Cultural Marxism

Cultural Marxism generally refers to one of two things:
#First — extremely rarely in popular discourse — "cultural Marxism" (lower C, upper M) refers to a strain of critique of popular culture by the Frankfurt School, framing such culture as being imposed by a capitalist culture industry and consumed passively by the masses.
#Second — in common usage in the wild — "Cultural Marxism" (both uppercase) is a common snarl word used to paint anyone with progressive tendencies as a secret Communist. The term alludes to a conspiracy theory in which sinister left-wingers have infiltrated media, academia, and science, and are engaged in a decades-long plot to undermine Western culture. Some variants of the conspiracy allege that basically all of modern social liberalism is, in fact, a communist front group.
The first meaning is indeed rare with very few people self-identifying as cultural Marxists, and only two academic works referring to the idea in positive way (Dennis L. Dworkin’s Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain by Dennis L. Dworkin (1997) Duke University Press. ISBN 0822319144.</ref>Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain by and Frederic Jameson's Conversations on Cultural MarxismConversations on Cultural Marxism by Frederic Jameson (2007) Duke University Press. ISBN 0822341093.).Hating Theory: “Cultural Marxism,” “CRT,” and the Power of Media Affect by Moira Weigel (2023) International Journal of Communication 17:6504–6524.
The modern popularization of the second, pejorative meaning can be traced to Fox News blowhard Mark Levin who on Jul 11, 2021 promoted his error-filled book American MarxismFox News host Mark Levin's bestseller "American Marxism": A work of staggering ignorance: Hothead Fox News host keeps calling the Frankfurt School the "Franklin School." Does he mean the Franklin Mint? by Zachary Petrizzo (August 20, 2021 5:50AM EDT) Salon. on the air. Levin claimed simultaneously and contradictorily that Cultural Marxism originated in American academia fromd from Herbert Marcuse and from the German "Franklin School", as he called it (apparently meaning the Frankfurt School).American Marxism] by Mark R. Levin (2021) Threshold Editions. ISBN 150113597X. Levin further claimed that Cultural Marxism had spawned critical race theory (CRT). This claim is sort of a reverse poisoning the well from the then-already, baselessly-toxified CRT within the MAGA-sphere.
This Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory hinges on the idea that the Frankfurt School wasn't just an arcane strain of academic criticism.Nobody denies that the Frankfurt School existed (and championed its fair share of nutty ideas). Critics of the pseudohistorical 'Cultural Marxism' conspiracy theory merely argue that the school was tediously unsuccessful (and, as such, somewhat unimportant) in the broad scheme of Western progressivism — and, more obvious still, that all liberals aren't commies as well. Instead, the Frankfurt School was behind an ongoing Marxist plot to destroy the capitalist West from within, spreading its tentacles throughout academia and indoctrinating students to hate patriotism and freedom. Thus, rock'n'roll, 1960s counterculture, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, homosexuality,Jeffrey T. Kuhner explains why the gay agenda is Cultural Marxism! modern feminism, and, in general, all the "decay" in the West since the 1950s are allegedly products of the Frankfurt School.This Daily Bell article sets out the claim pretty unambiguously. It's also the work of the Jews.http://www.jaegerresearchinstitute.org/articles/dummies.htm James Jaeger makes documentaries about Cultural Marxismhttp://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2002/fall/mainstreaming-hate William S. Lind implicates the Jews
The conspiracy theory is descended from another, much older conspiracy theory referred to as "Cultural Bolshevism", used extensively in Nazi Germany, where Kulturbolschewismus ("Cultural Bolshevism") was used to degrade and abuse political opponents. In particular, Jews purportedly were secretly orchestrating the spread of communism ( as well as promoting sexual & gender permissiveness ("sexual Bolshevism").See the Wikipedia articles in and .
If anyone rants about "Cultural Marxists taking over culture!", feel free to remind them that they're spouting literal Nazi propaganda updated for the modern era.
==History==
===Nazi Germany===
A History of Nazi Germany describes how the Weimar Republic brought about increased freedom of expression (modernism), then described by critics as decadent and irrational. Traditionalist Germans thought that this was causing German culture to decay and that society was heading towards a moral collapse.https://books.google.com/books?id=bsGhz4qfgKAC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=cultural+bolshevism&source=bl&ots=f7pv9hCTt3&sig=CTuf-0nUE1i6WCwv-smbGYl5J_M&hl=fr&sa=X&sqi=2&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=cultural%20bolshevism A History of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945 by Joseph W. Bendersky They were at least catastrophically right about that last bit, though not in the way they intended.
