User:Jobrot/sandbox/Cultural Marxism

Cultural Marxism

Cultural Marxism is a term originating within Cultural analysis and Sociology but in contemporary politics has become almost exclusively used by conservative and far right political commentators as an explanation for Multiculturalism and Political Correctness, it has subsequently been used as an explanatory device in a number of niche political movements

As a conspiracy theory

Some radical right-wing groups argue that "political correctness" and multiculturalism are part of a conspiracy with the ultimate goal of undermining Judeo-Christian western values. This theory, which holds that political correctness originates from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School as part of a conspiracy that its proponents call "Cultural Marxism", is generally known as the Frankfurt School conspiracy theory by academics. The theory originated with Michael Minnicino's 1992 essay "New Dark Age: Frankfurt School and 'Political Correctness'", published in a Lyndon LaRouche movement journal. It is popular with many conservative commentators; for instance, in 2001, Patrick Buchanan, in The Death of the West, wrote that "Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism, a régime to punish dissent, and to stigmatize social heresy, as the Inquisition punished religious heresy. Its trademark is intolerance."

SPLC1 JAMMIN

Background

The term Cultural Marxism originated in the split between Political Sociology and Critical Theory, where Sociology was interested in describing the facts of the matter and Critical Theory was interested in Critiquing the causes of the tensions and events found within society.[1] What Richard R. Wiener wrote as being "the tensions between political sociology and the culturally oriented Marxism that emerged in the 60s and 70s".[2]

[3]

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Debunking William S. Lind & “Cultural Marxism” BY THE RED PHOENIX on AUGUST 26, 2011

http://theredphoenixapl.org/2011/08/26/debunking-william-s-lind-cultural-marxism/

"Critical theory was first defined by Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School of sociology in his 1937 essay Traditional and Critical Theory: Critical theory is a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to understanding or explaining it."

The New Statesman has said Cultural Marxism "has inspired a new wave of far-right movements, chief among them being the English Defence League".

Jason Wilson of The Guardian has described the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory as "a uniting theory for rightwingers who love to play the victim" and has counted the Gamergate movement among it's proponents,

Common claims of Cultural Marxism, and refutations

The Key and most common claims of Cultural Marxism are that it's the cause of Multiculturalism and Political Correctness.

The modern usage of Political Correctness was coined by french philosopher Michel Foucault who wrote: "a political thought can be politically correct ("politiquement correcte") only if it is scientifically painstaking" when writing to Jean Paul Satre in the french fortnightly journal Quinzaine littéraire,[4] he later in Duccio Trombadori's Remarks on Marx wrote that the Frankfurt School was not influential to his thinking [5][6]... ergo the modern usage of "Political Correctness" does not come from The Frankfurt School nor "Cultural Marxism" (whatever that may be) likewise the concept of Multiculturalism is not innately Marxist, and is more a product of global travel and immigration.

Original appearance on Wikipedia

The old Cultural Marxism page originally appeared on Wikipedia as dismissal of the theory: [7]

Proof that Cultural Marxism can be defined as a conspiracy theory

Chip Berlet writes ABOUT conspiracy theorists (descriptive), which is diffferent from BEING a conspiracy theorist (prescriptive). A sample of his work (which is very reasonable) can be found here: [8]. As for Lind declaring himself a conspiracy theorist, this is not likely to happen as he actually believes in what he's written. However there are plenty of secondary sources describing Lind's ideas as conspiracy theories (from both the media and academia [See Jérôme Jamin]) and they are included in the section in question. I've also made the case on this very talk page that Lind DOES talk about Cultural Marxism as a conspiracy. I'll paste some direct quotes from him, and highlight what I believe shows that he is intending to convey the notion of a conspiracy (and obviously others have continued this idea with talk of a "hidden agenda"):

"The next conservatism should unmask multiculturalism and Political Correctness and tell the American people what they really are: cultural Marxism" -William S. Lind

"Its goal remains what Lukacs and Gramsci set in 1919: destroying Western culture and the Christian religion. -William S. Lind (strange that Lukacs would attempt to destroy his own society)

"The next conservatism needs to reveal the man behind the curtain - - old Karl Marx himself." -William S. Lind

"Today, when the cultural Marxists want to do something like “normalize” homosexuality, they do not argue the point philosophically. They just beam television show after television show into every American home where the only normal-seeming white male is a homosexual (the Frankfurt School’s key people spent the war years in Hollywood)" -William S. Lind (living in Hollywood isn't the same as being a part of the movie industry, and nothing of the sort is mentioned in any bio of any member of the Frankfurt School.)

