Frankfurt School: In our time

[Fozzie Bear]

I thought this was a quite readable intro to it all:

Grand Hotel Abyss

In 1923, a group of young radical German thinkers and intellectuals came together to at Victoria Alle 7, Frankfurt, determined to explain the workings of the modern world. Among the most prominent members of what became the Frankfurt School were the philosophers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno...

www.versobooks.com

One of the more memorable things I read this year and it doesn't pull any punches with some of them being brillianrt but also arseholes.

 

[Nikkormat]

I thought this was a quite readable intro to it all:

Grand Hotel Abyss

In 1923, a group of young radical German thinkers and intellectuals came together to at Victoria Alle 7, Frankfurt, determined to explain the workings of the modern world. Among the most prominent members of what became the Frankfurt School were the philosophers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno...

www.versobooks.com

One of the more memorable things I read this year and it doesn't pull any punches with some of them being brillianrt but also arseholes.

Cheers, I'll add it to the "to read" list.

 

[phildwyer]

the anti-semitic "cultural Marxism" slur.

Why do you think it's anti-semitic to refer to the F-School's cultural Marxism?

 

[Serge Forward]

Fuck off.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Why do you think it's anti-semitic to refer to the F-School's cultural Marxism?

As far as I know it's not a term that was used by the Frankfurt School people themselves.

It is a term that is used by and was popularised by a lot of anti-semites.

It is a term that has been identified in being anti-semitic by various sources including the Southern Poverty Law Centre

'Cultural Marxism' Catching On

'Cultural Marxism,' a conspiracy theory with an anti-Semitic twist, is being pushed by much of the American right.

www.splcenter.org

And the Board of Deputies:

Tory MP criticised for using antisemitic term 'cultural Marxism'

Board of Deputies says Suella Braverman should pledge not to use term linked with far right

www.theguardian.com

So tell us what you think? Be brave and get out of your one-liner comfort zone on this thread...

 

[petee]

I thought this was a quite readable intro to it all:

Grand Hotel Abyss

In 1923, a group of young radical German thinkers and intellectuals came together to at Victoria Alle 7, Frankfurt, determined to explain the workings of the modern world. Among the most prominent members of what became the Frankfurt School were the philosophers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno...

www.versobooks.com

One of the more memorable things I read this year and it doesn't pull any punches with some of them being brillianrt but also arseholes.

looks very interesting but 448 pages!

 

[phildwyer]

As far as I know it's not a term that was used by the Frankfurt School people themselves.

It is a term that is used by and was popularised by a lot of anti-semites.

It is a term that has been identified in being anti-semitic by various sources including the Southern Poverty Law Centre

'Cultural Marxism' Catching On

'Cultural Marxism,' a conspiracy theory with an anti-Semitic twist, is being pushed by much of the American right.

www.splcenter.org

And the Board of Deputies:

Tory MP criticised for using antisemitic term 'cultural Marxism'

Board of Deputies says Suella Braverman should pledge not to use term linked with far right

www.theguardian.com

So tell us what you think? Be brave and get out of your one-liner comfort zone on this thread...

"Cultural Marxism" is an accurate term for the Frankfurt School's methodology.

Their most famous achievement was to depart from the economic determinism that characterized Leninist Marxism. They argued that culture also exercises a determining influence on history. They therefore suggested that Marxist politics be carried out in the realm of culture, as well as in the realm of the economy. Again, "cultural Marxism" captures their method perfectly well.

In fact this is the point I made above: the Right's critique of the Frankfurt School is substantially correct.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

"Cultural Marxism" is an accurate term for the Frankfurt School's methodology.

Their most famous achievement was to depart from the economic determinism that characterized Leninist Marxism. They argued that culture also exercises a determining influence on history. They therefore suggested that Marxist politics be carried out in the realm of culture, as well as in the realm of the economy. Again, "cultural Marxism" captures their method perfectly well.

In fact this is the point I made above: the Right's critique of the Frankfurt School is substantially correct.

I think there's a huge difference between saying that culture has a determining influence on history and that Jews are telling commies to get influential jobs to subvert youth everywhere and undermine Christian values.

