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185-427: " Cultural Marxism " is a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory that misrepresents Western Marxism (especially the Frankfurt School ) as being responsible for modern progressive movements, identity politics , and political correctness . The conspiracy theory posits that there is an ongoing and intentional academic and intellectual effort to subvert Western society via a planned culture war that undermines

370-665: A Holocaust denial conference. Spencer Sunshine, an associate fellow at the Political Research Associates , stated that "the focus on the Frankfurt School by the right serves to highlight its inherent Jewishness." According to Samuel Moyn, "[t]he wider discourse around cultural Marxism today resembles nothing so much as a version of the Jewish Bolshevism myth updated for a new age." Maxime Dafaure likewise states that Cultural Marxism

555-1338: A stroke during his trip to Germany. He had just finished speaking at the Frankfurt Römerberggespräche , and was on his way to the Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg, on invitation from second-generation Frankfurt School theorist Jürgen Habermas . In 2003, after Marcuse's ashes were rediscovered in the United States, they were buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery in Berlin. Marcuse's concept of repressive desublimation , which has become well-known, refers to his argument that postwar mass culture, with its profusion of sexual provocations, serves to reinforce political repression. If people are preoccupied with inauthentic sexual stimulation, their political energy will be "desublimated"; instead of acting constructively to change

740-479: A "New Dark Age" as a result of the abandonment of Judeo-Christian and Renaissance ideals, which he claimed had been replaced in modern art with a "tyranny of ugliness". He attributed this to an alleged plot to instill cultural pessimism in America, carried out in three stages by Georg Lukács , the Frankfurt School, and elite media figures and political campaigners. Minnicino asserted there were two aspects of

925-554: A "master plan" in Marxist revolutionaries and Cultural Marxists advocating for or predicting the dissolution of marriage. The charge is that they have a "'master plan' for the overthrow of Western civilization from within, personified by those members of the Frankfurt School [...]". Rachel Busbridge, Benjamin Moffitt and Joshua Thorburn describe the conspiracy theory as being promoted by the far-right, but that it "has gained ground over

1110-571: A "race struggle" and an hygienist vision of the world. The purity of the bio-mystical and primordial nation theorized by the Völkischen then began to be seen as corrupted by foreign elements, Jewish in particular. Translated in Maurice Barrès ' concept of "the earth and the dead", these ideas influenced the pre-fascist "revolutionary right" across Europe. The latter had its origin in the fin de siècle intellectual crisis and it was, in

1295-434: A "we" excluding a "they". The far right tends to absolutize differences between nations, races, individuals or cultures since they disrupt their efforts towards the utopian dream of the "closed" and naturally organized society, perceived as the condition to ensure the rebirth of a community finally reconnected to its quasi-eternal nature and re-established on firm metaphysical foundations. As they view their community in

1480-620: A 1979 essay Bahro's theories of "change from within." Marcuse married three times. His first wife was mathematician Sophie Wertheim (1901–1951), whom he married in 1924 and had his first son Peter with in 1928. Before emigrating to New York in 1934, they resided in Freiburg, Berlin, Geneva, and Paris. They lived in Los Angeles/Santa Monica and Washington, D.C., in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1951, Sophie Wertheim died due to cancer. Marcuse later married Inge Neumann (1914–1973),

1665-508: A Marxist critique, and Noam Chomsky , who knew and liked Marcuse "but thought very little of his work." Marcuse's 1965 essay " Repressive Tolerance ", in which he claimed capitalist democracies can have totalitarian aspects, has been criticized by conservatives. Marcuse argues that genuine tolerance does not permit support for "repression", since doing so ensures that marginalized voices will remain unheard. He characterizes tolerance of repressive speech as "inauthentic". Instead, he advocates

1850-496: A copy of Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology . Cultural Marxism was the primary subject of Breivik's manifesto. Breivik wrote that the "sexually transmitted disease (STD) epidemic in Western Europe is a result of cultural Marxism", that "Cultural Marxism defines Muslims, feminist women, homosexuals, and some additional minority groups, as virtuous, and they view ethnic Christian European men as evil" and that

2035-483: A current account of Critical Theory, but to advance a conservative version of US liberalism against the scapegoat of global conspiracy theory" and "In short, what Critical Theory provides to those who use 'critical theory' to signal a socialist threat to liberalism is not only a link to Marxist thought, but also a straw man against which to advance neoliberal politics." Philosophy professor Matthew Sharpe on The Conversation noted that "The last four decades have seen

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2220-699: A dialectical work studying G. W. F. Hegel and Karl Marx . During World War II, Marcuse first worked for the US Office of War Information (OWI) on anti-Nazi propaganda projects. In 1943, he transferred to the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency . Directed by the Harvard historian William L. Langer ,

2405-503: A form of tolerance that is intolerant of repressive (namely right-wing) political movements: Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that

2590-641: A former police officer founded the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement), a South African neo-Nazi paramilitary organisation, often described as a white supremacist group. Since its founding in 1973 by Eugène Terre'Blanche and six other far-right Afrikaners, it has been dedicated to secessionist Afrikaner nationalism and the creation of an independent Boer -Afrikaner republic in part of South Africa. During negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa in

2775-549: A joint statement claiming Osama bin Laden was a CIA asset and that the United States was planning a nuclear war against Russia. In 2019, Jay wrote that Castro's interest in the conspiracy theory had no long-term consequences. Far-right Far-right politics , often termed right-wing extremism , encompasses a range of ideologies that are typically marked by radical conservatism , authoritarianism , ultra-nationalism , and nativism . This political spectrum situates itself on

2960-561: A lesser extent neo-Fascism are now used exclusively for parties and groups that explicitly state a desire to restore the Third Reich or quote historical National Socialism as their ideological influence." One issue is whether parties should be labelled radical or extreme, a distinction that is made by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany when determining whether or not a party should be banned. Within

3145-450: A major shift in political thought by challenging the established ideas supporting hierarchy with new ones about universal equality and freedom . The modern left–right political spectrum also emerged during this period. Democrats and proponents of universal suffrage were located on the left side of the elected French Assembly, while monarchists seated farthest to the right. The strongest opponents of liberalism and democracy during

3330-426: A member of Pauline Hanson's One Nation and then Katter's Australian Party , declared during his maiden speech in 2018 that "Cultural Marxism is not a throwaway line but a literal truth" and spoke of the need for a " final solution to the immigration problem." In Brazil, the government of Jair Bolsonaro contained a number of administration members who promoted the conspiracy theory, including Eduardo Bolsonaro ,

3515-493: A military comradeship that rejected Marxist class analysis , or what Oswald Spengler had called a "socialism of the blood", which is sometimes described by scholars as a form of " socialist revisionism ". They included Charles Maurras , Benito Mussolini , Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and Ernst Niekisch . Those thinkers eventually split along nationalist lines from the original communist movement , Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels contradicting nationalist theories with

3700-423: A number of radical, right-wing [web] sites." Jay further writes: These, in turn, led to a plethora of new videos, now available on YouTube , 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 , racial equality , multiculturalism and gay rights to

3885-485: A political theorist at Columbia University , then continued at Harvard University in 1952. Marcuse worked at Brandeis University from 1954 to 1965, then at the University of California San Diego from 1965 to 1970. It was during his time at Brandeis that he wrote his most famous work, One-Dimensional Man (1964). Marcuse was a friend and collaborator of the political sociologist Barrington Moore Jr. and of

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4070-712: A relative decline of Marxist thought in academia. Its influence has been superseded by ' post-structuralist ' (or ' postmodernist ') thinkers like Jacques Derrida , Michel Foucault , Judith Butler and Gilles Deleuze . Post-structuralism is primarily indebted to thinkers of the European 'conservative revolution' led by Nietzsche and Heidegger . Where Marxism is built on hopes for reason, revolution and social progress, post-structuralist thinkers roundly reject such optimistic 'grand narratives'. Post-structuralists are as preoccupied with culture as our conservative news columnists. But their analyses of identity and difference challenge

4255-407: A self-indoctrinated lone-wolf, the danger comes from Islam, a religion seen as a totalitarian ideology which threatens liberal democracies from Western Europe as much as its Judeo-Christian heritage. In Lind, Buchanan and Breivik, overt racism is studiously avoided. Literary scholar Aaron Hanlon says "the objectives of proponents of conspiratorial views about Cultural Marxism were (and are) not to give

