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Cultural Marxism
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| Key members of the Frankfurt School |
By Linda Kimball
American Thinker - February 15, 2007
There are two misconceptions held by many Americans. The first is that communism ceased to be a threat when the Soviet Union imploded. The second is that the New Left of the Sixties collapsed and disappeared as well. "The Sixties are dead," wrote columnist George Will ("Slamming the Doors," Newsweek, Mar. 25, 1991)
Because the New Left lacked cohesion it fell apart as a political movement. However, its revolutionaries reorganized themselves into a multitude of single issue groups. Thus we now have for example, radical feminists, black extremists, anti-war ‘peace' activists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, and ‘gay' rights groups. All of these groups pursue their piece of the radical agenda through a complex network of organizations such as the Gay Straight Lesbian Educators Network (GSLEN), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), People for the American Way, United for Peace and Justice, Planned Parenthood, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), and Code Pink for Peace.
Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. They favor code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.
Birth of Multiculturalism
In anticipation of the revolutionary storm that would baptize the world in an inferno of red terror, leading to its rebirth as the promised land of social justice and proletarian equality Frederich Engels wrote, "All the...large and small nationalities are destined to perish...in the revolutionary world storm... (A general war will) wipe out all...nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only reactionary classes...but...reactionary peoples." ("The Magyar Struggle," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Jan. 13, 1849)
By the end of WWI, socialists realized that something was amiss, for the world's proletariat had not heeded Marx's call to rise up in opposition to evil capitalism and to embrace communism instead. They wondered what had gone wrong.
Separately, two Marxist theorists -- Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lukacs of Hungary -- concluded that the Christianized West was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order. The West would have to be conquered first.
Gramsci posited that because Christianity had been dominant in the West for over 2000 years, not only was it fused with Western civilization, but it had corrupted the workers class. The West would have to be de-Christianized, said Gramsci, by means of a "long march through the culture." Additionally, a new proletariat must be created. In his "Prison Notebooks," he suggested that the new proletariat be comprised of many criminals, women, and racial minorities.
The new battleground, reasoned Gramsci, must become the culture, starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science, and history. All of these things must be radically transformed and the social and cultural order gradually turned upside-down with the new proletariat placed in power at the top.
The Prototype
In 1919, Georg Lukacs became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun regime in Hungary. He immediately set plans in motion to de-Christianize Hungary. Reasoning that if Christian sexual ethics could be undermined among children, then both the hated patriarchal family and the Church would be dealt a crippling blow. Lukacs launched a radical sex education program in the schools. Sex lectures were organized and literature handed out which graphically instructed youth in free love (promiscuity) and sexual intercourse while simultaneously encouraging them to deride and reject Christian moral ethics, monogamy, and parental and church authority. All of this was accompanied by a reign of cultural terror perpetrated against parents, priests, and dissenters.
Hungary's youth, having been fed a steady diet of values-neutral (atheism) and radical sex education while simultaneously encouraged to rebel against all authority, easily turned into delinquents ranging from bullies and petty thieves to sex predators, murderers, and sociopaths.
Gramsci's prescription and Lukacs' plans were the precursor to what Cultural Marxism in the guise of SIECUS, GSLEN, and the ACLU--acting as judicially-powered enforcers--later brought into American schools.
Building a base
In 1923, the Frankfurt School -- a Marxist think-tank-was founded in Weimar Germany. Among its founders were Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno. The school was a multidisciplinary effort which included sociologists, sexologists, and psychologists.
The primary goal of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms. It would provide the ideas on which to base a new political theory of revolution based on culture, harnessing new oppressed groups for the faithless proletariat. Smashing religion, morals, It would also build a constituency among academics, who could build careers studying and writing about the new oppression.
Toward this end, Marcuse-who favored polymorphous perversion-expanded the ranks of Gramsci's new proletariat by including homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals. Into this was spliced Lukacs radical sex education and cultural terrorism tactics. Gramsci's ‘long march' was added to the mix, and then all of this was wedded to Freudian psychoanalysis and psychological conditioning techniques. The end product was Cultural Marxism, now known in the West as multiculturalism.
Additional intellectual firepower was required: a theory to pathologize what was to be destroyed. In 1950, the Frankfurt School augmented Cultural Marxism with Theodor Adorno's idea of the ‘authoritarian personality.' This concept is premised on the notion that Christianity, capitalism, and the traditional family create a character prone to racism and fascism. Thus, anyone who upholds America's traditional moral values and institutions is both racist and fascist. Children raised by traditional values parents, we are told to believe, will almost certainly become racists and fascists. By extension, if fascism and racism are endemic to America's traditional culture, then everyone raised in the traditions of God, family, patriotism, gun ownership, or free markets is in need of psychological help.
The pernicious influence of Adorno's ‘authoritarian personality' idea can be clearly seen in some of the research that gets public money.
"In Aug., 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the results of their $1.2 million tax-payer funded study. It stated, essentially, that traditionalists are mentally disturbed. Scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford had determined that social conservatives...suffer from ‘mental rigidity,' ‘dogmatism,' and ‘uncertainty avoidance,' together with associated indicators for mental illness." http://www.edwatch.org/ ‘Social and Emotional Learning" Jan. 26, 2005)
The Orwellian cast of the pathologies named shows how far Gramsci's long march has led us.
A corresponding and diabolically crafted idea is political correctness. The strong suggestion here is that in order for one not to be thought of as racist or fascist, then one must not only be nonjudgmental but must also embrace the ‘new' moral absolutes: diversity, choice, sensitivity, sexual orientation, and tolerance. Political correctness is a Machiavellian psychological ‘command and control' device. Its purpose is the imposition of uniformity in thought, speech, and behavior.
