Thread by @deonteleologist

"Cultural Marxism" has entered mainstream political discourse, appearing in recent speeches by DeSantis and Hawley, Fox News broadcasts, and right-wing media from Breitbart to Ben Shapiro.

This is a thread, with clips, on the 25-year history of "Cultural Marxism" on the Right 🧵

1. We begin with the arch-conservative activist and TV host, Bill Lind.

He began his 1998 talk "The Origins of Political Correctness" by saying college campuses have become so authoritarian that he'd be put "literally on trial" for joking about women and shopping carts

2. Lind says political correctness is seen as something to laugh at, but in fact "it's deadly serious. It is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead... the disease of ideology."

"Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism."

3. Lind argues that "conservatism is not an ideology," and that "all ideologies are totalitarian." He identifies what he sees as the "totalitarian" parallels between Communist dictatorships and PC on college campuses, which he calls "small, ivy-covered North Koreas."

4. Lind argues that "Cultural Marxism" divides the world into oppressor & oppressed groups based on race, sex, etc.; sees straight white men as inherently evil; and its main tool to attack socially privileged groups (i.e. white males) is "expropriation."

5. Who is behind “Cultural Marxism”? Lind blames the Frankfurt School philosophers who developed Critical Theory, which he sees as responsible for the existence of “Women’s Studies, Gay Studies, and Black Studies” departments in colleges and universities.

6. And who are these Frankfurt School philosophers? As Lind reminds us: they are, “to a man, Jewish.”

These Jewish intellectuals were kicked out of Nazi Germany for their “destructive criticism of every aspect of society,” so they brought their critical theory to NYC & Hollywood

7. When Lind gave a version of this talk to a bunch of Holocaust deniers in 2002, he made sure to emphasize that “These guys were all Jewish.” splcenter.org/fighting-hate/…

8. In the 1999 TV program Lind hosted based on this talk, he interviewed Laszlo Pasztor, a convicted Nazi collaborator from Hungary, to talk about Lukacs. (This screenshot from a 1988 NYT article, “Will Bush Purge Nazi Collaborators in the G.O.P.?”)

9. By 1999, “Cultural Marxism” seemed to be catching on. A conservative woman called in to berate Columbia history professor Manning Marable about how people who think racial inequality is not natural are trying to impose a “Culturally Marxist idea.”

10. When Pat Buchanan, who worked in both the Nixon and Reagan White House, ran for President in 2000, he lamented “Cultural Marxism” in his campaign announcement speech. He went on to devote a whole chapter to it in his 2002 bestselling book, “The Death of the West.”

11. Here’s Buchanan on “cultural Marxism.” The subtitle of his book is “How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Our Civilization.”

The first chapter, about falling birthrates among whites in the US and Europe, is called “Endangered Species.”

12. Buchanan’s famous speech at the 1992 GOP convention popularized the term “culture war” in the U.S., and Buchanan’s juxtaposition of the Cold War & the Culture War in this clip illustrate the function of the Cultural Marxist boogeyman in the culture wars.

Thread to be continued in a few hours as we pick up with Andrew Breitbart in 2011. Stay tuned!

In the meantime you can read about the Right’s clever use of linguistic propaganda in framing political debates and public discourse here: forummag.com/2023/03/06/fea…

13. Now we jump forward a few years to 2011, a BIG year for “Cultural Marxism.”

Andrew Breitbart published a book that year entitled “Righteous Indignation.” Here he explains to the Heritage Foundation that “this became my conspiracy theory.”

14. Breitbart repeatedly emphasizes that his revelation about “Cultural Marxism” is his “Aha moment,” his “one great epiphany” that enabled him to see “what exactly happened in this country.”

Here he is treated as an expert while apparently claiming Gramsci came to California.

15. Just like Lind, Breitbart blames the Frankfurt School for the existence of Queer Studies and African American Studies, which he thinks teaches people to view all members of society in terms of the oppressor/oppressed binary.

Sound familiar to anyone? Florida, maybe?

16. “The Frankfurt School are the origins of the mess we find ourselves in our culture right now… They’re the architects of the destruction of American culture as we know it.”

This led Breitbart to realize “this is my goal in life: I want to destroy the institutional Left.”

17. “They told their minions, ‘Go to the college campus. Go to Hollywood.’ They took over Hollywood and they took over the mainstream media.” The “Cultural Marxists,” Breitbart says, “came in here, took our institutions down,” and got rid of Washington & Lincoln’s birthdays (???)