But maybe that's just me.

 

[phildwyer]

I think there's a huge difference between saying that culture has a determining influence on history and that Jews are telling commies to get influential jobs to subvert youth everywhere and undermine Christian values.

There sure is. The F-School's greatest thinker wasn't Jewish anyway.

Who is saying the anti-Semitic stuff, btw? The links you provide above don't make it clear.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

From my extensive plucking of numbers out of the air, I would estimate that something like 99.56 per cent of all the people who use the term 'Cultural Marxism' have never heard of the Frankfurt School let alone are thinking of it when they use the term. It is a term flung around by people who don't know what Marxism is, and they don't even really know what they mean by 'Cultural Marxism' aside from 'things that sound like they threaten my position in society'.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Who is saying the anti-Semitic stuff, btw?

Richard Spencer, Jonathan Bowden, Nick Griffin, Lyndon LaRouche, Jordan Peterson, Andreas Breivek, Viktor Orban, Jack Renshaw, the people named in those links I posted...

 

[chilango]

I thought this was a quite readable intro to it all:

Grand Hotel Abyss

In 1923, a group of young radical German thinkers and intellectuals came together to at Victoria Alle 7, Frankfurt, determined to explain the workings of the modern world. Among the most prominent members of what became the Frankfurt School were the philosophers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno...

www.versobooks.com

One of the more memorable things I read this year and it doesn't pull any punches with some of them being brillianrt but also arseholes.

I've had that on my kindle for years and never got round to it. Worth a look?

 

[phildwyer]

Richard Spencer, Jonathan Bowden, Nick Griffin, Lyndon LaRouche, Jordan Peterson, Andreas Breivek, Viktor Orban, Jack Renshaw, the people named in those links I posted

Hang on a second, there's no-one in the links you posted who says anything anti-Semitic about the F-School or cultural Marxism. The stories say the phrase is "linked to anti-Semitism" and obviously that's the line they're pushing, but they provide no evidence.

So that raises the question of why they are so eager to smear criticism of the F-School as anti-Semitic. And also the question of why The Guardian refers to the "conspiracy theory" that "Marxist scholars of the Frankfurt school in inter-war Germany devised a manipulative programme of progressive politics intended to undermine Western democracies."

That's no conspiracy theory, that's the precise truth.

As for the other names you mention, I'd have to see the references before discussing them.

 

[Lurdan]

There's also a long article about the origins and usages of the phrase "Cultural Marxism" at wikipedia with lots of links. Quite a useful starting point IMO (something which can't be said about everything on wikipedia).

Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory - Wikipedia

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I've had that on my kindle for years and never got round to it. Worth a look?

You probably got it the same time I did in one of their sales.

I enjoyed it and thought it was a good way of finding out about the lives and ideas of people that I'd seen mentioned a lot but not really managed to figure out.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I think if we're doing "all these anti-semites were spot on when they said that revolutionaries want to undermine western democracy" then I am out.

 

[phildwyer]

There's also a long article about the origins and usages of the phrase "Cultural Marxism" at wikipedia with lots of links. Quite a useful starting point IMO (something which can't be said about everything on wikipedia).

Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory - Wikipedia

Yes, I saw that. Again, it's completely misleading. It states: "The conspiracy theory posits that there is an ongoing and intentional academic and intellectual effort to subvert Western society via a planned culture war that undermines the Christian values of traditionalist conservatism and seeks to replace them with culturally liberal values."

But once again, that's no conspiracy theory. It's 100% accurate. There is indeed such an effort. I ought to know, I'm part of it.

 

[phildwyer]

Another gem from Wikipedia's "Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory" page:

"Breitbart News has published the idea that Theodor Adorno's atonal music was an attempt at inducing mental illness on a mass scale."

And we're all supposed to gasp in shock, or laugh in scorn. But actually, that's pretty much true. Thomas Mann wrote a whole novel about it.

So for me the question is: who wants us to believe that all this stuff about the F-School is a "conspiracy theory?" And what are their motives?

 

[phildwyer]

Just one more from Wikipedia. This is the best:

"Former Breitbart contributors Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, have promoted the conspiracy theory, especially the claim that Cultural Marxist activity is happening in universities."