Critical theory is yet another psychological ‘command and control' device. As stated by Daniel J. Flynn, "Critical Theory, as its name implies, criticizes. What deconstruction does to literature, Critical Theory does to societies." (Intellectual Morons, p 15-16)
Critical Theory is an ongoing and brutal assault via vicious criticism relentlessly leveled against Christians, Christmas, the Boy Scouts, Ten Commandments, our military, and all other aspects of traditional American culture and society.
Both political correctness and Critical Theory are in essence, psychological bullying. They are the psycho-political battering rams by which Frankfurt School disciples such as the ACLU are forcing Americans to submit to and to obey the will and the way of the Left. These devious devices are but psychological versions of Georg Lukacs and Laventi Beria's ‘cultural terrorism' tactics. In the words of Beria,
"Obedience is the result of force...Force is the antithesis of humanizing actions. It is so synonymous in the human mind with savageness, lawlessness, brutality, and barbarism, that it is only necessary to display an inhuman attitude toward people to be granted by those people the possessions of force." (The Russian Manual on Psychopolitics: Obedience, by Laventi Beria, head of Soviet Secret Police and Stalin's right-hand man)
Double-thinking ‘fence-sitters', otherwise known as moderates, centrists, and RINOs bear the imprint of these psychological ‘obedience' techniques. These people-in some cases literally afraid of incurring the wrath of name-calling obedience trainers--- have opted to straddle the fence lest they be found guilty of possessing an opinion, one way or another. At the merest hint of displeasure from the obedience-trainers, up goes the yellow flag of surrender upon which it is boldly written:
"I believe in nothing and am tolerant of everything!"
Cultural Determinism
The linchpin of Cultural Marxism is cultural determinism, the parent of identity politics and group solidarity. In its turn, cultural determinism was birthed by the Darwinian idea that man is but a soulless animal and therefore his identity is determined by for example, his skin color or his sexual and/or erotic preferences. This proposition rejects the concepts of the human spirit, individuality, free will, and morally informed conscience (paired with personal accountability and responsibility) because it emphatically denies the existence of the God of the Bible.
Consequently, and by extension, it also rejects the first principles of our liberty enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. These are our "unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Cultural Marxism must reject these because these principles of liberty "are endowed by our Creator," who made man in His image.
Cultural determinism, states David Horowitz, is "identity politics-the politics of radical feminism, queer revolution, and Afro-centrism-which is the basis of academic multiculturalism...a form of intellectual fascism and, insofar as it has any politics, of political fascism as well." (Mussolini and Neo-Fascist Tribalism: Up from Multiculturalism, by David Horowitz, Jan. 1998)
It is said that courage is the first of the virtues because without it fear will paralyze man, thus keeping him from acting upon his moral convictions and speaking truth. Thus bringing about a general state of paralyzing fear, apathy, and submission-the chains of tyranny-is the purpose behind psychopolitical cultural terrorism, for the communist Left's revolutionary agenda must, at all costs, be clothed in darkness.
The antidote is courage and the light of truth. If we are to win this cultural war and reclaim and rebuild America so our children and their children's children can live in a ‘Shining City on the Hill' where liberty, families, opportunity, free markets, and decency flourish, we must muster the courage to fearlessly expose the communist Left's revolutionary agenda to the Light of Truth. Truth and the courage to speak it will set us free.
Additional References
Slouching Toward Gomorrah, by Robert H. Bork
Intellectual Morons, by Daniel J. Flynn
Related Articles
Trotsky's ‘Permanent Revolution' in America
Exposing America's Enemies, Part 2: Communist Progressive Democrats
Exposing America's Enemies: the ‘Social Justice Seeking' Communist Left
Linda Kimball writes on culture, politics, and worldview.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/archived-articles/../2007/02/cultural_marxism.html at September 12, 2011 - 05:59:04 PM CDT
Of all the problems Americans face, these aren't any of them. The Culture War was declared by reactionaries faced by change that came from the new universal mass communications. The communication isn't going anywhere, for now (thank God for New Neutrality!). The best thing for people who don't like the way the culture has changed because of it have to find a way to communicate their ideas, and they do, and they've had some victories and some losses. But I'll say this: if as Jefferson said, information is the currency of democracies, and we have more information than ever, that's probably a good thing for our future.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
The trouble is, Jersey, that the internet has provided us with a vast proliferation of MIS-information and DIS-information. The average person is easily seduced and swayed by cleverly-worded, seductive and inflammatory thoughts that flatter his or her ignorance and pander to his or her prejudices, personal desires and fantasies.
DeleteNO ONE is immune from this –– certainly not I, but at least I ADMIT it. ;-)
What we seem to have lost –– in my never humble opinion –– is both the desire and the ability to DISCRIMINATE between true and false, good and bad, valuable and meretricious, sense and nonsense, etc.
Ms. Kimball's article resonates well with me, because it provides the basis of a solid understanding as to how and why our critical faculties have become as warped, crippled and confused as they are.
Believe it or not there is s REASON for everything that happens. With the exception of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes, and volcanic eruptions, practically none of the events that changed the course of history have been ACCIDENTAL.
SO, the quality of our thoughts and convictions is o paramount importance. Linda Kimball has given solid evidence as to how and why we have lost our way n the jungle of confusion that has grown up since the unintended consequences of the Industrial Revolution brought about the onslaught of the Labor Movement, Marxism, Fabian Socialism, Cultural Marxism and the so-called Progressive Movement.
It's a huge, nearly hopeless,STINKING MESS.
Socialism does not entail radicalism, and many prominent socialists are Christians.
ReplyDeleteThat assertion is tantamount to a libertine claiming, "Sexual promiscuity in no way entails sin," or a pirate telling the world that piracy is not a criminal activity, but merely exercise in Freedom of Choice.
DeleteWe are well aware that many who like to call themselves "Christian" carry the banner for out-and-out Marxism, though they won't admit to the designation. We need look no farther than today's Vatican for positive proof of that.
Without going into so much detail as to stifle any urge to read it, the article makes the SOURCES of the corrosive intellectual and spiritual cancer that has overtaken the West abundantly clear.
