“Cultural Marxism” is a political epithet
and, at the same time, an explanation for the various “ills” which irk the
radical – and perhaps not so radical -- right. Along with the Radical Right, the
term has also become rather popular with mainstream conservatives. One can hear
the term tossed around on various media platforms (e.g. Fox news), as well as
Alternative-Right blogs, websites, and podcasts. Patrick Buchanan’s popular
book against immigration The Death of the
West, pointed to the Frankfurt School for promoting “cultural Marxism”. The
phrase is also bandied about by the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority
movement, and the Tea Party movement. One often hears the phrase used by Michael
Savage, a fringe right-wing radio host. If one takes a look at the literature which
makes use of the concept, a common understanding of what “cultural Marxism”
consists in occurs. So, what is so-called “cultural-Marxism” and what does the
radical-right have to say about it? Is their appraisal correct? Does it
accurately capture the arguments made by Marxists?
According to Richard Spencer and Jonathan Bowden, in an article published on
the Counter-currents website, the most “intellectual” of the white-nationalist
websites, the Frankfurt School is the progenitor of leftist political movements
hell-bent on destroying “Western civilization”. The left uses the weapons of
multi-culturalism, diversity, and political correctness to accomplish the task
of undermining healthy conservative values, and it was handed these weapons
from the Frankfurt school. The rightists who lament the rise of
“cultural-Marxism” cite blacks, feminists, homosexuals, and liberals on
television or in the university as proof that a cultural-Marxist agenda is
underway to destroy traditional social relations, which until the late 1960s
would never have stood for such “alien elements” being given a voice on the
media or in universities. Political Correctness is supposedly Marxist economic
critique translated into cultural terms. One may point out that the concept of “western
civilization” is a giant abstraction that papers over all kinds of conflicts
and differences. It simply posits a homogenous community of shared interests
despite the fact that no such thing exists. It’s an imagined community.
Bowden locates the origins of political correctness in the ideas and writings
of Adorno, Marcuse, and Horkheimer. Upon first glance, one notices that the
content of the arguments made by the various thinkers of the Frankfurt School
are ignored, as are the criticisms made by Marx against capitalism, and reduced
to a sound bite: “cultural-marxism.” This is not to say that the Frankfurt
school is either correct or incorrect, but simply that what they write and
think about isn’t touched upon in the slightest by the critics of
cultural-Marxism. Not surprisingly, the critics of “cultural Marxism” seem more
content to point out that Adorno and Marcuse were “Jews”, and that’s all one
has to know apparently when one conflates “jews” with “bad guys”. The term “cultural
Marxism” becomes a buzzword, a floating signifier that basically encapsulates
everything that the right doesn’t like. It means “the enemy”, and the term
operates in the same way the term “petite-bourgeois” does for Maoist and
Trotskyist sects who imagine being a worker is tantamount to being correct. One
could say that it has become a meme. So, the whole theory of “cultural Marxism”
is a term signifying a paranoid conspiracy theory where “the Jews” are responsible
for world-domination and brainwashing the masses into wanting homosexuality and
miscegenation. Indeed, the accusation of Cultural-Marxism is not exactly new,
but has its obvious historical antecedent in the fascist refrain about the jews.
It’s a recycling of the old Weimar conservative charge of “cultural Bolshevism”
aimed at aesthetic modernists, and also echoes the Nazi view that “Judeo-Bolshevik”
ideas were infecting the world like “vermin”.
Two types of
Marxists: Criminal Baby-Killers and Naïve Humanity Lovers
Bowden, in his
lecture against “Cultural Marxism” is rather self-assured when he insists that
Marxists are out to destroy the beloved liberty enjoyed by a free people. Here
this liberty consists in the beloved freedom of speech. Bowden and his ilk
lament that it is now looked down upon to casually toss out racial slurs at
blacks on the subway or give an ass-kicking to foreigners and other “parasites
of the community”, which every good nationalist knows don’t belong.
Bowden doesn’t get into anything Marxists say about freedom, human rights, or anything in particular. One suspects he has no clue what Marxists
actually have to say about it. He plays up the popular prejudices that liberty
and freedoms are a positive thing, and then he just pegs Marxists as the mortal
enemies of such things. Needless to say, things are more complicated than that.
It’s not just that “Marxists hate your freedom”, but that they actually have
something substantive to say about it that goes beyond the usual emotive braying
of “yay! Freedom!”
Every substantive criticism of the nation or capitalism is dismissed as
pseudo-scientific Marxist propaganda, and yet there is a pretense that Marxism
has been grappled with and delivered the decisive blow, even though a finger is
never lifted. The criticisms Marxism makes are dismissed as economic
determinism or materialism. Bowden tells us that there are two types of Marxists:
1) idealist utopian pacifist types who love humanity, and imagine communism as
the realization of altruism, and 2) Ruthless nihilist criminals, mass murders
in the making who want to get a hold of power to commit atrocities.
It’s the usual platitude:
communists are either dismissed as idealistic nutcases with good intentions,
which place them out of line with “reality”, or lambasted at as dangerous
baby-eaters who are out to dupe people with their dialectical sorcery, who have
no reverence for anything sacred because they would like to put mankind in
slavery or “destroy civilization”. There’s hopeless utopians who just can’t accept
reality and then there’s Stalinists sending everyone and their mother to the
gulug.
This is a funny way to start off a criticism. Rationally, an honest and charitable
person would deal with the ideas and arguments themselves. They would look at
the analysis a person has made and see if the reasons add up. Then you would
point out the mistakes. However, Bowden comes out attempting to assassinate the
character of Marxists straight away. In informal logic, this is one of the most
basic fallacies a person learns about: ad hominem. Instead of dealing with an
argument, one attacks the character of the person making the argument. If you
can make the person’s character look bad, then you’ve discredited their
arguments. Why would you want to listen to anything a person has to say if they
are crazy? Why would you want to listen to anything a person has to say if they
are a violent extremist? This is the laziest way to dismiss an opponent without
making a single argument.
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