The Nazis labeled this modernism as and, through claimed that Jews were primarily behind Communism. In particular, they argued that Jews had orchestrated the Russian Revolution and were the main power behind Bolshevists. This Jewish-led Bolshevist assault was described by Adolf Hitler as a disease that would weaken the Germans and leave them prey to the Jews (oh noes!), with Marxism being perceived as just another part of an "international Jewish conspiracy". Sometimes Nazis, past and present, will cite "Red Rabbi Weiss" who conflated communism with Judaism as "proof", yet remain silent about Vladimir Putin claiming that communism is Christianity. An ideological objective was thus the "purification" to eliminate alien influences and protect Germany's culture.
Of course, Nazis also conflated Jews with capitalism. Fascist ideology's complicated relationship with capitalism led to Mussolini mainly attacking a — the international nature of banks and the stock exchange — and praising a In short: if you don't like it, it's probably the Jews.
Posters:
Bolshevism Unmasked.jpg|Bolshevism unmasked: it's Jews.https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/zrr02/german_ww2_anticommunist_bolshevism_unmasked/
Bolschewismus ist Judentum.jpg|Stabbing Jews = stabbing communism.
Jewish communist inquisition.png|Caption: Under the sign of Juda: What comes from the Jews has spoiled the world, cultures and peoples have died as a result.It’s rather odd to invoke the Inquisition here, as it was not exactly known for its fondness for Jews (or anyone who weren’t staunch Catholics, really).
Jew eating nations.png|Jews are apparently nation-eaters, communists, and freemasons.Der Stürmer, October 1936 (Issue #41)
Nazi Schutzengel.jpg|Communists are the guardian angels of Jewish capitalists. (Mixed metaphors, this one.)
Jews are secretly Communists, Freemasons, and Jews.jpg|Jews are secretly communists, freemasons, and... Jews.
===Frankfurt School and academic usage===
Conspiracy theorists often trace the origins of Cultural Marxist doctrine back to the Frankfurt School of social theory and critical philosophy.Antisemitic ‘Cultural Marxist’ tropes have infected mainstream conservatism thanks to boomers using the internet - Amity Underground Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer were indeed interested in applying the Marxist theory of alienation (alongside the psychoanalysis of Freud and Hegelian premises of idealist philosophy) to address social issues of the 20th century outside the economic analysis of positivists and scientific socialists.Marxists.org - Frankfurt School They never advocated using cultural institutions to disseminate propaganda, as the conspiracy theory contendsAntisemitic ‘Cultural Marxist’ tropes have infected mainstream conservatism thanks to boomers using the internet - Amity Underground.
Cultural Marxism was a criticism of the lack of revolutionary Marxism at the Frankfurt School by more orthodox Marxists; it remains an informal term for the school itself. The term "cultural Marxism" was first sighted around 1973 in The Critique of Domination: The Origins and Development of Critical Theory by Trent Schroyer.https://theconversation.com/cultural-marxism-and-our-current-culture-wars-part-2-45562 Karl Marx himself never wrote at any length about culture (what he deemed "the "), and many Marxists argue against cultural studies — as orthodox Marxists often assert that the only "real" societal division is the one of class. The fact that cultural theorists use multiple lenses of class, race, gender, and sexuality to analyze culture suggests that their methods probably don't come from Marxist classifications. Instead, these lenses are more likely to have come from the 1920s-30s focus on human behavior as shaped by social structures and physical environmental factors, rather than genetic and personal characteristics.
==Right-wing usage==
The term is a favourite of Pat Buchanan and, to the most dangerous extent, far-right terrorists Anders Behring Breivik and Brenton Tarrant. It is a Cold Warrior's way of decrying "political correctness" or "multiculturalism."Bill Berkowitz. Cultural Marxism Catching On. Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report, Summer 2003, Iss. 110.Anders Behring Breivik. How It All Began -- Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism, in Breivik's Manifesto, 2083: A Declaration of European Independence. (This will probably be analyzed by criminal studies professors for years to come.)
