Alice Dreger has a remembrance of Napoleon Chagnon in The Chronicle Review. This part jumped out at me:
The reason he was willing to work with me for over a year was not because he had a big ego — which he did. It was because he knew the “closest approximation to the truth” would exonerate him. He knew that Tierney had misrepresented so much.
…
The chair of the AAA task force knew it too. That was Jane Hill, former president of the AAA. During my research, Sarah Hrdy shared with me a previously confidential message, dated April 15, 2002, in which Hill responded to Hrdy’s concerns about the task force’s work.
“Burn this message,” Hill told Hrdy. “The book [by Tierney] is just a piece of sleaze, that’s all there is to it (some cosmetic language will be used in the report, but we all agree on that). But I think the AAA had to do something because I really think that the future of work by anthropologists with indigenous peoples in Latin America — with a high potential to do good — was put seriously at risk by its accusations, and silence on the part of the AAA would have been interpreted as either assent or cowardice. Whether we’re doing the right thing will have to be judged by posterity.”
It’s easy to understand the calculation Hill and others were making.
If you don’t know, the backstory is around the year 2000 the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon came under fire as having aided and abetted genocide in the course of his research in a fashion that would make Josef Mengele proud. On the whole, all the accusations were false. But until that was established Chagnon came under fire from colleagues, and members of the press. The New York Times Book Review gave the critique of Chagon a positive review, something which John Horgan does not seem to regret much.
Despite the storm and fury ultimately the whole episode came to a just conclusion: Chagnon and James Neel were exonerated. The AAA task force report was eventually rescinded.
Does anyone believe that if the same thing happened today in 2019 it would end in the same way? I don’t think it would at all. The accusation itself would have destroyed Chagnon’s career immediately. Associates and colleagues would have been called upon to denounce Chagnon. Silence would be seen as suspect.
Perhaps people would understand on some level that it was far far better that one individual’s reputation must die so that the field might live. But whereas in 2000 those who were making this calculation seemed embarrassed about what they were doing, today I doubt there would be such reluctance. Even if Chagnon and James Neel were not guilty of the specific crimes, they were born convicted in the eyes of critics as white males. The only way that it would work out for Chagnon today is if he turned on Neel and denounced him, sacrificing the dead for the living. A “struggle session” would be his only defense.
We all know this is true. I suspect this is why Horgan seems utterly unashamed about having given praise to a book in 2000 which aimed to destroy reputations but which we now know as false. By today’s standards what he did was not a big deal. Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.
From reading the references, it is obvious I had Chagnon wrong in the comment I made on the piece dated October 2. His opinion on the causes of violence was evidently much more nuanced than I had believed it to be.
I clicked through to Horgon post. The biggest surprise was “Edward Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett and Marc Hauser”….. “Warning that a positive review might ruin my career, the group urged me either to denounce Darkness or to withdraw as a reviewer.”
This also now seems somewhat quaint. Although each faction still coordinates behind the scenes, the actual back and forth has no backroom dealing across sides. Instead all conflict is carried out directly in public live on twitter and other platforms. Congress of course functions that way now as well.
Orwell’s rejoinder to the apologists for the totalitarian regimes of his day seems particularly apt here. If Chagnon was an egg that simply *had* to be broken, one could just as well put his question to contemporary anthropologists.
“Where’s the omlette?”
I think the War Before Civilization thesis is getting stronger and also more generally accepted over time (although that’s just from my amateur observer’s perspective). I think that at least partly contradicts Razib’s perspective that people let their liberal biases increasingly triumph over the facts. Also that Chagnon seems to be winning this battle over time. Razib posits that Chagnon would not if the attacks started today – maybe, but Chagnon is winning today.
Anyway, maybe making some predictions about whether War Before Civilization becomes more accepted over time could be relevant to Razib’s pessimism.
If “War Before Civilization” is becoming more accepted (if!) then I think that needs some consideration in light of the underlying ideological shift in the academy.
I would tend to think that if it is becoming more accepted, I would darkly suggest this is possibly more to do with it presenting a vision of ‘primitive’ and ‘patriarchal’ societies which is considered to be fairly condign to the opinions of a more explicitly feminist, progressive, socialist, utopian, activist academy with less patience for ’90s liberal pieties.
