There is no such thing as "cultural Marxism"

[pecksniff]

Some posters on this board talk about it as if it were a real thing that mattered. But there is no such thing as "cultural Marxism". There was, once, a Frankfurt School of Marxist literary criticism, but it had no influence on the Civil Rights movement, the anti-Vietnam-War movement, the sexual revolution, the gay rights movement, Critical Race Theory, or anything else that has changed American or any other Western culture since the 1950s. It might have had some influence on the New Left -- but the New Left had no political successes, and has long since faded from the scene.

Cultural Marxism is a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture.[1][2][3] The theory claims that an elite of Marxist theorists and Frankfurt School intellectuals are subverting Western society with a culture war that undermines the Christian values of traditionalist conservatism and promotes the cultural liberal values of the 1960s counterculture and multiculturalism, progressive politics and political correctness, misrepresented as identity politics created by critical theory.[2][3][4]

A contemporary revival of the Nazi propaganda term "Cultural Bolshevism",[5] the conspiracy theory originated in the United States during the 1990s.[6][7]: Abstract  While originally found only on the far-right political fringe, the term began to enter mainstream discourse in the 2010s and is now found globally.[7] The conspiracy theory of a Marxist culture war is promoted by right-wing politicians, fundamentalist religious leaders, political commentators in mainstream print and television media, and white supremacist terrorists.[8] Scholarly analysis of the conspiracy theory has concluded that it has no basis in fact.[7][9]

 

[pecksniff]

Indeed, Marxism as such seems hardly to matter any more. The Zapatista rebels in Mexico never called themselves Marxists -- they would have, if their rebellion had begun 20 or even 10 years earlier. The name of Marx has lost its power to conjure.

 

[JohnEngelman]

On a web site where I was banned for saying nice things about Ethiopian immigrants, Jews, and Orientals other posters expressed the opinion that the United States would be a much better country if the so called "Cultural Marxists" of the presumed "Frankfurt School" had never been allowed to express their opinions.

During the War in Vietnam I was active in the anti war movement. I never considered myself to be a Marxist, but I knew many Marxists. They were of various kinds; some were Maoists; some were Trotskyists, etc. There were no Stalinists. There were members of the American Communist Party. They were very open about what they were. I could never get them to stop talking about how excellent their variety of Marxism was.

I have never encountered anyone who said "I am a Cultural Marxist." There is no Cultural Marxist Party, no Cultural Marxist Journal. "Cultural Marxist" is a derogatory term those on the right use for social liberals.

 

[JohnEngelman]

I think a political thinker should be read for insight, rather than doctrine. I believe Karl Marx had two valid insights, and that he was mistaken about everything else.

 

[icanhelp1]

Indeed, Marxism as such seems hardly to matter any more. The Zapatista rebels in Mexico never called themselves Marxists -- they would have, if their rebellion had begun 20 or even 10 years earlier. The name of Marx has lost its power to conjure.

There is a cultural Marxist movement in the US. Not to get too deep into the weeds but the prevalence of political correctness is testimony to its existence and poses a threat not only to liberal values but conservative values as well. Cultural marxism falsely cheers on inclusion while creating a culture of exclusion as demonstrated recently at Yale university as well as Berkeley California

 

[pecksniff]

There is a cultural Marxist movement in the US. Not to get too deep into the weeds but the prevalence of political correctness

which is simply another term for "not being an asshole," has nothing to do with Marxism.

 

[icanhelp1]

which is simply another term for "not being an asshole," has nothing to do with Marxism.

How do you explain critical theory, critical race theory, critical gender theory, open borders. Creating the boogie man *Fascism * to deconstruct society to eliminate fascism that doesn’t exist using fascist tactics.

 

[pecksniff]

How do you explain critical theory, critical race theory, critical gender theory, open borders. Creating the boogie man *Fascism * to deconstruct society to eliminate fascism that doesn’t exist using fascist tactics.

Not as having anything to do with Marxism. And the stuff described in the second sentence, I explain as nonexistent.

 

[Chernosoth]

And Strasserism, an obscure bit of Nazi BS:
https://tinkzorg.wordpress.com/2020/05/07/on-strasserism-and-the-decay-of-the-left/

 

[pecksniff]

I think a political thinker should be read for insight, rather than doctrine. I believe Karl Marx had two valid insights, and that he was mistaken about everything else.