I don't think that's correct. In my country, all the socialists I've met are reformist, which is not radical IMO.
DeleteAnybody's religious affiliation can be questioned, yours included. Even my irreligion is frequently doubted: some people will insist that some aspect or other of life is my "god". Anyway, it's a fallacy (specifically, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman>no true Scotsman fallacy</a>) on quite a grand scale. You reject every single left-wing Christian! Since you specifically mention the Vatican, let's take the Pope as one example. Would you deny that he is Christian?
I can ascribe the toxic elements of our recent culture just as easily to new forms of mass production, which cater and cultivate our innate human appetites like never before. The motive is purely profit, to a first approximation, socialism barely has an effect at all. (That's not quite fair, in the UK we still have a couple of socialistic institutions, the NHS and the BBC are tolerated, but they wouldn't be allowed to happen now. They're like pet aliens.)
Where socialism did have some bearing on American culture is as the great, threatening "other," a role now filled by Islam -- genuine threats the both, but otherwise uninfluential.
I present this as an alternative to your theory. I don't hold fast to it, but by gut feeling I find it at least as compelling as yours.
It's the QUALITY and EFFECT of "Thought" that concerns me, Jez, not "labels."
DeleteA lot depends, Jez, on what you might mean by "reformist." I'd appreciate it if you'd expand in that a bit, if you're still with us.
DeleteIt probably has some specific meaning, but I only mean gradualist, or not revolutionary. The left in Britain has no urge to dismantle anything, even obvious anachronisms like monarchy.
DeleteAre you sure monarchy is obsolete, Jez? The USA seems to be lapsing into a form of monarchy through the inertia of our elected representatives who are put in office by a vacuous, virtually brain-dead electorate.
DeleteRemember how often I've averred that we are essentially Creature of the Hive. We don't LIKE to be free and independent, we NEED Authority Figures, we ADORE being RULED, because thinking for ourselves is just about the most challenging thing we could hope to do.
Humanity seems to be dominated by Hardcore Recidivists –– i.e. we aways seem to find a way to put ourselves BACK in a prison of one sort or another.
Gus Weintraub said
DeleteNow that is an original opinion. I'd never thought of it like that before. Maybe it's time to rethink what we always thought we knew. Youhave an interesting mind.
Monarchy's just an example. Could've said the Lords, or the Church of England.
DeleteOh dear, Jez, now you're waxing opaque again! Since you are intelligent, I have to assume you willfully used a typical evasionary tactic to avoid acknowledging my point.
DeleteIf we admit admit the irrelevancy of all your examples, it is saddening, because discarding tradition altogether, and cutting any society off from its history is a mark not of "progress," but one of degeneration.
Mindless adherence to Tradition might be a definition of chauvinism, but the equally mindless rejection of it is merely destructive.
I acknowledge your point, but it does not bear on the point I was trying to make when I brought up monarchy; hence my attempt to clarify.
DeleteI don't mean to dismiss these institutions, remember I do not want to dismantle them. However, if I were designing a constitution from scratch, I would not include them.
That's just what our Founding Fathers thought too. But MY point was that, despite our best attempts to build a 'free society," the people seem naturally to gravitate back towards authoritarian regimes of kind or another.
DeleteTo wax trie for a moment, "Freedom is Not Free," and it takes a great deal of educated intelligence, determination and dedicated effort to maintain it, and not fall prey to the seductive blandishments of mountebanks and demagogues.
FT,
Deletedespite our best attempts to build a 'free society," the people seem naturally to gravitate back towards authoritarian regimes of kind or another.
I think that it's, in part, something to do with the Cult of Personality.
Yes, indeed, AOW!
DeleteAristotle said it very well approximately 350 years before the birth of Christ:
"Democracies are most commonly corrupted by the insolence of demagogues."
~ Aristotle (382- 322 B. C.)
The problems over which we fret and stew today have been with us since time immemorial. N matter how much we learn, how much we earn, and how many clever devices we invent we never seem to understand that the prime adversary to true progress is our own deeply flawed Human Nature.
Misspoken words are usually a double edged sword...
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what you've tried to say. Usually we delete cryptic remarks along with the barrage of drive-by insults and moronic catcalls, but you sound polite at least, so we hope you will return and clarify your meaning –– as long as your sentiments are relevant to this particular post.
DeleteCapitalism's response to "cultural Marxism" was "cultural capitalism." And on THIS front, capitalism completely and totally co-opted cultural Marxism and turned it into a diverse revenue stream. For there is no end to the follies and vanities of mankind in sight.
ReplyDeleteThe West has been culturally and socially impoverished by this culture war, but the "target" of the assault, the "ideological frame" of capitalism, has emerged completely unscathed.
Hmmm. I lack the basic history, but this would explain the observations I made (presented as an "alternative theory") in another comment. Does that make this a dialectic? Or a dialogic? I'll get round to looking all these up one day... But first, grouting!
DeleteBelieve it or not I too reject monocausal theories, Jez. I have enough wit left to realize that Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Beatrice Potter, the Frankfurt School and all the other advocates of Collectivist dialectical Materialism would never have been able to exert such a profound influence, if there had been no fertile in which ground their highly seductive, poisonous ideas could take root and grow into the menacing, nearly impenetrable bramble patch they did.
DeleteI love words, as you ought to know by now, but academics have an infernal habit of taking fairly simple concepts and giving them fabricated titles that obscure their meaning instead of clarifying it. I've always suspected the true reason behind this practice has been to help academics make themselves appear smarter to themselves and their colleagues than they really are. Audiences tend to be impressed and feel humbled when they can't begin to understand the substance of a lecture. this, I believe, is why slogans and "buzzwords" so easily –– and regrettably –– come into use.
I believe it was Einstein who said something to the effect that if you can't explain a subject simply and directly in a few well chosen words, you don't understand it well enough to talk about it –– something like that, doubtless he put it better.
