Thread by @SethCotlar

To those who live outside the right wing media echo chamber, this will just sound like mindless and vestigial, McCarthyite word salad...but Rubio is giving a shout out here to a decades-old, far right BS narrative about "cultural Marxism" that is pretty widespread.

https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1498680213357662214

To an alarming extent, the basic framework of the "cultural Marxism" narrative is the same as the "Judeo-bolshevism" narrative that informed fascist rhetoric in the 1930s.

https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1095519731132465152?s=20&t=3QqUYHIED1_m7-Mh1Qh4jg

David Neiwert, who's been studying and writing about the far right for decades, sums up the history very well here.
dailykos.com/stories/2019/1…

A key figure who infused empirically-challenged talk of "cultural Marxism" into the political culture of the US right was Andrew Breitbart. The narrative drove much of his work as a right wing activist and propagandist who sought to push the GOP rightward.

https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1070001748817829888?s=20&t=3QqUYHIED1_m7-Mh1Qh4jg

Put most simply, the function of this "cultural Marxism" trope is that it enables people to reframe their reactionary response to cultural change as a principled opposition to "Communism."
"I hate BLM not because I'm a racist, but because they're Marxists."

"I hate feminism not because I'm a misogynist, but because feminism is cultural Marxism."
"I'm opposed to protecting the rights of trans folks not because I'm a transphobe, but because the trans rights movement is the trojan horse of Communism."

Don't forget that the "principled," "non-racist" way that conservatives framed their opposition to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s was to claim that MLK and other activists were really "Communists."

https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1335633037720051714?s=20&t=3QqUYHIED1_m7-Mh1Qh4jg