Big Boobs, Blonde Hair and Blue Eyes and White Skin = Progressive Insanity

[canpakes]

I really should add that I think calling Sidney a Nazi encouraging eugenics is very dickish in the above sense. The desire to be dickish may be contagious without respect for party lines.

I’d ask Hound to produce a verified comment from any figure known to more people than their immediate neighbors and who has called Sweeney a Nazi. Maybe I’ll play around with a Rubik’s Cube while I wait; I’m figuring that I’ll have plenty of time.

Past Hound’s made-up assertions and confusion over the message versus the messenger, he accuses an imagined group of people of having the same miserable behavior that he displays in every post. The only difference is the label affixed to the outgroup.

[Kishkumen]

What is “cultural Marxism”? You keep using the term, but if I doesn’t mean what I suggested (the battle between proletariat red-neck culture and bourgeoisie New York Times culture), then what does it mean?

To me, cultural Marxism is the impact of Marxist theory on our intellectual/cultural lexicon, the various theories springing from Marxist thinkers that are regularly employed in scholarship and activism. I have no idea why we would use "the battle between proletariat redneck culture and bourgeoisie New York Times culture" as anything but a seriously reductive and misrepresentative description, or perhaps caricature, of what cultural Marxism is. That definition sounds more like an example of the deployment of the term for polemical purposes or a polemical description of the context of its deployment.

[Kishkumen]

I will add to these comments on Cultural Marxism the hilarity of the sites in Google results that dismiss the term "Cultural Marxism" as an anti-semitic conspiracy theory. Seriously, practically all of the top Google results for a search for that term come up with some kind of polemical propaganda either denying the existence of the term as anything legitimate or attacking things for being "Cultural Marxism," depending on the political bent of the author. Sadly, all of these things present themselves as serious commentary seeking to enlighten others on the actual meaning of "Cultural Marxism," but in point of fact it is all just a bunch of provocative, hysterical nonsense.

Consider the following:

In the morass of political propaganda, I was able to pull up a paper from the early 2000s written by a UCLA professor (Douglas Kellner) in its School of Education (an academic pursuit that right-wingers hate) and unironically titled, "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies." It is essentially a history of the influence of Marxism on critical theory, etc.

For access to it, see: https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/ke ... arxism.pdf

It is likely the case that the right-wingers, who identified Kellner as one of the Dirty Thirty, or the most politically extreme (on the Left) professors, had Kellner especially in mind when they latched onto the term as something to distort and attack.

Kellner has written a lot of anti-Trump stuff, his 2016 book, American Nightmare: Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism being an early representative example.

So, no, I do not agree that Cultural Marxism is fake or a conspiracy theory. It was something that left-wing professors unironically talked about as existing before it became the bugaboo of the right-wing assholes that hated these guys and sought to attack them. After distorting the meaning of Cultural Marxism, right-wingers provoked left-wingers into responding by attacking the caricature the rightwing created. Sadly, the leftists went further by saying that Cultural Marxism was only ever a made-up conspiracy theory. I think the Kellner paper speaks for itself. My Politifact says, "False," Cultural Marxism is not just a conspiracy theory. It was, once upon a time, a descriptive term defined and used fruitfully by left-wing academicians.

[Kishkumen]

Strangely, voting for Trump and having him land in office did not silence every opinion that MAGA deems bothersome or ‘unfun’.

The ‘solution’ seems worthless, and the choice to think that it was a solution to begin with seems driven by weak and vindictive behavior, no better than the worst that any ‘radical leftist’ would suggest.

Yes! MAGA is a scam from top to bottom. A complete scam. Trump is a con man. The only way anything works for him is if it adds money to his wallet and attention to his brand. All he has done is exploit the already existing feeling against political correctness and identity politics to serve his own ends.

But, the thing is, that feeling against political correctness and identity politics did/does exist. Should we pretend that it did not just because Trump is a con artist? In other words, should we lie to ourselves and others about how numerous people felt/feel about political correctness and identity politics?

I would love it if people shared my feelings about being fair and accepting of others. If they do not, I will not pretend that they do, or just assume that the only reason they disagree is because they are fundamentally bad people (doubtless, some of them are bad people, as bad people do exist). I will also not pretend that there have not been some silly extremes as people struggled to figure out how to achieve fairness and acceptance.

