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The Research and Analysis Branch of the OSS employed more than a thousand social scientists (including Marcuse) as information analysts, people who came out of

The Research and Analysis Branch of the OSS employed more than a thousand social scientists (including Marcuse) as information analysts, people who came out of academia for a while to aid the war effort vs. the Nazis. Many later went back to academia. Implying without further evidence that therefore academic social scientists are secret saboteurs, part of a spy agency conspiracy, is defamatory nonsense. Whatever anyone thinks about Marcuse per se, this kind of cheap anti-intellectualism is deplorable.

indigo945 5y ago
It's not anti-intellectualism, it's rampant, straight-faced, rotten anti-semitism. Marcuse was Jewish, and the idea here is that (((they))), who already run the secret deep state, have taken over the universities, erstwhile organizations of pure, rational, white science (as evidenced by logical colonial era head measurements), and turned them into vile spaces intent on destroying the white race. Nazi dogwhistle bullshit.
- pxc 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - jlawson 5y ago
    I feel like people pushing your beliefs never actually argue for them. All I ever see is guilt by association: Attempts to link ideas you hate to people you can label with scary words. It's not a move of convincing, rationality, logic, or thought. It's a power move; a moral categorization, a demonization, a manipulation of loyalties and appearances to try to isolate and harm the person you want to shut up. We see through it. If you have a case, make it. We don't care who ideas are associated with; we care if they're right or wrong.
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      Your claim is that those who are “pushing the belief” that «baseless, sweeping antisemitic conspiracy theories are bad» never adequately defend that position? You haven’t looked very hard then... Buckets of ink have been spent debunking specific ones, tracing their spread, analyzing their rhetorical structure and political uses, etc. etc. You might start with Sartre, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew https://archive.org/details/antisemitejew00sart/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/antisemitejew00sart/page/n5/mode... > Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. Or inre this particular variant, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...
      - jlawson 5y ago
        You're moving the goal posts and assuming your conclusion. "baseless, sweeping antisemitic conspiracy theories are bad" was never the question. The question is whether cultural Marxism as a concept is in fact a "baseless, sweeping antisemitic conspiracy theory". Don't just assume the answer is yes. Don't just try to associate the words with people you've labeled as bad. Make the actual case that the content of cultural Marxism, as it is presented by its fairest and best proponents (not the worst extremist fringe hangers-on), is itself antisemitic, baseless, sweeping, and a "conspiracy theory".
        jacobolus 5y ago
        > question is whether cultural Marxism as a concept is in fact a "baseless, sweeping antisemitic conspiracy theory When motohagiography’s direct (evidence-free) claim is that there is “zero controversy” in saying that the scholars (which he compares to liquid sewage) downstream of a (nowadays fairly obscure, 4-decades dead) Jewish scholar have secretly taken over all of academic social science – and thence the whole “public sector”, as well as tech and finance – and are sabotaging western culture/society as part of an OSS conspiracy, that becomes a baseless, sweeping, bigoted conspiracy theory. Which is also, by the way, a complete non sequitur in the context of this discussion; it’s comparable to replying to an article about the operation of the Swiss patent office with a theory that Einstein was trained by said office to subvert academic physics departments on the way to sabotaging American engineering and technology firms. (This kind of nonsense is entirely in character for folks spouting anti-semitic conspiracy theories, who throw them into conversations whenever they can, however irrelevant in context. See that Sartre quotation.) Whatever someone else’s more measured and careful claims about Marcuse (or the Frankfurt school, or Marxism, or social science, or the OSS, or ...) might be in some unrelated conversation is irrelevant.