4440-407: A sort of anti-thesis against their own beliefs." While the existence of such a political position is widely accepted among scholars, figures associated with the far-right rarely accept this denomination, preferring terms like "national movement" or "national right". There is also debate about how appropriate the labels neo-fascist or neo-Nazi are. In the words of Mudde, "the labels Neo-Nazi and to

4625-468: A state of decay facilitated by the ruling elites, far-right members portray themselves as a natural, sane and alternative elite, with the redemptive mission of saving society from its promised doom. They reject both their national political system and the global geopolitical order (including their institutions and values, e.g. political liberalism and egalitarian humanism ) which are presented as needing to be abandoned or purged of their impurities, so that

4810-589: A theory of the new stage of state and monopoly capitalism, described the relationships between philosophy, social theory, and cultural criticism, and provided an analysis and critique of German " National Socialism ". Marcuse worked closely with critical theorists while at the Institute. Marcuse emigrated to the United States in June 1934. He served at the Institute's Columbia University branch from 1934 through 1942. He traveled to Washington, D.C. , in 1942, to work for

4995-528: A unified party family, despite the heterogeneity of the far right parties." Kopeček concludes that a comparison of Central European far-right parties with those of Western Europe shows that "these four elements are present in Central Europe as well, though in a somewhat modified form, despite differing political, economic, and social influences." In the American and more general Anglo-Saxon environment,

5180-718: A unique evolution of far-right movements that emphasize nativism and radical opposition to central government. Far-right politics have led to oppression , political violence , forced assimilation , ethnic cleansing , and genocide against groups of people based on their supposed inferiority or their perceived threat to the native ethnic group , nation , state , national religion , dominant culture , or conservative social institutions. Across these contexts, far-right politics has continued to influence discourse, occasionally achieving electoral success and prompting significant debate over its place in democratic societies . According to scholars Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg ,

5365-517: A wider audience to "trickledown intellectualism", and claims that Saul Alinsky introduced cultural Marxism to the masses in his 1971 handbook Rules for Radicals . Woods argues that Breitbart focuses on Alinsky in order to associate cultural Marxism with the modern Democratic Party , and Hillary Clinton . Breitbart claims that George Soros funds the alleged cultural Marxism project. Martin Jay wrote that Breitbart's book displayed "appalling ignorance" of

5550-535: Is "profoundly American". In Commune magazine, Woods detailed a genealogy of the conspiracy theory beginning with the LaRouche movement. Kevin MacDonald has written several anti-semitic texts centering on the Frankfurt School. MacDonald criticized Breivik's manifesto for not being more hostile to Jews. Neo-Nazi and white supremacists promoted the conspiracy theory and help expand its reach. Websites such as

5735-479: Is a Berkeley-based writer, activist, lawyer, and muralist. Michael works as a philosophy professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Marcuse's granddaughter was the novelist Irene Marcuse and his grandson, Harold Marcuse , is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara . On July 29, 1979, ten days after his eighty-first birthday, Marcuse died after suffering

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5920-496: Is a contemporary update of antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as the Nazi concept of " Cultural Bolshevism ", and is directly associated with the concept of "Jewish Bolshevism". According to philosopher Slavoj Žižek , the term Cultural Marxism "plays the same structural role as that of the 'Jewish plot' in anti-Semitism: it projects (or rather, transposes) the immanent antagonism of our socio-economic life onto an external cause: what

6105-435: Is a crude slander , referring to something that does not exist, unfortunately does not mean actual people are not being set up to pay the price, as scapegoats , to appease a rising sense of anger and anxiety. And for that reason, 'cultural Marxism' is not only a sad diversion from framing legitimate grievances but also a dangerous lure in an increasingly unhinged moment." Sociologists Julia Lux and John David Jordan argue that

6290-687: Is against "the Cathedral". Schmitt's friend–enemy distinction has inspired the French Nouvelle Droite idea of ethnopluralism . In a 1961 book deemed influential in the European far-right at large, French neo-fascist writer Maurice Bardèche introduced the idea that fascism could survive the 20th century under a new metapolitical guise adapted to the changes of the times. Rather than trying to revive doomed regimes with their single party , secret police or public display of Caesarism , Bardèche argued that its theorists should promote

6475-474: Is also considered among the most influential of the Frankfurt School critical theorists on American culture, due to his studies on student and counter-cultural movements on the 1960s. The legacy of the 1960s, of which Marcuse was a vital part, lives on, and the great refusal is still practiced by oppositional groups and individuals. Eros and Civilization is one of Marcuse's most notable works, and his insensitivity to human relatedness portrayed in this project

6660-426: Is an extreme assessment of political correctness, accusing the latter of being a project to destroy Christianity, nationalism , and the nuclear family . Scholars associated with the Frankfurt School sought to create a better society by warning against patriarchy and capitalist exploitation, goals that could seem threatening to others who have an interest in maintaining the status quo. The conspiracy theory exaggerates

6845-467: Is believed to be responsible for replacing a diversity of local cultures (especially white, Western culture) with generic consumerism . The concept was promoted by pick-up artist James C. Weidmann through his blog Chateau Heartiste . On July 22, 2011, Anders Breivik murdered 77 people in the 2011 Norway attacks . About 90 minutes before enacting the violence, Breivik e-mailed 1,003 people his manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence and

7030-587: Is considered the key failure of this work. His insights of psychoanalytic object relations theory in this project have not been wedded or reinterpreted, without abandoning its core principles. Marcuse's thought remains influential in the 21st century. In the introduction to an issue of the journal New Political Science dedicated to Marcuse, Robert Kirsch and Sarah Surak described his influence as "alive and well, vibrant across multiple fields of inquiry across many areas of social relations". Marcuse's concept of repressive tolerance attracted renewed attention following

7215-465: 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." Lind employed the conspiracy theory to argue that leftist and liberal ideologies were alien to

7400-467: Is known as the reverse post-material thesis blames both left-wing and progressive parties for embracing a post-material agenda (including feminism and environmentalism ) that alienates traditional working class voters. Another study argues that individuals who join far-right parties determine whether those parties develop into major political players or whether they remain marginalized. Early academic studies adopted psychoanalytical explanations for

7585-479: Is no general agreement as to where the mainstream ends and the extreme starts, and if there ever had been agreement on this, the recent shift in the mainstream would challenge it." Proponents of the horseshoe theory interpretation of the left–right political spectrum identify the far left and the far right as having more in common with each other as extremists than each of them has with centrists or moderates . This theory has received criticism, including

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7770-774: The American Renaissance have run articles with titles like "Cultural Marxism in Action: Media Matters Engineers Cancellation of Vdare.com Conference". The Daily Stormer regularly runs stories about "Cultural Marxism" with titles such as "Jewish Cultural Marxism is Destroying Abercrombie & Fitch ", "Hollywood Strikes Again: Cultural Marxism through the Medium of Big Box-Office Movies" and "The Left-Center-Right Political Spectrum of Immigration = Cultural Marxism". Neo-nazis associated with Stormfront have strategically used

7955-464: The 1973 Rwandan coup d'état , the far right National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND) was founded under president Juvénal Habyarimana . Between 1975 and 1991, the MRND was the only legal political party in the country. It was dominated by Hutus , particularly from Habyarimana's home region of Northern Rwanda. An elite group of MRND party members who were known to have influence on

8140-808: The 2011 Norway attacks , the conspiracy theory was taken up by a number of far-right outlets and forums, including alt-right websites such as AltRight Corporation , InfoWars and VDARE which have promoted the theory. The AltRight Corporation's website, altright.com, featured articles with titles such as "Ghostbusters and the Suicide of Cultural Marxism", "#3 — Sweden: The World Capital of Cultural Marxism" and "Beta Leftists, Cultural Marxism and Self-Entitlement". InfoWars ran numerous headlines such as "Is Cultural Marxism America's New Mainline Ideology?" VDARE ran similar articles with similar titles such as "Yes, Virginia (Dare) There Is A Cultural Marxism—And It's Taking Over Conservatism Inc." Richard B. Spencer , head of

8325-581: The 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway by Anders Breivik , a follower of the conspiracy theory, Minnicino repudiated his own essay. Minnicino wrote, "I still like to think that some of my research was validly conducted and useful. However, I see very clearly that the whole enterprise—and especially the conclusions—was hopelessly deformed by self-censorship and the desire to in some way support Mr. LaRouche's crack-brained world-view." Paul Weyrich and William Lind were prominent figures of cultural conservatism in