(I don’t get the sense that the ‘Millennial Socialists’, who are thin in number in the population as a whole but fairly frequent, even modal, today in most geeky venues, really care *that* much about ideas of peaceful and noble nomads. They like fighting, or at least verbal fighting and temperamentally approve of political street fighting, and in the round maybe aren’t that dissimilar from what I would imagine Soviet anthropologists would have thought about simple societies. If anything, they seem to care a lot about defending the dignity and accomplishment of ‘equally advanced’ Asian and Islamic civilizations as a plausible alternative to Western civilization, rather than being too committed to the dignity of nomads.)
Only delusional people could ever have opposed “primitive warfare”, because we can observe the roots of it in other primates, especially chimpanzees, already. Actually even in most social animals with territorial needs and instincts from ants to lions.
Warfare was essential for human evolution in a lot of ways, from intensified male cooperation inside larger social units (changing evolutionary trajectories in a positive way) to the accelerated spread of advantageous genetic and cultural traits.
Mass wars became a problem when the combatants themselves had little profits from their sacrifices and suffering, war became a force of negative selection and possibility even threaten the species as a whole.
This changed how people viewed at war and allowed the Cultural Marxist to get more people convinced of a new “anti-heroic” age.
Like with Feminism, they tried to get scientific authority behind their plans for social engineering and invented a “golden age” before bad material inequality created all the despicable things they wanted to deconstruct, like patriarchy, tradional gender roles, national and ethnic identity, heroism and glorification of wars and the Western history etc.
The thing about that nonsense of a “golden age” which was corrupted later was always crap, but now its easier to discard than it was at the times of the “culture war” in the 1960s, because Cultural Marxism won and is now so deeply rooted in society and became the orthodoxy of the establishment, that they dont need fancy stories any more. They were a vehicle to break and deconstruct the conservative and right positions in the intellectual sphere, to create a legitimation beyond the current practise.
The individual rights and dignity of all identities and nothing else dogma, even at the cost of more fundamental individual rights and dignity, is now so deeply ingrained in Western societies, with the Cultural Marxist child of political correctness, that facts don’t matter any more if they could question the dogma.
Facts which would have utterly destroyed the CM project in the 1960s can now be tolerated with a shrug, because belief matters more than facts.
But of course, those high priests of political correctness and their disciples know how weak their factual arguments are and don’t want opposing views in the scientific communities. Especially since Trump was elected, because that proved to them a backlash is still possible.
So they have to defend their failed and destructive social engineering, which, even from the original Marxist perspective just helped the big money elite so far, with more aggressive positions and the actual silencing and persecution of opponents.
This will again be tolerated by the “elite” because they want a surveillance state and no backlash as well.
They prefer easy to manipulate, flexible individuals before healthy communities – worldwide.
An unholy alliance, but the Cultural Marxist crap will ne supportes until the new societal control will be established.
However, they coole a dangerous menu by supporting such movements. Might foreign back on them at some point, because they are rich, old, “white” men for the most part. With a power base without any democratic legitimation or control.
This unholy alliance was so successful because it helped both sides. Cultural Marxism, contrary to Marxism in itself, did not touch the power of big money, but is aimed to deconstruct the social and cultural preconditions of “inequality”. They didnt care for middle class white males life and family being ruined, stripped of rights and privileges, because it made their wealth privilege even more important.
Since the science, mass media was controlled by the money, they could limit and guide the left too. If they went too far and touched sensitive issues for them, they could easily do damage control.
The Internet and social media changed that completely because the filters of the establishment dont work any more.
Now they accelerate the path to the surveillance state, but they have a problem:
They might be able to ban criticism from the right, with the label of “hate speech”, but what about the left?
They are mostly old, “white” men coming from privileged money dynasties. In the past they made deals with leftists for either profit.
But now anybody can start a campaign against them, their corruption and misdemeanours as well! And if the current left is really consequent in their approach, all of them are criminals or at least abuse their disproportionate power and influence.
Which is in no way democratically legitimated or controlled, but just the result of accumulated wealth.
The Showdown will be therefore very interesting, because even if this unholy alliance will prevent a rollback and establish their social engineered surveillance state, they cant win both. Because one side will be at least the second victim of this techno-totalitarism 2.0.
Unless they Crash before, society stabilises, rolls back, being overtaken by religious fanatics or other political radicals or even collapses as a whole, they cant win both anyway.
But whatever happens, we now reached a point from which it is very, very unlikely that society in just a few decades from now can be seen as a real continuation of the last decades. We’re approaching new horizons for good or bad.
