At some point during the last half century, someone stole our culture. Just 50 years ago, in the 1950s, America was a great place. It was safe. It was decent. Children received a good education in public schools. Workers also brought home middle-class incomes so mothers could stay home with their children. Television programs reflected wholesome, traditional values.
Where did everything go? How did America become the seedy, decaying place we live in today - so different that those who grew up before the 1960s feel it is a foreign country? Did it just “happen”?
It didn’t just “happen.” In fact, a deliberate agenda was followed to rob us of our culture and replace it with a new culture very different from the old one. The context of how and why this happened is one of the most important parts of America's national story - and it's a context that almost no one knows. The people behind this change wanted it to be that way.
What has happened, in short, is that America's traditional culture, which grew over generations from our Judeo-Christian roots, has been swept away by a specific ideology. We know this ideology better as “political correctness” or “multiculturalism”. In fact, it is cultural Marxism, Marxism translated from the concepts of economics to those of culture. Relevant efforts date back not only to the 1960s but also to the First World War. As incredible as it may seem, just as the old economic Marxism of the Soviet Union was coming to an end, a new cultural Marxism became the dominant ideology of American elites. The number 1 objective of this cultural Marxism since its inception has been the destruction of Western culture and the Christian religion.
To understand a circumstance, it is always important to know its history. To understand who stole our culture, we need to look at the history of “political correctness”.
Early Marxist theory
Before World War I, Marxist theory held that if war broke out in Europe, the working class in all European countries would revolt, overthrow their respective governments, and create a new communist Europe. But when war broke out in the summer of 1914, this did not happen. Instead, millions of workers across European countries lined up to fight against their country's enemies. It was not until 1917 that a communist revolution finally occurred in Russia. But attempts to export this revolution to other countries failed because workers did not support it.
After the end of the World War in 1918, Marxist theorists had to ask themselves: what went wrong? As good Marxists, they could not admit that Marxist theory was wrong. Instead, two important Marxist intellectuals, Antonio Gramsci in Italy and Georg Lukacs in Hungary (Lukács was considered the most brilliant Marxist thinker since Marx himself) independently arrived at the same answer. They said that Western culture and the Christian religion had so blinded the working class to their true Marxist class interests that a communist revolution in the West would be impossible unless both were destroyed. This goal, established from the beginning as the aim of cultural Marxism, has never changed since.
A new strategy
As is well known, Gramsci formulated a strategy to destroy Christianity and Western culture, a strategy that would prove very successful. Instead of calling first for a communist revolution, as in Russia, he said that Marxists in the West should seize political power last, after a "long march through the institutions" - through the schools, the media, even even from churches; any institution that can influence culture. It is this “long march through the institutions” that America has been experiencing for decades, especially since the 1960s. Fortunately, Mussolini recognized the danger that Gramsci posed and put him in prison. His influence remained small until the 1960s, when his works, especially the “Prison Notebooks”, were finally rediscovered.
Georg Lukacs turned out to be even more influential. In 1918, he became deputy people's commissar for culture and education in the short-lived Bolshevik dictatorship of Bela Kuns in Hungary.
As such, he asked: “Who will save us from Western civilization?” and founded what he called “cultural terrorism.” One of the main components of cultural terrorism was the introduction of sex education in Hungarian schools. Lukács realized that if he had managed to destroy the country's traditional sexual mores, he would have taken a giant step towards the destruction of traditional culture and Christian faith.
Far from uniting behind Lukács's “cultural terrorism,” the Hungarian working class was so outraged that when Romanian troops invaded Hungary, they refused to fight for Bela Kun's dictatorship and the regime was overthrown. Lukacs hid, but not for long. In 1923, it resurfaced in a “Week of Marxist Studies” in Germany, a program financed by a young Marxist named Felix Weil, who inherited millions. Weil and the others who participated in this week of study were fascinated by Lukács's cultural perspective on Marxism.
The Frankfurt School
Weil responded by using some of his money to create a new think tank at the University of Frankfurt. Initially, the name “Institute for Marxism” was intended. But Cultural Marxists understood that they could be much more effective if they kept their true nature and objectives hidden. They convinced Weil to give the new institute a neutral name: “Institute for Social Research.” Soon known simply as the “Frankfurt School,” the Institute for Social Research became the place where “political correctness” as we know it today was developed.
The basic answer to the question: “Who stole our culture?” It is, therefore: The Marxists of the Frankfurt School.
