Bayith
Home |
Political Cultural and Social Issues
|
Political Correctness: Index of Topics
Political Correctness
Cultural Marxism's "Long March
Through The Institutions" of Western Civilisation
"I saw the
revolutionary destruction of Society as the one and only solution.
A worldwide overturning of values cannot take place without the annihilation of
the old values
and the creation of new ones by the revolutionaries"
[George Lukacs, The Frankfurt School]
"We will make the
West so corrupt that it stinks"
[Willi Munzenberg, The Frankfurt School]
Cultural Marxism
Political Correctness /
Critical Theory / Identity Politics
Quotations and Comments
Political Correctness, Cultural Marxism, Critical Theory | Identity Politics | The Origin of Identity Politics | The Frankfurt School
Programmes of Treason | Origins of Political Correctness: Articles | Political Correctness: Index of Quotes and Comments
Political Correctness: Index of Articles
Political Correctness / Cultural Marxism / Critical Theory
"One of the main ideas of the Frankfurt School was to exploit Freud's idea of 'pansexualism' - the search for pleasure, the exploitation of the differences between the sexes, the overthrowing of traditional relationships between men and women. To further their aims they would: (a) attack the authority of the father, deny the specific roles of father and mother, and wrest away from families their rights as primary educators of their children, (b) abolish differences in the education of boys and girls, (c) abolish all forms of male dominance - hence the presence of women in the armed forces, (d) declare women to be an 'oppressed class' and men as 'oppressors'" [source].
Extracts from the article: The Origin of 'Identity Politics' & 'Political Correctness' "[I]n the late 1920s, it was already becoming apparent that Marxist 'theory' did not work in practice, as evidenced by the absence of revolutionary overthrow of regimes in Europe according to Marxian prediction and prescription, even though just such a revolution had occurred in Russia a generation previously. The cognitive dissonance this must have produced within the mindset of 'Western'-culture intelligentsia could only persist and grow with the continued complete failure of a political-Left ethos anywhere to effect real change in its own terms. ... To try to salve their cognitive-dissonance, adherents to an ideology can try to save face by admitting neither their own gullibility nor the falsity of the ideology and instead blame others. In this way the failure of the ideology can be regarded and misrepresented as merely temporary, and the final reckoning postponed apparently indefinitely. In this case, those blamed - the fall guys, as it were - were those perceived to have 'let the side down': 'the workers'. Collectively intended to benefit from the predicted Marxist 'revolution' (or, at least, the furthering of 'the progressive project'), 'the workers' had been designated the 'agents of social change'; but they did not respond actively in this regard" The [white, male] worker: "Identity politics (sometimes dubbed 'political correctness') is the result of a political-Left major backlash against the mass of ordinary people (in Europe an 'the West'), beginning in the 1920s/30s, in the wake of the persistent failure of Marxist theory to be realised in European 'revolution' or any real change through democracy. In shifting the blame away from Marxist theory and those gullible enough to adhere to it, and on to those the theory had prescribed and predicted would have been the beneficiaries, if only they had responded accordingly ('the [white, male] workers'); then the cognitive-dissonance within the political-left mindset caused by this crisis to an extent was salved" Replaced by women: "The intellectual rationalisation was first by invoking Freud's, now comprehensively discredited, notion of 'repression' to attempt to explain a supposed impact on 'the workers' of 'capitalism' acting within the context of the family. With most workers (the group considered the principle 'agents of social change' in a 'revolution') being male, then the theoreticians had in mind the male as 'head' of the family. It was a simple extension in political-Left imagination for 'the worker' to change from being the putative conduit of the impact of 'capitalism' to its embodiment, leaving women to be deemed a replacement supposed 'oppressed' and 'disadvantaged' 'group'" To be joined by non-whites: "This implausible and unfalsifiable non-scientific nonsense mainly festered within academia until the co-option after 1968 by the political-Left of a movement which appeared to be akin to the revolutionary activity predicted by Marxism: the US 'civil rights' movement. This added to the 'new oppressed' the category 'non-white', which like that of women could be envisaged as an inversion of a retrospective stereotype of 'the worker'" Then homosexuals: "In the wake of the similarly seeming revolutionary Stonewall riots of 1969, the 'gay [sic] rights' lobby was also co-opted to further add to the abstract demonised aspects of 'the worker', thereafter retrospectively stereotyped as male plus 'white' plus heterosexual" From then on: "The strands of the 'new oppressed' combined in a new (neo-Marxist) conceptualisation to account for these political shifts after the fact, which came to be termed 'identity politics' (or more pejoratively but accurately, 'cultural Marxism' ...)" "The several abstracted faux groups, in entering political centre stage displaced 'class', because with 'the workers' now considered collectively persona non grata, then being 'working class' was no longer recognised as a disadvantage. Class distinction was jettisoned from the neo-Marxist 'progressive project'" "[A]nyone 'belonging' to a 'group' according to any of the inversions of one or more of the now supposed hallmarks of 'the worker' as male / 'white' / heterosexual, was deemed automatically to belong to the newly identified 'vanguard' of 'agents of social change', and deserving of automatic protection and definition as 'disadvantaged' and 'oppressed'. These three abstracted generic groupings of 'women', 'ethnic-minority' and 'homosexual', naturally were considered additive in conferring 'victim' status, so that a permutation of two out of the three - or, best of all, the full house - was a trump card in what has been dubbed 'intersectionality'" "The deemed 