5 ms·
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
by 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 agoI 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 agoYour 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 agoYou'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.
- jlawson 5y agoYou invented a lot of stuff here. I think you didn't do it intentionally; it's classic argument-hallucination, so I'll help you see where you are confabulating: MotoH never said that anyone had "secretly" taken over academic social science; to me it seems clear MotoH believes that it's all out in the open. MotoH never said they were 'sabotaging western culture/society', which would imply some extreme coordination and direct intent - only that the idea complex exists and is totalitarian and dominant. MotoH never said they were doing anything in present tense "as part of an OSS conspiracy"; the OSS was only part of the origin story many decades ago. MotoH never said the scholars were effluent; they compared their ideas to effluent. The above are strawmen. You made up a caricature of what MotoH said and then jumped straight to your conclusion with no argumentation in between (which seemed justified because your caricature was absurd). --- I think it would be great if you reread the last line of my post above (argue against the strong not weak/fringe version of the belief) and tried that. I can help though. Here are the claims for you to oppose: 1. Social justice ideology has become dominant over academic/corporate/media/cultural instutitions. 2. Social justice is a deconstructionist ideology that seeks to dismantle major parts of western society/identity and/or capitalism. 3. Social justice descends from the ideas of thinkers decades back mentioned earlier in this thread. Which do you think are wrong and what's your argument? Again I'll remind you: I've never heard anyone argue against the idea that cultural marxism exists so it'd be a real contribution if you were the first to do so!
- sheertwitter 5y ago[flagged]
- indigo945 5y ago[flagged]
- sheertwitter 5y ago[flagged]
- jacobolus 5y agoTrue 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