It’s a shame, but the non-STEM academy is garbage now, garbage people doing garbage “scholarship,” and since the rot has advanced so far in the academy, it’s impossible to reform from within. The gangrenous limb must be removed, and to that end I champion state de-funding of non-STEM curricula in the public universities. The idea has been gathering steam and in this new Trumpian era starting to be considered in Right political circles. Obviously private schools can carry on with this nonsense but there will be a great many fewer of those in another generation or less. The only way these people continue to survive is by being firmly attached to the public teat, and we taxpayers get nothing but noxious, anti-social agitprop for our investment.
Nothing of value would be lost, and no one would miss them once they’re gone. It would be delightful to see Left academy Twitter filled with woeful tweets about having to take on additional student debt to learn how to become computer janitors at ECPI.
@GFC: I think that is not possible nor necessary. Actually a lot depends on just a few people and fields of study.
But I would definitely say that some funding should be completely cut, some studies closed if they produce no verifiable results (hard to discuss though) and in the private field I would recommend to make any donation public if there wouldnt be the politically correct Mob waiting.
Because any kind of “diversity-equality” study funding would make the donor a saint, while any even remotely politically incorrect activity makes the donor a persona non grata if not worse.
That’s the actual problem: Any kind of even the mildest criticism, more and more even just indifference, to the Cultural Marxist project of “eliminating any kind of discrimination and inequality in society” will be punished.
You have good and bad scientists everywhere and if you let the privates do what they want, well, that was where all this started!
Or do you really think some delusional radical students would have succeeded like they did on their own.
I recently heard that a large majority of the American people was in favour of shooting at radical students if they turn violent during protests in the 1970s.
They had professors and newspapers which formed their worldview, music labels and producers making the great soundtrack of the age (love it myself). The conservative side made many mistakes of which Vietnam was the worst, but without the support “from above”, the political twist in popular culture, how far would they have come?
There was a lot of power and money behind the culture war of the 1960s, this is not about some idealistic students changing the World.
When they did their job, damage control came and none of the elite members orchestrating that Chaos had to pay from his Fortune to help those poor, underprivileged minorities they had so much empathisch for – when it was about destroying conservative community values.
You will wonder how fast this all can end when they touch the big money. At least you will hear and see very different voices and measures “from above” out of a sudden.
Like “Syrian freedom fighters” which got all the support while doing horrible atrocities. But “there is nothing to do about.”
Of course you can, if you want. But the establishment only wants if THEIR plans, privileges and well being are at threat.
So I can only hope for some maniacs from the left to cross as many Red lines as possible.
If the upper ones have to make a deal with the right to save their position, things would turn so fast you wont believe it.
Because everything gravitates to natural order, the artificial constructs need much more Investment!
But I’m afraid the big money has the left still so good under control, they rather want to completely annihilate the right on the West and will, if they fail to control what society they created, wake up too late.
Or they win and we are all slaves, no compromise with left or right being needed any more. Than the left will Wale up in a new Feudalism rather than a Star Trek Utopia.
Cultural Marxism
Someone please explain to me what this means. I see this term bandied about by (fellow) rightists, but it always struck me as nebulous.
Basically its about Western Marxist theories which, with roots in the Frankfurt sociological-philosophical school, distanced themselves from classic economic Marxism and Totalitarism, while taking in a lot of Freudian and other (more extreme was Wilhelm Reich) psychoanalytical and psychological concepts of mostly unscientific nature.
They used their sociological and psychologising view on society to first pathologise and then deconstruct not just authoritarian, but any kind of traditional and/or conservative values.
They did so under the premise that fix and moral based social interactions before “their awakening” were all based in relationship of power.
Ever wondered while the Eastern Communist states had more conservative, Nationalist and tradional societies with a healthier demographic after the Cold War than Western Europe?
It was not just because of Western Capitalism per se, but because the whole Western system, including pop culture became Cultural Marxist, but the truly Marxist East much less so – even though it came over before the opening. They were protected from some of the worst Western degeneracies by the Iron Curtain. AN irony of history, since they started pretty bad.
What this individual based crusade for societal deconstruction and paramount “equality” for society means can be summe up with: The weak should control the strong and the pillars of society should carrying the whole weight but shut up and feeling guilty “for their privileges”.
The classic hierarchy should be upside down: in the family the women before the man, the healthy child after the disabled, children above parents and recently even animals before humans and so on.
A lot of this was particularly successful in a certain guilt and helpers complex ridden Christian environment. That was fertile ground for this “crusade against nature”.
Constructivism and psychological concepts play a big role and even scientifically proven facts can be rejected because they are, like anything else we believe to be true, human Fabrics.