This all fits into Michael Barkun's "second type" of conspiracy theory - the "Global Systemic" type:

Main article: Conspiracy theory

Systemic conspiracy theories. The conspiracy is believed to have broad goals, usually conceived as securing control of a country, a region, or even the entire world. While the goals are sweeping, the conspiratorial machinery is generally simple: a single, evil organization implements a plan to infiltrate and subvert existing institutions. This is a common scenario in conspiracy theories that focus on the alleged machinations of Jews, Freemasons, or the Catholic Church, as well as theories centered on Communism or international capitalists.

So that the relevance of Barkun's description is more clear for you, I'll just insert Lind's ideas and words into Barkun's description - as to make it more apparent:

Systemic conspiracy theories. The conspiracy is believed to have broad goals, usually conceived as securing control of a country, a region, or even the entire world [The Media, Academia, Hollywood and ultimately America]. While the goals are sweeping ["destroying Western culture and the Christian religion"], the conspiratorial machinery is generally simple: a single, evil organization [The Frankfurt School] implements a plan to infiltrate and subvert existing institutions [Academia, the media and Hollywood]. This is a common scenario in conspiracy theories that focus on the alleged machinations of Jews, Freemasons, or the Catholic Church, as well as theories centered on Communism or international capitalists.

I hope that clears it up for you.

Debunking of sources

This section is intended for use when specific sources are being cited:

Dworkin via RGloucester during the AfD

As an example, which I and others have refuted numerous times, people like to cite the Dworkin book called "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies" as supporting the existence of a school called "Cultural Marxism". However, the book does not do this, indicative of the fact those citing it have not read it. First of all, Dworkin, writing in 1997, says "My account is the first intellectual history to study British cultural Marxism conceived as a coherent intellectual discipline" (pg. 3). From the start of the book, Dworkin makes clear that the argument that there has been this long-running school of thought called "cultural Marxism" is totally false. He says that he invented the term in this context. His book's purpose is to establish it, long after the theorists were dead, and after the conspiracy theory had already come to light.

What's more, he specifically says that the Frankfurt School and Gramsci, two people that all these IPs and SPAs claim are part of a school of "Cultural Marxism", are explicitly not part of his "cultural Marxism". In fact, he says he proposes the term "cultural Marxism" as an alternative the more mainstream phrase "cultural studies" for an exclusively British movement that began in the 1960s, with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham. This is a fringe usage. No one other than Dworkin has proposed this usage, and mainstream academia calls it "cultural studies", which we have an article on. He admits that it doesn't exist outside of his work, and that he is creating term for his own sake to reframe the traditional academic viewpoints on the Birmingham school (not the Frankfurt School).

Kellner

In reference to Kellner, his essay has been uploaded to his own personal directory on an academic server - this is a privilege that many students also get. Hence there is no evidence for it being peer reviewed, ergo as far as WP:RS goes, it's on the same level as any self-published blog or web document. It's a matter of policy, no special power or authority on my part - I just happen to be familiar with some of Wikipedia's policies (and requiring editorial/peer review of academic documents is one such policy).

N.D. Arora and A.S. Kharbe

there are two sources on the subject of Cultural Marxism that represent a Citogenesis or Circular Reporting risk to Wikipedia as they plagiarize verbatim directly from an outdated draft that came from Wikipedia (which can be found here [9] - 2006, archived here [10]) the sources are N.D. Arora's Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination and A.S. Kharbe's English Language And Literary Criticism (2013 and 2009, respectively), both are from publishers located in New Delhi and should be avoided to prevent a Citogenesis Incident.