I tend to give technical terms the benefit of the doubt. Precise language often has to jump through hoops which ordinary conversation or poetry does not. (Poetry has its own challenges, CS Lewis calls it "The doubling, splitting and recombining of thoughts ... the counterpoint of the mind, the mastery of doubled and trebled vision.") Sometimes the pursuit of precision can lead the specialist to use a word in a manner which is quite unrelated to its common usage. I agree with you that people often abuse technical language (and all language), but I don't think there is anything untoward in principle about redefining common words in strict ways fit for a specialist domain; language evolved long before we discovered the value of precision, so it's quite natural that we should struggle. As long as intelligible definitions are provided, I'll allow almost anything.
DeleteI think that sounds more like Feynmann, whom I think once noted with regret that a new branch of physics he was working on was not yet well understood, because it couldn't be explained to an undergraduate.
Einstein said (or, it is attributed to him) something related (but almost opposite), that explanations should be "as simple as possible, but no simpler." He allowed that some ideas are genuinely challenging.
My favorite maxim along these lines (no idea where it came from, maybe a computer scientist... Knuth?) goes "if you want to understand something, explain it to an idiot" -- where the idiot in question might be a computer, ie if you want to understand some theory or algorithm, writing a computer program might be a good exercise.
This was assigned reading in my American History class last term. I also assigned some parents to read it. But some of them didn't understand it! Why? Because they had already unwittingly bought into some of the concepts of cultural Marxism. Remember that these parents range in age from 40-53 and were educated in the public school system.
ReplyDeleteYes, I found out about this essay from you, FT.
Thank you for the acknowledgement, AOW.
DeleteLinda Kimball (or more likely, her editors at American Thinker) very tactfully neglected to tell her readers that a full ninety-percent of the villains in her piece were either JEWS or misguided fools like Friedrich Engels who fell under the SPELL of the pernicious, salacious, deductive, Brand of Thought generated by Atheistic Jewish Intellectuals.
"The Jew Thing" is the Elephant in the Room everyone strives to ignore. Hitler's method dealing with it was all wrong, but his aversion to it was NOT. The man was really ONTO something. The terrible way he mishandled it has brought agony and widespread tragedy to hundreds of millions of people.
A full SEVENTY years have passed, and we have not yet even BEGUN to get over World War Two. We only deluded ourselves into imagining any kind of meaningful victory had been attained.
So, disbar the Jews?
Delete"Disbar the Jews?" he asks.
DeleteOf course not. That's not only impossible, it's also rather silly. There are Jews and then there are JOOZE. The latter are often identified with vulgar epithets most find offensive, so I prefer not to use them.
I don't know what the situation is in England vis-a-vis Jews, or if anyone regards it as a problem today, but here in the USA after a period of enduring open anti-Semitism, just as my Italian ancestors endured being called "dirty Dagos," "WOPS," "Spaghetti Benders," and told, "You Stink of GARLIC," by people THEY regarded as "DIrty Irish Micks with Green Teeth," Stupid Polacks," "Blockheaded Hineys," etc.
Aside from having had to endure these usual odious forms of initiation that ALL immigrant groups went through in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews have been extremely well treated and have fared SPLENDIDLY in our country.
That would be fine, were it not for The Grant of Immunity from ANY form of critical analysis or ANY resentment sign of disapproval.
In general Jews hav capitalized on VICTIMHOOD like no other group in history, and they have gain unfair advantage by constantly rubbing the noses of the majority in every offense real and imagined committed against Their Tribe for the past FIVE-THOUSAND YEARS.
The result is they not only TOOT, they TRUMPET their own horns like no one else, act rude, pushy and overly demanding in restaurants and stores, and generally ride roughshod over the vast majority with impunity wearing hobnailed boots, and loudly proclaim their bad behavior to be VIRTUOUS, MORAL and NECESSARY in order to REFORM this wayward society.
In short the more vocal American Jews assume an aggressively self-righteous posture about everything they do and loudly denounce anyone who doesn't like it as "a vicious anti-Semite."
You couldn't possibly know what I;m talking about, unless you'd waited tables in a restaurant, kept a shop, taught school,or tried to sell your house.
I do NOT advocate punishment, but I WOULD like to see an end to OUR being forced to box with bare fists, while THEY are allowed to wear BRASS KNUCKLES.
Good. It wasn't my idea, I think it's silly too. So, what then? Promulgate anti-Jewish literature? Emulate what you perceive as Jewish self-regard and radicalism?
DeleteThere may be merit in your last suggestion, Jez. "Fight fire WITH fire," and all that. The only trouble there is that we've done too much of that ALREADY in my opinion, and in the process have damaged the quality of our character as a people.
DeleteWe've become far more acquisitive, materialistic, greedy, vain, shallow, and grossly sensualistic precisely because we've allowed ourselves to be seduced and manipulated into accepting so many rotten ideas and practices.
Alexander Pope put it this way:
"Vice is creature of such fearful mien
As to be hated needs to be seen.
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face
At first we endure, then pity, then embrace.
Whatever influences HE may have had in mind probably differ from those that concern me, but the same PRINCIPLE applies in any case.
So what practical course do you suggest?
DeleteI wish I had an easy answer, Jez, but all I can say is that helping others to become more fully AWARE of the forces brought to bear upon them might help spark an intellectual-cultural counter-revolution.
DeleteIf we are not permitted to know what figures like Marx, Trotsky, Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, Samuel Gompers, Antonio Gramsci, Bela Kuhn, Herbert Marcuse, Saul Alinsky, William Kunstler, Jerry Rubin, Abby Hofmann, the Ochs-Sulzbergers, Abe Foxman, Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, Howard Zinn, Joe Conason, Amy Goodman, George Soros, and thousands of others of their kind have done, we have no hope at all of counteracting it.
