What is Cultural Marxism and How Did it Get Here?

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With the promotion of such things as transgenderism through schools, the silencing of dissenting opinions on social media, and the branding of normal but concerned people as “bigots”, “homophobes”, “transphobes” or “Islamophobes”, it is patently obvious that something is seriously wrong in society.

The range and scale of change which has occurred, or rather, has been foisted upon us by our self-appointed intelligentsia and moral betters is only exceeded by its rapidity.

Political correctness, feminism, social justice, progressivism and post-colonialism are all now common terms in use throughout the media and society. And although these ideologies span a vast range of issues, they all originate from the same source which is; Cultural Marxism and its tool known as ‘Critical Theory’.

So where did this ‘Critical Theory’ and Cultural Marxism come from? They originated from a loose affiliation of theorists referred to as the ‘Frankfurt School’ with several of their number based at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research at Goethe University, Frankfurt during the interwar period. During and after the Second World War, many of its members disbursed throughout Europe and to the United States.

Following both the defeats of the First and Second World War, the Frankfurt School was left perplexed at the unwillingness of workers around the world to unite in an international socialist movement, instead choosing to stay loyal to their home nation and reaping the rewards and benefits of trade and commerce.

The attempt to arrive at a socialist society through economic means had clearly failed. For Cultural Marxists, a new approach would need to be applied, this time through the culture and social institutions such as the family, the legal system, universities, the media and the churches. Although disparate and wide ranging, Critical Theory focused on one particular end: the total transformation, and re-engineering of traditional western society.

Members and related affiliates to the movement include Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno and Barack Obama’s ideological mentor, Saul Alinsky.

During the 1960s, Cultural Marxism gained traction with the political left, as well as attracting widespread exposure through the West, particularly in North America and Europe. Cultural Marxism soon came to dominate the social sciences and humanities at universities, and now its influence has spread through virtually every major social institution.

The development of sex/gender studies, post-colonial studies, queer theory and ‘whiteness’ studies all emerged through Cultural Marxism. While many of these fields of studies (if we can call them that) were still seen as radical, ‘edgy’ or just plain nuts, in less than a decade, issues such as same-sex marriage and transgenderism have been thrust into the mainstream. They have not come into the mainstream because they have been important issues for the populace at large, but have instead been propagated and disseminated by Cultural Marxism through the media, politics and educational institutions.

Cultural Marxism is not only dangerous because of what it seeks to introduce (and destroy), but it is deeply insidious in its dealing with alternative or opposing views. Whilst claiming to stand for such things as ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’, Cultural Marxism attempts to pathologise its debating partners and brand them with various slanderous, concocted and spurious ‘phobias’. Cultural Marxism is not only dangerous in what it promotes, but it is dangerous and disingenuous in how it engages with society in debate, and how it attempts to bring about social change.

While Marxists and Cultural Marxists envisage and aim for the creation of a utopian society on earth, the reality of Marxism and its communist and socialist offspring is invariably the creation of the exact opposite. All that Cultural Marxism can offer is a “desolate form of eternal warfare between evermore narrowly defined groups of offended minorities.”

The stakes against Cultural Marxism are high. What we risk losing is our European and Western culture, with all the benefits and advances it has brought to not only us and our civilisation, but to the world at large.

Photo by rdesign812