In current wingnut usage, it's additionally a favorite amongst Gamergaters — demonstrating the movement's attraction of many anti-Semites, white supremacists, and MRAs — which they label feminist critics like Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian, who often receive sexist personal attacks and rape threats. They complained when discussions on Wikipedia predating their obsession with the term resulted in the "Cultural Marxism" article on Wikipedia being redirected to the "Conspiracy theory" section of restored after appealing to the God-King, no consensus after that, then deletion and redirection back to the conspiracy theory.Archive of "Cultural Marxism" Wikipedia article
The term is odious enough that non-far-right people wanting to use it now sometimes apologise in advance,http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100178296/criticising-cultural-marxism-doesnt-make-you-anders-breivik/http://www.thelibertyconservative.com/cultural-marxism-conspiracy-theory/ much as nobody behaving in a blatantly racist manner will accept the label "racist". Although Jordan Peterson and the UK Conservative MP Tory MP criticised for using antisemitic term 'cultural Marxism', The Guardian, 26 March 2019 apparently didn't get the memo.
===Origin===
The first usage of the phrase "cultural Marxism" in the conspiracist sense was by William S. Lind of the Free Congress Foundation in his speech "The Origins of Political Correctness" to right-wing group Accuracy in Academia in July 1998, in which he described "political correctness” and "cultural Marxism" as "totalitarian ideologies" that were turning American campuses into "small ivy-covered North Koreas, where the student or faculty member who dares to cross any of the lines set up by the gender feminist or the homosexual-rights activists, or the local black or Hispanic group, or any of the other sainted 'victims' groups that revolves around, quickly find themselves in judicial trouble." Lind gave this speech many times; a 2000 version sets out his thesis:
Lind was one of the most prominent figures in promoting the conspiracy theory in the early 2000s, in conjunction with organisations including Free Congress Foundation and American Conservative magazine.Jerome Jamin. "Cultural Marxism: A survey". Religion Compass. 2018; 12:e12258. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12258
The conspiracy theory was also pushed around this time by Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation, who spent the 1990s railing against "political correctness", culminating in the 1999 videotape Political Correctness: The Dirty Little Secret, attacking the Frankfurt School.
At a campaign stop in Denver for the Reform Party in October 2000, Pat Buchanan accused Native Americans attempting to block a Columbus Day parade of "cultural Marxism" in the Rocky Mountain News.Robert Weller (October 9, 2000) "Buchanan Criticizes Parade Protest"http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pat-trashes-columbus-day-protest/ In his 2001 book The Death of the West, he described "cultural Marxism" as a "regime to punish dissent and to stigmatize social heresy as the Inquisition punished religious heresy. Its trademark is intolerance." Buchanan also played a prominent role in James Jaeger's 2011 film Cultural Marxism: The Corruption of America, which set out to explain how the Frankfurt School (according to the film's website) sought to "destroy American free‐enterprise capitalism by undermining its economic engine, the Middle Class and the basic building block of society, the family unit."
"Political correctness" had become the popular snarl word of choice after a 1991 speech by George H. W. Bush, with ensuing press coverage and a Washington Times op-ed by Laurence Jarvik of the Heritage Foundation decrying "storm troopers" attacking "Western culture."http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2003/summer/reframing-the-enemy
Prior to this, Soviet dissident suggested that civil rights and social justice movements in the Western world are secretly Soviet plots to weaken their countries from within, and that those who strive for such goals are "useful idiots", because according to Bezmenov, "equality is a ridiculous goal".Call of Duty trailer recklessly promotes far right conspiracy theory Ian Walker, Kotaku The inclusion of Bezmenov's interview with the conspiracy theorist in the advertising for the popular video game Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is met with praise by fellow conspiracy theorist Sargon of Akkad.
===Neo-Nazi adoption===
An article, "Subversive Jew Parasites Explode Over Antisemitic Leaflets in Sydney" by the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, states:
Many members of the meme-Nazi alt-right similarly hold that Cultural Marxism is real, is done by Jews, and is a serious threat to their ethnostate dreams.
===2011 Norway attacks===
Anders Behring Breivik, the terrorist and mass-murderer behind the 2011 Norway Attacks in Utøya and Oslo was himself an adherent of said conspiracy theory. In fact Breivik's 1,518 page manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence contains numerous mentions of "Cultural Marxism" at least 100 times and he specifically blames it alongside feminism and Islam for the supposed decline of Europe and Western civilization in addition to having 27 pages worth of William Lind's writings.
===Gallery===
File:The Nose Knows.jpg|No anti-semitism here. None at all.