Jameson Conversations On Cultural Marxism

"Cultural Marxism" does not appear ONCE in the body text of the 296 pages of "Conversations on Cultural Marxism" that you claim explicitly references "Cultural Marxism" [11] - the phrase only and I restate: ONLY appears in THE TITLE. Leaving readers to guess about the conversations relevance to Marxism.

Jameson is also not a quality source for having possibly interchanged his usages of Cultural Studies and "Cultural Marxism", as described here:

"Some of the most suggestive criticisms of the path taken by many followers of the Birmingham School (not of its founders) emphasize that they have let themselves be caught out by a certain textual condition, where the text seems to acquire a self-contained condition, overlooking the connection with social contexts. Therefore, Fredric Jameson emphasizes the need to recover the critical theory of culture that comes from Marx, Freud, the School of Frankfurt, Luckács, Sartre and complex Marxism, and suggests redefining cultural studies as cultural Marxism and as a critique of capitalism. For this, the economic, political and social formations should be considered and the importance of social classes highlighted (Jameson, 1998)." Page 4 [12]

Ed West

"Generally, of course, if someone uses the term Cultural Marxism on an internet message-board, it is not a red light exactly, but certainly an amber one. Likewise bringing up the Frankfurt School does not automatically suggest a clean bill of mental health."

"No one wakes up thinking “I’m going to destroy Western civilisation by undermining its institutions”, and if you think that they do, you perhaps need to turn off your computer."

Ed West's blog should be treated as such (a blog), and hence fails WP:RS.

Richard R. Weiner and others via IP editor during the AfD

These titles have already been covered on the talk page (hence the frustrations) but I'll cover them again here:

"Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" by Richard Weiner, 1981

[13] Described as A thorough examination and analysis of the tensions between political sociology and the culturally oriented Marxism that emerged in the 60s and 70s - Note, not the same thing as 'Cultural Marxism'; an organized political movement that's taken over (or aims to take over) our culture. In fact Richard Weiner doesn't even seem to think that all Critical theorists are innately dirty stinking commies as the description of the book makes clear that many Critical Theorists; "fall ideologically outside the cultural Marxism movement". A title alone can't be referenced, and my money is on this instance not being an exception to the standard meaning (ie. The Frankfurt School).

"Conversations on Cultural Marxism" by Fredric Jameson, 2007 [14]

Oh come on! The words 'Cultural Marxism' don't even appear within the text of this book! [15]

"Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain" by Dennis Dworkin [16]

Dworkin's himself proclaims this to be "the first intellectual history to study BRITISH cultural Marxism conceived as a coherent intellectual tradition" and notes that his doing so is contentious (this is evidence against your case).

"Cultural Marxism" by Frederic Miller and Agnes F. Vandome [17]

"Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of critical theorists who have been [deemed to be] influenced by Marxist thought and who share an interest in analyzing the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society [how dare they!]. The phrase refers to any critique of culture that has been [deemed to be] informed by Marxist thought. Although scholars around the globe have employed various types of Marxist critique to analyze cultural artifacts, the two most influential have been the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (the Frankfurt School) and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK. The latter has been at the center of a resurgent interest in the broader category of Cultural Studies."

"Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies" by UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner [18]

An essay Douglas Kellner uploaded himself to his own faculty directory (read: self-published, non-peer reviewed) in which he regularly references himself, and only contains 9 instances of the term Cultural Marxism (none of them being definitive or meaning anything other than the origins of Cultural Studies/The Frankfurt School), and he does so interchangeably with 'Cultural Studies' (literally switching from one to the other in adjacent sentences). In addition he uses the term Cultural Studies 90 times in the essay (making Cultural Studies a full 10 times more common in this work that users keep citing as legitimating the Cultural Marxism).

