Unwrapping the 'Cultural Marxism' Nonsense the Alt-Right Loves

[smilesammich 10,727]

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The trope of "cultural Marxism" has been steadily gaining traction among the broad and diverse entity that is the radical right (although, hating diversity, would baulk at you saying so), where it serves as an umbrella term variously responsible for such un-American and anti-Western ills as atheism, secularism, political correctness, gay rights, sexual liberation, feminism, affirmative action, liberalism, socialism, anarchism, and, above all, multiculturalism. The ultimate goal of cultural Marxism, we're led to believe, is to slowly and stealthily dilute and subvert white, Christian Western culture, thereby opening sovereign nations to rule by a one-world corporate government. Whether that's by Jews, lizards, or communists isn't always clear.

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The "cultural Marxist" conspiracy has a slippery genealogy through the American right, beginning with its coinage by Lyndon Larouche in the early 1990s (although Hitler had warned of "cultural Bolshevism" during the 1920s). It passed through various esoteric journals and hard-right think tanks and was picked up by paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan (author of The Death of the West), William S. Lind, and Paul Weyrich, and over the last decade has spread feverishly through the murkier, more hyper-masculinist and libidinally challenged corners of the web. It has been rolled out everywhere from the Daily Mail (whose editor accuses the BBC of cultural Marxism) to the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, from Milo fans to meninists, becoming a staple of permanently livid YouTube ranters. Ubiquitous and almost infinitely flexible, it's the perfect scapegoat, yet betrays not only a mind numbingly ill-informed reading of the Frankfurt School's output, but also a staggeringly stupid grasp of the historical process. (Spoiler: It's the requirements of international capital, not the string-pulling of a few sociologists, that has provided history's chief motor these last few decades.)

"For Breivik, Breitbart, and others, multiculturalism is a strategic goal en route to a globalist superstate"

Arguably the biggest boost for the conspiracy came from its liberal use at Tea Party rallies, where it was fastened on to by Andrew Breitbart, soon to be making cultural waves with his eponymous news aggregation website, focused initially on the ills of big government, big hollywood, and big journalism: the dark troika of American society's takeover by cultural Marxism.

In his autobiography Righteous Indignation, Breitbart describes the discovery of cultural Marxism as his "awakening"—redolent of the "red pill" that all conspiracy cranks feel when the vast, anxiety-inducing complexity of the universe becomes pacified in the paranoiac, pattern-seeking mind, reduced to the imaginary order of some joined-up plot (the irony of "red pill," of course, being that it's taken from The Matrix, whose makers, the Wachowski Brothers, are now the Wachowski sisters—trans politics being another plank of cultural Marxism). Grasping its effects, he said shortly before his death in 2012, was like "putting the medicine in the sherbet… My one great epiphany, my one a-ha moment where I said, 'I got it—I see what exactly happened in this country.'"

The self-righteous zeal animating Breitbart's subsequent kulturkampf drips through almost every interview, illustrating the propensity for the internet to enable a single person's prejudices, ignorance, and resentments to seize the cultural narrative—to resonate in echo chambers, free of intellectual checks and balances.

For Breivik, Breitbart, and others, multiculturalism is a strategic goal en route to the aforementioned globalist superstate: Erode the foundations of the nation and the culture of its people, and hocus pocus, you have monolithic, monocultural (yet somehow also still multicultural) corporate rule. Apparently it hasn't occurred to them that the system of nation states, with their tax havens and labor-cost differentials, is intrinsic to the technocratic global order.

One of the principal delivery systems of cultural Marxism and the subversion of these wholesome Western norms—such that women can be more than housewives and nonwhites are allowed to vote—is popular culture. Here's "editor-at-large" of conspiracy website InfoWars, Paul Joseph Watson—after Milo the most eloquently ignorant of the right-wing provocateur webslebs—helpfully explaining this mass indoctrination and degeneracy: "Why is popular culture so contrived, plastic, empty, meaningless, grotesque, and incredibly retarded? Because from the 20th century onwards, post-modernist, moral relativist, critical theory–espousing cultural Marxist nihilists began to seize control of society… The goal? To completely undermine the foundation of Western civilization and leave us open to subversion and capitulation."

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/78mnny/unwrapping-the-conspiracy-theory-that-drives-the-alt-right

 

there is a method to the madness..dailycaller, breitbart, those sorts..writing the script.

[Jacque67 7,328]

5 hours ago, smilesammich said:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/78mnny/unwrapping-the-conspiracy-theory-that-drives-the-alt-right

 

there is a method to the madness..dailycaller, breitbart, those sorts..writing the script.

Word.

[Mr&Mrs G. 903]

1 hour ago, Jacque67 said:

Word.

Too many big words my head is going to explode. 

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

4 minutes ago, Mr&Mrs G. said:

Too many big words my head is going to explode. 

Plus 50.  A lot of words that seem to mean very little.  I was taught to avoid that in every writing class I ever took.

[Jacque67 7,328]

7 minutes ago, Mr&Mrs G. said:

Too many big words my head is going to explode. 

I was raised in the school of KISS!

[Dashinka 23,402]

6 minutes ago, IDWAF said:

Plus 50.  A lot of words that seem to mean very little.  I was taught to avoid that in every writing class I ever took.

Well it is from an biased Left Wing news source.

[Mr&Mrs G. 903]

Just now, Jacque67 said:

I was raised in the school of KISS!