8510-593: The Auschwitz II (Birkenau) concentration camp, who fled first to Argentina, then Paraguay, before finally settling in Brazil in 1960. Mengele eventually drowned in 1979 in Bertioga , on the coast of São Paulo state, without ever having been recognized in his 19 years in Brazil. The far right has continued to operate throughout Brazil and a number of far-right parties existed in the modern era including Patriota ,

8695-648: The Bilderberg Group sought to influence world events via the spread of rock and roll music. Estulin's work was based on Minnicino's 1992 essay which emphasized Adorno's involvement in the Radio Research Project . Martin Jay described Estulin's text as "risible" and explained that, although some in the Frankfurt School wrote about the potential for mass media to pacify labor movements, it was something they lamented rather than planned to implement. Castro invited Estulin to Cuba, where they issued

8880-1054: The Bolsonaro family in Brazil , José Antonio Kast in Chile and Keiko Fujimori in Peru . Nationalists from Europe and the United States met at a Holiday Inn in St. Petersburg on March 22, 2015, for first convention of the International Russian Conservative Forum organized by pro-Putin Rodina -party. The event was attended by fringe right-wing extremists like Nordic Resistance Movement from Scandinavia but also by more mainstream MEPs from Golden Dawn and National Democratic Party of Germany . In addition to Rodina, Russian neo-Nazis from Russian Imperial Movement and Rusich Group were also in attendance. The event

9065-936: The Brazilian Labour Renewal Party , the Party of the Reconstruction of the National Order , the National Renewal Alliance and the Social Liberal Party as well as death squads such as the Command for Hunting Communists . Former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro was a member of the Alliance for Brazil , a far-right nationalist political group that aimed to become a political party, until 2022, when

9250-581: The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda continue to wage an insurgency against Rwanda from neighboring countries, where they are also involved in local conflicts and terrorism. The Interahamwe were the main perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, during which an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi, Twa and moderate Hutus were killed from April to July 1994 and the term Interahamwe

9435-698: The Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt . The Institute deposited their endowment in Holland in anticipation of the Nazi takeover, so Marcuse never actually worked in the school there. Instead, he began his work with the Institute in Geneva , where a branch office was formed after leaving Nazi Germany in May 1933. While a member of the Frankfurt School, Marcuse developed a model for critical social theory , created

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9620-731: The Jobbik party in Hungary. During the rise of Nazi Germany, far-right international organizations began to emerge in the 1930s with the International Conference of Fascist Parties in 1932 and the Fascist International Congress in 1934. During the 1934 Fascist International Conference, the Comitati d'Azione per l'Universalità di Roma  [ it ] (CAUR; English: Action Committees for

9805-506: The Ligue des Patriotes , with the common goal of a uniting the masses beyond social divisions. The Völkisch movement emerged in the late 19th century, drawing inspiration from German Romanticism and its fascination for a medieval Reich supposedly organized into a harmonious hierarchical order. Erected on the idea of " blood and soil ", it was a racialist , populist , agrarian , romantic nationalist and an antisemitic movement from

9990-626: The National Policy Institute , has promoted the conspiracy theory. Spencer's master's thesis was on the topic of Theodor Adorno. A combination of homophobia and anti-globalism within the alt-right has produced the concept of " globohomo ", a variant of "Cultural Marxism" alleging that media and business elites seek to impose a homogeneous "uniculture" on the world, and to weaken populations by promoting feminism, sexual freedom, gender fluidity, liberalism, and immigration. "Globohomo" stands in for global neoliberalism , which

10175-722: The Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency ) where he criticized the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the book Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (1958). In the 1960s and the 1970s, he became known as the pre-eminent theorist of the New Left and the student movements of West Germany , France , and the United States ; some consider him "the Father of

10360-658: The Republican Party and establishing strong ties with American contacts. In March 2019, Abascal tweeted an image of himself wearing a morion similar to a conquistador , with ABC writing in an article detailing the document that this event provided a narrative that "symbolizes in part the expansionist mood of Vox and its ideology far from Spain". The charter subsequently grew to include signers that had little to no relation to Latin America and Spanish-speaking areas. Vox has advised Javier Milei in Argentina ,

10545-662: The Union for the Republic . Throughout the reign of the Gnassingbé family, Togo has been extremely oppressive. According to a United States Department of State report based on conditions in 2010, human rights abuses are common and include "security force use of excessive force, including torture , which resulted in deaths and injuries; official impunity; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrests and detention; lengthy pretrial detention; executive influence over

10730-652: The University of Freiburg in 1922 on the German Künstlerroman , after which he moved back to Berlin, where he worked in publishing. Two years later he married Sophie Wertheim, a mathematician. He returned to Freiburg in 1928 to study with Edmund Husserl and write a habilitation with Martin Heidegger , which was published in 1932 as Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity ( Hegels Ontologie und die Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit ). This study

10915-493: The culture wars of the 1960s against liberals and Marxists, split from the mainstream conservatism of the "Old Right", forming a loose intellectual grouping (the " New Right ") that criticised the contemporaneous society and attempted to transform cultural norms and values. In the 21st century, The European New Right influenced the US alt-right to focus on nonviolent ways to delegitimize the liberal status quo. This included criticising

11100-500: The génocidaires . Kabuga was arrested in France on 16 May 2020, and charged with crimes against humanity . The Interahamwe was formed around 1990 as the youth wing of the MRND and enjoyed the backing of the Hutu Power government. The Interahamwe were driven out of Rwanda after Tutsi -led Rwandan Patriotic Front victory in the Rwandan Civil War in July 1994 and are considered a terrorist organisation by many African and Western governments. The Interahamwe and splinter groups such as

11285-424: The political spectrum : "the left considers the key inequalities between people to be artificial and negative, which should be overcome by an active state, whereas the right believes that inequalities between people are natural and positive, and should be either defended or left alone by the state." Aspects of far-right ideology can be identified in the agenda of some contemporary right-wing parties: in particular,

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11470-400: The " European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg is a cultural-Marxist-controlled political entity." A number of other far-right terrorists have espoused the conspiracy theory. Jack Renshaw , a neo-Nazi child sex offender convicted of plotting the assassination of Labour MP Rosie Cooper , promoted the conspiracy theory in a video for the British National Party . John T. Earnest,

11655-412: The " godfather " of the alt-right. He defended William Lind against accusations that "Cultural Marxism" has anti-semitic undertones. Gottfried identifies as reactionary and questions the value of political equality . Gottfried defines cultural Marxism as "a particular movement for change that combines some elements of Marxist socialism with a call for sexual and cultural revolution". However, he says that

11840-439: The "intellectual momentum" of the conspiracy theory, and to Anders Breivik as the "violent impetus". Both of them relied on Lind, who edited a multi-authored work called "Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology" that Jamin calls the core text that "has been unanimously cited as 'the' reference since 2004." Lind and the Free Congress Foundation produced the video Political Correctness: The Frankfurt School in 1999. It

12025-415: The "redemptive community" can eventually leave the current phase of liminal crisis to usher in the new era. The community itself is idealized through great archetypal figures (the Golden Age , the savior, decadence and global conspiracy theories ) as they glorify non-rationalistic and non- materialistic values such as the youth or the cult of the dead. Political scientist Cas Mudde argues that

12210-451: The 1900s onward as a consequence of a growing exclusive and racial connotation. They idealized the myth of an "original nation", that still could be found at their times in the rural regions of Germany, a form of "primitive democracy freely subjected to their natural elites." Thinkers led by Arthur de Gobineau , Houston Stewart Chamberlain , Alexis Carrel and Georges Vacher de Lapouge distorted Darwin 's theory of evolution to advocate

12395-423: The 1920s and 1930s, a local brand of religious fascism appeared known as Brazilian Integralism , coalescing around the party known as Brazilian Integralist Action . It adopted many characteristics of European fascist movements, including a green-shirted paramilitary organization with uniformed ranks, highly regimented street demonstrations and rhetoric against Marxism and liberalism . Prior to World War II,

12580-418: The 1980s, far-right groups began to solidify themselves through official political avenues. With the founding of the European Union in 1993, far-right groups began to espouse Euroscepticism , nationalist and anti-migrant beliefs. By 2010, the Eurosceptic group European Alliance for Freedom emerged and saw some prominence during the 2014 European Parliament election . The majority of far-right groups in

12765-511: The 1990s, the "winning formula" was often to attract anti-immigrant blue collar workers and white collar workers who wanted less state intervention in the economy, but in the 2000s, this switched to welfare chauvinism . In comparing the Western European and post-Communist Central European far-right, Kopeček writes that "[t]he Central European far right was also typified by a strong anti-Communism, much more markedly than in Western Europe", allowing for "a basic ideological classification within