File:Pol cultural Marxism conspiracy flowchart.jpg|A diagram posted to /pol/https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/38570562/ outlining "the origins and effects" of Cultural Marxism: the blasted international Heebs did it. Said chart was reposted with approval on the neoreactionary blog MoreRight, with the part about the Jews gently trimmed away.https://archive.today/vJD8F
File:Cultural marxism.jpg|A contest aiming to string association fallacies produced this.http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/07/07/whos-afraid-of-cultural-marxism-nazis-mostly-as-this-roundup-of-terrible-memes-reveals/
File:Cm13.jpg|The Reptilians are controlled by Cultural Marxists.http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/07/07/whos-afraid-of-cultural-marxism-nazis-mostly-as-this-roundup-of-terrible-memes-reveals/
File:Cm11.jpg|Smashing homosexuality invented by the Soviet Union?http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/07/07/whos-afraid-of-cultural-marxism-nazis-mostly-as-this-roundup-of-terrible-memes-reveals/
File:Culturel marxisme.jpg|Ze culturel marxistes zey are committing genocide on whites.In French, this says "no to white genocide" followed by "diversity is a code word for white genocide, showing that white supremacist conspiracy memes have no language barrier. However, the word for diversity used is the Italian one rather than the French one for some reason. Sacrébleu ooh la la!"Stop White Genocide Flags for the Nations", Daily Stormer, archive
Cultural Marxism Your Race.png|Cultural Marxism = degenerate multiracial families. Your homogeneous race = God-men. Of course, we say this as non-racists.
Talmudism.png|Smash Cultural Talmudism?http://smashcm.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-jewish-high-commissaries.htmlhttps://web.archive.org/web/20170315004311/http://smashcm.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-jewish-high-commissaries.html
==Debunking==
Despite its widespread popularity among the hard-right, many both on the right and left have thoroughly debunked the concept as not being Marxist at all. Christian Dominionist Gary North calls Cultural Marxism an oxymoron.Cultural Marxism Is an Oxymoron, garynorth.com Actual Marxist Michael Acuña calls it a myth.Michael Acuña. On the Myth of "Cultural Marxism", commonruin.wordpress.comMichael Acuña. My Final Word on “Cultural Marxism”, commonruin.wordpress.com And "How to Paint Your Panda" has debunked it as well.Cultural Marxism, Cultural Conservatism and the Frankfurt School: Making Sense of Nonsense (October 3, 2014) How to Paint Your Panda.
==Trivia: John, Paul, George, and Marx==
Although it doesn't get brought up much these days, similar conservative cranks frequently denounced the Beatles as a communist plot in their heyday.
But separately, there's also a conspiracy theory that Theodor Adorno, leading light of the Frankfurt School, secretly wrote all their songs.https://tabublog.com/2016/02/03/theodor-w-adorno-songwriter-for-all-beatles-songs-director-of-frankfurttavistock-social-engineering-school/ And in fact all the songs for the British Invasion of the 1960s.
This theory seems to have originated with supposedly ex-MI6 crank John Coleman, in his 1991 book The Committee of 300.https://archive.org/stream/TheStoryOfTheCommitteeOf300/TheStoryOfTheCommitteeOf300_djvu.txt Adorno is claimed to have worked with the (an organisation with which he had no connection), at the behest of the Jesuits rather than the Jews. Various alt-right blogs still contend that Adorno used the Tavistock Institute in order to disseminate propaganda through pop music that would provoke the 'degeneracy' of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.Antisemitic ‘Cultural Marxist’ tropes have infected mainstream conservatism thanks to boomers using the internet. by Ruairi Wood (April 14, 2019) Amity Underground (archived from 14 Apr 2019 17:05:14 UTC). Because that's totally how societal shifts work in real life.
Henry Makow further theorises that this is the work of the Illuminati, but then of course he would.http://humansarefree.com/2014/03/the-beatles-were-illuminati-creation.html
Back in consensus reality, the music Adorno was actually into was Schoenberg's twelve-tone stuff, the main influence on his own compositions. He hated jazz (so he had some good sense) and popular music in general.http://www.moyak.com/papers/adorno-schoenberg-atonality.html And he particularly disliked the Beatles:
Oh well.
==See also==
*Critical race theory
*Cultural Christian
*International Jewish conspiracy § antisemitism and anti-communism
*Modern art and architecture
*Red baiting
*Sexual Bolshevism (yes, really)
==External links==
*Ben Alpers. The Frankfurt School, Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories, and American Conservatism. US Intellectual History Blog Jul. 25, 2011.
*Dennis Dworkin. Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies A history of the term before it became a dirty word.
*Cultural Marxism: A Measured Response (HBomberguy)
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Alt-right
Category:Anti-intellectualism
Category:Antisemitism
Category:Communism
Category:Conspiracy theories
Category:Conspiracy theorist scapegoats
Category:Fascism
Category:Political correctness
Category:Racism
Category:Scapegoating
Category:Snarl words
Category:Unified conspiracy theory