reveals how many things that are thought to be true simply cannot stand up to documented facts, which are often the opposite of what is widely believed.
-
-
Timely book by 93 year old Thomas Sowell
- By Wayne on 09-27-23
By: Thomas Sowell
-
Irreversible Damage
- The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
- By: Abigail Shrier
- Narrated by: Pamela Almand
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Teenage girls are taking courses of testosterone and disfiguring their bodies. Parents are undermined; experts are over-relied upon; dissenters in science and medicine are intimidated; free speech truckles under renewed attack; socialized medicine bears hidden consequences; and an intersectional era has arisen in which the desire to escape a dominant identity encourages individuals to take cover in victim groups. Every person who has ever had a skeptical thought about the sudden rush toward a non-binary future but been afraid to express it - this book is for you.
-
-
Some interesting points, but extremely biased
- By Bill on 08-03-20
By: Abigail Shrier
-
Kindly Inquisitors
- The New Attacks on Free Thought, Expanded Edition
- By: Jonathan Rauch
- Narrated by: Penn Jillette
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will." So writes Jonathan Rauch in Kindly Inquisitors, which has challenged listeners for more than 20 years with its bracing and provocative exploration of the issues surrounding attempts to limit free speech.
-
-
One of My Top 3 Books - Ever
- By AB on 07-13-16
By: Jonathan Rauch
-
The Canceling of the American Mind
- Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All—but There Is a Solution
- By: Greg Lukianoff, Rikki Schlott
- Narrated by: Rikki Schlott, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cancel culture is a new phenomenon, and The Canceling of the American Mind is the first book to codify it and survey its effects, including hard data and research on what cancel culture is and how it works, along with hundreds of new examples showing the left and right both working to silence their enemies.
-
-
Good book, Important information, poorly read
- By pj on 12-08-23
By: Greg Lukianoff, and others
-
Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me
- Debunking the False Narratives Defining America’s School Curricula
- By: Wilfred Reilly
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1995, James W. Loewen penned the classic work of criticism Lies My Teacher Told Me, a left-leaning corrective that addressed much of what was sanitized and omitted from American history books. But in the decades that followed, false leftist narratives—as wrong as those they supplanted—have come to dominate American academia and education. Now, in the same spirit but updated for 2024, Wilfred Reilly demolishes the scholastic myths propagated by the left, uncovers fresh angles on “established” events, and turns what we think we know about history upside down.
-
-
A Must Read for Parents With Children in our Public Schools
- By john bogush on 09-05-24
By: Wilfred Reilly
What listeners say about The Counterweight Handbook
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dear Prudence
- 03-06-25
Balanced Critique of the Problems With DEI
Maybe the clearest, most non-hysterical explanation of the illiberalism inherent in wokeism I've come across. I love the practical solutions offered and also the compassion for well-meaning people who were caught up thinking they were just opposing discrimination.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!