I suppose those would be:

1. Social classes have interests in conflict, and compete.

2. The most important factors in historical change are material, such as advances in technology.

He tried to build a predictive theory of history out of this. He seems to have overlooked the fact that technological change is inherently unpredictable. Nobody in Marx' time could have, except as a pure guess, predicted the automobile or the radio, or the social changes they would cause.

 

[Rightguide]

For once a Peck thread title happens to be true. There is no such word.

 

[pecksniff]

On a web site where I was banned for saying nice things about Ethiopian immigrants, Jews, and Orientals other posters expressed the opinion that the United States would be a much better country if the so called "Cultural Marxists" of the presumed "Frankfurt School" had never been allowed to express their opinions.

In context, it would seem they were blaming Cultural Marxists for the waves of non-white immigration to the U.S. since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended the national-origins-quota system.

Predictable.

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/5/51/The_Nose_Knows.jpg

What brought the Jews into this, you might ask? For one thing, the concept of a Cultural Marxist conspiracy is literally an updating of a Nazi theory. For another, American white supremacists have put a distinctly American twist on antisemitism: Jews were behind the civil rights movement, because they want to encourage race-mixing, because mixed-race people are stupider than pure whites and, therefore, easier for the Jews to control. The same logic would apply to immigration policy -- if it's looser than before then it must be the Jews' work, to encourage race-mixing. Note that in the cartoon above, the first step is "MASS IMMIGRATION."

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/9/90/Cultural_marxism.jpg
https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/9/90/Cultural_marxism.jpg[/img[

 

[colddiesel]

Cultural Marxism is a convenient target that right wingers paint on the backs of more liberal people. It can be attached to anyone deemed insufficiently right wing and potentially includes any Democrat marginally more liberal than Joe Manchin. The right demonizes the image then attaches that image to their political enemies.

Some Democrats and Liberals like Pecksmith are so politically dumb that they attach the target to their own backsides and invite conservatives to kick it. This thread is a good example of that kind of foolishness and is yet another example of Pecksmith giving his opponents a free hit.

Be more specific Pecksmith, and think of what the reaction to your open ended assertions will be - and it is never what you think it should be. Just look at some of the crap your thread has given an audience to.

 

[JohnEngelman]

In context, it would seem they were blaming Cultural Marxists for the waves of non-white immigration to the U.S. since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended the national-origins-quota system.

Predictable.

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/5/51/The_Nose_Knows.jpg

What brought the Jews into this, you might ask? For one thing, the concept of a Cultural Marxist conspiracy is literally an updating of a Nazi theory. For another, American white supremacists have put a distinctly American twist on antisemitism: Jews were behind the civil rights movement, because they want to encourage race-mixing, because mixed-race people are stupider than pure whites and, therefore, easier for the Jews to control. The same logic would apply to immigration policy -- if it's looser than before then it must be the Jews' work, to encourage race-mixing. Note that in the cartoon above, the first step is "MASS IMMIGRATION."

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/9/90/Cultural_marxism.jpg
https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/9/90/Cultural_marxism.jpg[/img[

Jew haters blame Jews for everything hat has gone wrong in their lives, and for everything they dislike about social changes in the United States. They resent Jews because of Jewish intelligence and prosperity.

 

[JohnEngelman]

I suppose those would be:

1. Social classes have interests in conflict, and compete.

2. The most important factors in historical change are material, such as advances in technology.

He tried to build a predictive theory of history out of this. He seems to have overlooked the fact that technological change is inherently unpredictable. Nobody in Marx' time could have, except as a pure guess, predicted the automobile or the radio, or the social changes they would cause.

I think his valid insights are that unregulated capitalism concentrates wealth and income at the top, and partly as a result capitalism experiences increasingly serious economic downturns. He was most mistaken in his assertion that loyalties of class are stronger than loyalties of race, nation, and ethnicity. Marx is useful in understanding the events that led up to the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the ensuing Great Depression.

He cannot explain the First World War, the rise of Italian Fascism and German Nazism, and the fact that in the United States the white working class is a Republican constituency.

 

[pecksniff]

I think his valid insights are that unregulated capitalism concentrates wealth and in come at the top, and partly as a result capitalism experiences increasingly serious economic downturns. He was most mistaken in his assertion that loyalties of class are stronger than loyalties of race, nation, and ethnicity. Marx is useful in understanding the events that led up to the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the ensuing Great Depression.

He cannot explain the First World War, the rise of Italian Fascism and German Nazism, and the fact that in the United States the white working class is a Republican constituency.

Does Marx' thinking tell us anything that can make any reliable predictions now?