They question really everything ans try to make people in secure about whats the truth and what not, whether common sense exists or not. The only thing they never question is their own vision of an “equal and open” society.
They have to fail because you need to take care for the pillars of society rather than what they carry.
You might question why the Plutocracy likes that? They dont, but it helps to deconstruct what they dont like too. Its a societal catalysator they use to make us all helpless small objects in the World System. Freed not just from traditional constrictions, but also supporting networks.
The Taliban Pashtu could make up organised resistence and survive in their communities. The average Western person has fewer and fewer people to trust and is fully dependent from the systems money and economy.
Also, the “political correctness” will be used to widen the police and surveillance state. If the honest and true leftists don’t wake up, they build their own prison.
The left feels they can “change something”. Probably like in the 60-70s.
But who knows what happens next these days and which plans work out.
But the bug money-Cultural Marxist alliance has an expiration date.
Like the real black movements. Once they did what they ought to do, they are supposed to move back in the Box…
To make it more concrete: The whole concept of the importance of “weak members of society feeling offended” would be unthinkable without CM. Being weak, strange and aberrant is good, anything normal and functional exerts pressure, abuses power and being privileged by an ignorant society which should recognise the beauty of deviation.
Every day you get served a new insanity of this social engineering, something like:
https://www.google.at/amp/s/www.nationalreview.com/corner/oxford-students-vote-to-ban-clapping/amp/
It was general custom to clap or knock on the table in European universities for centuries, but now its being questioned and some want “to ban” it.
Why? Because some people “might feel anxious” or even getting a panic attack because of the noise they argue.
So because there MIGHT BE a single person for every 100th lecture you want to destroy a century old, useful custom of acclamation!
Because to keep it, would mean “to exclude someone” from social interaction at the elite institutions.
Instead of doing more for gifted people with an unfavourable social background for studying in Oxford, which would really change something to the positive for all, they make this symbolic nonsense to demonstrate “how sensitive they are and how a sensitive copes with social inclusion”.
It doesnt even matter how far that nonsense really goes on in Oxford, the idea alone is symptomatic.
It wouldnt have been possible without Cultural Marxist concepts. Yet, to be fair to the founders, its an American leizure to middle class Degeneration of CM.
Because the original concept was to really revolutionise society and abandon Bourgeois customs and hypocrisy.
Now many of those American and British students and professors are like Bourgeois clowns and caricature the original concept in a highly hierarchical, pseudo-intellectual microcosmos of absurdities without having touched the real Capitalist “inequality”, or better inherent deficits, in any significant way.
Most approach a wealthy, saturated life as a minion of the Plutocracy and can play clowns and persecute the right criticism whereever it might still persist.
Useful idiots on strings. However, like said above, the Internet made new campaigns, activism and communication outside of the old message control possible.
This could create a situation in which the old puppet masters themselves come under Fire.
So far not too much happened, but if they let them grant, some might wake up. But then its much easier to attack imaginary authoritarian foes and showing “empathy” for “suppressed minorities” (which still are supposed to clean their rooms by the way) rather than looking at the more fundamental issues of the Capitalist Oligarchy.
but it always struck me as nebulous
My apology upfront, but as best as I can tell you are correct. It is every cultural, political and economic change of which the observer disapproves. Marxism got thrown in because that’s the worst word association that was around at the time.
The critical theory and the starters of this political movements explicitely relied on Marxist theory and writings.
The whole concept of “freeing the suppressed” from the Bourgeois European Capitalist and Imperialist hegemony was Marxist.
It was just adapted to “heterosexual white male” in the next steps with all consequences and this was accepted by the American establishment for two reasons:
1st: A lot of the agitators and supporters were Jewish, they were more afraid of European homogeneity than they relied upon it.
2nd, which proved to be more important, because almost the whole American elite of all backgrounds was on board: They wanted to defeated Communism with the concept of “equal opportunity” regardless of any sort of identity while being able to keep Capitalism and power, bringing social movements under control and corrupting their leaders with “deals”.
This was the internal reason, the external was propaganda for the imperialist USA being the real liberator of all Kinds of “suppressed people” worldwide. Even if they dont feel “suppressed” they need to be “educated about it” to become “free individuals”.
This vision of a multi-ethnic Capitalist world under the leadership of the USA was easier to Sellerie with the USA themselves becoming the role model for “equal opportunities”.
So some spin doctors saw the Marxist challenge, chose what’s best compatible with their goals and promoted it so that more fundamental challenges to the Oligarchy’s rule could be brought under control.