12950-414: The 19th century, such as Joseph de Maistre and Friedrich Nietzsche , were highly critical of the French Revolution. Those who advocated a return to the absolute monarchy during the 19th century called themselves "ultra-monarchists" and embraced a " mystic " and " providentialist " vision of the world where royal dynasties were seen as the "repositories of divine will". The opposition to liberal modernity

13135-484: The 2010s and is now found globally. The conspiracy theory of a Marxist culture war is promoted by right-wing politicians, fundamentalist religious leaders, political commentators in mainstream print and television media, and white supremacist terrorists , and has been described as "a foundational element of the alt-right worldview". Scholarly analysis of the conspiracy theory has concluded that it has no basis in fact. European reactionaries, following their defeat in

13320-424: The 2010s began to establish international contacts with right-wing coalitions to develop a solidified platform. In 2017, Steve Bannon would create The Movement , an organization to create an international far-right group based on Aleksandr Dugin 's The Fourth Political Theory , for the 2019 European Parliament election . The European Alliance for Freedom would also reorganize into Identity and Democracy for

13505-605: The 2019 European Parliament election. The far-right Spanish party Vox initially introduced the Madrid Charter project, a planned group to denounce left-wing groups in Ibero-America , to the government of United States president Donald Trump while visiting the United States in February 2019, with Santiago Abascal and Rafael Bardají using their good relations with the administration to build support within

13690-517: The European Union cut off aid in reaction to the regime's human-rights offenses. After's Eyadema's death in 2005, his son Faure Gnassingbe took over, then stood down and was re-elected in elections that were widely described as fraudulent and occasioned violence that resulted in as many as 600 deaths and the flight from Togo of 40,000 refugees. In 2012, Faure Gnassingbe dissolved the RTP and created

13875-456: The Frankfurt School as a euphemism to refer to Jewish people more generally, in venues where more forthright anti-semitism would be censored or rejected. Timothy Matthews criticized the Frankfurt School from an explicitly Christian right perspective in the Catholic weekly newspaper The Wanderer . According to Matthews, the Frankfurt School, under the influence of Satan , seeks to destroy

14060-409: The Frankfurt School plan to destroy Western culture. Firstly, a cultural critique, by Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin , to use art and culture to promote alienation and replace Christianity with socialism . This included the development of opinion polling and advertising techniques to brainwash the populace and control political campaigning. Secondly, the plan supposedly included attacks on

14245-439: The Frankfurt School's members were part of any kind of international conspiracy to destroy Western civilization , and Horkheimer strictly prohibited members of the Frankfurt school from engaging in political activism in the United States. According to Marc Tuters , "the analysis of Marxism proffered by this literature would certainly not stand up to scrutiny by any serious historian of the subject." Conspiracy theorists misrepresent

14430-541: The Marxist concern with labor, instead claiming, according to Leszek Kołakowski , that since "all questions of material existence have been solved, moral commands and prohibitions are no longer relevant." He regarded the realization of man's erotic nature as the true liberation of humanity, which inspired the utopias of Jerry Rubin and others. Marcuse's critiques of capitalist society (especially his 1955 synthesis of Marx and Sigmund Freud , Eros and Civilization , and his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man ) resonated with

14615-569: The Nazi Party had been making and distributing propaganda among ethnic Germans in Brazil. The Nazi regime built close ties with Brazil through the estimated 100 thousand native Germans and 1 million German descendants living in Brazil at the time. In 1928, the Brazilian section of the Nazi Party was founded in Timbó, Santa Catarina. This section reached 2,822 members and was the largest section of

14800-546: The Nazi Party outside Germany. About 100 thousand born Germans and about one million descendants lived in Brazil at that time. After Germany's defeat in World War II, many Nazi war criminals fled to Brazil and hid among the German-Brazilian communities. The most notable example of this was Josef Mengele , a Nazi SS officer and physician known as the "Angel of Death" for his deadly experiments on prisoners at

14985-574: The Nazi-inspired phrase legitimacy for the American right. It is dropped in or quoted in other stories—some of them lighthearted, like the fashion cues of the alt-right—without describing how fringe this notion is. It's akin to letting conspiracy theories about chem trails or vaccines get unearned space in mainstream press." Another is Andrew Sullivan , who went on "to denounce 'cultural Marxists' for inspiring social justice movements on campuses." Paul and Sunshine argue that failure to highlight

15170-655: The Nazis, the Frankfurter [ sic ] School and its vaguely Jewish exponents fell under the rubric of Kulturbolshewismus , 'Cultural Bolshevism.'" Andrew Woods in the essay "Cultural Marxism and the Cathedral: Two Alt-Right Perspectives on Critical Theory" (2019), acknowledges comparisons to Cultural Bolshevism, but argues against the idea the modern conspiracy theory was derived from Nazi propaganda. He writes instead that its antisemitism

15355-539: The New Left". His best-known works are Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964). His Marxist scholarship inspired many radical intellectuals and political activists in the 1960s and 1970s, both in the United States and internationally. Herbert Marcuse was born July 19, 1898, in Berlin , to Carl Marcuse and Gertrud Kreslawsky. Marcuse's family was a German upper-middle-class Jewish family that

15540-581: The Office of War Information, and afterward the Office of Strategic Services. Marcuse went on to teach at Brandeis University and the University of California, San Diego , later in his career. In 1940, he became a US citizen and resided in the country until his death in 1979. Although he never returned to Germany to live, he remained one of the major theorists associated with the Frankfurt School, along with Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (among others). In 1940, Marcuse published Reason and Revolution ,

15725-584: The President and his wife Agathe Habyarimana are known as the akazu , an informal organization of Hutu extremists whose members planned and lead the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Prominent Hutu businessman and member of the akazu, Félicien Kabuga was one of the genocides main financiers, providing thousands of machetes which were used to commit the genocide. Kabuga also founded Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines , used to broadcast propaganda and direct

15910-806: The Research and Analysis (R&A) Branch was the largest American research institution in the first half of the twentieth century. At its zenith between 1943 and 1945, it employed over twelve hundred, four hundred of whom were stationed abroad. In many respects, it was the site where post-World War II American social science was born, with protégés of some of the most esteemed American university professors, as well as numerous European intellectual émigrés, in its ranks. In March 1943, Marcuse joined fellow Frankfurt School scholar Franz Neumann in R&;A's Central European Section as senior analyst; there he rapidly established himself as "the leading analyst on Germany". After

16095-560: The Rwandan genocide. The far right in South Africa emerged as the Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) in 1969, formed by Albert Hertzog as breakaway from the predominant right-wing South African National Party , an Afrikaner ethno-nationalist party that implemented the racist, segregationist program of apartheid , the legal system of political, economic and social separation of the races intended to maintain and extend political and economic control of South Africa by

16280-458: The United States. He argued that Lukács and Antonio Gramsci had aimed to subvert Western culture because it was an obstacle to the Marxist goal of proletarian revolution . He alleged that the Frankfurt School under Max Horkheimer had hoped to destroy Western civilization and establish totalitarianism (even though some members had fled Nazi totalitarianism ), using four main strategies. First, Lind said, Horkheimer's critical theory would undermine

16465-640: The United States; Weyrich had co-founded right-wing groups including the Free Congress Foundation , which he led. Weyrich equated political correctness with Cultural Marxism in a speech to the Conservative Leadership Conference of the Civitas Institute in 1998. He argued that "we have lost the culture war" and that "a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from

16650-682: The Universality of Rome), created by Benito Mussolini 's Fascist Regime to create a network for a "Fascist International", representatives from far-right groups gathered in Montreux , Switzerland , including Romania 's Iron Guard , Norway 's Nasjonal Samling , the Greek National Socialist Party , Spain 's Falange movement, Ireland's Blueshirts , France 's Mouvement Franciste and Portugal 's União Nacional , among others. However, no international group

16835-537: The White minority. The HNP was formed after the South African National Party re-established diplomatic relations with Malawi and legislated to allow Māori players and spectators to enter the country during the 1970 New Zealand rugby union team tour in South Africa. The HNP advocated for a Calvinist , racially segregated and Afrikaans -speaking nation. In 1973, Eugène Terre'Blanche ,

17020-400: The actual work of the Frankfurt School. Breitbart News has published the idea that Theodor Adorno 's atonal music was an attempt at inducing mental illness on a mass scale. Former Breitbart contributors Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk , founder of Turning Point USA , have promoted the conspiracy theory, especially the claim that Cultural Marxist activity is happening in universities. In

