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Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Undermining Freedom

Reality having failed to conform to the revolutionary vision of the collectivists known as communists and socialists, they sought instead to destroy the culture of Western free society. We have visited this idea before in a Eric Raymond's post titled Gramscian Damage. Here I excerpt an article titled Cultural Marxism.
There are two misconceptions held by many Americans. The first is that communism ceased to be a threat when the Soviet Union imploded. The second is that the New Left of the Sixties collapsed and disappeared as well.

Because the New Left lacked cohesion it fell apart as a political movement. However, its revolutionaries reorganized themselves into a multitude of single issue groups.

Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. They favor code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.

By the end of WWI, socialists realized that something was amiss, for the world's proletariat had not heeded Marx's call to rise up in opposition to evil capitalism and to embrace communism instead.

Separately, two Marxist theorists-Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lukacs of Hungary-concluded that the Christianized West was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order. The West would have to be conquered first.

The West would have to be de-Christianized, said Gramsci, by means of a "long march through the culture."

The new battleground, reasoned Gramsci, must become the culture, starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science, and history.

In 1923, the Frankfurt School-a Marxist think-tank-was founded in Weimar Germany. Among its founders were Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno.

The primary goal of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms. It would provide the ideas on which to base a new political theory of revolution based on culture, harnessing new oppressed groups for the faithless proletariat. Smashing religion, morals, It would also build a constituency among academics, who could build careers studying and writing about the new oppression.

The end product was Cultural Marxism, now known in the West as multiculturalism.

A corresponding and diabolically crafted idea is political correctness. The strong suggestion here is that in order for one not to be thought of as racist or fascist, then one must not only be nonjudgmental but must also embrace the ‘new' moral absolutes: diversity, choice, sensitivity, sexual orientation, and tolerance. Political correctness is a Machiavellian psychological ‘command and control' device. Its purpose is the imposition of uniformity in thought, speech, and behavior.

Critical Theory is an ongoing and brutal assault via vicious criticism relentlessly leveled against Christians, Christmas, the Boy Scouts, Ten Commandments, our military, and all other aspects of traditional American culture and society.

Both political correctness and Critical Theory are in essence, psychological bullying.

"... it is only necessary to display an inhuman attitude toward people to be granted by those people the possessions of force."


Double-thinking ‘fence-sitters', otherwise known as moderates, centrists, and RINOs bear the imprint of these psychological ‘obedience' techniques.


At the merest hint of displeasure from the obedience-trainers, up goes the yellow flag of surrender upon which it is boldly written:
"I believe in nothing and am tolerant of everything!"
The linchpin of Cultural Marxism is cultural determinism, the parent of identity politics and group solidarity.

It is said that courage is the first of the virtues because without it fear will paralyze man, thus keeping him from acting upon his moral convictions and speaking truth. Thus bringing about a general state of paralyzing fear, apathy, and submission-the chains of tyranny-is the purpose behind psychopolitical cultural terrorism, for the communist Left's revolutionary agenda must, at all costs, be clothed in darkness.

The antidote is courage and the light of truth. If we are to win this cultural war and reclaim and rebuild America so our children and their children's children can live in a ‘Shining City on the Hill' where liberty, families, opportunity, free markets, and decency flourish, we must muster the courage to fearlessly expose the communist Left's revolutionary agenda to the Light of Truth. Truth and the courage to speak it will set us free.

An interesting perspective can be had of this from a philosophical and historical view by reading Stephen Hicks book Explaining Postmodernism.
This from a review:

The socialist intellectuals were in a quandary. They ought rationally to have abandoned their views, since their doctrine was fallacious in theory and disastrous in practice; but rationality is not a trait much in evidence among the socialistically inclined. If reason speaks against socialism, is not the solution obvious: out with reason! If reason provides no access to reality, but is rather a mask for power, the critique of socialism is disabled.

How, though, can socialists claim that reason is relative and at the same time aver an absolute belief in socialist politics? Are they not here caught in a contradiction that even they cannot dismiss? Hicks finds plausible two explanations of the contradiction. On one account, "absolutist politics are primary, while the relativism is a rhetorical strategy that is used to advance that politics"; on the other, "both the relativism and the absolutism coexist in postmodernism, but the contradictions between them simply do not matter psychologically to those who hold them" (p. 185). Hicks rejects the view that relativism is primary and the politics secondary. If it were true, "then postmodernists would be adopting political positions across the spectrum, and that is simply not happening" (p. 186).

Choose freedom or choose your flavor of tranny!

See also this diagram from the book of attempts to rescue socialist thought from failure. Of course Postmodernism and it's epistemological deadend are alive in academia but this book about Michael Polanyi is helpful for someone wishing to reconnect with reality.


Also, a book I will comment on more in the future, White Guilt by Shelby Steele, makes the observation that there is a growing opposition to this undermining of the culture from people with a renewed confidence in more traditional beliefs. Well, one can hope.

4 comments:

Oroborous said...

I find Linda Kimball to be a little overwrought when she writes that "communism [is] alive and thriving here in America."

"Cultural Marxism" isn't the same as Communism, and in any case, it ain't "thriving", it's just around. But so are anarchists, and they too have no hope whatsoever of convincing enough people to join their deluded movement.

They're just outlets for disturbed people.

Howard said...

oroborous

yes, Kimball is overwrought but there is a substantial residue of hypercritical thinking about Western civilization that taints the views of even some people in the mainstream...

Unknown said...

I agree with the verdict that Kimball's critique is overwrought. Especially as it relates to certain cultural values like tolerance. She is almost delving into the territory of conspiracy theory, explaining how this value was foisted upon us by scheming Marxists. In point of fact tolerance is a value that Americans have developed of their own from their experience integrating successive waves of immigrants. Cultural Marxists have did not develop the idea of tolerance, neither did they foist it upon us. They merely attempted to coopt it.

I'm reminded of the right-wing reactionaries of yesterday who tried to shock the American conscience with the revelation that universal public education was part of Marx's strategy to spread the idea of Communism, the idea being that we should be against anything that they are for.

Howard said...

Tolerance per se is a good thing. As with any idea, promotion of an absolutist version that does not allow for any important distinctions is the problem.