SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ AUGUST 22, 2016

1. It should come as no surprise that the growing cohort of conservative movementarians trying to promote the "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory haven't got the first fucking clue what they're yammering about. But in case you've recently bumped into said aberrant ideation and were curious as to what all the hubbub was about, why not check out what an actual, bona fide Marxist has to say about the subject? Michael Acuña begins his excellent analytical and historical overview thusly:

Across the paleoconservative blogosphere, on every “libertarian” forum and racist webpage, a strange concept is faulted for the turmoil witnessed in North America and Europe today, as well as for the alleged breakdown of Western social mores. ‘Cultural Marxism’ is the name these courageous right-wing dissidents have assigned this corrosive force. 

So what exactly is cultural Marxism and how is it that so many ostensibly capitalist societies haven fallen victim to it? The narrative varies depending on the political leaning of the individual disseminating it, but its standard rendition is as follows: a sect of European intellectuals, disillusioned by the failure of orthodox Marxist parties to mobilize the proletariat into conflict with the bourgeoisie, came to the conclusion that the original Marxist formulation was incorrect. Western workers simply possessed too conservative a disposition for communism’s egalitarian rhetoric to appeal to them. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s dialectical theory of capitalism’s internal contradictions generating a qualitatively higher mode of production—communism—was flawed. There were ideological obstacles preventing the economic synthesis from being realized. The solution to Marxism’s theoretical errors these thinkers arrived at was to replace class as the locus of struggle with culture. In other words, the traditional Marxist Klassenkampf was to be entirely replaced by a neo-Marxist Kulturkampf. 

These men, many of whom were psychoanalysts of Jewish descent (a fact of particular interest to fascists), came to be known as the ‘Frankfurt school’ due to their affiliation with the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University, located in Frankfurt, Germany. The subversive ideas this faction of assorted academicians and literati conjured up had a profound effect on Western intellectuals and eventually infected the minds of North America’s and Europe’s cultural elite via university indoctrination, the story goes on, thereby leading to the liberal social movements and various projects of social engineering observed today, e.g., feminism, LGBTQ rights, multiculturalism, and political correctness. To quote the late conservative political commentator Andrew Breitbart:

"We can call it cultural Marxism, but at the end of the day, we experience it on a day to day basis. By that I mean, a minute by minute, second by second basis. It’s political correctness and it’s multiculturalism." 

But how well does this chilling tale conform to reality? Not very. However, before describing the actual causes of the social maladies certain conservatives impute to ‘cultural Marxism,’ I believe it would be instructive to trace the origins of this conspiracy theory; for, in so doing, we shall discover that it is little more than the latest iteration of the right-wing’s ceaseless Red Scare effort. 

Let us begin at the beginning, with Karl Marx himself...

What follows is a carefully constructed, engagingly written, and convincingly definitive account of this patently ridiculous, reactionary meme. Also, be sure to read through the voluminous comments section, where Acuña makes a good faith effort to patiently engage with and educate an alt.right True Believer. The latter's increasingly desperate flailing in the face of an ideological opponent whose knowledge and basic intelligence so obviously eclipse his own comes close to being as revealing about the insidious core of the Current Crisis as Acuña's essay, itself.

2. Ladies and gentlemen, take a firm grip on your favorite religious fetish object, apply a fresh coating of drool-repellent aerosol spray on your anti-nightmare body pillow, and enter the world of DINILD TRIMP! Don't say I didn't try to warn you.

3. This one goes out to all my dungeon crawlin' homies. Whaddaya think, boys? Would our weekend-long sessions of AD&D have been more enjoyable if one of us had invested in a half-acre sized replica of the pseudo-medieval worlds of our vivid, sex-starved, teen-aged imaginations? I dunno... maybe yes, maybe no. Sure is impressive, though...