My parents couldn't afford the kind of education it would take to decipher what that guy was talking about, as much as I tried the more my head hurt. I bet for a lot of readers whatever point the writer was trying to make it went right over their heads.

 

Clearly I am not his targeted audience, in this instance ignorance is bliss.

 

[Jacque67 7,328]

2 minutes ago, Mr&Mrs G. said:

My parents couldn't afford the kind of education it would take to decipher what that guy was talking about, as much as I tried the more my head hurt. I bet for a lot of readers whatever point the writer was trying to make it went right over their heads.

 

Clearly I am not his targeted audience, in this instance ignorance is bliss.

 

Not sure if this is a windup job, but sad if true. There are libraries out there and self-education goes a long way. Don't blame your parents. Seriously, the op makes a lot of good points. You are smart.

[Mr&Mrs G. 903]

Just now, Jacque67 said:

Not sure if this is a windup job, but sad if true. There are libraries out there and self-education goes a long way. Don't blame your parents. Seriously, the op makes a lot of good points. You are smart.

No wind up, left school at 14 to go to work, none of my brothers or sisters went much further in education than our early teens. Working class family, two bedroomed home with my mother & father 5 kids, both grand parents, 2 aunts and one niece all living together, sometimes other aunts/uncles would come home from working in the UK. Full house but great childhood, parents done a great job they taught us right from wrong and we never wanted for anything.  

 

College was for the elites when I was younger, Ireland through the 60's and 70's was a poor country so if you got a job offer you left school. The option of further education was never an option for people like me.

 

Honestly if I had went to the library to learn and understand that article this is the only time I would have needed it. 

[Dashinka 23,402]

3 minutes ago, Mr&Mrs G. said:

No wind up, left school at 14 to go to work, none of my brothers or sisters went much further in education than our early teens. Working class family, two bedroomed home with my mother & father 5 kids, both grand parents, 2 aunts and one niece all living together, sometimes other aunts/uncles would come home from working in the UK. Full house but great childhood, parents done a great job they taught us right from wrong and we never wanted for anything.  

 

College was for the elites when I was younger, Ireland through the 60's and 70's was a poor country so if you got a job offer you left school. The option of further education was never an option for people like me.

 

Honestly if I had went to the library to learn and understand that article this is the only time I would have needed it. 

Yes, it is tough being someone that has to work for a living and doesn't have time to be an elitist.

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

24 minutes ago, Mr&Mrs G. said:

My parents couldn't afford the kind of education it would take to decipher what that guy was talking about, as much as I tried the more my head hurt. I bet for a lot of readers whatever point the writer was trying to make it went right over their heads.

 

Clearly I am not his targeted audience, in this instance ignorance is bliss.

 

The "article", if that is what one could call it, was written that way on purpose, I suspect.  Ambiguous and euphemistic writing has a certain value when talking about volatile subjects.  Equivocation at its finest, in those first two quotes.

[Jacque67 7,328]

3 minutes ago, Mr&Mrs G. said:

No wind up, left school at 14 to go to work, none of my brothers or sisters went much further in education than our early teens. Working class family, two bedroomed home with my mother & father 5 kids, both grand parents, 2 aunts and one niece all living together, sometimes other aunts/uncles would come home from working in the UK. Full house but great childhood, parents done a great job they taught us right from wrong and we never wanted for anything.  

 

College was for the elites when I was younger, Ireland through the 60's and 70's was a poor country so if you got a job offer you left school. The option of further education was never an option for people like me.

 

Honestly if I had went to the library to learn and understand that article this is the only time I would have needed it. 

Well your parents did an admirable job. Hate all this old class warfare nonsense  in the UK.  Not sure about in Ireland, but university used to be free in England in the 60s and 70s I think, so if you persevered it was still possible to enter. Don't get hung-up on the misuse of the word "elite". You, too, if you set your mind to it can be an elite. It's something to aspire to in the future. 

Seriously, the op, makes many relevant points.

[Mr&Mrs G. 903]

Just now, IDWAF said:

The "article", if that is what one could call it, was written that way on purpose, I suspect.  Ambiguous and euphemistic writing has a certain value when talking about volatile subjects.  Equivocation at its finest, in those first two quotes.

If I look at the article in it's simplest form and assume the writer is trying to make a point of some sort, surely he would be trying to sway those from the alt-right and who at times are classed as uneducated. So why not write it in a manner that a normal educated everyday person could understand? 

 

So to me he had no intention of trying to sway anyone's opinion, he was just pandering to his own class or readership. 

[Dashinka 23,402]

1 minute ago, Jacque67 said:

Well your parents did an admirable job. Hate all this old class warfare nonsense  in the UK.  Not sure about in Ireland, but university used to be free in England in the 60s and 70s I think, so if you persevered it was still possible to enter. Don't get hung-up on the misuse of the word "elite". You, too, if you set your mind to it can be an elite. It's something to aspire to in the future. 

Seriously, the op, makes many relevant points.

There is a difference between being elite and treating those that are perceived to be unequal as lesser individuals and being successful.  Not all successful people are elite and not all elites are successful.

[Jacque67 7,328]

5 minutes ago, Mr&Mrs G. said:

If I look at the article in it's simplest form and assume the writer is trying to make a point of some sort, surely he would be trying to sway those from the alt-right and who at times are classed as uneducated. So why not write it in a manner that a normal educated everyday person could understand? 

 

So to me he had no intention of trying to sway anyone's opinion, he was just pandering to his own class or readership. 

Ugh.respectfully disagree.

Edited August 30, 2017 by Jacque67