And thats what they still do: Social control and manipulation expands, even with surveillance and police state measures, while the Left starts one sick campaign after the other, but the system stays intact and even gets stronger while personal freedom is shrinking.
At the base of this distorted political correctness is still and 100 percent a Marxist way thinking and evaluating social relations.
The critical theory and the starters of this political movements explicitely relied on Marxist theory and writings.
It is fallacious to assert that Marxism is what a or some Marxists advocate.
To make you understand what the difference between Marxism and cultural Marxism is, and what they have in common, I might use one obvious example.
You have a poor black community with a lot of school drop outs and high unemployment with a more wealthy white neighbourhood.
Now both classic Marxism and Cultural Marxism would be upset about this situation,
would blame society and the environment and would want to lift the socio-economic level of the black community, the difference is how.
The classic Marxists would invest big time, creating new opportunities for better schooling and efficient local structures, jobs and they would prevent obvious discrimination too. They would try to adapt the social and economic environment to make their situation better.
A Cultural Marxist would first blame and accuse the White community of discrimination and not giving equal opportunities to the black individuals, will promote mixed classes, even at great costs and efforts for the people, will invest in some educational program for the black kids and blame society and discrimination for everything. Will install quota and put the white neighbourhood under pressure.
But with the exception of a handful of chosen black quota people, for most nothing will change other than they will be educated to blame society for everything.
And of course, no systemic change and fundamental investment will be made to really better the situation for the majority of the black community. Sometimes the projects they do will make the situation even worse, because they don’t fit to the people’s needs, but just into the CM ideological scheme.
Only a small black group profits truly.
The vast majority of both black and white people loses because the programs destabilise their communities and the “reality of equal opportunity” makes it easier to justify cutting general social programs and wages for lower and middle class jobs, because its always the individuals fault if “they don’t succeed”.
Whites should not whine because they are privileged anyway and other ethnicities because they have these great “equal opportunities”, quotas and educational programs.
Such measures are not liberal/libertarian and the inconsequence and neglect is unthinkable in classic Marxism, but thats cultural Marxism in a Neoliberal society.
Social engineering and educational programs which weaken naturally grown communities, while the distribution of wealth gets more and more skewed and a smaller percentage than ever controls more than ever.
But the single individuals from “minorities” which are being brought to the upper-middle level of society prove the “equal opportunities” dogma.
On top they can, as e.g. actors, scientists and politicians promote even more social engineering and “changing of attitudes” while being thankful for their Mentors and Sponsors to have brought them there.
No word which would really change the situation for the majority of the “underprivileged” on the ground.
The new leftists recently, based on social media activism, mostly white Bourgeois, seem to demand more. But let’s see what they really do.
In any case: The goal is Marxist, the measures mostly in the socio-cultural individual sphere rather than the hard economic state.
Marxism would change the economic foundation first, the rest second. Cultural Marxism wants attitudes change and equal opportunities first, economic interventions second.
Brainwashing before help.
Marxism would change the economic foundation first, the rest second. Cultural Marxism wants attitudes change and equal opportunities first, economic interventions second.
Thanks for the ‘splaining. I think it has helped, because you finally wrote something with which I can almost agree.
I would add that a Marxist would believe that once the economic foundation was changed everything else would more or less fall into place. I think that the people you lump together as Cultural Marxists believe that if you change the culture, the economic picture would fall into place.
@Twinkie if you haven’t seen Yuri Bezmenov’s talks, they’ll help understand cultural Marxism and its origins as subversion of the west.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g&t=7s
Yes, thats correct and they thought so for different reasons:
Before culture could be changed, you would need to force people to accept change in social relations, economic inequality and power structures. But, at least in the 1960s, they wanted to distance themselves from Totalitarism like in Soviet Russia or China. It wasnt what they wanted any more. Most rejected open, violent revolution, not all, but those which dominated in the end.
So you start to deconstruct all the foundations of traditional, conservative society instead. You change the language in a way which makes opposing thoughts harder to express. This is really Orwellian speech control of the worst kind and it started with Marxist intellectuals debating how society could be transformed to this egalitarian paradise they strived for.
Natural differences and laws could only be neglected and denied if they would compromise the dogma of absolute egality of all humans and society, the environment making the really important difference virtually always.
Communism started pretty bad with Lamarckism and other anti-Darwinian nonsense, but became more pragmatic over time.
Western cultural Marxists are nowadays still split on the issue whether it suffices to have the interpretative control over the results of natural sciences, mainly via mass media control and personal campaigns against wrong-doers, or whether controversial research should be banned altogether.