When MSNBC starts lying to me about how unpopular Bernie Sanders is, or how identity politics are only problematic when right-wingers do it, etc., etc., I just laugh and change the channel. Lies are lies. Also, I do not believe that everyone involved in the American Eagle ad campaign is a Nazi or knowingly promoting Nazi ideology.

[Marcus]

I thought Mayan Elephant only believed in Corey Kilpak's book about how to be dickish.

Hound believes weird things.

I thought that the book you’re referring to was about how to supposedly be less dickish.

Perhaps Corey is not a competent resource on the matter.

I don't think he is either. Neither are the iterations named Hound, Elephant, Cultellus, and Binger. All of them exhibit the ability to be dickish. Of course, the book was based on profoundly inconsistent analysis (think Dunning-Kreuger type modeling), so it's really no surprise.

[drumdude]

Isn’t it weird how the right wingers here fall into the same traps over and over?

[Analytics]

What is “cultural Marxism”? You keep using the term, but if I doesn’t mean what I suggested (the battle between proletariat red-neck culture and bourgeoisie New York Times culture), then what does it mean?

To me, cultural Marxism is the impact of Marxist theory on our intellectual/cultural lexicon, the various theories springing from Marxist thinkers that are regularly employed in scholarship and activism. I have no idea why we would use "the battle between proletariat redneck culture and bourgeoisie New York Times culture" as anything but a seriously reductive and misrepresentative description, or perhaps caricature, of what cultural Marxism is. That definition sounds more like an example of the deployment of the term for polemical purposes or a polemical description of the context of its deployment.

The way I look at it, if “cultural Marxism” were a thing, it would be the study of culture from a Marxist paradigm. Fleshing this out, the most fundamental concept of the Marxist point of view is that society is defined as class conflict. Quoting the first several paragraphs of the Communist Manifesto, Marx said:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

If we look at American culture through the paradigm of Marxism, the great conflict is between the Bourgeoisie culture of the New York Times and the Proletariat culture of Fox News.

But like I said, “cultural marxism” doesn’t really mean anything. But if it did, it would be that.

[Analytics]

I will add to these comments on Cultural Marxism the hilarity of the sites in Google results that dismiss the term "Cultural Marxism" as an anti-semitic conspiracy theory. Seriously, practically all of the top Google results for a search for that term come up with some kind of polemical propaganda either denying the existence of the term as anything legitimate or attacking things for being "Cultural Marxism," depending on the political bent of the author. Sadly, all of these things present themselves as serious commentary seeking to enlighten others on the actual meaning of "Cultural Marxism," but in point of fact it is all just a bunch of provocative, hysterical nonsense.

Consider the following:

In the morass of political propaganda, I was able to pull up a paper from the early 2000s written by a UCLA professor (Douglas Kellner) in its School of Education (an academic pursuit that right-wingers hate) and unironically titled, "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies." It is essentially a history of the influence of Marxism on critical theory, etc.

For access to it, see: https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/ke ... arxism.pdf

I stand corrected. “cultural Marxism” does mean something, but it turns out I was still half-right--cultural Marxism means what I said it would mean if it existed. “Cultural Marxism” is the study of culture from a Marxist perspective. Douglas Kellner would definitely classify my analysis of NYT culture vs. Fox News culture as cultural marxism. He’d say my analysis was flawed, but it would still be cultural Marxism. He’d likely say that even though Fox News is more Proletariat and the NYT is more Bourgeoisie, both of them are tools of the super-rich to maintain and grow the economic disparity that defines the times. "For Marx and Engels, the cultural ideas of an epoch serve the interests of the ruling class, providing ideologies that legitimate class domination.”

In any case, that paper makes it clear that “Cultural Marxism”, as Douglas Kellner uses the term, is a version of culture studies that looks at cultural issues through a Marxist paradigm. It isn’t about Marx’s influence on culture--it’s about how you analyze what’s going on. Just as Das Kapital is an analysis of Capitalism from a Marxist perspective, Cultural Marxism is the study of culture from a Marxist perspective.

