User talk:The Four Deuces/Archives/2022/January

Cultural Marxism

I suppose that yourself and all the other editors on that page have already read these articles... I have no idea who this person is, but I agree with most of what they have to say. The idea that the only non-fringe use of the term relates to the conspiracy theory is utterly baffling to me. Tewdar (talk) 15:47, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for posting that. I don't know who this editor is, but remember these types of arguments were presented. My response then was that various writers at various times had used the words "cultural Marxism" to mean different things.

It is interesting that the first use of the words found was from 1973. The next reference was British Cultural Marxism (1991). There are then a scattering of references after that date. So the term was never used during the period they were writing about.

Without a body of literature or a sourced definition, it fails notability and hence there cannot be an article without a lot of synthesis.

Conpiracy theorists coined the term cultural Marxism, then scoured the literature to find evidence of its use.

If someone coins a term and we find that someone had used the same expression before, we don't say they must be the same thing. The expression neoliberalism has been used with different meanings since the 1890s, before assuming its modern meaning in the 1990s. That doesn't mean that we should have articles about all of them, although we mention the history of the expression in the article.

TFD (talk) 18:03, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I have a handful or so of sources (available on request, but you'll probably have to wait until the weekend!) from the 1980s using the term "cultural Marxism" with the approximate meaning of "Marxist analysis of (Western) culture." I also have found at least one source that makes some attempt at defining the term. In general, I find a lot more sources using "cultural Marxism" (in this sense) than I do for "Marxist cultural analysis". I'm not arguing for a change of article name or anything, but go ahead and search JSTOR for proof. As those linked articles suggest, the term has been used, with somewhat mutable meaning it is true, for four decades now with this meaning, apart from a few aberrations, like meaning "people trying to be cool by pretending to be Marxists in the 60s". Tewdar (talk) 19:04, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Your original question was "What evidence have we that the term 'Cultural Marxism' has its roots in the term 'Kulturbolshewismus'?" That appears to be how the conspiracy theorists derived the term. They would have called it that whether or not the expression had ever been used. They certainly do not use the same definition. Notice too the similarity to the term cultural liberalism, which the conspiracy theorists conflate with cultural Marxism.

There was a similar discussion at neoliberalism. Hayek et al. briefly used the term to decribe their movement. In the 1990s, the term was coined by people who were unaware of its earlier use. While we mention the earlier use, we don't say that's where the modern term came from.

The term "neo-conservative" has also been used with different meanings.

TFD (talk) 23:57, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Anyway, of all terms, why would the conspiracy theorists call the conspiracy theorists cultural Marxists, rather than critical theorists or simply the Frankfurt School? TFD (talk) 23:59, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for remembering my original question. 😁 What evidence have we that the Nazi Kulturbolshewismus, translated in the 1938 BUF Quarterly journal as 'cultural Marxism', links directly to the modern 'cultural Marxism' conspiracy theory? Jay says so, but... also, remember that Minnicinno pins 'cultural Marxism' explicitly on the *Frankfurt school*. I'm not sure exactly why they call it "Cultural Marxism", but it probably sounds better than the "Critical Theorists", or the "Frankfurt Conspirators". Perhaps it's a combination of the Nazi propaganda and the actual academic usage? Do you have any sources that explicitly state why the conspiracy theory is so named? Tewdar (talk) 00:42, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Notice that Minnicinno does not use the term cultural Marxism. He writes, "The task of the Frankfurt School, then, was first, to undermine the Judeo-Christian legacy through an "abolition of culture"; and, second, to determine new cultural forms which would increase the alienation of the population, thus creating a "new barbarism."" The article is broader than the Frankfurt School.

Then we have "The Origins of Political Correctness" (Lind 2000):

"Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious."

While Lind mentions the Frankfurt School as part of the conspiracy, he does not call them the cultural Marxists or attribute the term to them. Instead he refers to their theory as "Critical Theory." Lind apparently did not come across the expression "cultural Marxism" in his readings. So where did he get it?

It was only later that the conspiracy theorists discovered Trent Schroyer' use of the term in 1973.

So it's only a guess that they took the term from the Nazis, but we have a source that is attributed in text for that claim. We know beyond reasonable doubt that they got the conspiracy theory from them.

TFD (talk) 02:37, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the quotes. I am not well enough acquainted with the conspiracy theory, so perhaps I'll take a closer look at Minnicinno, Lind et al. at some point. From a brief scan of their droolings, there are probably a million better things to do with my time... 👍 Tewdar (talk) 07:15, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Brock, Sanders, Corbyn and Chavez

That was Correct the Record, which was a PAC and likely to have different editorial standards than MMFA. Perhaps you'd like to update that article with the deeply-sourced account you have, which I don't see there. Is MMFA biased? Of course it is. Everyone is biased. But bias is not the issue. Lying is the issue. MMFA doesn't lie, but they expose liars, and liars tend to lash out at their exposers. But we digress. soibangla (talk) 02:40, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I do not see how you can separate MMfA from David Brock. And I don't see that the staff have sufficient qualifications for it to be a reliable sources.

The fact they are biased doesn't bother me. It's whether that bias will affect the accuracy of their reporting. The other issue is whether the staff have the education and experience to objectively evaluate the material they are analyzing.

That's not to say I am disparaging them. They provide a useful service in quickly and in grat detail identifying misinformation in right-wing media. But that comes at a cost, which is that accuracy may suffer. So I would want to see other sources comment before inclusion. That of course is what WEIGHT requires.

I think too that a lot of liberal editors could be more mindful of tone. While articles should explain that Carlson's show provides misinformation in order to promote extreme positions, it should be dispassionate about it. Expressing our own shock and rage in articles not only is unencyclopedic, but actually undermines the credibilty of articles. There's an expression: preaching to the choir. If a clergyman is preaching to the converted, their job is to strengthen their faith by using judgmental language that praises their congregation and demonizes the unbelievers. But if they are preaching to the unconverted, they need to be more subtle. You can see that with CTR. If their role was to energize Clinton supporters, they were successful. But they also alienated Sanders supporters which might have cost them the general election. While Sanders supporters overwhelmingly voted for Clinton, if they had not been alienated, they might have provided the additional votes she needed to win the swing states.

TFD (talk) 04:08, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Review of Soviet and Communist studies

Could you please analyze the article, in particular whether you think my reasoning here is flawed or correct? If you think I am wrong, I can generally assume that is probably correct and I will avoid further discussing this. For context, this was all the stuff removed by Nug at Soviet and Communist studies as irrelevant per WP:INDISCRIMINATE and WP:TOPIC. Was that correct? This is my restructuring (e.g. I moved most of removed stuff into a section named "Memory politics"). I truly trust your knowledge about scholarship and our policies, so I would love to hear your thoughts and if you think my proposed structure is an improvement, or there are errors. Davide King (talk) 18:56, 25 January 2022 (UTC)