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Frankfurt School: In our time

The name Simon Mann ring any bells?

20 years ago is slightly more recent than 50 years ago, I suppose. However, he wasn't trying to organise a coup d'etat in the UK but in West Africa and, anyway, he fucked up. The antics of Wagner offer a more contemporary international example but their games too seem to have ended in tears - torn limb from limb mostly in that crash. But your a fan of Putin and chums and their heroic resistance to US hegemony, aren't you?
 
If anyone fancies reading a bit more on the LaRouchites and white nationalists who came up with the stuff Dwyer's been soaking his brain in, here you go:
And here's a tasty PDF of Joan Braune's "Who’s Afraid of the Frankfurt School? “Cultural Marxism” as an Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory":

The former features this quote from Stormfront, which helpfully sums things up:
Talking about the Frankfurt School is ideal for not naming the Jews as a group (which often leads to a panicky rejection, a stubborn refusal to listening anymore and even a “shut up”) but naming the Jew by proper names. People will make their generalizations by themselves – in the privacy of their own minds. At least it worked like that with me. It was my lightbulb moment, when confusing pieces of an alarming puzzle suddenly grouped to a visible picture. Learn by heart the most important proper names of the Frankfurt Schoolers – they are (except for a handful of minor members and female “groupies”) ALL Jews. One can even quite innocently mention that the Frankfurt Schoolers had to leave Germany in 1933 because “they were to a man, Jewish,” as William S. Lind does.
 
If anyone fancies reading a bit more on the LaRouchites and white nationalists who came up with the stuff Dwyer's been soaking his brain in, here you go:

The Frankfurt School came up with it themselves. They were Marxist revolutionaries working at the cultural level, they never pretended to be anything else.

Not being funny, but I really doubt you've ever read a single word they wrote.
 
I suggest you stop using Stormfront as your source for information. Theodor Adorno was not Jewish.
He was Jewish enough to fall foul of Hitler's race laws, and considered Jewish by the various far right critics of "Cultural Marxism".

Your attempt to argue that you aren't simply parroting antisemitic tropes in your support for far right critics of the Frankfurt School really doesn't stand a moment's scrutiny.
 
Indeed they don't, but we're discussing whether or not you are supporting an antisemitic trope, and the fact than Adorno wasn't actually Jewish isn't a get out you can use.

It's not anti-semitic to say that the F-School were Marxist revolutionaries working by cultural means. That's exactly what they were, and that's exactly what they said they were. And they weren't Jewish anyway--no more so than any comparable group of mittel-Europa intellectuals in the 1920s.

Again, I have to wonder if you've ever read them.
 
It's not anti-semitic to say that the F-School were Marxist revolutionaries working by cultural means. That's exactly what they were, and that's exactly what they said they were. And they weren't Jewish anyway--no more so than any comparable group of mittel-Europa intellectuals in the 1920s.

Again, I have to wonder if you've ever read them.
You seem to still be missing, or perhaps just trying to evade the point, which is that you explicitly endorsed the right wing critique of the FS, an integral part of which is an antisemitic attack on their Jewishness.

You can wriggle or try to evade this with as many red herrings as you want, but it's clear to everyone reading the thread what you're up to.
 
Anarchists are also revolutionaries but that doesn't mean we need to agree with the Daily Mail when they say that they are hellbent on poisoning the water supply with LSD or whatever bollocks they come out with.
 
Anarchists are also revolutionaries but that doesn't mean we need to agree with the Daily Mail when they say that they are hellbent on poisoning the water supply with LSD or whatever bollocks they come out with.

The Daily Mail charge against the F-School is that they were trying to subvert hegemonic Western culture in pursuit of a Marxist revolution. That charge is true.
 
The Frankfurt School came up with it themselves. They were Marxist revolutionaries working at the cultural level, they never pretended to be anything else.