Initially, the institute worked mainly on conventional Marxist themes such as the labor movement. But in 1930 this changed dramatically. That year, the institute was taken over by a new director, a brilliant young Marxist intellectual named Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer was heavily influenced by Georg Lukacs. He immediately began to make the Frankfurt School the central place where Lukács's pioneering work on cultural Marxism could be developed into a full-fledged ideology.
For this purpose he brought some new members to the Frankfurt School. Perhaps the most important of these was Theodor Adorno, who would become Horkheimer's most creative collaborator. Other members included two psychologists, Erich Fromm and Wilhelm Reich, well-known advocates of feminism and matriarchy, and a young graduate student named Herbert Marcuse.
Advances in Cultural Marxism
With the help of this blood renewal, Horkheimer made three major advances in the development of cultural Marxism. First, he broke with Marx's view that culture was just part of the social superstructure, determined by purely economic factors. On the contrary: he postulated that culture was an independent and very important factor in the development of societies.
Secondly, again in contrast to Marx, he announced that the working class would cease to act as agents of revolution. However, he left open the question of who would play this role – a question Marcuse finally answered in the 1950s.
Third, Horkheimer and the other members of the Frankfurt School decided that the key to the destruction of Western culture would be the symbiosis of Marx and Freud. They argued that, just as workers are oppressed under capitalism, in Western culture all people live in a permanent state of psychological oppression. The “liberation” of everyone from this repression became one of the main goals of cultural Marxism. Most importantly, they realized that psychology gave them a far more powerful tool than philosophy for destroying Western culture: psychological conditioning.
Today, when cultural Marxists in Hollywood want to “normalize” something like homosexuality (to “free” us from “oppression”), they produce television show after television show in which the only seemingly normal white man is a homosexual. This is how psychological conditioning works: people learn the lessons that cultural Marxists want to teach them, without even knowing they are learning them.
The Frankfurt School has come a long way in creating the ideology of political correctness. Then, suddenly, fate intervened. In 1933, Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists came to power in Germany. Since the Frankfurt School was Marxist and the Nazis hated Marxism, and since almost all of the leading members of the Frankfurt School were Jews, they decided to leave Germany. In 1934, the Frankfurt School and its leading members were moved from Germany to New York City with the help of Columbia University.
Before long, their focus shifted from destroying traditional Western culture in Germany to doing the same in the United States. It would be a huge success.
New developments
The Frankfurt School, benefiting from American hospitality, soon resumed its intellectual work on cultural Marxism. These new developments have now been added to the previous achievements already created in Germany:
* Critical theory
To further their purpose of destroying Western culture, the Frankfurt School developed a powerful tool they called “Critical Theory”. What was this theory? The theory was to criticize. By subjecting all traditional institutions, starting with the family, to endless and relentless criticism (the Frankfurt School, however, was careful never to define what it stood for, only what it opposed), the Frankfurt School he hoped to eventually overthrow these institutions. . Critical theory is the basis for many “studies” departments that now populate American colleges and universities. Not surprisingly, these departments are the province of academic political correctness.
*Studies on prejudice
In a series of academic studies, the Frankfurt School sought to define traditional attitudes on any topic as “prejudice,” which culminated in Theodor Adorno's immensely influential book, “The Authoritarian Personality,” published in 1950. The Frankfurt School also developed the misleading “F Scale,” which sought to link traditional attitudes toward sexual morality, male-female relations, and family issues with support for fascism. Today, the favorite term advocates of political correctness use for anyone who disagrees with them is “fascist.”
* Domination
In another aspect, the Frankfurt School broke with orthodox Marxism, which saw history as determined by control of the means of production. Instead, the Frankfurt School said that history was determined by groups – defined as men, women, races, religions, etc. – who had power or “dominion” over other groups. She labeled certain groups, especially white men, as “oppressors” while defining other groups as “victims.” Victims were automatically good and oppressors bad, depending on the group they came from, regardless of individual behavior.
Although they were Marxists, members of the Frankfurt School also embraced Nietzsche (another person they admired for his disregard for traditional morality was the Marquis de Sade). They integrated into cultural Marxism what Nietzsche called the “reevaluation of all values”. What this means – simply put – is that all old sins become virtues, and all old virtues become sins. Homosexuality is fine and a good thing, but anyone who believes that men and women should have different social roles is an evil “fascist.” This is what political correctness is now teaching children in public schools across America.
The Frankfurt School also commented directly on public education in America. She said it doesn't matter whether school-age children learn some skill or fact. All that matters is that they graduate from these schools with the right “attitude” on certain issues.