"Cultural Marxism: Media, Culture and Society" on the Critical sociology Transforming sociology series of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociiology [19]

Come on, what is this? a computer compiled subject reader? Look at the cover [20] it states "High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA Articles" and the looking up links by googling the ISBN cites different authors depending on which pages you visit!

Stop giving out sausage and calling it ham. Your references clearly point toward the term 'Cultural Marxism' being a rarefied academic terminology for the early stages of development around Cultural Studies (ie. The Frankfurt School). To claim anything beyond that, or that it alone merits a wikipedia article - THAT is a bit too far and doesn't line up with your sources! There are OBVIOUS places for this academically uncommon term to be put on pre-existing wikipedia pages (if people are so inclined)... and the only other usage is as a fad conspiracy theory. Until some evidence is provided - the communists haven't taken over!

Trent Schroyer via RGloucester on the draft

I've not been able to get a copy of this guy's book, at yet. It seems out-of-print, and I can't find it at a major research university's library. Regardless, I did manage to find a couple of reviews of it. They make it clear that his invention of the neologism "cultural marxists" (not "Cultural Marxism") is not accepted by mainstream scholarship. Indeed, the book is largely his own personal narrative of philosophy, rather than a book of analysis. He uses "cultural marxist" to refer to critical theory, and indeed, his book is titled: The Critique of Domination: The Origins and Development of Critical Theory. So, once again, we have people trying to pass off critical theory, which we have an article on, as "cultural marxism" on the basis of one guy's opinion. Taken from this review, which appeared in the British Journal of Law and Society, we have this quote:

The insistence that American society be designated as "capitalist" is important to Schroyer since he believes that many contemporary critical theorists (those he calls "cultural marxists" and who include Lukacs, Marcuse and Habermas) have committed the error of adopting a version of the convergence hypothesis. They have, he claims, correctly identified the fact that the dynamics of all advanced industrial societies results in contradictions between the demands for economic growth and its social consequences, but by so doing they have abandoned the historical specificity which would allow them to identify the unique contradictions of capitalism and socialism per se.

First of all, note the use of quotation marks around "cultural marxists", and note how the reviewer writes "those he calls..." Second of all, note that his book is all about his own "claims", and point of view, not any scholarly analysis. Note how the review ends:

As a contribution to critical theory, one has doubts about whether Schroyer will be acceptable to his fellow marxists. One cannot see as being acceptable his analogy between critical theory and pscho-analysis, nor his identification of various "alternative" groups as potential revolutionary cadres...Schroyer's radicalism, for all its theoretical sophistication, at heart relates to a more home grown popularist radicalism whose pragmatism constantly threatens to burst through the imported european clothes.

It is quite clear that this guy's conception of reality is WP:FRINGE. What conception does exist, is an equation of critical theory with his neologism "cultural marxism". However, we've already got an article on that. This is not the only problem with this "draft". Once again, we have many sources that do not discuss the term "cultural Marxism" being used in this article. Once again, we have WP:FRINGE sources that use "cultural marxism" to refer to something we already have an article on.

Marc Steinberg, E. P. Thompson, George Ritzer, K.N. Panikkar, Emily Hicks

These are all examples of the term being used as a post-hoc description. Something labelled "Cultural Marxism" after the fact. None of these usages are definitive. Hence the term being described as "an ill-defined, informal terminology" - NOT as the right would have it; a set and permanent ideology sweeping the nation.

"You are judging the works by their titles; you will not be able to find a definition of "cultural Marxism", or a discussion of its scope, in any of those articles." -a Wikipedia editor

Marc Steinberg [21] - very small mention, leads directly to E. P. Thompson's "Thompsonian Marxism" (see below).