Not being funny, but I really doubt you've ever read a single word they wrote.
Depends who counts as a Frankfurter. Read Benjamin, who I think does, read Brecht who I think doesn't, read Fromm but that was ages ago and I could probably do with re-reading, not read much of most of them other nerds. But it's besides the point, because 1) I don't have to have read Adorno to have an opinion on the idea that he wrote all the Beatles' music, and 2) as I'm sure you will have noticed, that "Dialectics of Counter-Enlightenment" article I linked to above is by Martin Jay, author of works such as The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas, Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America, and Splinters in Your Eye: Frankfurt School Provocations, among others. I think Martin Jay probably has read a bit of the Frankfurt School in his time, so he's probably worth paying attention to on the subject of whether they're being represented accurately or not.
I suggest you stop using Stormfront as your source for information. Theodor Adorno was not Jewish.
I wouldn't recommend them as a source for objective information about the world, but that extract does seem quite revealing about the worldviews of people who are really into theories about the Frankfurt School's influence and impact.
Hitler and the far right don't get to define who's Jewish.
I don't know how much you know about 20th-century history, but Hitler quite literally did get to define who was Jewish, in ways that had some really quite important impacts for the people who were so defined. I think the answer to the question of who counts as Jewish is tied to why we're asking that question. It might well be the case that Adorno would not help you make up a minyan, but to say that Adorno was only Jewish according to the criteria used by antisemites, therefore he couldn't be the object of antisemitic conspiracy theories... well, that would be a bit silly wouldn't it?
 
Anarchists are also revolutionaries but that doesn't mean we need to agree with the Daily Mail when they say that they are hellbent on poisoning the water supply with LSD or whatever bollocks they come out with.
Yeah, I was also thinking along these lines - over the last year or so, it is true that I've been involved in organising strike action at my workplace, and supporting others taking action at theirs, but it would be a grotesque conspiracist distortion of that fact to then arrive at the conclusion that the 2022-23 strike wave was secretly organised by anarchists, or Jews, or indeed people who like opossums or whatever. Just like it may well be the case that a few people involved in the Gay Liberation Front might've read a book by Marcuse, or a book by someone who'd read a book by Marcuse or whatever, but that still doesn't mean that gay marriage is actually a product of the Frankfurt School's cultural Marxist plotting.
 
So according to dwyer and his mates in the fash-o-sphere, the frankfurt school embarked on a dastardly plot to undermine "western" civilisation, values and morals by infiltrating the academic and cultural insitutions and waging a campaign of cultural subversion from within - "cutlural marxism" - thus bringing about the woke-apocolypse of gay marriage, feminism, civil rights and the cancelation of jim davidson.

the problem with this argument - putting aside its inherent and utterly rank anti-semitism for a moment - is that the frankfurt school's influence on culture is somewhere between fuck all and as to close to fuck all as makes no difference .

The cultural and social upheavals of the mid 20th c onwards were shaped by a range of interelating dynamic factors. i,e in the post war west you had a better paid and better educated young working class and the the expansion of mass media technology enabling them to create their own cultural space as both active consumers, participants and prioducers - particualrly in areas like fashion and popular music. Socially libera ideas (especailly around sexuality and equliaty) gain a culutral, poltical and social space - not through some dastrardly acamdemic plots - but through indicvidual and collective action and spread of these ideas and dissenting examples - (so a gay man reads in paris or sydney hears about stonewall and is inspired to set up or seek out gay rights magazines or orgnasiations)
Post WW2 ideas about universal human rights are enshringed in the UN constitutional and feed into ongoing civil rights struggles in the US - and inspire similar movements in south aftrica and ireland. All this is accelerated by mass media and the poisibilies offerered by cheper production of pamflets, magazines, films, photogrpahy and video - and further enhnacned later by the interenet.

And this all feeds back into mass culture as novelists, filmmakers, screenwriters, playwirghts, songwriters, mucicians, poets, artists etc etc feed these ideas and altnernative narratives into wider public conciousness . The net effect is that strict centralised control of culture and "public morality" become more and more difficult and increasingly and continually contested. What we have today is a continuation of the same process.