They refuse largely to e.g. accept sex differences of significance, but consider sexual or ethnic identities as social constructs and culture dependent. They are societal constructs indeed, but not fully so and they have biological significance. This is hard to accept under the Marxist Formula (influenced by older ideas including Christian) of societal conditions forming what a person becomes before anything else.
Communists could be more pragmatic because they ruled, Cultural Marxist are much more delusional because they think the more of the European people and culture they destroy and sacrifice, the more natural laws they bend, the closer they will come to their Utopia. A society of equality and all the people in the World will be thankful for that gift and join them hand in hand, dancing without seeing any differences any more in this peaceful Lala-Land.
In fact they are just a doomsday sect which ruins the very foundation of their own people and ideology.
Because most of the World is not interested in their dreams.
But thats when it will get really nasty and we are approaching this stage: Bad backward white people and unthankful “minorities” will both be forced to accept their greater wisdom. Now, with the urge to take the power over the state to finally make it happen and prevent a Backslash once and for all.
We see this in recent polls: Normal black and Latino people want better socio-economic conditions, not as much the all important identity and speech terror or radical Feminism.
But this cultural Marxism is really ideal for social engineering, because thats what it was always about, manipulating every aspect of life to prepare the revolution.
They might just have done their job for the Capitalist Oligarchy though. Because they gained little real power but were just supported and guided from above SO FAR.
To make it more concrete: The whole concept of the importance of “weak members of society feeling offended” would be unthinkable without CM.
With all due respect, that is very wrong. The idea of not offending is much older than Marx. Probably much older than Jesus. The idea that it is not good manners to offend people who are “not as fortunate” as yourself is equally as old.
And as any good right-winger knows, political correctness not only allows offending people but revels in offending many people who may or may not be weak but who are the wrong sort of people, part of one or more wrong groups, e.g., poor white Christians.
What this individual based crusade for societal deconstruction and paramount “equality” for society means can be summe up with: The weak should control the strong and the pillars of society should carrying the whole weight but shut up and feeling guilty “for their privileges”.
Again, as any right-winger can tell you, much of political correctness worships power, as long as the right people are exercising it. It believes in diploma privilege: the schooled deserve more money and power than the unschooled. And, of course, it believes in moral privilege: the woke should be able to tell the non-woke what to do and what to say and ideally what to think.
There may be such a thing as cultural Marxism but this sounds simpler: “I’m right; you’re wrong. Do what I say and shut up.”
@Roger: Agreed, but there are “special cases” now created by cultural Marxism.
E.g. even if you are a high level white and heterosexual Professor of great importance for Cultural Marxist thought, you have to show great respect in public to whatever a poor black, disabled, queer woman with psychological problems has to say (just to have it all at once).
It might be absolute nonsense, a white guy would be kicked out, but you have to listen carefully what she has to say in the debate and being even more careful about your answer as a privileged old man.
This really results of the extreme lefts appreciating and respecting all kind of nonsense which comes from the “better people” by their own definition.
Because open social arrogance is mainly allowed against other “privileged people”. So “white trash” being more acceptable than similar words for other people.
Similar would be:
Christianity : Islam
Man : Woman
Heterosexual : LBGT
State : NGOS
Economy : Environment
Etc.
This is more than just right and wrong, but they create their own bubble of guilt and repentence, like Christian sects.
After they have done their service and were upset about injustice and intolerance, they feel better and superiour as the awaken ones, can get into their car and have fun, with the exception of “alternative lifestyles”.
Needless to say that the whole area of post-Colonial studies and Gender studies is an exclusively CM Domain a/o.
Why I think Cultural Marxism as a term is important? Because thats the ideological foundation of a lot of societal trends especially since the 1960s.
Political correctness is just one of the more important results of its influence on politics and society. But there is much more many people don’t realise any more because they grew up in a CM environment and think thats just “normal”, even if they might see a problem, they don’t know that this status is quite young and the result of CM social engineering.
They just don’t know the history and background of societal customs.
And thats part of it: History being reduced to gospels of CM.
More nuanced views on the past are unwanted.
There we come back to primitive warfare: More nuanced views rather than the “Golden Age” vs bad civilisational influences are unwanted.
Some would prefer to ban them.
As I’ve said in the past guys, I don’t think people on the right really understand how useful it has been for you to have the left wing domesticated and ensconced in academia – and how much worse it will be if it is systematically disassembled.
