Dear Jerry,
I had copied your words before you put in the strike through and 'deburgerizing', so I remove it in the post below. Your honesty and integrity really impress me here on such a vexatious issue.
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We need to delineate what Cultural Marxism (a leftist movement) consists of, quite apart from "Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory" which is obviously a conspiracy theory of right wing origin as you demonstrate decisively. Now I too support LGBTI rights (having met intersex people through my medical practice) and the need for some kind of social underpinning for multiculturalism.
However, this has not been and cannot be achieved thru the cultural debasement resulting from the Frankfurt School's promotion of SnDnR&R.
Just to be clear, the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory is (to use Wikipedia's definition):
...a right-wing, antisemitic conspiracy theory, which claims that the Frankfurt School is part of a continual academic and intellectual culture war to systematically undermine and destroy Western culture and social traditions.[49] As articulated in the 1990s, the supposed conspiracy means to replace traditionalist conservatism and Christianity with the counterculture of the 1960s to promote social changes such as racial multiculturalism, multi-party progressive politics, acceptance of LGBT rights, and political correctness in language.[50][51][52]
Hmm... this website is also opposed to traditionalist conservatism and Christianity, and we support multiculturalism, progressive politics, and LGBT rights.
The leading trio of the Frankfurt School (HAM) were all of Jewish background (Adorno party so) and saw Leninist ideas triumph briefly in the Soviet Union before collapsing in the West under the sudden emergence of Fascism. The Frankfurt School arose in response, seeing correctly that Western culture contained something that could resist Leninism. They wanted to find what this Western cultural component was - rather than asking where Leninism goes wrong! Having isolated this cultural component they then wanted to neutralize it.
They were further demoralized by the Fascist era, especially the Nazis because the leading trio were all of German origin. Now no one can deny the Nazi's massacre of millions of Jews, despite evidence of exaggerated figures, nor can one deny the genuine popularity of Nazism, given the millions of soldiers who fell fighting for it. This profoundly affected the Frankfurters, and their US backers, who realized that there was something in the human 'soul' which was extremely antipathetic to socialistic ideas (not merely against Leninism or Communism). Remember Adorno’s infamous words: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric;” hence all post-1945 poets must be barbarians!
Now Horkheimer and Adorno were absolutely correct in identifying the Enlightenment of the 17th-18th century as a major – if not the major – cause of this Western cultural blindness and arrogance (as seen in the title
Dialectic of Enlightenment). However, their interpretation of the defects in Enlightenment thinking are entirely different to my own critique of the Enlightenment (much like Gramsci's critique of Bukharin is different to Lukacs'). E.g. Horkheimer & Adorno did not critique Leninism (i.e. they offer no critique of his
State and Revolution), even though they critique the notion of determinism correctly in the quote below.
Dialectic of Enlightenment p. 5 said:
On the road to modern science, men renounce any claim to meaning. They substitute formula for concept, rule and probability for cause and motive.
Despite their excellent start however they soon degenerate into a striking collection of observations that are nevertheless disconnected, revealing no attempt on their part to link them together into a new synthesis and understanding. This was highlighted in 1947 with the addition of the chapter "Elements of anti-Semitism", which, while underscoring their underlying motivation, struggles to find a solution through Freudian psychology – but emphasizes the ‘package deal’ involved, one that for them required an all-encompassing broad-based solution (rather than requiring further analysis). I.e.
”Dialectic of Enlightenment p. 201 of my 258 page edition” said:
Anyone who gives a chance to Fascism, subscribes to the destruction of the trade unions and the crusade against Bolshevism; he automatically subscribes too to the destruction of the Jews. The conviction of the anti-Semites – however artificial it may be – has been absorbed in the predetermined and subjectless reflexes of a political party.
Given the authors’ blanket refusal to carry out further analysis on the Jewish question, this means that one has either to be labelled a
Fascist or a
chump, hence all deeper thinking (including genuine thinking) on the issue is to be labelled “fascist”! Jean Paul Sartre independently came up with the same debate-denying binary opposition.
The eventual result was
The Authoritarian Personality (1950 – funded by the American Jewish Committee), which, as Joe showed from chapter 23 (esp. page 976), attacks and destroys anyone who will not submit to, nor be influenced and manipulated by simple-minded Leftist ideas. The authors also realized that Fascism has many rational and reasonable features, so many that the authors realized that it could not be combatted in a ‘rational’ way - hence their later recourse to hedonism and cultural debasement, as proven in Marcuse's
Eros and Civilization, which in 1955 looked forward to a machine-based future where workers had plenty of leisure time (shades of
Brave New World) – and hence the risk of thinking for themselves and realizing that just as Bolshevism, whether under Stalin or Khrushchev was no good, perhaps the West would not be either and that economic downturn (which is inevitable under the capitalism system as Rosa Luxemburg showed) would lead to the return of Fascism! Hence Marcuse’s bizarre idea of 'revolution' lying in the turn to infant sexuality – rendering the masses confused and intellectually impotent.
”Marcuse E&C p. 201-2 said:
No longer used as a full-time instrument of labor, the body would be resexualized. The regression involved in this spread of the libido would first manifest itself in a reactivation of all erotogenic zones and, consequently, in a resurgence of pregenital polymorphous sexuality and in a decline of genital supremacy. … This change in the value and scope of libidinal relations would lead to a disintegration of the institutions in which the private interpersonal relations have been organized, particularly the monogamic and patriarchal family.
