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| {{Primary sources|article|date=May 2014}} | |||
| The '''Frankfurt School conspiracy theory''', often termed "'''Cultural Marxism'''", is a theory that postulates that the ] of ] deliberately subverted traditional Western values through interventions into ], leading to what is called ]. This represents an alternative to the scholarly understanding of the Frankfurt School, which argues that while members of the Frankfurt School did individually engage in social critique, they never developed any unified theory or collective political agenda with regard to the ]. The theory has received institutional support from the ].<ref name=Berkowitz/> | |||
| ==History== | |||
| ===Origins=== | |||
| This conspiracy theory view has been traced in part to the idea of "]" which was popularised in the early 1990s.<ref name=Berkowitz/> Although it became more widespread in the late 1990s and 2000s, it originated with Michael Minnicino's lengthy 1992 essay "New Dark Age: Frankfurt School and 'Political Correctness'", published in ''Fidelio'' by the ]. The Institute has reproduced the essay online.<ref name="schillerinstitute.org">, Schiller Institute</ref><ref name=Jay/><ref>Jay (2010) notes that Daniel Estulin's book cites this essay and that the Free Congress Foundation's program was inspired by it.</ref> The Schiller Institute, a branch of the ], further promoted the idea in 1994.<ref>Michael Minnicino (1994), (] 1994), part of "Solving the Paradox of Current World History", a conference report published in '']''</ref> The Minnicino article charges that the Frankfurt School promoted ] in the arts as a form of ], and played a role in shaping the ].<ref name="schillerinstitute.org"/> Historian ] wrote in 2010 that "what began as a bizarre Lyndon Larouche coinage has become the common currency of a larger and larger public of addled enragés has entered at least the fringes of the mainstream."<ref name=Jay/> | |||
| ==="Cultural Marxism"=== | |||
| By 1997, the polemic against "Political Correctness" had been picked up by ]'s Free Congress Foundation which referred to it as "Cultural Marxism".<ref>Lind, William S., "What is 'Political Correctness?," Essays on our Times, ], Number 43, March 1997.; Raehn, Raymond V., "The Historical Roots of 'Political Correctness,'", Essays on our Times, ], Number 44, June 1997.</ref> In 1998 the head of the Foundation's Center for Cultural Conservatism, ], introduced it at an ] conference.<ref>. Paper presented at 13th annual summer conference of ], July 1998.</ref><ref name=Beirich/> In 1999 Lind led the creation of an hour-long program ''Political Correctness: The Frankfurt School''.<ref name=Jay/> The documentary | |||
| <blockquote>"spawned a number of condensed textual versions, which were reproduced on a number of radical right-wing sites. These in turn led to a welter of new videos now available on You Tube, which feature an odd cast of pseudo-experts regurgitating exactly the same line. The message is numbingly simplistic: all the ills of modern American culture, from feminism, affirmative action, sexual liberation and gay rights to the decay of traditional education and even environmentalism are ultimately attributable to the insidious influence of the members of the Institute for Social Research who came to America in the 1930's. The origins of "cultural Marxism" are traced back to Lukács and Gramsci, but because they were not actual émigrés, their role in the narrative is not as prominent."<ref name=Jay/></blockquote> | |||
| The ] ] may have contributed most to the popularisation of the view (partly through editing a 2004 Free Congress Foundation book, ''Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology''<ref>] (ed, 2004), '', ], November 2004.</ref>), including (in 2002) observing of the Frankfurt School that "these guys were all Jewish".<ref name=Berkowitz/> Lind argues that, | |||
| <blockquote>"] is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious."<ref name="academia">The Origins of Political Correctness: An Accuracy in Academia Address by Bill Lind http://www.academia.org/lectures/lind1.html</ref></blockquote> | |||
| Lind argues that "Political Correctness" has resulted in American citizens, particularly in academia, being "afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic" and that such changes can be attributed to the influence of cultural Marxists.<ref name="academia" /> | |||
| Another leading proponent is ], devoting a chapter of his '']'' (1998) to the Frankfurt School as part of an argument about Jewish influence.<ref name=Berkowitz/> Another significant influence is ]'s '']'' (2001), "stigmatizing as it did the Frankfurt School for promoting 'cultural Marxism' (a recycling of the old Weimar conservative charge of 'cultural Bolshevism' aimed at aesthetic modernists)."<ref name=Jay/> Buchanan asserted that the Frankfurt School commandeered the American ], and used this cartel to infect the minds of Americans.<ref>Buchanan, Pat; '']''; pp. 73-96. ISBN 0-312-30259-2</ref> ]'s 2006 book ''Los secretos del club Bilderberg'' (which was praised by ]) included the Frankfurt School conspiracy theory.<ref name=Jay>] (2010), "". ] (Fall 2010-Winter 2011, 168–169): 30–40.</ref> Estulin links ]'s involvement in the Rockefeller-funded ] with ], "who was somehow able to engineer the Beatles' conquest of the American media in the 1960's."<ref name=Jay/> Others promoting the theory include ]<ref name=Jay/> and ] (in his book ''Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!'', 2011.<ref>Ben Alpers, 25 July 2011, </ref>). | |||