Now, as I mentioned, 2011 was a BIG year for "Cultural Marxism."

That's because on July 22, 2011, a neo-Nazi named Anders Breivik murdered 77 people in Norway in order to publicize his 1500+ page manifesto. The first 45 pages focus on "Cultural Marxism" and the Frankfurt School.

In fact, the first part of Breivik's manifesto simply parrots the 2004 volume edited by Bill Lind, "Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology."

But see for yourselves: Breivik (right) is literally plagiarizing Lind (left), with a few contextual edits (Europe vs USA)

Before returning to clips from right-wing media, I'd like to add a few more contextual details to make explicit what has been implicit in this thread the whole time.

Firstly, the similarities between "Cultural Marxism" and the Nazis' "Cultural Bolshevism" cannot be ignored.

And while it is true that not everyone who invokes "Cultural Marxism" intends to scapegoat Jews, it is equally true that neo-Nazis invoke "Cultural Marxism" and the Frankfurt School precisely because they see it as a way to radicalize normies into seeing Jews as the enemy.

Thus you have the spread of memes like these. The Horkheimer “quote” in the last image is totally fake. That doesn’t stop it from popping up all over the internet, including from people who don’t even notice the antisemitic nature of the meme.

16. This takes us to our next right-wing pseudo-intellectual: Ben Shapiro (2016)

If you thought a major neo-Nazi terrorist’s promotion of conspiracy theories about the Frankfurt School would stop Ben Shapiro from parroting them, then you have way too much respect for Ben Shapiro

17. Next up: Paul Joseph Watson, a British far-right YouTuber and long-time employee of Alex Jones.

In this Feb. 2017 video (2.8 million views) he says “Cultural Marxists” seek “to completely undermine the foundation of Western civilization and leave us open to subversion.”

August 2017: a seven-page memo entitled “POTUS & Political Warfare” ended up on Trump’s desk. It said that Trump was being attacked because he is “an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative.” Trump LOVED it.

H/t @DavidNeiwert

18. October 2017: Jordan Peterson answers a question from a fan in Australia who says he opposes gay marriage “because it’s backed by Cultural Marxists.”

Peterson: “I’d be against it too if it was backed by Cultural Marxists”

July 2018: former Republican congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul posts a tweet about “Cultural Marxism” with a blatantly racist and antisemitic cartoon slate.com/news-and-polit…

19. In August 2018, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk repeated Breitbart’s talking points verbatim and found a new Jew to blame: “Cultural Marxism is being taught in every major university across the world because George Soros is spending over $30 billion to make sure that happens.”

20. October 2020: Trump’s executive order targeting “Critical Race Theory” in federal programs gives new life to Frankfurt School conspiracy theories and “Cultural Marxism.” Here Charlie Kirk parrots Lind, Breitbart and Shapiro but with a focus on Marcuse’s role in creating “CRT”

Jan 2021: the Trump White House publishes its “1776 Report”—which Charlie Kirk was hired to work on.

Without saying “Cultural Marxism,” it rehearses the same arguments, claiming that Gramsci and the Frankfurt School sought to “destroy” Western culture & blaming them for “CRT.”

Feb & March 2021: James Lindsay embraces the “Cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory but insists that, while these Jews “really did want to end Western Civilization,” it was because they were “Communists,” not because they were Jews. Very helpful James

June 2021: Christopher Rufo, the chief architect behind the “CRT” moral panic, takes James Lindsay’s rants about Marcuse and runs with them in a video with 300k views. When I pointed out that Rufo was helping to mainstream a neo-Nazi conspiracy theory, Lindsay doubled down.

December 2021: with Chris Rufo standing behind him, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis introduces his “Stop WOKE Act” targeting “CRT” in public schools.

“Critical Race Theory is just cultural Marxism aimed at delegitimizing America’s founding and destroying the fabric of our nation.”

CPAC 2022: DeSantis says the Left’s goal is to “marginalize the conservative half of the country… they want us to be second class citizens.”

“The Woke is the new religion of the Left. Wokeism is a form of Cultural Marxism… it’s about tearing at the fabric of our society”

I’ll end the thread where we began, with Bill Lind, this time in 2020.

Lind reveals that he sees no difference between “political correctness” & “wokeism”—and he uses the phrase “Cultural Marxism” because “most Americans regard Marxism as illegitimate.” The power of propaganda.