E. P. Thompson (who with Dorothy Thompson came up with a Thompsonian Marxism, also described as humanist Marxism or Cultural Marxism) notes that when confronted by when anti-Marxists, he defended Marxism, firmly. Yet when he met orthodox Marxists, he denounced them, angrily. [22]

George Ritzer [23] - Whilst this is the most expansive source available it MUST be noted that ALL of this 2004 text comes from Douglas Kellner's, 2003 essay, which has been self-published in his own personal academic directory. A privilege many students are also allowed, so it cannot be taken as peer reviewed and hence does not meet WP:RS. Ignoring that, its use of "Cultural Marxism" is still descriptive (describing a whose who), not definitive (giving concise/precise meaning or definition). That said "The application of historical materialism to Cultural Analysis" would be an interesting definition to extract from the text (albeit my own, and diametrically opposing Trent Schroyer's original usage)... but that still wouldn't formulate "Cultural Marxism" as a movement, especially considering that even "The Frankfurt School" are a loose fit group, whose definition varies depending on which scholars you ask (as will be noted on in the next section).

Emily Hicks [24] - Hicks seems to view "Cultural Marxism" as more of an outreach program for extending socialism to a wider audience. Ironically this means raising Cultural Marxism as a specter for the past 2 decades then unavailing it as accurate, may push many towards socialism.

K.N. Panikkar [25] - very short mention in the Hindu Times.

On the informality of The Frankfurt School

Main article: Frankfurt School

Which "theorists" to include in what is now called the "Frankfurt School" may vary among different scholars. Indeed, the title of "school" can often be misleading, as the Institute's members did not always form a series of tightly woven, complementary projects.

The term "Frankfurt School" arose informally to describe the thinkers affiliated or merely associated with the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research; it is not the title of any specific position or institution per se, and few of these theorists used the term themselves.

Richard R. Weiner for instance (a source often cited for the existence of "Cultural Marxism") ends up writing about theorists who admittedly "fall ideologically outside the cultural Marxism movement" [26] - so to go from a group THAT loosely nit, and apply an even more loosely nit ill defined "grouping" ontop! - ie Cultural Marxism - it seems almost like a second order level of vagueness and ambiguity.

Buchanan quote

"Using Critical Theory, for example , the cultural Marxist repeats and repeats the charge that the West is guilty of genocidal crimes against every civilization and culture it has encountered. Under Critical Theory, one repeats and repeats that Western societies are history's greatest repositories of racism, sexism, nativism, xenophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, fascism, and Nazism. Under Critical Theory, the crimes of the West flow from the character of the West, as shaped by Christianity. One modern example is "attack politics," where "surrogates" and "spin doctors" never defend their own candidate, but attack and attack the opposition. Another example of Critical Theory is the relentless assault on Pius XII as complicit in the Holocaust, no matter the volumes of evidence that show that accusation to be a lie."

External Links

Origins of Cultural Marxism

See also

• Cultural conservatism
• McCarthyism
• Cultural Christian
• Red-baiting
• Red Scare
• The Mass Psychology of Fascism
• Birmingham School of Cultural Studies
• Frankfurt School
• Cultural Bolshevism

My preferred version of the section

Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory

'Cultural Marxism' in modern political parlance commonly refers to a conspiracy theory which sees the Frankfurt School as part of a contemporary movement within the political left to take over and destroy Western society. Originally the term had a far less common niche usage within Cultural Studies where it described The Frankfurt School's objections to forms of culture they saw as having been mass-produced and imposed from above by a top-down Culture Industry, which they claimed alienates the masses from developing a broader sense of their own cultural context and class interests. Later theorists such as Stuart Hall of the Birmingham School adopted a "British Cultural Marxism" by which culture could be analyzed as consumed, decoded, produced, encoded and reproduced by multiple classes simultaneously; also known as the Encoding/decoding model of communication. However since the 1990s the term "Cultural Marxism" has been hijacked by the paleoconservative movement as part of an ongoing Culture War where it refers to a conspiracy theory in which The Frankfurt School are seen as having engineered the downfall of western society using multiculturalism, progressive politics and political correctness as their methods. This conspiracy theory version of the term is associated with American religious paleoconservatives such as William S. Lind, Pat Buchanan, and Paul Weyrich but also holds currency among the alt-right neo-reactionary movement as well as within white nationalist groups.