  - sheertwitter 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - indigo945 5y ago
      [flagged]
      - sheertwitter 5y ago
        [flagged]
- jacobolus 5y ago
  True enough (and thanks for being explicit). But “these inferior-race academics are leading our youth astray” is also anti-intellectual. And it’s not like these fascists are only anti-semitic. They are also happy to whine incoherently about women, gays, blacks, Native Americans, Latin Americans, Chinese, Arabs, Indians, schoolteachers, public health experts, organized labor, .... And for that matter happy to complain about the straight male WASP academics who have "sold out their people". Etc. Take for example this 2-day-old twitter post post by a guy affiliated with all sorts of GOP and GOP-adjacent organizations, https://twitter.com/jlippincott_/status/1471584502266880005 https://twitter.com/jlippincott_/status/1471584502266880005
  - jlawson 5y ago
    The Twitter account you linked is suspended. What was that about tech not being totalitarian?
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      Still here for now: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1471584502266880005.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1471584502266880005.html
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
motohagiography 5y ago
This comment is the least bizarre and unhinged accusation on the thread so I will respond to it. There is nothing anti-intellectual about pointing out the tactics used within organizations today, learned in the universities, resemble this sabotage manual, especially since the tactics I am referring to are nihilistic and totalitarian, and come right out of what Arendt (as it turns out, a contemporary of members said school mentioned downthread) described as the necessary conditions for a totalitarian movement. There is zero controvsery that academia and its appendant institutions, and now big tech, and even finance has been compromised by a totalitarian movement whose members are trained that power is the highest good, that there is no truth, no God, no consequences, and other downstream effluent of what appears to be a strain of Heideggerian Marxism. One hopes you apply the same standard of intellectualism to your fellow travelers whose best responses reduce to hysterical canards that are so absurd as to be beneath a denial. I encourgage you all to please, do better.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  «Everyone agrees that (((Marcuse)))’s secret cabal and those (their “downstream effluent”) they have compromised who control academia, tech, finance, and government are godless totalitarian nihilists» (slightly paraphrased) is not really the kind of response most people were hoping for....
  - motohagiography 5y ago
    While I am glad to have provoked discussion, especially in the context of the original "Parable of Lightning / Kolmolgorov Complicity" essays which I highly recommend reading, and that this thread was one of its traps appears to be confirmed, but I defer to the moderators in regard to whether we're adding value with this kind of personal slander.
    - indigo945 5y ago
      Kolmogorov was, however, not complicit with the very scary idea that one shouldn't spout anti-semitic nonsense, he was complicit in an actual totalitarian system. The systems in which Kolmogorov complicity happens are those in which you can't freely give your opinion. However, anti-semitism isn't an opinion, but an insanity, and besides, you are not Kolmogorov. Stop overselling your harmful nonsense. Plus you are, as you notice, absolutely allowed to spout anti-semitic rhetoric, and will not be literally burned at the stake or shot for it. This does not free you from professional consequences, even in the academic sphere, because it is hard to take seriously the ideas of someone who seriously believes that the Jews invented Marxism as a weapon to do what-exactly?