But this is far too complex, chaotic and organic a process for some - so it must be actually all be a jewish intellectual plot with it tentacles imbedded in the BBC, academia and even the national trust. Or alternatively its all a planned process of control by capitalists to keep us from acheving class conciosness ( wasnt this the frankfurts schools take on pop culture? and that pop songs were "cultural fordism" with internchangable parts mass produced to pacify supine consumers? - tis bollocks anyway).

Anyway the real villians in the cultural class war that has undermined christainaiy, the west and drained our natural essences arent Adorano and Horkheimer - its Guglielmo Marconi, John Logie Baird and the likes of Little Richard and Oscar Wilde.
 
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So according to dwyer and his mates in the fash-o-sphere, the frankfurt school embarked on a dastardly plot to undermine "western" civilisation, values and morals by infiltrating the academic and cultural insitutions by waging a campaign of cultural subversion from within - "cutlural marxism" - thus bringing about the woke-apocolypse of gay marriage, feminism, civil rights and the cancelation of jim davidson.

the problem with this argument - putting aside the its inherent and utterly rank anti-semitism for a moment - is that the frankfurt school's influence on culture is somewhere between fuck all and as to close to fuck all as makes no difference .

The cultural and social upheavals of the mid 20th c onwards were shaped by a range of interelating dynamic factors. i,e in the post war west you had a better paid and better educated young working class and the the expansion of mass media technology enabling them to create their own cultural space as both active consumers, participants and prioducers - particualrly in areas like fashion and popular music. Socially libera ideas (especailly around sexuality and equliaty) gain a culutral, poltical and social space - not through some dastrardly acamdemic plots - but through indicvidual and collective action and spread of these ideas and dissenting examples - (so a gay man reads in paris or sydney hears about stonewall and is inspired to set up or seek out gay rights magazines or orgnasiations)
Post WW2 ideas about universal human rights are enshringed in the UN constitutional and feed into ongoing civil rights struggles in the US - and inspire similar movements in south aftrica and ireland. All this is accelerated by mass media and the poisibilies offerered by cheper production of pamflets, magazines, films, photogrpahy and video - and further enhnacned later by the interenet.

And this all feeds back into mass culture as novelists, filmmakers, screenwriters, playwirghts, songwriters, mucicians, poets, artists etc etc feed these ideas and altnernative narratives into wider public conciousness . The net effect is that strict centralised control of culture and "public morality" become more and more difficult and increasingly and continually contested. What we have today is a continuation of the same process.

But this is far too complex, chaotic and organic a process for some - so it must be actually all be a jewish inteleectual plot with it tentacles imbedded in the BBC, academia and even the national trust. Or alternatively its all a planned process of control by capitalists to keep us from acheving class conciosness ( wasnt this the frankfurts schools take on pop culture? and that pop songs were "cultural fordism" with internchangable parts mass produced to pacify supine consumers? - tis bollocks anyway).

Anyway the real villians in the cultural class war that has undermined christainaiy, the west and drained our natural essences isnt Adorano and Horkheimer - its Guglielmo Marconi, John Logie Baird and the likes of Little Richard, and Oscar Wilde.
Think you could also make quite a strong case that the neoliberal phase post 1970s further undermined 'traditional' values through marketisation of everything, weakening of family ties through collapse of tradtional industry, etc etc - and that would also likely be a much more robust evidence-based case than blaming a gang of dastardly professors.
 
Think you could also make quite a strong case that the neoliberal phase post 1970s further undermined 'traditional' values through marketisation of everything, weakening of family ties through collapse of tradtional industry, etc etc - and that would also likely be a much more robust evidence-based case than blaming a gang of dastardly professors.

yeah - atomisation of community, rise of nuclear family, decline of big employer manufacturing industries all very much in the mix in terms of decline in social cohesion - and has had significent impact on culture. Also the marginalised groups were always there - but were hidden in the demi-monde. The idea of a cohesive, secure society with shared morals and codes of behavour was always largely myth.
 