| Similarly, conservative ]'s book, ''The Strange Death of Marxism'' (2005) argues that Marxism survived and evolved since the fall of the ] in the form of "cultural Marxism": | |||
| <blockquote>] called themselves Marxists without accepting all of Marx’s historical and economic theories but while upholding ] against capitalism, as a moral position …. Thereafter socialists would build their conceptual fabrics on Marx’s notion of “],” extracted from his writings of the 1840s …. could therefore dispense with a strictly materialist analysis and shift … focus toward religion, morality, and aesthetics. ...</blockquote> | |||
| Lind comments on Gottfried's book: | |||
| <blockquote>Is the critical observation about the Frankfurt School therefore correct, that it exemplifies '],' which pushes ] revolution under a sociological-Freudian label? To the extent its practitioners and despisers would both answer to this characterization, it may in fact be valid … but if Marxism under the Frankfurt School has undergone alterations, then there may be little Marxism left in it. The appeal of the Critical Theorists to Marx has become increasingly ritualistic and what there is in the theory of Marxist sources is now intermingled with identifiably non-Marxist ones …. In a nutshell, they had moved beyond Marxism … into a militantly antibourgeois stance that operates independently of Marxist economic assumptions.<ref name="Lind, William S">Quoted in Lind, William S.. "." 10 October 2005. ''The American Conservative''. Review of Paul Gottfried, ''The Strange Death of Marxism'', University of Missouri Press.</ref></blockquote> | |||
| In a similar vein, in her '']'', ] says that it is possible to determine what works of '']'' are valuable, but that "cultural Marxists" since the 1960s have completely changed the criteria so as to reward mediocre books and denounce truly good literature as ], ], homophobic and elitist.<ref name="Kantor, Elizabeth">Kantor, Elizabeth; '']''; pp. 189-198. ISBN 1-59698-011-7</ref> | |||
| The "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory found fertile ground with the development of the ] in 2009, with contributions published in the '']'' and '']'' highlighted by some Tea Party websites.<ref name=Collectivists>{{cite journal | url=http://crs.sagepub.com/content/38/4/565.abstract | title=Collectivists, Communists, Labor Bosses, and Treason: The Tea Parties as Right-Wing Populist Counter-Subversion Panic | author=Berlet, Chip | journal=Critical Sociology |date=July 2012 | volume=38 | pages=565–587 | doi=10.1177/0896920511434750 | issue=4}}</ref><ref>For example Chuck Rogér, March 27, 2010, '']'', </ref> | |||
| Although the ] is not usually involved, in a version of the theory by ] published in ''Cry Havoc!'' (2007), the Frankfurt School was a Communist front set up ], which Jay described as a "crackpot claim".<ref name=Jay/> | |||
| According to ], a ] professor at the ], the ] is "a convenient target that very few people really know anything about.... By grounding their critique in Marxism and using the Frankfurt School, make it seem like it's quite foreign to anything American. It takes on a mysterious cast and translates as an incomprehensible, anti-American, foreign movement that is only interested in undermining the U.S." Lichtman says that the "idea being transmitted is that we are being infected from the outside." <ref>Lichtman, quoted Berkowitz.</ref> Lichtman's critique parallels that of rhetorical critic ] who demonstrated how ] co-founder ] used a similar disease metaphor in his writings and speeches during the "]" era of the 1950s and 60s.<ref>Black, Edwin. (1970) "The Second Persona". ''The Quarterly Journal of Speech''.56.2</ref> | |||
| ] (2012) situates the theory in a wider context: "From the colonial Salem witch hunts, to the anti-Catholic nativism of the 1800s, to the Palmer raids of 1919–20, to the 1950s McCarthy-era Red Scare, to the Tea Parties of today, the hunt for subversion is built around conspiracy theories. Those seeking to expose the conspiracy build movements to counter the alleged subversion. Their central frame is that the national is imperiled by a secret and sinister conspiracy seeking to crush democracy and install some form of evil totalitarian rule."<ref name=Collectivists/> Berlet argues that the "Cultural Marxism" theory is a form of ] that helps "the power elites of organized wealth" to mobilise right-wing popular movements in the support of their interests: "Blaming hard times as being the result of the secret conspiracy is a time-honored tradition, and conspiracy theories function as a narrative form of scapegoating."<ref name=Collectivists/> | |||
| ===Allegations of Antisemitism=== | |||
