Today’s world has a whole new vocabulary: cultural Marxism, Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, white privilege, systemic racism, social justice, and more. They’re controversial, but they also have histories, and knowing where they came from will help you understand how to answer them.

Author and columnist Larry Alex Taunton gives a helpful, concise history of socialism and Marxism in Europe, including its enmity towards religion from its early beginnings. Originally focused on economic issues, under Antonio Gramsci it turned toward other forms of “oppression.”

Gramsci’s theories took aim at family, schools, the law, and more. It’s a Trojan Horse approach known now as “cultural Marxism.” His views breathed new life into a movement that should have died under the weight of all its genocides in Russia and Asia.

Cultural Marxism now has new ideologies supporting it: Critical Race Theory and intersectionality. Taunton opens all this up for understanding, puts it in context of all Marxism’s stunning failures, and explains why “If Christianity goes, the whole world goes” down a deadly trail of Marxism.