Think you could also make quite a strong case that the neoliberal phase post 1970s further undermined 'traditional' values through marketisation of everything, weakening of family ties through collapse of tradtional industry, etc etc - and that would also likely be a much more robust evidence-based case than blaming a gang of dastardly professors.

You make it sound like the ideas people learn at university have no influence on their future life.

Obviously the ideas themselves arise from the social base, as you say. But equally obviously the ideas react upon and alter their social circumstances. Dialectical interpenetration innit. So if people get taught F-School theory at university, they'll probably put it into some form of practice once they leave.
 
the marginalised groups were always there - but were hidden in the demi-monde.

I don't agree with that either, at least not with regard to marginalized forms of sexuality. They weren't always there. Marginalized sexuality per se is always there, but the forms it takes vary widely. They change very rapidly too--it's well within living memory that male homosexuality was regarded as the most despicable of perversions in the Western world. Marginalization is eternal; the marginalized are historical.
 
You make it sound like the ideas people learn at university have no influence on their future life.

Obviously the ideas themselves arise from the social base, as you say. But equally obviously the ideas react upon and alter their social circumstances. Dialectical interpenetration innit. So if people get taught F-School theory at university, they'll probably put it into some form of practice once they leave.
Except that as many or more people learn, say, Chicago School theory at university. And we know which economic theories have held sway globally for the last half century.
 
I don't agree with that either, at least not with regard to marginalized forms of sexuality. They weren't always there. Marginalized sexuality per se is always there, but the forms it takes vary widely. They change very rapidly too--it's well within living memory that male homosexuality was regarded as the most despicable of perversions in the Western world.
pretty sure there have been gay people since there have been people. And underground urban gay culture certainly goes back several centuries in this country .
 
Except that as many or more people learn, say, Chicago School theory at university. And we know which economic theories have held sway globally for the last half century.

Exactly! It's the major ideological contradiction in the American ruling class. They learn capitalist economics and anti-capitalist humanities. They call it "socially liberal, economically conservative" or something.

Anyway, they're going to stamp out the anti-capitalist humanities over the next 10-20 years. They wouldn't be bothering if they weren't aware of the effect of learning anti-capitalism at a young age..
 
pretty sure there have been gay people since there have been people. And underground urban gay culture certainly goes back several centuries in this country .

It goes back only to the eighteenth century molly-houses. There have always been men having sex with men, but there haven't always been people who identify as "homosexual."
 
It goes back only to the eighteenth century molly-houses. There have always been men having sex with men, but there haven't always been people who identify as "homosexual."
"only" 250 - 300 years then. Slightly longer than "within living memory". And could also be classed as "several centuries" - which is what I wrote.
 
Exactly! It's the major ideological contradiction in the American ruling class. They learn capitalist economics and anti-capitalist humanities. They call it "socially liberal, economically conservative" or something.

Anyway, they're going to stamp out the anti-capitalist humanities over the next 10-20 years. They wouldn't be bothering if they weren't aware of the effect of learning anti-capitalism at a young age..

Anyway - so how are the far right anti semites and yourself "correct" in their asseessment about the frankfurt school when they have had close to zero impact on the culture they were supposedly subverting?
 
Anyway - so how are the far right anti semites and yourself "correct" in their asseessment about the frankfurt school when they have had close to zero impact on the culture they were supposedly subverting?

Well the argument is that the F-School was a response to the German proletariat's unexpected and unwelcome nationalism in WW1, the failures of the post-war communist risings in Munich and Berlin, and the capture of the proles by fascism.

Disillusioned away from classical Marxism by above events, the F-School gave up on the proles as the identical subject/object of history, and they began to search for a surrogate revolutionary vanguard. They found it first in African-Americans, then in women, now in sexual minorities. So ideas like "cultural revolution" and "identity politics"--which no-one can deny are strongly influential on today's Western Left--originate with the F-School's revision of classical Marxism.
 
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