Lindsay told NTD's "The Nation Speaks" program in a recent interview that the ESG scoring system was initially conceived as a way for investors to track the likelihood that a corporation would be a good bet for investment over the long term.

"In the early 2000s, a few very socially minded socially activist investors got together and thought up this idea that, well, it's probably the case that companies that are bad at environmental policy, bad with social responsibility, and bad corporate governance are going to be bad bets in long term investment," he said.

James Lindsay, co-author of "Cynical Theories," in New York on Feb. 28, 2020. (Brendon Fallon/The Epoch Times)

Lindsay believes the ESG concept was suspect from the very beginning and it's unclear whether higher scores translated into good long-term profitability for participating corporations.

Worse still, he argued that, over time, ESG scores have been hijacked and "weaponized" by "social justice warriors."

"They have the leverage to be able to use this like a … financial gun to the head of any corporation that doesn't do what it wants them to do," he said, calling it a "blatant weaponization."

"In fact, it's racketeering is what it is, is just criminal racketeering, using what looks like a responsible measurement tool as the mechanism. So nobody's directly responsible for engaging in what is really a mob shakedown of corporations," he argued.