Weyrich first aired his conception of Cultural Marxism in a 1998 speech to the Civitas Institute's Conservative Leadership Conference, later repeating this usage in his widely syndicated Culture War Letter. At Weyrich's request William S. Lind wrote a short history of his conception of Cultural Marxism for The Free Congress Foundation; in it Lind identifies the presence of homosexuals on television as proof of Cultural Marxist control over the mass media and claims that Herbert Marcuse considered a coalition of "blacks, students, feminist women and homosexuals" as a vanguard of cultural revolution. Lind has since published his own depiction of a fictional Cultural Marxist apocalypse. Lind and Weyrich's writings on this subject advocate fighting Cultural Marxism with "a vibrant cultural conservatism" composed of "retroculture" fashions from the past, a return to rail systems as public transport and an agrarian culture of self-reliance modeled after the Amish. Paul Weyrich and his protégé Eric Heubeck later openly advocated for a more direct form of "taking over political structures" by the "New Traditionalist Movement" in his 2001 paper The Integration of Theory and Practice written for Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation.

In 1999 Lind led the creation of an hour-long program entitled "Political Correctness: The Frankfurt School". Some of Lind's content went on to be reproduced by James Jaeger in his YouTube film "CULTURAL MARXISM: The Corruption of America" which wrongly attributes quotes from Pat Buchanan's "Death of the West" as having come from The Frankfurt School themselves. The intellectual historian Martin Jay commented on this phenomenon saying that Lind's original documentary:

"... spawned a number of condensed textual versions, which were reproduced on a number of radical right-wing sites. These in turn led to a welter of new videos now available on YouTube, which feature an odd cast of pseudo-experts regurgitating exactly the same line. The message is numbingly simplistic: all the ills of modern American culture, from feminism, affirmative action, sexual liberation and gay rights to the decay of traditional education and even environmentalism are ultimately attributable to the insidious influence of the members of the Institute for Social Research who came to America in the 1930's."

Dr. Heidi Beirich likewise claims the concept is used to demonize various conservative “bêtes noires” including "feminists, homosexuals, secular humanists, multiculturalist, sex educators, environmentalist, immigrants, and black nationalists."

According to Chip Berlet, who specializes in the study of extreme right-wing movements, the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory found fertile ground within the Tea Party movement of 2009, with contributions published in the American Thinker and WorldNetDaily highlighted by some Tea Party websites.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that William S. Lind in 2002 gave a speech to a Holocaust Denial conference on the topic of Cultural Marxism. In this speech Lind noted that all the members of The Frankfurt School were "to a man, Jewish", but it's reported that Lind claims not to "question whether the Holocaust occurred" and suggests he was present in an official capacity for the Free Congress Foundation "to work with a wide variety of groups on an issue-by-issue basis".

Although it became more widespread in the late 1990s and 2000s, the modern iteration of the theory originated in Michael Minnicino's 1992 essay "New Dark Age: Frankfurt School and 'Political Correctness'", published in Fidelio Magazine by the Schiller Institute. The Schiller Institute, a branch of the LaRouche movement, further promoted the idea in 1994. The Minnicino article charges that the Frankfurt School promoted Modernism in the arts as a form of Cultural pessimism, and shaped the Counterculture of the 1960s after the Wandervogel of the Ascona commune.

More recently, the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik included the term in his document "2083: A European Declaration of Independence", which along with The Free Congress Foundation's "Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology" was e-mailed to 1,003 addresses approximately 90 minutes before the 2011 bomb blast in Oslo for which Breivik was responsible. Segments of William S. Lind's writings on Cultural Marxism have been found within Breivik's manifesto.

Philosopher and political science lecturer Jérôme Jamin has stated, "Next to the global dimension of the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, there is its innovative and original dimension, which lets its authors avoid racist discourses and pretend to be defenders of democracy". Professor and Oxford Fellow Matthew Feldman has traced the terminology back to the pre-war German concept of Cultural Bolshevism locating it as part of the degeneration theory that aided in Hitler's rise to power. William S. Lind confirms this as his period of interest, claiming that "It [Cultural Marxism] is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I."