That, of course, is why I believe breaking what-I-call "The Jew Taboo" and ridding ourselves of the chains of Political Correctness is possibly important.
A fellow from the ancient world who suffered a great deal on our behalf, but whose presence in our lives has been deemed "irrelevant" by virtually all the figures Linda Kimball and I have named, once said:
"Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free."
He didn't advise us to persecute and execute our enemies, however. He only wanted us to be able to identify them correctly. That and to know what is and is not good for us. That alone, I believe, would be more than enough to effect healthful, productive change.
As surely the massive violence of the past has proven, militant opposition and bloodshed only makes things worse.
In my view we've been greatly damaged by a determined campaign of ruthless, vociferous INTELLECTUAL AGGRESSION, which has bullied The Old Order out of existence.
The best way to combat that would be to sharpen "our" wits, and stage an equally determined COUNTER-REVOLUTION based not on "Hate" but on "Truth."
Not easy, I know.
This is you at your very best, FT. I wonder how many will be able to find it, and if they do, would they take the time to read it? I've always felt the best part of your blog shows up in the comments you make to opponents. I admire your poetry too, as I've told you before.
DeleteI write very little these days, but I thought you'd like to know I'm still around.
Helen Highwater
Do you mean we should attempt to regain the political upperhand through the tactics of cultural marxism; or we should work at reinvigorating and uplifting culture, restoring it to health?
DeleteI'm all for the latter, regardless of what force has caused culture's decline. You just got to keep participating, I guess.
JEZ: Do you mean we should attempt to regain the political upperhand through the tactics of Cultural Marxism; or we should work at reinvigorating and uplifting culture, restoring it to health?
DeleteFT: Using an adversary's tactics against him –– often called "fighting fire with fire" here in the U.S. –– may be an effective tactic, as long as we don't fall into the trap of becoming just like the adversary we wish to defeat. In that way HE wins, of course, and WE lose.
Your latter alternative is preferable, of course, but difficult to accomplish with a willfully "ignoranticized" populace grown backward and fiercely wayward largely because of the terrible influence of Cultural Marxism. It's all a bit of a Catch 22.
JEZ: I'm all for the latter, regardless of what force has caused culture's decline. You just got to keep participating, I guess.
FT: Im glad to hear you say that, although we may differ considerably as to what is and is not "uplifting," I'm not sure. ;-) I'm afraid you may have gotten the impression that I would prefer a petrified culture –– eternal and unchanging. Very sorry if I've come across that way, because nothing could be farther from the Truth.
I am not against "change" at all, because even in the best of times past we've never come anywhere near Perfection, although some of the Great Masters like Phidias, Michelangelo, Bernini, Cellini, Palladio, J.S. Bach, Christopher Wren, Shakespeare, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Renoir, Monet, Ravel, Van Gogh, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, Messiaen, Poulenc, and many others certainly did each in his own unique fashion.
What I believe we may be in danger of losing is the ability to DISCRIMINATE intelligently between good and bad, worthy and meretricious, Art and Kitsch, Shit and Shinola, etc. ;-)
Why would this be the case? Because Cultural Marxism and the mentality it has spearheaded have been bound and determined to eradicate long held standards that made clear lines of demarcation between good and bad taste, wisdom and foolishness, moral and immoral behavior, fairness and unfairness, normal and abnormal, wholesomeness and depravity, etc.
My disapproval of this does NOT mean am unaware of, or hostile to, all the advances made in the past or the influences brought to bear by foreign cultures. I am concerned mostly with the way most today, apparently, fail to differentiate between Incessant Change for the Sake of Change, and Genuine Progress.
AFTERTHOUGHT: A simple return to calling a spade a spade unflinchingly and unapologetically would do wonders to restore a measure of honesty and perhaps even some sanity to public discourse. Almost anything would be better than maintaining the currently miserable status quo.
DeleteIt may be trite, but it's still true:
"STICKS and STONES may BREAK my BONES, but NAMES could NEVER HARM ME."
If someone says, "I hate your guts, you dirty son-of-a-bitch," instead of demanding an apology or trying to have him muzzled by the courts, simply ask him "WHY?"
It MIGHT start a worthwhile dialogue. Couldn't hurt, could it?
Fighting fire with fire might do some good sometimes, but it is not my interest.
DeleteI think making good art is difficult, and engineering a renaissance even more so; but not sure how it's Catch-22.
One positive outcome from recent technology is it's much easier for a niche artist to find her small audience. One reason that's a good thing is that a multitude of niche artists is inherently beyond the control of companies or governments.
I don't feel we should have to agree on what is uplifting, surely it's ok if our differing temperaments respond to different works (although there is significant overlap); however I was talking about people uplifting culture, not culture uplifting us. I don't require that every work of art be uplifting. I don't object to them being so, but why shouldn't you be allowed to write about eg. an asthma attack? I reckon that can be valid.
In art appreciation, I think discriminating intelligently takes a back seat to responding emotionally. You might disagree (do you?) but even so, it is not marxism that makes me think so, just my definition of "art," which has as much to do with emotional power as it has with beauty.
I agree that there is a line between moral and immoral behaviour, but not that it is clear -- I'm sure I could conjure a moral dilemma that you would find difficult to judge. Also, I think there is a big difference between morality and taste. Is there a line? Certainly not a fixed one. I think it depends so much on the intentions of the creator and the expectations of the beholder. Schoenberg took this to extremes, indulging in what one critic called "the self-gratification of an individual who sits in his studio and invents rules according to which he then writes down his notes." It would be wrong-headed to reject him on any terms but his own, and wrong-hearted to accept him on any terms but our own.
As you know, I don't share your negative view of PC. "I hate your guts, you dirty son-of-a-bitch" is not un-PC nor illegal. (neither is it a good way to start a conversation).