17205-422: The argument that it has been centrists who have supported far-right and fascist regimes over socialist ones. Jens Rydgren describes a number of theories as to why individuals support far-right political parties and the academic literature on this topic distinguishes between demand-side theories that have changed the "interests, emotions, attitudes and preferences of voters" and supply-side theories which focus on

17390-628: The authority of family and government while segregating society into opposing groups of victims and oppressors. Second, he said, concepts of the authoritarian personality and the F-scale measuring susceptibility to fascism, developed by Adorno, would be used to accuse Americans with right-wing views of having fascist principles. Third, he said, polymorphous perversity would undermine family structure by promoting free love and homosexuality . Fourth, he characterized Herbert Marcuse as saying that left victim-groups should be allowed to speak while groups on

17575-414: The broader family of the far right, the extreme right is revolutionary, opposing popular sovereignty and majority rule, and sometimes supporting violence, whereas the radical right is reformist, accepting free elections, but opposing fundamental elements of liberal democracy such as minority rights, rule of law, or separation of powers. After a survey of the academic literature, Mudde concluded in 2002 that

17760-409: The claims of the conspiracy theorists, postmodernism tends to be wary of or even hostile towards Marxism, including towards the grand narratives typically supported by Critical Theory. The author Matthew Rose wrote that arguments by the American neo-Nazi Francis Parker Yockey after World War II were an early example of the conspiracy theory. William Lind on one occasion presented his theories at

17945-422: The commodities that they buy, thus making commodities extensions of people's minds and bodies. Affluent mass technological societies, he argues, are controlled and manipulated. In societies based upon mass production and mass distribution, the individual worker has become merely a consumer of its commodities and entire commodified way of life. Modern capitalism has created false needs and false consciousness geared to

18130-503: The concept of "the masses" was introduced into the political debate through industrialization and the universal suffrage , a new right-wing founded on national and social ideas began to emerge, what Zeev Sternhell has called the "revolutionary right" and a foreshadowing of fascism . The rift between the left and nationalists was furthermore accentuated by the emergence of anti-militarist and anti-patriotic movements like anarchism or syndicalism , which shared even fewer similarities with

18315-633: The concerns of the student movement in the 1960s because of his willingness to speak at student protests and his essay " Repressive Tolerance " (1965). He had been given the title “Philosopher of the New Left” for his rejection of the traditions of Western civilization. The New Left provided an attractive alternative to American society and Marcuse was able to appeal to many young individuals through his teachings of utopianism. His ideas critiqued contemporary liberalism and its conservative vestiges of nineteenth-century liberalism. Marcuse then soon became known in

18500-507: The consciousness of this fact has not yet penetrated the Movement as a whole". Many themes and ambitions from Marcuse's work found embodiment in socialist feminism, especially ideas developed in Eros and Civilization . It involved changes not only in the structural power relations of society, but in the instinctual drives of individual human beings. Although he regarded women's participation in

18685-465: The conservative alt-right deplores as the ethical disintegration of our lives ( feminism , attacks on patriarchy , political correctness , etc.) must have an external cause—because it cannot, for them, emerge out of the antagonisms and tensions of our own societies." Dominic Green wrote a conservative critique of conservatives' complaints about Cultural Marxism in Spectator USA , stating: "For

18870-640: The conspiracy theory can be broken down into its key elements: " misogynist anti-feminism, neo- eugenic science (broadly defined as various forms of genetic determinism ), genetic and cultural white supremacy , McCarthyist anti-Leftism fixated on postmodernism , radical anti-intellectualism applied to the social sciences, and the idea that a purge is required to restore normality." They go on to say that all of these items are "supported, proselytised and academically buoyed by intellectuals, politicians, and media figures with extremely credible educational backgrounds." In "Taking On Hate: One NGO's Strategies" (2009),

19055-408: The consumption of commodities : it locks one-dimensional man into the one-dimensional society which produced the need for people to recognize themselves in their commodities. The very mechanism that ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs that it has produced. Most important of all, the pressure of consumerism has led to the total integration of

19240-414: The core of the far right's worldview is organicism , the idea that society functions as a complete, organized and homogeneous living being. Adapted to the community they wish to constitute or reconstitute (whether based on ethnicity, nationality, religion or race), the concept leads them to reject every form of universalism in favor of autophilia and alterophobia , or in other words the idealization of

19425-614: The core philosophical idea of fascism regardless of its framework, i.e. the concept that only a minority, "the physically saner, the morally purer, the most conscious of national interest", can represent best the community and serve the less gifted in what Bardèche calls a new " feudal contract". Another influence on contemporary far-right thought has been the Traditionalist School , which included Julius Evola , and has influenced Steve Bannon and Aleksandr Dugin , advisors to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as well as

19610-538: The critique of Soviet or Nazi regimes to characterize developments in the advanced industrial world. Second, his grounding of critical theory in a particular use of psychoanalytic thought. During his years in Freiburg, Marcuse wrote a series of essays that explored the possibility of synthesizing Marxism and Heidegger's fundamental ontology, as begun in the latter's work Being and Time (1927). This early interest in Heidegger followed Marcuse's demand for "concrete philosophy," which, he declared in 1928, "concerns itself with

19795-578: The decay of traditional education, and even environmentalism , are ultimately attributable to the insidious intellectual influence of the members of the Institute for Social Research who came to America in the 1930s. Lind's documentary also featured Lazlo Pasztor, a former member of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party who collaborated with the Nazis , and later served five years in prison for crimes against humanity . David Solway sees

19980-411: The disappearance of historic frames of reference (e.g. law and order , the family, the ethnic, linguistic and religious community and nation as well as the natural environment ) and a socioeconomic program associating corporatism , state control of certain sectors, agrarianism , and a varying degree of belief in the free play of socially Darwinistic market forces. Mudde then proposes a subdivision of

20165-713: The dissolution of the OSS in 1945, Marcuse was employed by the US Department of State as head of the Central European section, becoming an intelligence analyst of Nazism. A compilation of Marcuse's reports was published in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort (2013). He retired after the death of his first wife in 1951. Marcuse began his teaching career as

20350-587: The dog-whistles he's emitting". Spencer Sunshine and journalist Ari Paul have criticized traditional media such as The New York Times , New York Magazine and The Washington Post for their coverage of the conspiracy theory, arguing that they have either not clarified the nature of the conspiracy theory or "allow[ed] it to live on their pages." An example is an article in The New York Times by David Brooks , who Paul and Sunshine argue "rebrands cultural Marxism as mere political correctness, giving

20535-532: The early 1990s, the organization terrorized and killed black South Africans. Togo has been ruled by members of the Gnassingbé family and the far-right military dictatorship formerly known as the Rally of the Togolese People since 1969. Despite the legalisation of political parties in 1991 and the ratification of a democratic constitution in 1992, the regime continues to be regarded as oppressive. In 1993,

20720-476: The extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc. Marcuse later expressed his radical ideas through three pieces of writing. He wrote An Essay on Liberation in 1969, in which he celebrated liberation movements such as those in Vietnam , which inspired many radicals. In 1972 he wrote Counterrevolution and Revolt , which argues that the hopes of the 1960s were facing a counterrevolution from

20905-479: The far end of the right, distinguished from more mainstream right-wing ideologies by its opposition to liberal democratic norms and emphasis on exclusivist views. Far-right ideologies have historically included fascism , Nazism , and Falangism , while contemporary manifestations also incorporate neo-fascism , neo-Nazism , white supremacism , and various other movements characterized by chauvinism , xenophobia , and theocratic or reactionary beliefs. Key to

21090-421: The far right can be viewed as a combination of four broadly defined concepts, namely exclusivism (e.g. racism , xenophobia , ethnocentrism , ethnopluralism , chauvinism , including welfare chauvinism ), anti-democratic and non-individualist traits (e.g. cult of personality , hierarchism , monism , populism , anti-particracy , an organicist view of the state), a traditionalist value system lamenting

21275-485: The far right's support. The 1933 publication The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich argued the theory that fascists came to power in Germany as a result of sexual repression . For some far-right parties in Western Europe, the issue of immigration has become the dominant issue among them, so much so that some scholars refer to these parties as "anti-immigrant" parties. The French Revolution in 1789 created

21460-409: The far right, as they have historically favored a social Darwinistic or elitist hierarchy based on the belief in the legitimacy of the rule of a supposed superior minority over the inferior masses. Regarding the socio-cultural dimension of nationality, culture and migration, one far-right position is the view that certain ethnic, racial or religious groups should stay separate, based on the belief that