This is my own analysis of things: In the late 19th and early 20th century, we had a relatively strong left-wing working-class movement in the United States. Not strong compared to Europe at the time, but strong compared to the U.S. today. This movement was particularly strong among those who were first/second generation Ashkenazic immigrants, but represented among other groups as well.
Beginning in the 1960s, the children of this grouping basically colonized the academy, going straight from left-wing agitators to tenured professors. This essentially disengaged them from class struggle – and to a large extent real politics. They were sinecured in lifetime positions where they could essentially do whatever they wanted as long as they initially paid their dues through the PHD process and didn’t ruffle too many feathers. They got to have a decent salary, live in little bubbles where everyone agreed with them ideologically, and take entire years off for travel if they so desired. The vast majority of these people – though they style themselves as “radical” and see their work as “social action” don’t really do much of anything to threaten either capitalism or political leaders. They write articles read by a few dozen people, and teach students who for the most part remember nothing they had learned in the class five years later.
In the past few decades, neoliberalism has all-but-destroyed the standard of living of new entrants into the academy. Much of the teaching work has already been transferred to part-time adjunct faculty which make as little as a quarter of what a tenure-track professor makes on a credit-hour basis. This has already led to the beginnings of a labor uprising among adjunct staff, but even when they do succeed in increasing standards, the cost savings for universities for moving onto this model are so dramatic that the shift continues. That academia is no longer a very valid career path has been drilled into undergrads, as outside of grifter programs like MFAs in creative writing, the number in degrees has steadily fallen, despite the overall population increasing. So what you desire is already happening, in a more protracted fashion.
Regardless, let’s say hypothetically you got the power you sought to move this along. What difference would it make. Ideologically speaking, I think probably relatively little. Just about everything – including political ideology – is caused by an interplay between biology and culture. People attracted to leftism will be attracted to it no matter where they are. Indeed, most of the younger folks I know in the DSA and the like are not the perpetual grad students of yore, they’re broadly speaking “working class” folks with boring day jobs they hate.
Similarly, and independent of general political inclination, the truly toxic people in academia – those who play internal politics within departments, lie about colleagues to advance their own agendas, have a general lust for power and recognition, etc – will for the most part be exactly the same people outside of the academy as inside. It’s just that they’ll do the same awful stuff in local government, unions, and civic associations.
Why I think Cultural Marxism as a term is important?
Ever since these people have been “named” by people such as yourself as the opposition they have been handing you your nuts on a silver platter.
One of my points is that whatever “you” are doing is not working, so you need to try something else. One of my other points is that you should consider a name change for your opposition.
@Karl Zimmerman
Bummer, like totally.
@Karl: I don’t agree with the academic institutions, because those are key for the societal control. Also:
“Just about everything – including political ideology – is caused by an interplay between biology and culture. People attracted to leftism will be attracted to it no matter where they are.”
That depends on how you define “Left” and “Right”, because those terms can mean very different things. A passive Conservatism will usually never get a lot of active idealistic followers. In a more dynamic situation and fight for change things can look very different. I could observe many families which changed from one to the other side, and they were basically the same people, just different generations in a different environment. It matters a lot which political climate dominates school and university, it matters a damn lot, believe me. Some people might always gravitate to one or the other side, but the majority is influenceable.
Also, a very big thing of importance: Cultural Marxism was particularly successful with women. They could sell the “everything was bad and now you are so free and everything will be fine and peaceful” mantra.
If you look at the recent polls and elections, in North America and Europe alike, the electoral behaviour of males and females was very, very different. It always was, but now its a strong split. European young males are more and more in defensive mode, they see what’s coming, they being betrayed, they are fed up. Not all vote radical, but the Left is almost dead among young males.
Quite the contrary on the female side, which defend the pluralistic society and want to avoid conflicts. That’s a female behaviour constant: They rather avoid conflict and want to prevent escalation, even if the situation will only get worse.
Actually a lot of males being appeased by their women and the more radical ones from the right have a real problem of finding partners, because they being seen as close to criminals and there are not too many women on the same level.
This was always the plan too, when they wanted to destroy the patriarchal family. Because in the past the male was the dominant force in the family, most family members would have voted “like dad did” if they had a vote at all. The Cultural Marxist movement knew that very well, so their first target was and still is, everywhere, the patriarchal extended and nuclear family. They are even happy with destroyed families, single mothers, lot of divorces, loose relationships because all of this reduces birth rates in European states and destroys family structures which are the base of an ordered society.