Media and entertainment
Led by Adorno, the Frankfurt School was initially hostile to the culture industry, which assumed it would “commodify” culture, that is, demote it to a commercial commodity. Then people began to listen to Walter Benjamin, a close friend of Horkheimer and Adorno, who said that cultural Marxism could make powerful use of media such as radio, cinema, and later television, to psychologically condition the public. Benjamin's vision prevailed, and Horkheimer and Adorno spent the World War II years in Hollywood. It is no coincidence that the entertainment industry is today the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of cultural Marxism.
The growth of Marxism in the United States
After World War II, when the National Socialists were defeated, Horkheimer, Adorno and most of the other members of the Frankfurt School returned to Germany, where the institute re-established itself in Frankfurt with the help of the American occupation forces. At that time, cultural Marxism became the unofficial but widespread ideology of the Federal Republic of Germany.
But hell has not forgotten the United States. Herbert Marcuse remained there and began translating the more difficult academic writings of other members of the Frankfurt School into simpler language that people could easily understand. His book “Instinctive Structure and Society” (original in English: “Eros and Civilization”) made use of the intersection of Marx and Freud by the Frankfurt School to show that if we could understand “non-procreative Eros” through ““polymorphic perversity” It would “free” us, it could create a new paradise where there would only be fun and no more work. “Instinct Structure and Society” became one of the most important New Left texts of the 1960s.
Marcuse also expanded the intellectual work of the Frankfurt School. In the early 1930s, Horkheimer left open the question of who would actually replace the working class as the driving force of the Marxist revolution. In the 1950s, Marcuse responded to this question by saying that this role would be played by a coalition of students, blacks, feminist women and homosexuals – the nucleus of the student revolt of the 1960s, and the sacred “victim groups” of political correctness. of today. .
Marcuse also took on one of political correctness’ favorite terms: “tolerance.” He gave it a whole new meaning. He defined “liberating tolerance” as tolerance of all ideas and movements of the left and intolerance of all ideas and movements of the right. Today, when we hear cultural Marxists call for “tolerance,” what they mean is Marcuse’s “liberating tolerance” (just as when they call for “diversity,” they mean uniformity of belief in their ideology).
The student uprising of the 1960s, driven largely by opposition to the draft to fight the Vietnam War, presented Marcuse with a historic opportunity. As its most famous “guru,” he injected the Baby Boomer generation with the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School. Of course, the Baby Boomers didn't understand what was really going on.
As was the case at the beginning of the Institute, Marcuse and some other “insiders” did not proclaim that political correctness and multiculturalism were a form of Marxism. And the effect was devastating: an entire generation of Americans, especially the college-educated elite, absorbed cultural Marxism, adopting a poisonous ideology that sought to destroy America's traditional culture and Christian faith. This generation, which now runs all of America's elite institutions, is now waging nonstop war against all traditional views and institutions. She almost won this war. Traditional American culture is largely in ruins.
A counter-strategy
Now we understand who stole our culture from us. The question now is: what can we do?
We can choose between two strategies. The first is to strip Marxists of existing institutions – the public schools, universities, the media, the entertainment industry and most major churches. Cultural Marxists expect us to try this, they are prepared to do so, and it would mean an open attack on well-prepared defensive positions with comparatively few resources and opportunities to be heard. Every foot soldier can predict where this will lead: defeat.
But there is another, more promising strategy. We can dissociate ourselves and our families from the institutions controlled by Cultural Marxists and build new institutions for ourselves, institutions that will help us reclaim our traditional Western culture.
A few years ago, my colleague Paul Weyrich wrote an open letter to the conservative movement proposing this strategy. Although most other conservative (Republican) political leaders had reservations, his letter resonated significantly with rank-and-file conservatives. Many of them are already part of a movement that is moving away from the dominant corrupt culture and creating parallel institutions: the homeschool movement. Similar movements are beginning to offer sensible alternatives in other aspects of life, such as movements to promote small, local farmers, who often run organic farms and who develop local markets for the products of these organic farms. If the Brave New World’s motto was to think globally and act locally, ours should be: “Think local, act local.”
Thus, our strategy of undoing what Cultural Marxism did to us has a certain parallel with your own strategy, as expounded by Gramsci so long ago. Gramsci called on Marxists to undertake a “long march through institutions”. Our counter-strategy is a long march to create our own institutions. This won't happen quickly and it won't be easy either. On the contrary, it will be the work of generations – as it was with cultural Marxists. They were patient because they knew that the “inevitable forces of history” were on their side. The question is: can we be equally patient and persistent, knowing that the Creator of history is on our side?
Translated by: Matthias Boening
Distribution: Julio Severo in German:
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