21645-483: The far right. The latter began to develop a "nationalist mysticism" entirely different from that on the left, and antisemitism turned into a credo of the far right, marking a break from the traditional economic "anti-Judaism" defended by parts of the far left, in favour of a racial and pseudo-scientific notion of alterity . Various nationalist leagues began to form across Europe like the Pan-German League or

21830-487: The far-right appeals to those who believe in maintaining strict cultural and ethnic divisions and a return to traditional social hierarchies and values. In practice, far-right movements differ widely by region and historical context. In Western Europe, they have often focused on anti-immigration and anti-globalism , while in Eastern Europe, strong anti-communist rhetoric is more common. The United States has seen

22015-474: The far-right nebula into moderate and radical leanings, according to their degree of exclusionism and essentialism . The Encyclopedia of Politics: The Left and the Right states that far-right politics include "persons or groups who hold extreme nationalist, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, religious fundamentalist, or other reactionary views." While the term far right is typically applied to fascists and neo-Nazis , it has also been used to refer to those to

22200-558: The far-right worldview is the notion of societal purity, often invoking ideas of a homogeneous "national" or "ethnic" community. This view generally promotes organicism , which perceives society as a unified, natural entity under threat from diversity or modern pluralism . Far-right movements frequently target perceived threats to their idealized community, whether ethnic, religious, or cultural, leading to anti-immigrant sentiments , welfare chauvinism , and, in extreme cases, political violence or oppression. According to political theorists,

22385-498: The global dimension of the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, there is its innovative and original dimension, which lets its authors avoid racist discourses and pretend to be defenders of democracy. As such, Cultural Marxism is innovative in comparison with old styled theories of a similar nature, such as those involving Freemasons , Bavarian Illuminati , Jews or even Wall Street bankers. For Lind, Buchanan and Breivik,

22570-437: The great names of freedom and reason while betraying their substance at every important point." Herbert Marcuse appealed to students of the New Left through his emphasis on the power of critical thought and his vision of total human emancipation and a non-repressive civilization. He supported students he felt were subject to the pressures of a commodifying system, and has been regarded as an inspirational intellectual leader. He

22755-603: The idea of metapolitics . The apocalyptic strain of thought begins in Oswald Spengler 's The Decline of the West and is shared by Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist . It continues in The Death of the West by Pat Buchanan as well as in fears over Islamization of Europe . Ernst Jünger was concerned about rootless cosmopolitan elites while de Benoist and Buchanan oppose the managerial state and Curtis Yarvin

22940-529: The idea that "the working men [had] no country." The main reason for that ideological confusion can be found in the consequences of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which according to Swiss historian Philippe Burrin had completely redesigned the political landscape in Europe by diffusing the idea of an anti-individualistic concept of "national unity" rising above the right and left division. As

23125-808: The idea that superior persons should dominate society while undesirable elements should be purged, which in extreme cases has resulted in genocides . Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London, distinguishes between fascism and right-wing nationalist parties which are often described as far right such as the National Front in France. Mudde notes that the most successful European far-right parties in 2019 were "former mainstream right-wing parties that have turned into populist radical right ones." According to historian Mark Sedgwick , "[t]here

23310-512: The importance of rock and roll, for example, as a symbol for New Left activism. He had many speaking engagements in the US and Western Bloc in the late 1960s and 1970s. He became a close friend and inspirer of the French philosopher André Gorz . Marcuse defended the arrested East German dissident Rudolf Bahro (author of Die Alternative: Zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus [trans., The Alternative in Eastern Europe ]), discussing in

23495-515: The individual's intersubjective growth. Leszek Kołakowski described Marcuse's views as essentially anti-Marxist, in that they ignored Marx's critique of Hegel and discarded the historical theory of class struggle entirely in favor of an inverted Freudian reading of human history where all social rules could and should be discarded to create a "New World of Happiness." Kołakowski concluded that Marcuse's ideal society "is to be ruled despotically by an enlightened group [who] have realized in themselves

23680-434: The influence of the Frankfurt School; Stuart Jeffries , discussing it, noted their "negligible real-world impact". According to Joan Braune, Cultural Marxism in the sense referred to by the conspiracy theorists never existed, and does not correspond to any historical school of thought. She also states that Frankfurt School scholars are referred to as "Critical Theorists", not "Cultural Marxists". She points out that, contrary to

23865-662: The institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture." For the Free Congress Foundation, Weyrich commissioned Lind, a paleoconservative activist, to write a history of Cultural Marxism, defined as "a brand of Western Marxism ... commonly known as ' multiculturalism ' or, less formally, Political Correctness." In the 2000 speech The Origins of Political Correctness , Lind wrote, "If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political correctness

24050-532: The interests of one's own group should be prioritized. In western Europe, far right parties have been associated with anti-immigrant policies, as well as opposition to globalism and European integration . They often make nationalist and xenophobic appeals which make allusions to ethnic nationalism rather than civic nationalism (or liberal nationalism). Some have at their core illiberal policies such as removing checks on executive authority , and protections for minorities from majority ( multipluralism ). In

24235-595: The judiciary; infringement of citizens' privacy rights; restrictions on freedoms of press , assembly , and movement; official corruption; discrimination and violence against women; child abuse, including female genital mutilation (FGM), and sexual exploitation of children; regional and ethnic discrimination; trafficking in persons, especially women and children; societal discrimination against persons with disabilities; official and societal discrimination against homosexual persons; societal discrimination against persons with HIV ; and forced labor, including by children." During

24420-457: The labor force as positive, and a necessary condition for women's liberation, Marcuse did not consider it sufficient for true freedom. He hoped for a shift in moral values away from aggressive and masculine qualities towards feminine ones. Jessica Benjamin and Nancy Chodorow believed that Marcuse's reliance on Freud's drive theory as the source of the desire for societal change is inadequate for both philosophers since he fails to account for

24605-563: The late 2010s, Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson popularized the term, for example, by blaming "Cultural Marxism" for demanding the use of gender-neutral pronouns as a threat to free speech, thus moving the term into mainstream discourse. Critics state that Peterson misuses postmodernism as a stand-in term for the conspiracy without understanding its antisemitic implications, specifying that "Peterson isn't an ideological anti-Semite; there's every reason to believe that when he re-broadcasts fascist propaganda, he doesn't even hear

24790-513: The manner in which they lived due to the mechanism of repression of technological advances. The use of technology allowed people to not be aware of what is occurring around them such as the fact that they might soon be out of their jobs because these technologies are carrying out their same jobs quicker and cheaper. He claimed the modern-day workers were not as rebellious as before during the Karl Marx era (19th century). They just freely conformed to

24975-452: The margins." Andrew Breitbart , founder of Breitbart News , authored a 2011 book Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World that represents one of the conspiracy theory's moves towards the mainstream. Breitbart's interpretation of the conspiracy is similar in most respects to that of Lind. Breitbart attributes the spread of the ideas of the Frankfurt School from universities to

25160-528: The media as "Father of the New Left." Contending that the students of the '60s were not waiting for the publication of his work to act, Marcuse brushed the media's branding of him as "Father of the New Left" aside lightly, saying: "It would have been better to call me not the father, but the grandfather, of the New Left." His work strongly influenced intellectual discourse on popular culture and scholarly popular culture studies . In particular, he influenced youth because he "spoke their language." He understood

25345-477: The media, which claimed that he openly advocated violence, although he often clarified that only "violence of defense" could be appropriate, not "violence of aggression". He continued to promote Marxian theory, with some of his students helping to spread his ideas. He published his final work The Aesthetic Dimension in 1977 on the role of art in the process of what he termed "emancipation" from bourgeois society. Marcuse felt that societal reform may be found among

25530-466: The modern ambiguities in the definition of far-right politics lie in the fact that the concept is generally used by political adversaries to "disqualify and stigmatize all forms of partisan nationalism by reducing them to the historical experiments of Italian Fascism [and] German National Socialism ." Mudde agrees and notes that "the term is not only used for scientific purposes but also for political purposes. Several authors define right-wing extremism as

25715-612: The most common term is " radical right ", which has a broader meaning than the European radical right . Mudde defines the American radical right as an "old school of nativism, populism, and hostility to central government [which] was said to have developed into the post-World War II combination of ultranationalism and anti-communism, Christian fundamentalism, militaristic orientation, and anti-alien sentiment." Jodi Dean argues that "the rise of far-right anti-communism in many parts of