These prospects seem to confirm the expectation that intellectual liberation can lead only to a society of sex maniacs, that is, to no society. However, the process just outlined involves not simply a release but a transformation of the libido: from sexuality constrained under genital supremacy to erotization of the entire personality. It is a spread rather than an explosion of the libido – a spread over private and societal relations which bridges the gap maintained between them by a repressive reality principle. …
In contrast, the free development of transformed libido within transformed institutions, which eroticizing previously tabooed zones, time and relations, would minimize the manifestations of mere sexuality by integrating them into a far larger order, including the order of work. In this context, sexuality tends to its own sublimation: the libido would not simply reactivate precivilized and infantile stages, but would also transform the perverted content of these stages.
An aside: Presumably the apostles might have done likewise (
Acts 2:45)…
”Acts of the Apostles” said:
And sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need.
… as “possessions” could include even their own bodies used for ‘sacred prostitution’ to sustain early Christianity economically! Luckily for them however they had 'procured' friends in high places.
Hence, post 1955, the debasement of culture as outlined in the essays on this website (Wasson's mushroom trip, Woodstock etc.)! And these perversions lie at the very center of popular culture today.
And you too, Jerry, no doubt see the startling paradox of Joe Atwill's podcasts in which he supports having family and children, despite his having overturned the very basis of Christianity – which of course itself claims to the be the fundamental basis of Western culture and family values! This traps not just Joe but all of us, not just in the West, in a terrible predicament!
While the intended turn to cultural and sexual debasement is clear from the very last page in
The Authoritarian Personality as well as Marcuse’s works, the philosophical connection to Adorno & Horkheimer’s
Dialectic of Enlightenment might seem less clear, despite the obvious Freudian connection between the HAM trio and their common Frankfurter membership.
However, I have since discovered the answer – and it dovetails with the position to be put forward in the
Corruption of Science by Modern Philosophy. They identify the Enlightenment and its doctrine of determinism (= atheistic predestination) with [a conception of] truth being a “wholly conceived and mathematized world” which they blame on one particular person, quoting the arguments of Edmund Husserl, an early 20th century German philosopher of Jewish background whose ideas are popularly misconceived as agreeing with Heidegger’s (to the latter’s great annoyance).
“Dialectic of Enlightenment p. 25” said:
“An infinite world, in this case a world of idealities, is conceived as one whose objects do not accede singly, imperfectly, and as if by chance to our cognition, but are attained by a rational, systematically unified method – in a process of infinite progression – so that each object is ultimately apparent according to its full inherent being … In the Galilean mathematization of the world, however, this selfness is idealized under the guidance of the new mathematics: in modern terms, it becomes itself a mathematical multiplicity.” Thinking objectifies itself to become an automatic, self-activating process; an impersonation of the machine that it produces itself so that ultimately the machine can replace it. … Mathematical procedure became, so to speak, the ritual of thinking.
It is clear that Adorno & Horkheimer identify the culprit as being Galileo!
Likewise Marcuse (my edition of
One Dimensional Man has exactly 200 pages). He is quoting from an untranslated work of Husserl titled (my translation)
The Crisis of European Sciences and the Transcendental Phenomenology (Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die transcendentale Phänomenologie):
“One Dimensional Man chapter 6 p. 133” said:
Husserl starts with the fact that the mathematization of nature resulted in valid practical knowledge: in the construction of an “ideational” reality which could be effectively ‘correlated’ with the empirical reality (pp. 19, 42). But the scientific achievement referred back to a pre-scientific practice, which constitutes the scientific basis (the Sinnesfundament) of Galilean science. This pre-scientific basis of science is the world of practice (Lebenswelt) which determined the theoretical structure, was not questioned by Galileo; moreover, it was concealed by the further development of science. The result was the illusion that the mathematization of nature created an autonomous (eigenständige) absolute truth” (p. 49f), while in reality, it remained a specific method and technique for the Lebenswelt. …
In this project, universal quantifiability is a prerequisite for the domination of nature. Individual non-quantifiable qualities stand in the way of an organization of men and things in accordance with the measurable power to be extracted from them. But this is a specific, socio-historical project, and the consciousness which undertakes this project is the hidden subject of Galilean science; the latter is the technic, the art of anticipation extended in infinity (ins Unendliche erweiterte Voraussicht p. 51).
We see here that Marcuse shares the viewpoint of Horkheimer & Adorno, that the culprit to blame for the Enlightenment’s perversions is ultimately Galileo, because he supposedly created a rigid mathematical world where everything was predetermined by equations.
Their and Husserl’s viewpoint is manipulative BS. Galileo said that the physical world is “written in the language of mathematics” but did not imply that the world is
reducible to mathematics as the authors above do! Newton reduced it more to mathematics but only Pierre Laplace drew the ultimate conclusion. The true preacher of the mathematical subjugation of physics is Einstein however!
So what is their underlying message? Just have a good time from SnDnR&R since
you cannot understand what science and mathematics (and therefore life, politics, economics and meaningful human relationships) are really about.
Now I agree with you 100% that Jews do not have a genetic tendency to perversion, sleaze, evil, deceit, avarice or whatever over and against non-Jews. However, when it comes to culture – which dovetails with and partly controls ideology – Miss Kitty for example, realizes that humanity’s predicament is grave (e.g. while I was composing this, news came through of an Israeli military strike on Syria, killing Syrian soldiers there)! And this too is why I find it difficult when considering "Racism, Cultural Degeneration and Misplaced Paranoia" (the quote marks are hardly required given the subject matter) to take either your side or Joe's since it is more than mere tribal and ethnic motivations at work today but at the same time trying to identify any potential Machiavellian malpractice concerning whatever front group is to be victimized so as to take the
cultural blame is also an extremely taxing task - but worthy of the effort.
Yours faithfully
Claude