| Many of the Frankfurt School were Jewish, and according to ] explicitly linked to the plans to School's main ethnic background;<ref name=Berkowitz/><ref name=Jay/> Critics have found in other accounts, specifically ] broadcast "Political Correctness:The Frankfurt School," a transparent subtext which is not hard to discern and has become more explicit with each telling of the narrative".<ref name=Jay/><ref>Commenting on the 1999 ] broadcast, ] (2010) writes "here is a transparent subtext which is not hard to discern and has become more explicit with each telling of the narrative. Although there is scarcely any direct reference to the ethnic origins of the School's members, subtle hints allow the listener to draw his own conclusions about the provenance of foreigners who tried to combine Marx and Freud, those giants of critical Jewish intelligence. At one point, William Lind asserts that "once in America they shifted the focus of their work from destroying German society to attacking the society and culture of its new place of refuge," as if the very people who had to flee the Nazis had been responsible for what they were fleeing!"</ref> | |||
| <blockquote>"In a nutshell, the theory posits that a tiny group of Jewish philosophers who fled Germany in the 1930s and set up shop at Columbia University in New York City devised an unorthodox form of 'Marxism' that took aim at American society's culture, rather than its economic system. | |||
| The theory holds that these self-interested Jews — the so-called 'Frankfurt School' of philosophers — planned to try to convince mainstream Americans that white ethnic pride is bad, that sexual liberation is good, and that supposedly traditional American values — Christianity, 'family values,' and so on — are reactionary and bigoted. With their core values thus subverted, the theory goes, Americans would be quick to sign on to the ideas of the far left."<ref name=Berkowitz>Berkowitz, Bill (2003), "Reframing the Enemy: ‘Cultural Marxism’, a Conspiracy Theory with an Anti-Semitic Twist, Is Being Pushed by Much of the American Right." Intelligence Report. ], Summer. http://web.archive.org/web/20040207095318/http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=53&printable=1</ref></blockquote> | |||
| ===Endorsements by white nationalists=== | |||
| The Southern Poverty Law Center reported in 2002 that the theory had been taken up by a number of what it defines as ]s;<ref name=SPLC>"," ''Intelligence Report'', Fall 2002</ref> the ] ], for example, picked up the issue in 2000.<ref name=Beirich>Beirich, Heidi and Hicks, Kevin (2009), "White Nationalism in America", in Perry, Barbara (2009, ed.), ''Hate Crimes: Understanding and defining hate crime''. ], pp118-9</ref> | |||
| The idea of Cultural Marxism theory reached greater prominence, particularly in Europe, when it was established that Norwegian white nationalist ], who killed dozens of people in 2011, had placed this view of "cultural marxism" as a cornerstone of his ideology, placing a copy of William Lind's 2004 pamphlet on the subject at the beginning of his manifesto.<ref>Daniel Trilling " ''New Statesman'' April 2012; Professor Jérôme Jamin (Université de Liège) : «» 2012</ref> Breivik's manifesto "explicitly equates liberalism and multiculturalism with cultural Marxism, something Breivik says is destroying European Christian civilization."<ref name=Wodak>Heidi Beirich, "Hate Across the Waters: the Role of American Extremists in Fostering an International White Consciousness", in ] (ed 2013), '''', London: ]. pp96-7</ref> This view was adopted by European white nationalists from American ones, and is grounded in the claim that Cultural Marxism has suppressed white nationalism and racial identity, while African Americans and Latinos have been able to build a strong cultural identity and institutions. As ] put it in 2004, "Racial pride is fine for blacks and everyone else, but verboten... for whites. Not just American whites mind you, but all whites everywhere."<ref name=Wodak/> | |||
| ==List== | |||
| ] cites the following as "a list cited verbatim from many of the websites devoted to the question:" | |||
| <blockquote> | |||
| # The creation of racism offenses | |||
| # Continual change to create confusion | |||
| # The teaching of sex and homosexuality to children | |||
| # The undermining of schools' and teachers' authority | |||
| # Huge immigration to destroy identity | |||
| # The promotion of excessive drinking | |||
| # Emptying of churches | |||
| # An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime | |||
| # Dependency on the state or state benefits | |||
| # Control and dumbing down of media | |||
| # Encouraging the breakdown of the family<ref name=Jay/> | |||
| </blockquote> | |||
| The authorship of the list is unclear; Jay cites a 2009 publication<ref>Timothy Matthews, "," Catholic Insight, March, 2009; the item was originally published in '']'', December 11, 2008.</ref> but implies it may predate it. | |||
| ==References== | |||
| {{reflist|30em}} | |||
| ==External links== | |||
| * Bruce Miller, November 21, 2011, | |||
| ] | |||
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