25900-561: The nature of Theodor Adorno's work on the Princeton Radio Project , wherein Adorno sought to understand the ability of mass media to influence the public, which he saw as a danger to be mitigated, rather than a plan to be implemented. Conspiracy theorists position themselves as defending "Western civilization", which serves as a floating signifier often focusing on capitalism and freedom of speech . The conspiracy theory

26085-563: The nature of the conspiracy theory "has bitter consequences. 'It is legitimizing the use of that framework, and therefore it's coded antisemitism.'" Supporters of the conspiracy theory include paleoconservative political philosopher Paul Gottfried . Gottfried was at one time a student of Herbert Marcuse (with whom he disagreed) and edited the academic journal Telos . Under Gottfried's tenure, Telos became far-right in its outlook, writing favorably about Carl Schmitt and Alain de Benoist . Gottfried influenced Richard Spencer and has been called

26270-551: The outcast of society, thus he supported movements such as the Feminist movement. Marcuse was particularly concerned with Feminism near the end of his life, for reasons he explained in a public lecture Marxism and Feminism in 1974, mentioning this in a Stanford lecture, "I believe the Women’s Liberation Movement is perhaps the most important and potentially the most radical political movement that we have - even if

26455-686: The party described it as the "party of organized violence". The new government promptly reversed the democratic reforms initiated during the Guatemalan Revolution and the agrarian reform program ( Decree 900 ) that was the main project of president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman and which directly impacted the interests of both the United Fruit Company and the Guatemalan landowners. Herbert Marcuse Between 1943 and 1950, Marcuse worked in U.S. government service for

26640-621: The party was disbanded. Since 2022, he is a member of the Liberal Party . Bolsonaro has been widely described by numerous media organizations as far right. In Guatemala, the far-right government of Carlos Castillo Armas utilized death squads after coming to power in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état . Along with other far-right extremists, Castillo Armas started the National Liberation Movement ( Movimiento de Liberación Nacional , or MLN). The founders of

26825-475: The past quarter century" and conclude that "[t]hrough the lens of the Cultural Marxist conspiracy, however, it is possible to discern a relationship of empowerment between mainstream and fringe, whereby certain talking points and tropes are able to be transmitted, taken up and adapted by 'mainstream' figures, thus giving credence and visibility to ideologies that would have previously been constrained to

27010-408: The perceived decline of Western culture and the influence of pop culture, which they claimed was the result of a collusion between capitalism and what they called "Cultural Marxism". Michael Minnicino's 1992 essay New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and 'Political Correctness' has been described as a starting point for the contemporary conspiracy theory in the United States. Minnicino's interest in

27195-443: The perpetrator of the 2019 Poway synagogue shooting , was inspired by white nationalist ideology. In an online manifesto, Earnest stated that he believed "every Jew is responsible for the meticulously planned genocide of the European race " through the promotion of "cultural Marxism and communism." Concerning the real-life political violence caused by the conspiracy theory, law professor Samuel Moyn wrote: "That 'cultural Marxism'

27380-436: The plate for a very long time," going on to confirm that the Frankfurt school were Marxists concerned with culture, and that Marcuse promulgated the idea of repressive tolerance. However, the conspiracy theory presents an "improverished cartoon version" of these ideas. Jay wrote that Lind's documentary was effective Cultural Marxism propaganda because it "spawned a number of condensed, textual versions, which were reproduced on

27565-474: The political philosopher Robert Paul Wolff , and also a friend of the Columbia University sociology professor C. Wright Mills , one of the founders of the New Left movement. In his "Introduction" to One-Dimensional Man , Marcuse wrote: "I should like to emphasize the vital importance of the work of C. Wright Mills." In the post-war period, Marcuse rejected the theory of class struggle and

27750-447: The political scientist Heidi Beirich says the Cultural Marxism theory demonizes the cultural bêtes noires of conservatism such as feminists , LGBT social movements , secular humanists , multiculturalists , sex educators , environmentalists , immigrants and black nationalists . Jamin writes on the flexibility of the conspiracy theory to serve the rhetorical purposes of different groups with diverse sets of enemies: Next to

27935-491: The president's son who "enthusiastically described Steve Bannon as an opponent of Cultural Marxism." Jair Bolsonaro sought to expunge the influence of Paulo Freire from Brazilian universities. This had the opposite effect , driving sales of Freire's book Pedagogy of the Oppressed . In 2010, former head of state Fidel Castro called attention to a version of the conspiracy theory by Daniel Estulin , which proposed that

28120-498: The primacy Marxism affords to economics as much as they oppose liberal or conservative ideas." Shortly after the Norway attacks, mainstream right-wing politicians began espousing the conspiracy. In 2013, Cory Bernardi , a member of the ruling Liberal Party , wrote in his book The Conservative Revolution that "cultural Marxism has been one of the most corrosive influences on society over the last century." Five years later, Fraser Anning , former Australian Senator, initially sitting as

28305-436: The programmes of parties, their organization and the opportunity structures within individual political systems. The most common demand-side theories are the social breakdown thesis , the relative deprivation thesis , the modernization losers thesis and the ethnic competition thesis . The rise of far-right parties has also been viewed as a rejection of post-materialist values on the part of some voters. This theory which

28490-636: The right of mainstream right-wing politics . According to political scientist Lubomír Kopeček, "[t]he best working definition of the contemporary far right may be the four-element combination of nationalism, xenophobia, law and order, and welfare chauvinism proposed for the Western European environment by Cas Mudde." Relying on those concepts, far-right politics includes yet is not limited to aspects of authoritarianism , anti-communism and nativism . Claims that superior people should have greater rights than inferior people are often associated with

28675-436: The right were silenced. Lind said that Marcuse considered a coalition of " Blacks , students, feminist women, and homosexuals" as a feasible vanguard of cultural revolution in the 1960s. Lind also wrote that Cultural Marxism was an example of fourth-generation warfare . Pat Buchanan brought more attention among paleoconservatives to Weyrich and Lind's iteration of the conspiracy theory. Jérôme Jamin refers to Buchanan as

28860-435: The right. After Brandeis denied the renewal of his teaching contract in 1965, Marcuse taught at the University of California San Diego . In 1968, California Governor Ronald Reagan and other conservatives objected to his reappointment, but the university decided to let his contract run until 1970. He devoted the rest of his life to teaching, writing and giving lectures around the world. His efforts brought him attention from

29045-597: The sake of their expediency." In Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right , Cynthia Miller-Idriss examines the far-right as a global movement and representing a cluster of overlapping " antidemocratic , antiegalitarian, white supremacist " beliefs that are "embedded in solutions like authoritarianism , ethnic cleansing or ethnic migration, and the establishment of separate ethno-states or enclaves along racial and ethnic lines". According to Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg ,

29230-549: The subject derived from his involvement in the LaRouche movement . Lyndon LaRouche had begun developing conspiracy theories regarding the Frankfurt School in 1974, when he alleged that Herbert Marcuse and Angela Davis were acting as part of COINTELPRO . Other features of the conspiracy theory had developed across the 1970s and 80s in the movement's magazine, EIR , according to the researcher Andrew Woods. Minnicino's essay argued that late twentieth-century America had become

29415-409: The substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other ethnicities and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable. These were the people whose standards of living demanded the ending of intolerable conditions and institutions and whose resistance to one-dimensional society would not be diverted by the system. Their opposition was revolutionary even if their consciousness

29600-459: The supposed Christian values of traditionalist conservatism and seeks to replace them with culturally liberal values. A contemporary revival of the Nazi propaganda term " Cultural Bolshevism ", the contemporary version of the conspiracy theory originated in the United States during the 1990s. Originally found only on the far-right political fringe, the term began to enter mainstream discourse in

29785-418: The system they were under for the sake of satisfying their needs and survival. Since they had conformed, the people's revolution that Marcuse felt was necessary never happened. As a result, rather than looking to the workers as the revolutionary vanguard, Marcuse put his faith in an alliance between radical intellectuals and those groups not yet integrated into one-dimensional society: the socially marginalized,

29970-399: The term "cultural Marxism" is not ideal since the connection with Marxism is tenuous. Gottfried writes that the influence of the Frankfurt School lives on in modern left-wing politics mainly in the form of a tendency to conflate the right wing with fascism. The conspiracy theory states that an elite of Marxist theorists and Frankfurt School intellectuals are subverting Western society. None of

30155-459: The terms "right-wing extremism", " right-wing populism ", "national populism", or "neo-populism" were often used as synonyms by scholars (or, nonetheless, terms with "striking similarities"), except notably among a few authors studying the extremist-theoretical tradition. Italian philosopher and political scientist Norberto Bobbio argues that attitudes towards equality are primarily what distinguish left-wing politics from right-wing politics on