These Shapiro and Kirk guys must be off their heads if they expect anyone to believe that. There are some nutty conspiricists on the far-right eh what....

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Hmmm. The planning the r/w nutters envisage really doesn't exist. They just have the huff that a bunch of people believe different things from them.

And there's something very objectionable and objectively wrong about the idea that this is some kind of elite intellectual project rather than the product of all kinds of forces from all sections of society, not least the poor and downtrodden. So another term used by the same people who say Cultural Marxism, a term that some even use as a synonym for it, is 'woke'. But look up the origins of the term woke. It's not the product of some planned elite programme. It is the product of the minds of downtrodden black people in Jim Crow America. We see what you're doing to us. We're not sleepwalking idiots.

 

[phildwyer]

Hmmm. The planning the r/w nutters envisage really doesn't exist.

It really does exist. Honestly, it does. Marxists really do sit around and plan how to undermine traditional Western culture, in order to bring about a Marxist revolution. They totally do. Trust me on this one.

 

[hitmouse]

Pretty much everything the right say about the Frankfurters is true.

As an expert on the Frankfurt School and right-wing criticisms of such, you will of course be aware that Olavo de Carvalho, along with a number of other figures on the right, has claimed that Adorno actually wrote all of the Beatles' music as part of his plot to undermine Western civilisation. I personally suspect that one might actually not be true myself.
More broadly, with a few seconds of googling I managed to find this (archived link for obvious reasons) which seems a fairly standard example of the "anti-cultural marxist" case:

What do Black Lives Matter, trans “rights,” same-sex “marriage,” feminism, campus safe spaces, multiculturalism, political correctness, gender studies and the modern social justice movements have in common?

All these movements and ideas are cut from the fabric of a new “soft” Marxism...
many of the trends mentioned above, and more, which are sweeping the globe today were born in Germany between the first and second world wars and are known as soft Marxism, or cultural Marxism.

This intellectual movement began at The Frankfurt School, at Goethe University, in Frankfurt, Germany. The Frankfurt school rejected both capitalism in the West and traditional Marxism in the Soviet Union...

A growing number of controversies are causing upheaval – BlackLives Matter, trans restrooms, same-sex “marriage.” All these issues are being driven by one Issue – the worldview manifested in Secularism/Atheism and its philosophic offspring, soft Marxism. These matters are not unrelated. They are all connected by a set of ideas.

This is the line of argument you're defending as being basically correct, right? Or indeed the Delingpole and LaRouchite articles linked on the first page of this thread?

 

[hitmouse]

It really does exist. Honestly, it does. Marxists really do sit around and plan how to undermine traditional Western culture, in order to bring about a Marxist revolution. They totally do. Trust me on this one.

Which Marxists? Where exactly do they do this?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It really does exist. Honestly, it does. Marxists really do sit around and plan how to undermine traditional Western culture, in order to bring about a Marxist revolution. They totally do. Trust me on this one.

That's like saying the SWP effect meaningful change through their meetings. They don't. Similarly, the real world phenomena pointed at by those using the term 'cultural Marxist' were not produced by Marxists who sat around planning them. That's the 'conspiracy' bit of the theory. Hell, half the things such bigots complain about, such as multiculturalism, immigration and even minority rights, are the product of neoliberal thinking as much as anything else.

 

[phildwyer]

Which Marxists? Where exactly do they do this?

In universities.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

In universities.

And neoliberal academics at universities sit around discussing their neoliberal shit also. So what?

People discuss ideas at universities shocker !!!

 

[phildwyer]

That's like saying the SWP effect meaningful change through their meetings. They don't.

They influence many of the people who listen to them. So do cultural Marxists. Who has the bigger audience?

 

[phildwyer]

People discuss ideas at universities

I wouldn't go that far.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

All those business schools churning out Marxists. It's a total disgrace really.

 

[hitmouse]

In universities.

And "Black Lives Matter, trans “rights,” same-sex “marriage”" - all these things are a product of those cultural Marxists in the universities, right? That's what you think?