 

[JohnEngelman]

In context, it would seem they were blaming Cultural Marxists for the waves of non-white immigration to the U.S. since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended the national-origins-quota system.

Predictable.

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/5/51/The_Nose_Knows.jpg

What brought the Jews into this, you might ask? For one thing, the concept of a Cultural Marxist conspiracy is literally an updating of a Nazi theory. For another, American white supremacists have put a distinctly American twist on antisemitism: Jews were behind the civil rights movement, because they want to encourage race-mixing, because mixed-race people are stupider than pure whites and, therefore, easier for the Jews to control. The same logic would apply to immigration policy -- if it's looser than before then it must be the Jews' work, to encourage race-mixing. Note that in the cartoon above, the first step is "MASS IMMIGRATION."

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/9/90/Cultural_marxism.jpg
https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/9/90/Cultural_marxism.jpg[/img[

Yes. Jew haters are pretty disgusting all right.

 

[pecksniff]

Yes. Jew haters are pretty disgusting all right.

I guess it helps, for the CT-minded, to have some kind of all-explanatory go-to villain.

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/d/d5/Cm13.jpg

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/1/1b/Great_and_Powerful_Wizard_of_Debt.png

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/a/a6/March_of_Jewry.jpg

 

[JohnEngelman]

I guess it helps, for the CT-minded, to have some kind of all-explanatory go-to villain.

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/d/d5/Cm13.jpg

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/1/1b/Great_and_Powerful_Wizard_of_Debt.png

https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/a/a6/March_of_Jewry.jpg

I am a Gentile. If I was Jewish I would not praise them like I do. Jews are humble about their high IQ averages and the success and prosperity it earns for them.

I like to infuriate Jew haters by reminding them of Jewish intelligence and prosperity. Jew haters have spent their lives watching Jews get better grades, better jobs, and better incomes. Now they wait in fear of being replaced by more intelligent, better paid Jews, who will perform their jobs faster, better, and with less effort, before being promoted to better paying Jews.

I admire Jews, respect Judaism, and love Israel.

 

[pecksniff]

I am a Gentile. If I was Jewish I would not praise them like I do. Jews are humble about their high IQ averages and the success and prosperity it earns for them.

I like to infuriate Jew haters by reminding them of Jewish intelligence and prosperity. Jew haters have spent their lives watching Jews get better grades, better jobs, and better incomes. Now they wait in fear of being replaced by more intelligent, better paid Jews, who will perform their jobs faster, better, and with less effort, before being promoted to better paying Jews.

I admire Jews, respect Judaism, and love Israel.

Hitler never questioned Jews' intelligence -- to the contrary, he regarded them as "negative supermen." The point of that kind of antisemitism is that Jews are evil geniuses -- essentially parasitic rather than creative -- behind-the-scenes string-pullers who always find a way to run things despite their scanty numbers. One Nazi wrote that an all-Jewish society would be impossible because "vampires cannot live on other vampires."

As is typical with conspiracy theories, the way it contradicted the visible facts (that Jews appeared to be everywhere an utterly powerless, persecuted minority) could be taken as evidence of its cunning success.

The Nazis also persecuted and arrested Freemasons. The only reason I can think of is, that the Nazi movement was all about conspiracy theorizing, and conspiracy theorists had been blaming the Masons for this or that ever since the French Revolution.

 

[JohnEngelman]

Does Marx' thinking tell us anything that can make any reliable predictions now?

I am not good at predicting the future. During the 1970's I thought that the War in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal, and the economic stagflation would push the United States to the left. What we got instead were the tax revolt, the administration of Ronald Reagan, and successful efforts by the Republican Party to skew things more in favor of the well to do.

I have read The Communist Manifesto several times in its entirety. I read some of Marx's early writings in college. After I graduated from college I took a seminar on Das Kapital given by the American Communist Party.

The reforms of the New Deal during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt from 1933 to 1945 countered the tendency of capitalism to accumulate wealth and income at the top. These reforms included steeply progressive taxation, laws to protect labor unions, minimum wage laws, and Social Security. As a result of these the United States developed the largest and richest middle class in world history.

Ronald Reagan weakened these reforms during his administration of 1981 to 1988 by reducing the top tax rate from 70% to 28%, encouraging corporations to weaken labor unions, and slowing increases in the minimum wage. Milton Friedman encouraged Republican economic policy by stating that the only goal of corporations should be to maximize wealth going to stock holders. Any benefits going to employees and consumers should be regarded as incidental.