This is highly important to realise, that the “sexual revolution” and women’s emancipation has to be seen from this perspective: Female voters and consumers were more susceptible for the CM promises, so they could be positioned as a blockade to any rollback from the right, because:
– Females are in all Western societies the majority
– They influence their male counterparts and are, oftentimes, by current law and custom, in the stronger position in the family
– You will hardly get a large enough majority by males alone, so you always have to break the female blockade.
Femals and minorities, migrants are positioned all the same way: They being courted by the left, and once they reach a certain percentage, even if a huge majority of European males would vote for a right alternative, women and minorities will blockade it.
That was the plan from the start, to make “the change” irreversible by democratic elections.
This was also good for the Oligarchy, because they did eliminate the opposition from the Right, while at the same time taming the Left as an ally. This unholy alliance is now in charge, but it depends on success and reciprocal profits.
The main benefit for the left was the Oligarchy let them do their culture war and destruction of the conservative and right base.
Its always better if such a situation becomes more radical, for a very simple reason: The slow change is something many people fail to notice in its consequences. A quick and drastic change in a short time, on the other hand, will make people aware of what happens.
This is true for many things, including surveillance and the reduction of individual freedoms. Do it slowly, in baby steps, many people which would otherwise revolt just shrug.
“Ever since these people have been “named” by people such as yourself as the opposition they have been handing you your nuts on a silver platter.
One of my points is that whatever “you” are doing is not working, so you need to try something else. One of my other points is that you should consider a name change for your opposition.”
I’m doing no real activism with this, but most certainly, if I would, I would educate every single politically active person on the issue. For the vast majority of people, this is not sayable any more. Unfortunately, the CM victory was so complete, you can’t even discuss many such things openly any more. Those who know what you are talking about instanctly attack you and don’t listen to your arguments at all and the rest, even those practising their Cultural Marxist cult in a direct tradition from the Frankfurt School, oftentimes don’t know where it was coming from. Its lost in history for most people anyway. But its important for a deeper understanding of the relations.
For most debates it suffices to talk about “Political Correctness” in practise that’s the main thing anyway, because its their firewall. That’s why even rather clumsy politically incorrect people in public can be valued in gold – every single punch which results in a hole in their firewall is great.
Because the whole construct is so artificial and can only be hold up with such great investments in all fields of society, from indoctrinating children from their first years to students at college, that once the wall crumbles the whole CM project will be dust. It won’t be taken serious any more, it will become the ridiculous caricature of an utopian project it always was, based on false premises and childish, naive views of the world.
That’s why they could be exploited by the Oligarchy, they are essentially naive morons which got too big guns in their hands – but just lent, not really handed over. If the Oligarchy wants to cut them down, they will fall like grass, unless they manage to get on their throat first if they get more political power and floating on the wave.
But doesn’t look like that, they don’t have enough European males behind their backs. That’s a problem for every radical approach, funnily enough. Because in the end, its always about looking in gun barrels. All words will only lead you as far. And the Marines and Special Forces, the CIA and NSA, the whole structures of the state and deep state won’t follow them if they want to do something really radical.
That’s why behind everything is, in reality, the Oligarchy. Without their support, they are nothing, they achive nothing of significance. Like a dog in a cage they let them out, if they want to bait a foe. But if it really matters, this was obvious in all the American wars of the last years, they stand by and just watch. Obama led illegal wars every single day, but he was a dove, yeah sure.
Trump did restrict every single war to the minimum and kept peace as good as possible, but he is an insanse warmonger. Yes, of course.
The mass media is a bitch.
@Karl Zimmerman
I’d agree with you about academia, if I hadn’t seen the effectiveness of propagandized studies firsthand. One example is the Harvard Injury Control Research Center (HICR). They do studies on “gun violence”, with conclusions that consistently advocate for more gun control legislation.
But who funds the HICR? The Joyce Foundation and the Bohnett Foundation. It would be like the NRA and NSSF jointly funding a bunch of studies that are unanimously pro-gun.
Yet most people trust the HICR’s work. They have a hard time grasping who the funding sources are, what they stand for, and how that biases research. They believe in peer-review.
The HICR doesn’t disclose their conflicts of interest in their studies. How does that pass peer-review? The polarization and corruption of the social sciences over the past few decades.
This goes on in biotech, nutrition, and other fields where there’s money or political power at stake. This recent SJW corruption means you risk alienation within your own department every time you publish anything that goes against the SJW dogma.
Get a new SJW boss? Good luck with your career.
Academic studies make the news, which then inform public opinion. The public votes. Instead of a local impact, the toxic types coordinate for a national impact.