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Mark Adams National Security Correspondent
The Toxic Tendrils of Cultural
Marxism – Part One
Traditional Marxist theory predicted that in the event of a major European war, the working class all over Europe would rise up to overthrow capitalism and create communism. But when World War One came in 1914, that did not happen. When it finally did happen in Russia in 1917, citizens in other European countries did not support it.
Why not? Rather then examine their theory for flaws two Marxist theorists, Antonio Gramsci in Italy and Georg Lukacs in Hungary, independently came to the same answer: Western culture and the Christian religion had so blinded the working class to the benefits of Marxist ideology that Communism was impossible to achieve in the West unless – and until – Western culture and Christianity were destroyed.
“Who will save us from Western civilization?” asked Lukacs in 1919.
That same year Lukacs became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the Bolshevik Bela Kun government in Hungary. What did Lukacs do in his attempt to destroy Western civilization? One of his first acts was to introduce a bawdy sex education program into Hungary’s public schools! He knew that if he could destroy the West’s traditional sexual mores, he would have taken a giant step toward destroying Western culture itself. The curricula that Lukacs foisted on the Hungarians is very similar to what is taught today in the United States. But back then it was an unmitigated disaster and within months the Bela Kun Bolsheviks were shut down.
But that didn’t stop the Marxists. In fact failure and public shame never stops them so that, much like encrusted latrine scum, they never really go away.
Military historian Bill Lind is credited for coining the term “Cultural Marxism.” It is more than a nifty neologism, rather it is economic Marxism translated into cultural terms.
A Newsweek article explains:
“In classic Marxist fashion, critical theory divides everyone in society into classes of oppressed and oppressors but posits that the so-called oppressed stand in the way of revolution when they adhere to the societal belief systems and cultural norms of their so-called oppressors. Therefore, the cultural institutions that stand in the way of the Marxist revolution must be destroyed through relentless criticism (hence the name: critical theory)”. https://www.newsweek.com/critical-race-theory-repackaged-marxism-opinion-1599557
During the time period 1922-1923 this merry band of Marxists formed their own institute, the Frankfurt Institute headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany. Once the Nazis seized control in the early 1930s key members left Germany and settled into their new home at Columbia University where they continued to spew toxic ideology.
From Newsweek:
Critical theorists openly admit their intent is to use racial minorities to foment a Marxist revolution while doing next to nothing to improve their social standing.
The trap of totalitarianism.
There use to be a time in America when the mantra “the best and the brightest” applied to those who served in the corridors of power. Often times when people learn of the horrors of the Nazi death/extermination camps, the blood lust that permeated the Communist gulags in Siberia, or the genocides in Cambodia, many times their reaction is “well thank goodness that could never happen here.” Really?
In 1887 Lord Acton warned about how the inherent dangers of unchecked authority and the moral decline that often accompanies it when he declared that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
That was fine as far as it went. But in 1944, the Austrian economist Frederick Hayek argued that Acton actually had it backward. It’s not that power corrupts the people who hold it, the point is that many times power selects for the kind of person who was already willing to be corrupted. In his brilliant expose about totalitarianism, The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek devotes a full chapter to this topic (Chapter 10 – WHY THE WORST GET ON TOP)
Hayek’s argument is straightforward. In a system where the central authority controls resources and outcomes, the arrangement for who gets to run it doesn’t necessarily favor the most competent or the most principled. Too many times it favors the most ruthless shreds of humanity.
Hayek saw this firsthand in the early 20th century. Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany not because he overwhelmed the old guard with his economic and business acumen but because he was willing to do what they weren’t. The old guard thought they could contain him. But that didn’t happen and within 18 months, every institution that was supposed to restrain the Nazis had been rendered non-functional and Germany had been transformed into a full-fledged totalitarian state.
It was the same blueprint in Russia just a few years earlier. By 1929, Stalin had thwarted every rival, not because he was the most ideologically pure of the Bolsheviks, but because he was the most ruthless.
In China a few years after Hayek wrote his book the blueprint played out for Mao who would go on to murder somewhere between 15 and 55 million people.
What about America?
As Hayek evinces whenever there exists concentrated power with little or no accountability it can serve as a magnet for individuals who crave power. In addition to those congressman and senators who are attracted to government because of the power it affords them there are a lot of petty bureaucrats who are drunk on power which is bad enough but often times accompanying their lust for power is an overwhelming proclivity to subjugate.
As an example consider this quote from Adolf Hitler:
If the older generation cannot get accustomed to us, we shall take their children away from them and rear them as needful to the Fatherland.
Compare Hitler’s quote to this January 2021 quote:
“We should go for all the Republican voters, and Homeland Security will take their children away, and we’ll put [Trump supporters’ children] into re-education camps.”
The person who uttered that outrageous statement was not just some guy walking down the aisle pushing a shopping cart. Rather it was Michael Beller then principal counsel for the tax-supported Public Broadcast Service.
It is distressing to realize that in American corridors of power there are individuals as fanatic as the French revolutionists or the Moscow revolutionaries from 1917. For many of them political ideology becomes a secular religion which transforms them into zealots marred with an irrational devotion to their cause to the point that they lose track of whether or not their cause is even just.
– Mark Adams National Security Correspondent