Thank you for a good deal of good conversation, Jez. This has been the most enjoyable by far of the few exchanges we've had. I can't continue right now, because anther Eye Crisis has made it necessary for me to rest my eyes more than usual.
DeleteI do appreciate your having approached me this time more as a fellow human being than a a wayward pupil, an object of condescension, or subtly camouflaged scorn.
I hope we may continue in the same vein soon again. I'm beginning to believe we may have more in common beneath our superficial characteristics than I'd thought.
If there were any way for you to know me as i really am, you might think that too.
Cheers!
I already do. I won't back down from our established areas of disagreement, but at the lowest level we share a lot of instincts.
DeleteTake care of your eyes.
Funny Jersey mentioned 'culture wars' as if it were a historical even. We are going through culture wars right now, and the radical left is pounding the crap out of the 'reactionaries.'
ReplyDeletePeople are bastards. Whoever is on top will bully everybody else. That's human nature. The divorcee or a woman rumored to be promiscuous would be whispered about, ostracized and maybe her children discriminated against. Same for others perceived to be violating Christianity-based societal norms.
And Jersey, etc, don't bore us with a lecture on hypocrisy. It is the tribute vice pays to virtue, and hypocrisy too is human nature. Those who have not completely cauterized their souls and their consciences grasp for something higher, and often fall down trying to attain it. That is hardly a negative.
Now, the worm has turned, and those on the bottom (abortionists, sexually promiscuous, drunkards, dope users, pornographers, idolaters, blasphemers) are now on top, and if you ain't on board with them, you won't get very far in many circles.
Despite all my harping on human nature, it still amazed me that so few on the left can grasp this mirror-image I've just described.
(cue Jersey telling me I'm full of shit)
Very well said, especially the paragraph on hypocrisy.
DeleteBut do you really find that your virtue limits you? What circles are these?
Please! PLEASE! PLEASE! Make a better effort to STAY ON TOPIC -- both of you
DeleteKimball's essay is of SEMINAL significance which is why I have posted for a second time, and will probably post it again if this blog chooses to continue publication.
If we don't know where we've been –– and why ––, how could we possibly hope to learn from or mistakes and improve our goals for a better future?
Jez,
DeleteEssentially, today, to be in the cool kid crowd, you've got to express approval for gay marriage, applaud transsexuals, be pro-pot legalization,and overall put your prudish Christian moralism aside. But in this mirror image, we are preached at nonstop about climate change and a host of other pet leftwing issues, and they couch it all in moralistic terms. You're a bad person if you don't agree.
In my own little world, this matters very little. But it is common in urban workplaces, and especially in the arts.
I'll punch out now out of fear of deviating from conversational strictures.
Jez, we can continue the conversation on Facebook if you like.
Nevermind, FreeThinke. I answered Jez's question in another forum.
DeleteFine, but I'd like to know you and others find it so very difficult to address the issue of Cultural Marxism. Jez did attempt to address it. So did Jersey in his inimitable fashion. ;-)
DeleteThis is why I may soon have to close the blog to comments altogether and just be content with talking to myself.
As some doubtlessly famous person once said, "It's better to be alone than in poor company."
INCIVILITY has become The New Norm largely because of the proliferation of cell phones and the blogosphere. We don't talk WITH each other anymore. We talk AT each other, and the aura of hostility both latent and blatant is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
How and when did the idea that we must continually OPPOSE and REMONSTRATE with one another become the Order of the Day?
Walt Whitman's advice is more pertinent today tan ever before:
BE CURIOUS, NOT JUDGMENTAL.
And of course some Smart Alec, eager to continue fanning the flames of dissension and disharmony, will soon come along to tell me that I'M being judgmental even to issue such an opinion.
It's really quite hopeless, which is why I'm spending more time at prayer, study and meditation and less at these vain attempts to enjoy conversation.
Well, FreeThinke, it is often how one communicates, right? I like arguing, too, but you're right about veering off course. Reminds me of the Monty Python sketch where the guy walks into a room, get's hit on the head with a hammer, and when he exclaims he came for argument, he's told he's in the room for getting hit on the head and needs to go a few doors down the hall for an argument. Then again, here we have a guy looking to make early twentieth German Jewish philosophical into some kind of world destroying conspiracy.
DeleteJMJ
RE: "World-Destroyng Conspiracy"
DeleteLinda Kimball, who is NOT a "guy," has given a good basic exposition of how certain ideologies, which she and I and many others regard as corrupt, pernicious and depraved, have emerged and taken root in the public consciousness of most civilized nations.
It doesn't matter whether the INTENTION to change the world through application of these ideologies was evil or not. In the real world RESULTS are ALL that COUNT.
Karl Marx MAY have meant well, but the RESULT of his emergence as an influential political philosopher has been MONUMENTALLY DESTRUCTIVE.
I'm sorry, I didn't know I said she was a guy.
DeleteLook, the Frankfort School was a just a few philosophers. They didn't do anything. The things you attribute to them are really just modern phenomenon. Most all of the people with direct influence on the culture haven't even heard of these guys let alone been influenced by them. Most of these phenomenon have nothing to do with any ideology, or at least not directly or any one particular.
With our new system of communications, we have the normal amalgamation and normalization of the culture but on a mass, rapid, national scale. When someone says or does something or an issue i at hand, especially if that someone or the issue is on the popular radar, it can be viewed and judged by the masses instantly, and their reaction can easily become a mass celebration, or mass social sanction - or more.
Often the reactions of the masses to certain matters is guided at some level by certain media outlets or personalities, but even then those sources are usually just telling them what they already want to know or believe. So, when a video emerges of a Presidential candidate, for example, exclaiming half the country is nothing but layabouts and welfare-spoiled whiners, the reaction is swift and unforgiving.
Marx didn't talk about culture very much. He was media and culturally savvy. He saw the culture as the "superstructure," something that was built upon the class system and NOT the foundation at all. So, "Cultural Marxism" to anyone familiar with Marx makes no sense at all.
