| Revision as of 13:30, 30 December 2014 editShii (talk | contribs)21,017 edits Broad consensus on the talk page that this should article should be shortened and merged back into Frankfurt School. I will start the process by removing obvious SYNTH and OR material.← Previous edit | Latest revision as of 10:50, 11 September 2020 edit undoBuidhe (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Page movers, File movers, Mass message senders, New page reviewers, Pending changes reviewers, Template editors136,100 edits ←Changed redirect target from Frankfurt School#Conspiracy theory to Cultural Marxism conspiracy theoryTag: Redirect target changed | ||
| (6 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| #REDIRECT ] | |||
| {{pp-vandalism|expiry=5 March 2015|small=yes}} | |||
| {{R from alt}} | |||
| {{Primary sources|article|date=May 2014}} | |||
| The '''Frankfurt School conspiracy theory''' regards the early 20th century ] of ] ] as the origin of a contemporary movement in the ] to subvert traditional ], referred to as "Cultural Marxism" by theory proponents.<ref name="Cmin" /> The theory was first put forward in a 1992 essay by American commentator Michael Minnicino.<ref name="Cmin">{{cite book | title=Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth | publisher=PM Press | author=Sasha Lilley, David McNally, Eddie Yuen | year=2012 | pages=87-88 | isbn=160486804X}}</ref> It advocates for the idea that ] and "]" are products of ], which originated with the Frankfurt School. The theory is associated with American conservative thinkers such as ], ] and ], and has received institutional support from the ].<ref name="Cmin" /><ref name=Berkowitz/> It diverges greatly from mainstream scholarship on the Frankfurt School, which remembers the school for its early criticism of the phenomenon of ] and ], which it viewed as ] instruments of economic and political control.<ref name="ASRe">{{cite news | url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/15/naysayers | title=The Naysayers | work=The New Yorker | date=15 September 2014 | accessdate=5 December 2014 | author=Ross, Alex}}</ref> | |||
| ==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 ].<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"=== | |||
| 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 ] and ], but because they were not actual émigrés, their role in the narrative is not as prominent."<ref name=Jay/></blockquote> | |||
| 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/> ]'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>). | |||
| 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> | |||
| ] (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> | |||
| ==References== | |||
| {{reflist|30em}} | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
Latest revision as of 10:50, 11 September 2020
Redirect to:
- From an alternative name: This is a redirect from a title that is another name or identity such as an alter ego, a nickname, or a synonym of the target, or of a name associated with the target.
- This redirect leads to the title in accordance with the naming conventions for common names to aid searches and writing. It is not necessary to replace these redirected links with a piped link.
- If this redirect is an incorrect name for the target, then {{R from incorrect name}} should be used instead.