As a result, Marx's economic predictions are again coming true: wealth and income accumulate at the top; incomes stagnate for the bottom two thirds of the country, as the cost of housing increases.

This could result in a backlash, similar to what happened during the 1930's. So far this has not happened because the U.S. population has become increasingly diverse. Most poor whites vote Republican, if they vote at all, because they distrust the Democrat Party on the issues of race, crime, and immigration.

Moreover, the Democrat Party has come to be dominated by well educated, well paid, bi coastal professionals. These lack the public enthusiasm the Republican Donor Class has for tax cuts for the rich, but they do not really care, because they benefit. This is why the Democrat Party emphasizes the identity politics that alienates the white working class, which used to be an enthusiastic Democrat constituency. Meanwhile Democrat politicians ignore popular support for a more progressive tax system.

Marx's predictions are most likely to be achieved with a homogeneous work force. During the Roosevelt administration ninety percent of the U.S. population was white. Most blacks were restricted to de facto second class citizenship. This restriction was an obvious violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. It is not clear to me that the New Deal would have been successful otherwise.

The New Deal was popular in the once "Solid South." When Roosevelt was elected in 1932, and when he was re elected three times, he carried each of the eleven former Confederate states. He would not have been able to do so if civil rights legislation was on the agenda.

 

[JohnEngelman]

Hitler never questioned Jews' intelligence -- to the contrary, he regarded them as "negative supermen." The point of that kind of antisemitism is that Jews are evil geniuses -- essentially parasitic rather than creative -- behind-the-scenes string-pullers who always find a way to run things despite their scanty numbers. One Nazi wrote that an all-Jewish society would be impossible because "vampires cannot live on other vampires."

As is typical with conspiracy theories, the way it contradicted the visible facts (that Jews appeared to be everywhere an utterly powerless, persecuted minority) could be taken as evidence of its cunning success.

The Nazis also persecuted and arrested Freemasons. The only reason I can think of is, that the Nazi movement was all about conspiracy theorizing, and conspiracy theorists had been blaming the Masons for this or that ever since the French Revolution.

What you say is true.

In Mein Kampf, Volume I, Chapter II, "Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna," Hitler wrote:

"While thus examining the working of the Jewish race over long periods of history, the anxious question suddenly occurred to me, whether perhaps inscrutable Destiny, for reasons unknown to us poor mortals, had not unalterably decreed the final victory of this little race?"

In Chapter XI, "Nation and Race," Hitler wrote:

"Today the Jew is looked upon as 'clever,' and in a certain sense he has been so at all times."

I prefer the term "Jew hater" to anti Semite, because Arabs are Semites. Arabs are also the most anti Jewish people in the world. To the Jew hater the Jew represents the negative side of capitalism. Once I read this dichotomy described on a neo Nazi website. Gentile capitalism was described as what happens when a genius invents something useful. He hires people to produce and sell his invention. The people he hires benefit. The customers benefit. He gets rich. Jewish capitalism consists of rent gouging Jewish landlords, and Jewish CEO's who lay off twenty percent of the work force, and require the survivors to do twenty percent more work for no extra pay.

 

[pecksniff]

I prefer the term "Jew hater" to anti Semite, because Arabs are Semites.

The word "antisemitism" was coined in the 19th Century as a name for something new -- the belief that Jews are evil by their hereditary nature. The older thing, called Judenhaas -- Jew-hate -- was a religious prejudice that a Jew could at least in theory escape by converting.

 

[pecksniff]

Marx's predictions are most likely to be achieved with a homogeneous work force.

That is not implied in his theory and there are no other reasons to believe it.

 

[Rightguide]

On a web site where I was banned for saying nice things about Ethiopian immigrants, Jews, and Orientals other posters expressed the opinion that the United States would be a much better country if the so called "Cultural Marxists" of the presumed "Frankfurt School" had never been allowed to express their opinions.

During the War in Vietnam I was active in the anti war movement. I never considered myself to be a Marxist, but I knew many Marxists. They were of various kinds; some were Maoists; some were Trotskyists, etc. There were no Stalinists. There were members of the American Communist Party. They were very open about what they were. I could never get them to stop talking about how excellent their variety of Marxism was.

I have never encountered anyone who said "I am a Cultural Marxist." There is no Cultural Marxist Party, no Cultural Marxist Journal. "Cultural Marxist" is a derogatory term those on the right use for social liberals.

Social liberals with totalitarian ideas for imposing their agenda items onto the whole of the population.