30340-612: The threat does not come from the migrant or the Jew because he is a migrant or a Jew. For Lind, the threat comes from the Communist ideology, which is considered as a danger for freedom and democracy, and which is associated with different authoritarian political regimes (Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba, etc.). For Buchanan, the threat comes from atheism , relativism and hard capitalism which, when combined, transform people and nations into an uncontrolled mass of alienated consumers. For Breivik,

30525-609: The traditional Christian family using critical theory and Marcuse's concept of polymorphous perversity, thereby encouraging homosexuality and breaking down the patriarchal family. Andrew Woods wrote that the plot Matthews describes does not resemble the Frankfurt School so much as the alleged aims of communists in The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen . Nonetheless, Matthews' account was circulated credulously by right-wing and alt-right news media, as well as in far-right internet forums, such as Stormfront. Following

30710-416: The traditional family structure by Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm to promote women's rights , sexual liberation, and polymorphous perversity to subvert patriarchal authority . Minnicino claimed the Frankfurt School was responsible for elements of the counterculture of the 1960s and a " psychedelic revolution", distributing hallucinogenic drugs to encourage sexual perversion and promiscuity. After

30895-700: The truth of contemporaneous human existence." These words were directed against the neo-Kantianism of the mainstream, and against both the revisionist and orthodox Marxist alternatives, in which the subjectivity of the individual played little role. Though Marcuse quickly distanced himself from Heidegger following Heidegger's endorsement of Nazism, thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas have suggested that an understanding of Marcuse's later thinking demands an appreciation of his early Heideggerian influence. Marcuse's analysis of capitalism derives partially from one of Karl Marx's main concepts: Objectification, which under capitalism becomes Alienation . Marx believed that capitalism

31080-464: The unity of Logos and Eros, and thrown off the vexatious authority of logic, mathematics, and the empirical sciences." The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre asserted that Marcuse falsely assumed consumers were completely passive, uncritically responding to corporate advertising. MacIntyre frankly opposed Marcuse. "It will be my crucial contention in this book," MacIntyre stated, "that almost all of Marcuse's key positions are false. For example, Marcuse

31265-577: The university of Berlin while still on active duty. He then became a member of a Soldiers' Council that participated in the abortive socialist Spartacist uprising . In 1919, he attended the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, taking classes for four semesters. In 1920, he transferred to the University of Freiburg to concentrate on German literature, philosophy, politics, and economics. He completed his Ph.D. thesis at

31450-423: The ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements that promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or that oppose

31635-615: The widow of his close friend Franz Neumann (1900–1954). After his second wife Inge died in 1973, Marcuse married Erica Sherover (1938–1988), a former graduate student at the University of California, in 1976. In his first marriage with Sophie Wertheim, they had one son, Peter Marcuse, born in 1928. Peter Marcuse was a professor emeritus of urban planning at Columbia University in New York. Although Marcuse did not have any children with Inge Neumann Marcuse, he helped raise her two sons, Thomas Neumann and Michael Neumann. Thomas (now Osha)

31820-726: The words of Fritz Stern , the deep "cultural despair" of thinkers feeling uprooted within the rationalism and scientism of the modern world. It was characterized by a rejection of the established social order, with revolutionary tendencies and anti-capitalist stances, a populist and plebiscitary dimension, the advocacy of violence as a means of action and a call for individual and collective palingenesis ("regeneration, rebirth"). The key thinkers of contemporary far-right politics are claimed by Mark Sedgwick to share four key elements, namely apocalyptism , fear of global elites , belief in Carl Schmitt 's friend–enemy distinction and

32005-500: The working class into the capitalist system. Its political parties and trade unions have become thoroughly bureaucratized and the power of negative thinking or critical reflection has rapidly declined. The working class is no longer a potentially subversive force capable of bringing about revolutionary change. Marcuse evolved a theory over the years that stated modern technology is repressive naturally. He believed that in both capitalist and communist societies, workers did not question

32190-531: The world" should be interpreted "as a politics of fear, which utilizes the disaffection and anger generated by capitalism. [...] Partisans of far right-wing organizations, in turn, use anti-communism to challenge every political current which is not embedded in a clearly exposed nationalist and racist agenda. For them, both the USSR and the European Union, leftist liberals, ecologists, and supranational corporations – all of these may be called 'communist' for

32375-422: The world, they remain repressed and uncritical. Marcuse advanced the prewar thinking of critical theory toward a critical account of the "one-dimensional" nature of bourgeois life in Europe and America. His thinking has been seen as an advance of the concerns of earlier liberal critics such as David Riesman . Two aspects of Marcuse's work are of particular importance. First, his use of language more familiar from

32560-535: Was attended by several notable American white supremacists including Jared Taylor and Brandon Russell . Morocco saw a spread of ultranationalism , antifeminism , and opposition to immigration themes in digital spaces. A number of far-right extremist and paramilitary groups carried out the Rwandan genocide under the racial supremacist ideology of Hutu Power , developed by journalist and Hutu supremacist Hassan Ngeze . On 5 July 1975, exactly two years after

32745-628: Was based on the belief that hierarchy and rootedness are more important than equality and liberty, with the latter two being dehumanizing. In the French public debate following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, far right was used to describe the strongest opponents of the far left , those who supported the events occurring in Russia. A number of thinkers on the far right nonetheless claimed an influence from an anti-Marxist and anti-egalitarian interpretation of socialism , based on

32930-658: Was exploiting humans; that by producing objects of a certain character, laborers became alienated, and this ultimately dehumanized them into functional objects themselves. Marcuse took this belief and expanded it. He argued that capitalism and industrialization pushed laborers so hard that they began to see themselves as extensions of the objects they were producing. At the beginning of One-Dimensional Man Marcuse writes, "The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment," meaning that under capitalism (in consumer society), humans become extensions of

33115-455: Was fully established before the outbreak of World War II . Following World War II, other far-right organizations attempted to establish themselves, such as the European organizations of Nouvel Ordre Européen , European Social Movement and Circulo Español de Amigos de Europa or the further-reaching World Union of National Socialists and the League for Pan-Nordic Friendship . Beginning in

33300-478: Was further distributed by the Council of Conservative Citizens , a racist group, which added its own introduction. The film includes decontextualized clips of historian Martin Jay , who was not aware of the nature of the production at the time. Jay has since become a recognized expert on the conspiracy theory. Concerning right-wing exploitation of his statements, Jay wrote, "Those beans I allegedly spilled had been on

33485-507: Was not an orthodox Marxist. Like many of the Frankfurt School, Marcuse wrote of " critical theory " not of "Marxism" and MacIntyre notes a similarity in this to the Right Hegelians , whom Marx attacked. Hence, MacIntyre proposed that Marcuse be regarded as "a pre-Marxist thinker". According to MacIntyre, Marcuse's assumptions about advanced industrial society were wrong in whole and in part. "Marcuse," concluded MacIntyre, "invokes

33670-474: Was not. Many radical scholars and activists were influenced by Marcuse, such as Norman O. Brown , Angela Davis , Charles J. Moore , Abbie Hoffman , Rudi Dutschke , and Robert M. Young (see the List of Scholars and Activists link below). Among those who critiqued him from the left were Marxist-humanist Raya Dunayevskaya , fellow German emigre Paul Mattick , both of whom subjected One-Dimensional Man to

33855-713: Was well integrated into German society. Marcuse moved from Berlin to the suburb of Charlottenburg , the center of West Berlin. Marcuse's formal education began at Mommsen Gymnasium and continued at the Kaiserin-Augusta Gymnasium in Charlottenburg from 1911 to 1916. In 1916, he was drafted into the German Army , but only worked in horse stables in Berlin during World War I . He would sit out his entire military service in Germany. While in Berlin, he managed to secure permission to attend lectures at

34040-409: Was widened to mean any civilian bands killing Tutsi. Other far-right groups and paramilitaries involved included the anti-democratic segregationist Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR), which called for complete segregation of Hutus from Tutsis. The CDR had a paramilitary wing known as the Impuzamugambi . Together with the Interahamwe militia, the Impuzamugambi played a central role in

34225-418: Was written in the context of the Hegel Renaissance that was taking place in Europe with an emphasis on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 's ontology of life and history, idealist theory of spirit and dialectic. In 1932, Marcuse stopped working with Heidegger, who joined the Nazi Party in 1933. Marcuse understood that he would not qualify as a professor under the Nazi regime . Marcuse was then hired to work for

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