[Gunnar]

In any case, that paper makes it clear that “Cultural Marxism”, as Douglas Kellner uses the term, is a version of culture studies that looks at cultural issues through a Marxist paradigm. It isn’t about Marx’s influence on culture--it’s about how you analyze what’s going on. Just as Das Kapital is an analysis of Capitalism from a Marxist perspective, Cultural Marxism is the study of culture from a Marxist perspective.

However flawed Marxism is, Marx was justly critical of the unmitigated greed and cruelty of many capitalists who selfishly exploit their workers with little or no consideration for their needs, well-being and happiness, nor any love or compassion for their fellow beings as taught by Jesus Christ, in whom most of them claim to worship. Consequently, too many conservatives conclude that rejecting Marxism necessarily entails also rejecting the very idea of loving, helping and showing compassion for anyone other than themselves, especially those who are less fortunate or in need. However flawed Karl Marx was, even Marxism is closer to the Christian ideal of loving one's neighbor as oneself than extreme, unmitigated, selfish and unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism.

[Gadianton]

It is likely the case that the right-wingers, who identified Kellner as one of the Dirty Thirty, or the most politically extreme (on the Left) professors, had Kellner especially in mind when they latched onto the term as something to distort and attack.

Great find, Rev. I had no idea that Leftists who consider themselves Marxists ever self-described as "cultural Marxists," I'd never heard the term aside from right-wing propaganda. As a conspiracy theory? Hadn't heard that either. That would definitely be wrong. As for "misrepresenting" -- that's tough because Critical Theory is incomprehensible, and you're never going to accurately represent a theorist, even if you think it's cool and you're trying to become one yourself. At a certain point I don't care if Critical Theorists and postmodernists are misunderstood as they seem to take incomprehensibility as a badge of honor. So good luck them. But, there are different kinds of misunderstandings and misrepresentations, because it's not like Hound could name a single Marxists or point to a single paragraph by a Marxist he's ever read, and the same goes for pretty much any reference to "cultural Marxism" by right-wingers that I've ever seen. Having read a few Marxist-themed books and papers and having no idea what the “F” it's talking about, I guarantee that Hound doesn't know either.

Perhaps there are leftwing culture warriors and activists who have produced dumbed-down Marxist theories to advance the cause, and these are the folks Hound's sources are talking about, and maybe Hound can reveal them to us.

To help Hound out, here's a couple paragraphs from one of the most famous Marxists of all times, Theodore Adorno, who discovered the Frankfurt School. This is from his essay, "On Popular Music" (since Hound likes metal, which is a form of popular music):

The primary effect of this relation between the framework and the detail is the listener becomes prone to evince stronger reactions to the part than to the whole. His grasp of the whole does not lie in the living experience of this one concrete piece of music he has followed. The whole is pre-given and pre-accepted, even before the actual experience of the music starts: therefore, it is not likely to influence, to any great extent, the reaction to the details, except to give them varying degrees of emphasis. Details which occupy musically strategic positions in the framework - the beginning of the chorus or its reentrance after the bridge have a better chance for recognition and favourable reception than details not so situated, for instance, middle bars of the bridge. But this situational nexus never interferes with the scheme itself. To this limited situational extent the detail depends upon the whole. But no stress is ever placed upon the whole as a musical event, nor does the structure of the whole ever depend upon the details.

Serious music, for comparative purposes, may be thus characterized: Every detail derives its musical sense from the concrete totality of the piece which, in turn, consists of the life relationship of the details and never of a mere enforcement of a musical scheme. For example, in the introduction of the first movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony the second theme (in C-major) gets its true meaning only from the context. Only through the whole does it acquire its particular lyrical and expressive quality that is, a whole built up of its very contrast with the cantus firmus like character of the first theme. Taken in isolation the second theme would be disrobed to insignificance. Another example may be found in the beginning of the recapitulation over the pedal point of the first movement of Beethoven's 'Appassionata'. By following the preceding outburst it achieves the utmost dramatic momentum. By omitting the exposition and development and starting with this repetition, all is lost.

What did you think Hound? How much of this do you think you'll have to read before you find something that helps your cause?