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> There is no such a thing as cultural Marxism. That's a conspiracy theory the nazis first created. There is such a thing as "cultural Marxism", and it is not

> There is no such a thing as cultural Marxism. That's a conspiracy theory the nazis first created. There is such a thing as "cultural Marxism", and it is not a conspiracy theory invented by the Nazis or anyone else. Consider for example the 1981 book by academic Richard Weiner, "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" [0] – it discusses "cultural Marxism" as a real thing, in a positive light, and it is a real academic book, not some conspiracy theory hoax. Or similarly consider Dennis L. Dworkin's 1997 book "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies" [1] – not some conspiratorial tome, it was published by Duke University Press. Or American philosopher Frederic Jameson's 2007 book "Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism" [2] – also published by Duke University Press, and not a conspiratorial work either Cultural Marxism is a real movement in post-war Marxism and academia. To what extent it influenced movements such as BLM is a question about which reasonable people can disagree. But its existence is not a conspiracy theory. No doubt some of the more extreme claims uninformed people have made about it do venture into the realms of conspiracy theory. But it would be wrong to assume that everyone who makes a claim like "cultural Marxism influenced BLM" is using the phrase "cultural Marxism" in such a sense. You'd have to investigate what they actually mean by it. [0] https://books.google.com/books?id=4G0XAAAAIAAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=4G0XAAAAIAAJ [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=dY1Cgg8NV64C https://books.google.com/books?id=dY1Cgg8NV64C [2] https://books.google.com/books?id=pY69yJnmEAYC https://books.google.com/books?id=pY69yJnmEAYC

gverrilla 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...
- skissane 3y ago
  The Nazi concept of "Cultural Bolshevism" has nothing to do with Cultural Marxism the post-war academic movement "Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory" is about claiming that said post-war academic movement is a "Jewish plot". Yes, that's an antisemitic conspiracy theory. But stating that the academic movement exists, and discussing to what degree its ideas influenced contemporary social movements such as BLM, is not a conspiracy theory, and not per se antisemitic. I think what is happening here, is some people are motivated to ignore the difference between what is a reasonable argument ("to what degree was a contemporary social movement influenced by a contemporary academic theory") and what is an unreasonable one ("it's a Jewish plot"), because they want to shut down that reasonable argument
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  What is your point here? That a left wing Wikipedia editor has a left wing defensive opinion? Did you bother to look at the sources? https://newrepublic.com/article/144317/trumps-racism-myth-cultural-marxism https://newrepublic.com/article/144317/trumps-racism-myth-cu... Good stuff.
janalsncm 3y ago
I learned something today, I had no idea there was a coherent ideology of cultural Marxism. I had always assumed it was just a term made up on the spot in the spirit of “Marxism=bad leftie thing” (don’t you know how many died under Mao/Stalin?!), therefore lumping all of progressive politics in with it. This might be contrasted with “postmodern Marxism” or “postmodern neo-Marxism” which is some kind of pseudointellectual epithet but is seems fundamentally incoherent. Postmodernism rejects grand narratives about society, but Marxism itself is a grand narrative (namely, that capitalist society should be framed as a class struggle between workers and capitalists). In the other hand, I think there’s reason to believe the term “cultural Marxism” has undergone semantic shift recently. I see this quite frequently in progressive/conservative politics (another example is the term “woke”). So it may be best to either retire the term altogether or at least explicitly define it first. The cultural Marxism discussed in 60s and 70s academia is not the same thing as what the Norway terrorist was referring to in his manifesto.
- skissane 3y ago
  > This might be contrasted with “postmodern Marxism” or “postmodern neo-Marxism” which is some kind of pseudointellectual epithet but is seems fundamentally incoherent. Postmodernism rejects grand narratives about society, but Marxism itself is a grand narrative (namely, that capitalist society should be framed as a class struggle between workers and capitalists). Postmodern Marxism is a real thing too. See for example yet another Duke University Press book (Duke University is really into this kind of stuff for some reason) from 2001, "Re/presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism" [0]. Another more recent book is "The Condition of Digitality: A Post-Modern Marxism for the Practice of Digital Life" (University of Westminster Press, 2020) [1] Are postmodernism and Marxism inherently contradictory? Well, "postmodernism" is a very broad and amorphous school of thought. The idea of postmodernism as opposition to "grand narratives" is due to Lyotard, and yes that idea seems rather incompatible with Marxism, at least in its classic form; but other postmodernist thinkers emphasised different ideas, whose incompatibility with Marxism is less obvious. I also am picking up on the fact that you are obliquely referring to Jordan Peterson, who is known to use the phrases “postmodern Marxism” and “postmodern neo-Marxism”. Honestly, I've never paid him a great deal of attention – I'm neither one of his fans nor one of his haters, I'm just not that interested in him. So, I can't say whether he is using the phrase "postmodern Marxism" in the same sense as those academic books I cite do, or in a different sense. > The cultural Marxism discussed in 60s and 70s academia is not the same thing as what the Norway terrorist was referring to in his manifesto. I don’t know about that. Let me put it this way: the World Zionist Congress (WZC) is a real thing, an international conference that was first held in Switzerland in 1897, and it was held for the 38th time in Jerusalem in 2020. So the conference is not a conspiracy theory. But, if you go looking for them, you will find antisemites who will tell you that the WZC secretly controls the world’s banks and governments-that is a baseless conspiracy theory. However, even though we have both a real world factual discourse about the WZC and an unhinged antisemitic conspiracy theory about it, that doesn’t mean that the two discourses are using the term “World Zionist Congress” to mean fundamentally different things-no, they are both talking about the same thing. In the same way, just because Breivik talked about “Cultural Marxism”, doesn’t in itself prove he was talking about something different - he could be talking about the same thing, but making baseless/unhinged claims about it, and wrongly using those claims to justify his senseless mass murder of innocents [0] https://books.google.com/books?id=0PdqvSOo-rgC https://books.google.com/books?id=0PdqvSOo-rgC [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=qSkNEAAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=qSkNEAAAQBAJ