Here in America in 2015, in the real world as opposed to the philosophical, the freedom of speech is pretty damn well guaranteed. If anything, it's been expanded (unfortunately expanded to include financial transactions), and further secured (the classification of communications as utilities). You are freer to speak without recourse in America than most every other nation on the planet. You are also freer to transact arms and to transact in general, and at most all levels save for just a few (but those few, like the war on drugs, have really damaged the nation).
So, I'm sorry, but I see all this as nonsense. You are simply reacting to projections of the culture, by the culture, for or against it. There is no Marxist anything going on here. It's just society behaving in ways you don't like.
JMJ
They didn't do anything? So THAT's why they call Herbert Marcuse the Guru of the New Left? Who knew?
DeleteFrom the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.... The Frankfurt School has had an enormous impact on philosophy as well as social and political theory in the United States and around the world. In the 1960s Marcuse ascended to prominence and became one of the best known philosophers and social theorist in the world. He was often referred to as the Guru of the New Left (a title which he rejected). During the late 1970s through the 1990s Marcuse's popularity began to wane as he was eclipsed by second and third generation critical theorists, postmodernism, Rawlsian liberalism, and his former colleagues Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. In recent years there has been a new surge of interest in Marcuse.
'68 was THE turning point. Cultural Marxism became cultural capitalism.
Delete'68 Frankfurt School... Marcuse, Adorno, et al.
Your ideology has blinded you, JMJ.
Therisites, you can banter about philosophy all day. With or with any of those guys, society would be pretty much the same today. You guys are hunting snipe.
DeleteJMJ
Jersey, do you realize that you have just said in effect that our minds are perfectly useless and that Thought of any kind is essentially a waste of time?
DeleteI don't believe you meant exactly that, but it IS what you said.
If ideas good, bad and indifferent have no meaning, and no value,because it's impossible they would ever be given practical application, then why does the Human Mind seem to fall prey so easily to the stimulation provided rock stars, medical quackery, and demagoguery?
Jersey's right, FT... The Enlightenment meant nothing. Just a bunch of useless philosophers sitting round a salon trying to impress some chicks to get laid. It all would have happened anyway.
DeleteIdiocy. You are simply over-blowing the practical significance of a particular strain of modern philosophy.
DeleteJMJ
Talullah Tabasowitz said
DeleteIf you say so, dear.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteJersey, I can't let you talk that way t my guests. Behave yourself, please.
DeleteThis ain't no barroom.
"Dear" is how dumb hicks pretend they're smarter than people with twice their inbred IQs.
DeleteJMJ
I'll bet that Jersey felt almost as patronized as a black Nutroots Convention attendee being lectured on how Black Lives Matter by Bernie Sanders.
DeleteOY! OY! OY! GEVALT!
DeletePlease accept my apologies. I was not being incivil, opposing or remonstrating. The post sparked a thought, and I shared it.
ReplyDeleteThere's no need to apologize, but I still wish you'd share what thoughts you might have on the emergence and wide-reaching effect of "Cultural Marxism" a phenomenon I (obviously) regard as seminal to the dreadful condition of World Politics in which we find ourselves enmired today. That is what motivated reposting this article.
DeleteBe curious not judgemental.
ReplyDeleteAdvice well given yet frequently not heeded.
Much can be learned if one reads between the lines.
Cultural Marxism and Cultural Capitalism are both real and there will forever exist between them an intellectual and social state of war for the minds of the young snd impressionable.
It will be raging into the 22'nd century and beyond.
We can't all be Existential Phenomenologists...
DeleteThis is an excellent article giving an in-depth perspective on the ills infecting our world today. So with me you're preaching to the choir, FT.
ReplyDeleteBut just in some folks need to be disabused of the notion that this is old news and there's no sense in rehashing old history, one can always say that to understand the present you need to understand the past, as it will show how we got to our present predictable destination.
And here's something that the wonders of the world wide web permits: having to go "off shore" to find any media mention of the funding behind some of the recent and current "racial protests" in the United States—"Liberal billionaire George Soros donated $33million to social justice organizations which helped turn events in Ferguson from a local protest into a national flashpoint.
The handouts, revealed in tax filings from Soros's private foundation, were given to dozens of different groups which weighed in on the crisis.
Organizers from professional groups in Washington, D.C., and New York were bussed into the Missouri town to co-ordinate messaging and lobby to news media to cover events using the billionaire's funding."
Funny George Soros just doesn't get any recognition or respect from the "newspaper of record" for his contributions to the Master Plan.
Thanks, Waylon. As our friend, AOW, says, "The Truth is not Hate Speech."
DeleteThe Truth also could never be regarded as "Old News." The Truth is Immortal and Immutable.
I would only caution all to be aware that using "facts" to promote hatred and violence does a great disservice to the Truth.
We must rise above the urge to do violence, and use the power of Reason to defeat the Rule of Lies, Distortion and Corruption.
Very very hard, when MOST seem eager to find an excuse to vilify, condemn and do harm to others in a spirit of Righteous indignation.
I have come to believe that Self-Rigteousness, which is always accompanied by the unfettered urge to chastise, counsel and condemn others for THEIR perceived failings, is the greatest sin of all.
The idea that the "gradual" progression to the nirvana of the socialist state is completely divorced from the revolutionary Bolshevik apocalypse is fatuous. They both desire the same ends and would eventually converge at the ultimate end to which they strive to achieve.
ReplyDeleteInteresting off-shore story of recent vintage in Jolly Old England where the Queen herself is now being portrayed as a "Nazi" sympathizer as she is shown performing the dastardly deed. Could one project the future and assert that this may indeed portend a similar end to the British Royal Family as experienced by their cousins (the Romanovs) at the hands of the Bolsheviks? There is that possibility, I believe.
As the Beeb would have the world believe—it may be a foul ball. But what the hell it runs rampant in the family, I guess.