indigo945 5y ago

It's not anti-intellectualism, it's rampant, straight-faced, rotten anti-semitism. Marcuse was Jewish, and the idea here is that (((they))), who already run the secret deep state, have taken over the universities, erstwhile organizations of pure, rational, white science (as evidenced by logical colonial era head measurements), and turned them into vile spaces intent on destroying the white race. Nazi dogwhistle bullshit.

pxc 5y ago
[flagged]
- jlawson 5y ago
  I feel like people pushing your beliefs never actually argue for them. All I ever see is guilt by association: Attempts to link ideas you hate to people you can label with scary words. It's not a move of convincing, rationality, logic, or thought. It's a power move; a moral categorization, a demonization, a manipulation of loyalties and appearances to try to isolate and harm the person you want to shut up. We see through it. If you have a case, make it. We don't care who ideas are associated with; we care if they're right or wrong.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    Your claim is that those who are “pushing the belief” that «baseless, sweeping antisemitic conspiracy theories are bad» never adequately defend that position? You haven’t looked very hard then... Buckets of ink have been spent debunking specific ones, tracing their spread, analyzing their rhetorical structure and political uses, etc. etc. You might start with Sartre, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew https://archive.org/details/antisemitejew00sart/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/antisemitejew00sart/page/n5/mode... > Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. Or inre this particular variant, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...
    - jlawson 5y ago
      You're moving the goal posts and assuming your conclusion. "baseless, sweeping antisemitic conspiracy theories are bad" was never the question. The question is whether cultural Marxism as a concept is in fact a "baseless, sweeping antisemitic conspiracy theory". Don't just assume the answer is yes. Don't just try to associate the words with people you've labeled as bad. Make the actual case that the content of cultural Marxism, as it is presented by its fairest and best proponents (not the worst extremist fringe hangers-on), is itself antisemitic, baseless, sweeping, and a "conspiracy theory".
      - jacobolus 5y ago
        > question is whether cultural Marxism as a concept is in fact a "baseless, sweeping antisemitic conspiracy theory When motohagiography’s direct (evidence-free) claim is that there is “zero controversy” in saying that the scholars (which he compares to liquid sewage) downstream of a (nowadays fairly obscure, 4-decades dead) Jewish scholar have secretly taken over all of academic social science – and thence the whole “public sector”, as well as tech and finance – and are sabotaging western culture/society as part of an OSS conspiracy, that becomes a baseless, sweeping, bigoted conspiracy theory. Which is also, by the way, a complete non sequitur in the context of this discussion; it’s comparable to replying to an article about the operation of the Swiss patent office with a theory that Einstein was trained by said office to subvert academic physics departments on the way to sabotaging American engineering and technology firms. (This kind of nonsense is entirely in character for folks spouting anti-semitic conspiracy theories, who throw them into conversations whenever they can, however irrelevant in context. See that Sartre quotation.) Whatever someone else’s more measured and careful claims about Marcuse (or the Frankfurt school, or Marxism, or social science, or the OSS, or ...) might be in some unrelated conversation is irrelevant.
- sheertwitter 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - indigo945 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - sheertwitter 5y ago
      [flagged]
jacobolus 5y ago
True enough (and thanks for being explicit). But “these inferior-race academics are leading our youth astray” is also anti-intellectual. And it’s not like these fascists are only anti-semitic. They are also happy to whine incoherently about women, gays, blacks, Native Americans, Latin Americans, Chinese, Arabs, Indians, schoolteachers, public health experts, organized labor, .... And for that matter happy to complain about the straight male WASP academics who have "sold out their people". Etc. Take for example this 2-day-old twitter post post by a guy affiliated with all sorts of GOP and GOP-adjacent organizations, https://twitter.com/jlippincott_/status/1471584502266880005 https://twitter.com/jlippincott_/status/1471584502266880005
- jlawson 5y ago
  The Twitter account you linked is suspended. What was that about tech not being totalitarian?
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    Still here for now: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1471584502266880005.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1471584502266880005.html
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

motohagiography 5y ago

This comment is the least bizarre and unhinged accusation on the thread so I will respond to it. There is nothing anti-intellectual about pointing out the tactics used within organizations today, learned in the universities, resemble this sabotage manual, especially since the tactics I am referring to are nihilistic and totalitarian, and come right out of what Arendt (as it turns out, a contemporary of members said school mentioned downthread) described as the necessary conditions for a totalitarian movement. There is zero controvsery that academia and its appendant institutions, and now big tech, and even finance has been compromised by a totalitarian movement whose members are trained that power is the highest good, that there is no truth, no God, no consequences, and other downstream effluent of what appears to be a strain of Heideggerian Marxism. One hopes you apply the same standard of intellectualism to your fellow travelers whose best responses reduce to hysterical canards that are so absurd as to be beneath a denial. I encourgage you all to please, do better.

jacobolus 5y ago
«Everyone agrees that (((Marcuse)))’s secret cabal and those (their “downstream effluent”) they have compromised who control academia, tech, finance, and government are godless totalitarian nihilists» (slightly paraphrased) is not really the kind of response most people were hoping for....
- motohagiography 5y ago
  While I am glad to have provoked discussion, especially in the context of the original "Parable of Lightning / Kolmolgorov Complicity" essays which I highly recommend reading, and that this thread was one of its traps appears to be confirmed, but I defer to the moderators in regard to whether we're adding value with this kind of personal slander.
  - indigo945 5y ago
    Kolmogorov was, however, not complicit with the very scary idea that one shouldn't spout anti-semitic nonsense, he was complicit in an actual totalitarian system. The systems in which Kolmogorov complicity happens are those in which you can't freely give your opinion. However, anti-semitism isn't an opinion, but an insanity, and besides, you are not Kolmogorov. Stop overselling your harmful nonsense. Plus you are, as you notice, absolutely allowed to spout anti-semitic rhetoric, and will not be literally burned at the stake or shot for it. This does not free you from professional consequences, even in the academic sphere, because it is hard to take seriously the ideas of someone who seriously believes that the Jews invented Marxism as a weapon to do what-exactly?