gverrilla 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...

skissane 3y ago
The Nazi concept of "Cultural Bolshevism" has nothing to do with Cultural Marxism the post-war academic movement "Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory" is about claiming that said post-war academic movement is a "Jewish plot". Yes, that's an antisemitic conspiracy theory. But stating that the academic movement exists, and discussing to what degree its ideas influenced contemporary social movements such as BLM, is not a conspiracy theory, and not per se antisemitic. I think what is happening here, is some people are motivated to ignore the difference between what is a reasonable argument ("to what degree was a contemporary social movement influenced by a contemporary academic theory") and what is an unreasonable one ("it's a Jewish plot"), because they want to shut down that reasonable argument
SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
What is your point here? That a left wing Wikipedia editor has a left wing defensive opinion? Did you bother to look at the sources? https://newrepublic.com/article/144317/trumps-racism-myth-cultural-marxism https://newrepublic.com/article/144317/trumps-racism-myth-cu... Good stuff.

janalsncm 3y ago

I learned something today, I had no idea there was a coherent ideology of cultural Marxism. I had always assumed it was just a term made up on the spot in the spirit of “Marxism=bad leftie thing” (don’t you know how many died under Mao/Stalin?!), therefore lumping all of progressive politics in with it. This might be contrasted with “postmodern Marxism” or “postmodern neo-Marxism” which is some kind of pseudointellectual epithet but is seems fundamentally incoherent. Postmodernism rejects grand narratives about society, but Marxism itself is a grand narrative (namely, that capitalist society should be framed as a class struggle between workers and capitalists). In the other hand, I think there’s reason to believe the term “cultural Marxism” has undergone semantic shift recently. I see this quite frequently in progressive/conservative politics (another example is the term “woke”). So it may be best to either retire the term altogether or at least explicitly define it first. The cultural Marxism discussed in 60s and 70s academia is not the same thing as what the Norway terrorist was referring to in his manifesto.

skissane 3y ago
> This might be contrasted with “postmodern Marxism” or “postmodern neo-Marxism” which is some kind of pseudointellectual epithet but is seems fundamentally incoherent. Postmodernism rejects grand narratives about society, but Marxism itself is a grand narrative (namely, that capitalist society should be framed as a class struggle between workers and capitalists). Postmodern Marxism is a real thing too. See for example yet another Duke University Press book (Duke University is really into this kind of stuff for some reason) from 2001, "Re/presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism" [0]. Another more recent book is "The Condition of Digitality: A Post-Modern Marxism for the Practice of Digital Life" (University of Westminster Press, 2020) [1] Are postmodernism and Marxism inherently contradictory? Well, "postmodernism" is a very broad and amorphous school of thought. The idea of postmodernism as opposition to "grand narratives" is due to Lyotard, and yes that idea seems rather incompatible with Marxism, at least in its classic form; but other postmodernist thinkers emphasised different ideas, whose incompatibility with Marxism is less obvious. I also am picking up on the fact that you are obliquely referring to Jordan Peterson, who is known to use the phrases “postmodern Marxism” and “postmodern neo-Marxism”. Honestly, I've never paid him a great deal of attention – I'm neither one of his fans nor one of his haters, I'm just not that interested in him. So, I can't say whether he is using the phrase "postmodern Marxism" in the same sense as those academic books I cite do, or in a different sense. > The cultural Marxism discussed in 60s and 70s academia is not the same thing as what the Norway terrorist was referring to in his manifesto. I don’t know about that. Let me put it this way: the World Zionist Congress (WZC) is a real thing, an international conference that was first held in Switzerland in 1897, and it was held for the 38th time in Jerusalem in 2020. So the conference is not a conspiracy theory. But, if you go looking for them, you will find antisemites who will tell you that the WZC secretly controls the world’s banks and governments-that is a baseless conspiracy theory. However, even though we have both a real world factual discourse about the WZC and an unhinged antisemitic conspiracy theory about it, that doesn’t mean that the two discourses are using the term “World Zionist Congress” to mean fundamentally different things-no, they are both talking about the same thing. In the same way, just because Breivik talked about “Cultural Marxism”, doesn’t in itself prove he was talking about something different - he could be talking about the same thing, but making baseless/unhinged claims about it, and wrongly using those claims to justify his senseless mass murder of innocents [0] https://books.google.com/books?id=0PdqvSOo-rgC https://books.google.com/books?id=0PdqvSOo-rgC [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=qSkNEAAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=qSkNEAAAQBAJ