Is every mixed economy sliding inexorably towards communist dicatorship?
DeleteMilitant egalitarianism certainly tends toward authoritarianism. Communism as outlined in the dreamworld of Marx's mind may never be fully realized, thank God. It is doomed to fail, because it rewards the worst aspects of human nature and punishes the best –– rewards failure by punishing success. In reality it's all about REGIMENTATION and COERCION. Quite hideous by my llghts,
DeleteHerr FreeThinke,
ReplyDeleteYou address an issue of premier importance. Modern culture as constructed by the cultural marxists, as you call them, does not allow people to be weeded out, resulting in more mental disorder and deterioration of the gene pool.
I have documented a number of symptoms of this, such as weakening of viability and resistance, decreasing fertility, proletarianisation, and moral damage due to 'penning up people' (Zusammenpferchung). The number of idiots, epileptics, psychopaths, criminals, prostitutes, and tramps who descend from alcoholic and syphilitic parents, and who transfer their inferiority to their offspring, is incalculable. The well-known example of the Jews, with their strong disposition towards nervous and mental disorders, teaches us that their extraordinarily advanced domestication may eventually imprint clear marks on the race.
We are faced with degeneration and hysteria fostered by public education and a welfare state that rewards inborn delinquents, pathological liars, querulous persons, and Triebmenschen (persons driven by a basic compulsion, including vagabonds, spendthrifts, and dipsomaniacs).
The Cultural Marxists have created a world of chaos so that the weak will always beg for more of their assistance. A pathology not unlike that of a mother who purposely holds her child back in a retarded state so that the child will remain dependent upon her.
Excellent post! I congratulate you, young man.
*Clicks heels, salutes, and then goose-steps back to DNC Party HQ.*
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteWe reject and DELETE irrelevant remarks, –– especially when they are made by bogus personalities who pretend to be someone better known.
DeleteDear Herr FreeThinke
ReplyDeleteAs you said.."The Truth also could never be regarded as "Old News."
There IS much need to apologize, no matter how thy look at it.. Others do NOT see it that way!
Like John McCain yesterday...?
DeleteYoo bin at this long enough. Move along or I'll grab a bullhorn and shout you all the way back to Hymietown.
ReplyDeleteThe new left ain't communism. Sayin' it is is racism. Plain and square.
Stupidity is sad.
DeleteIgnorance is pathetic.
Willful ignorance is obnoxious,
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteYou certainly don't, and therefore, you got the boot.
DeleteBuh bye, and please don't return.
Obama has just made a new law .
ReplyDeleteFrom now on, new citizens will NOT have to pledge aleagance to this country when becoming a citizen .
It sickens me to see what we have become in the name of tolerance.
KIPLING'S LITTLE MAN
ReplyDelete_______ ~ or ~ _______
_ Bolshevism Revisited _
A Leftist caught in doubt
Lifts up his head to shout:
Your treatment is unfair,
You bully! How you dare
To question my veracity
With cruel, hard-eyed tenacity
I do not know. My views
Which boldly you accuse
Of being falsely ranked
In truth are sacrosanct.
My thoughts are Holy Writ.
Your thoughts are quite unfit;
Based on selfish fears
They inspire tears
And dare to say the blame
Lies squarely in the frame
Of those whose failing lives
Look to him who thrives
And say: Your gold is mine,
You greedy, bloated swine.
You have more than you need.
It's up to you to feed
Me, the ill and weak,
Else Heaven that you seek
Will ever be denied.
And I will see your hide
Shredded, tanned and dried.
And hung outside the gates
Of each neighborhood that hates
The needy and the poor,
Who soon will storm your door
And drag you from your bed
And then lop off your head.
While the masses you denied
Will ever take great pride
Your ignominious demise
Was effected in the guise
Of condign righteous wrath
Giving Bourgeois digs a bath.
With stolen food and goods
We'll raze your neighborhoods
And laugh to see you hurt
Dying in the dirt.
WE DO NOT CARE TO RISE:
We live for your demise.
We thrive on righteous hate.
It is by now too late
To make a plan to stop us
End the Founder's opus.
Our Marx destroyed your God.
He's in - not on - the sod
Feeding nematodes
In their dark abodes.
With mockery and shrill
Sarcastic gibes we kill.
We drool with sheer delight
At the thought of endless night.
Where everything that's witty,
Charming, gracious, pretty
Slumps to the nitty gritty,
As we revel in the dung
Corrupting all your young.
For "we are the little folk, we
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone, and you'll see
How quickly we'll drag down the state." *
~ FreeThinke
–––––––––––––––––
* Rudyard Kipling
Doghouse Riley said
ReplyDeleteThat last piece really nailed it, Mr. Thinke. Powerful stuff!
How is Lauren? I guess Martha must be pretty well shot by now, poor girl!
DeleteThe old man must have died ages ago. Did the family ever leave that bi house? I dub either of the girls had what t takes to keep it up.
I always thought Lauren was an awfully good sport about your escapade in that bookstore. What a woman!
... Ferne Geliebte
When ISIS or the Taliban destroy a work of art, the Left moves into high dudgeon. But when the Left destroys one, they all applaud politely, "ooh" and "ahhh".
ReplyDeleteYou're a little confused about the difference there, huh? I don't like what those guys did, but it was nothing like what the Taliban do.
DeleteJMJ
Two! Four! Six! Eight!
DeleteWe must all degenerate.
Eight! Six! Two! Four!
Critics now must play the whore.
Why - Should - This - Be?
Because we must bow to P-C.
What - Made - This - True?
We must thank The Jew Tabu.
Truth, when it's suppressed
Makes society distressed.
A Reign of Dishonesty
Means that no one can be free.
There is no democracy
When we bow to Hypocrisy.
~ Anne Animus
The extent that Americans have been brainwashed makes the Soviet Union seem like a kind, caring democracy.
ReplyDelete