'groups' replacing 'the workers' ... are abstractions rather than groups per se, and in any case far too heterogeneous to be in reality 'oppressed' or 'disadvantaged'; ... the identities in 'identity politics' do not arise within the groups themselves but are conferred according to what can be posited in opposition to 'the workers'. Thus are ignored actually 'oppressed' and 'disadvantaged' categories wholly or mainly comprising males, whilst included are those not in reality comprising the 'oppressed' and 'disadvantaged'; and inasmuch as 'groups' in any way are, as they purport, indeed 'oppressed' and 'disadvantaged', this is overturned either through being stretched in their inclusiveness beyond credulity (as with 'ethnic minority') or narrowed to the point of absurdity (as with the minuscule minority that is trans-sexual). ... The upshot is that 'identity politics' is a 'gravy train' for the already privileged. Worse, it is an instrument of oppression against the very 'group' perennially disadvantaged and the victim of prejudice, which formerly had been identified as worthy of the liberation Marxism promised: the vast majority of (necessarily lower-status) men" "Notions of 'repression' and 'false consciousness' were enough of a dressing-up of a volte-face from eulogising to blaming/demonising 'the workers' to prevent it appearing too transparently to be holding 'the workers' directly culpable, and it was also sufficient a departure from orthodox Marxism that its origin in Marxism was hidden, thereby aiding its acceptance. This would have been important in the USA crucible of these politics when in the aftermath of McCarthyism the political-Left was obliged to present itself differently. With purging of 'communists' having proved resoundingly popular with the American working-classes, a far sharper sense of an 'us' and 'them' vis-á-vis 'the workers' was experienced by the US political-Left, reinforcing its antipathy. Here we have the core of what became 'identity politics', but it was not known as such until the early 1970s" Its current Politically-Correct manifestations: "'Identity politics' all too apparently has grown to be accepted and predominant everywhere - not least among conservative politicians ... police forces, judiciaries, and entire government administrations - such that it is now a totalitarian quasi-religion. ... 'Political correctness' has often and popularly been the ideology's tag, ... but this is rather to confuse the ideology itself with what perhaps is better understood as its surface manifestation, mode of enforcement and expression of its fervency: the seemingly absurd 'speech codes' and blanket gratuitous charges of 'sexism', 'racism' and homophobia (sic) ubiquitous in the media, politics and the workplace" Egalitarianism and the Left's striving for elitist-separatism: "Bidding for social pre-eminence is a combination of trying to acquire rank within society and also to be part of a pre-eminent in-group - one that is almost as separate from society as it is at its apex: elitist-separatism. Implicitly, ... this is what the political-Left foundationally, if unwittingly, is concerned with achieving. Through the ideological conceptualising of society in terms of cooperation, with any competition considered aberrational, those with a political-Left ethos are left peculiarly blind to their own competitiveness. Indeed, their ideology is very much a displaced expression of it, and explains the peculiarly vehement bigotry of its adherents, and why supposed 'proletarian' revolution invariably produced a tyranny, and one that is actually directed towards the 'proletariat', not by it" "The politics espoused of egalitarianism is a competitive-altruistic feint to assist the otherwise standard status-grab. Functioning to deny the legitimacy of any rival elitist-separatists and their ethos, it dupes not only others aspiring though as yet failing to be part of an elite, but precludes even self-awareness of their own elitist-separatist aspirations by political-Left adherents themselves. It is in respect of this, ultimately, that are deployed the intense and protracted attempts to salve cognitive-dissonance so prominent a part of political-Left experience" A supreme irony: [T]he very charge made against 'the workers' of a psychological dysfunctionality in supposedly not being able to see what is in their own best interests, boomerangs back on political-Left adherents as actually their myopia in respect of the psychology of their own ethos. It is not that Neo-Marxism / 'identity politics' / 'political correctness' / postmodernism' is an altruism that is in fact disguised self-interest: it's nothing of the sort. In the service of its own ends, the political-Left ethos adopted a deception designed to fail to identify the actually 'disadvantaged' / 'oppressed', expressly so as to make their condition still worse, as a form of revenge on those regarded as ungrateful for past efforts on their behalf ... It is hard to think of a political fraud as great, (as deep, wide, successful and sustained) as this in history, or even to devise one in mischievous imagination" Its over-reaching and eventual demise: "[The] distinct absences of internal consistency in the 'theory' are the direct consequence of its origination and development as an attempt to hide uncomfortable truths within academic political-Left politics; not to address issues in the real world. That it is hopelessly contradictory, in the end is beside the point to the ideologues, ... but the lack even of internal (let alone external) consistency is a confirmation of the non-sustainability of 'identity politics' 'theory', contributing to what inevitably, as for any and every ideology, is its eventual demise" "Yet there is the distinct possibility that this may not arrive until after 'identity politics' (or however else it is tagged, and whatever else to which it morphs) has grown unstoppably to become yet another recapitulation of 'the terror'. It's now well on the way, with the totalitarianism continuing to ratchet upwards. 'Identity politics' is now so entrenched across 'Western' society that it has a life of its own well beyond the latter-day now quite intense critique of it from within the academia that spawned it. Such critique does not, however, extend to uncovering the actual origin and function of the ideology, indicating that this is just another phase in the endless attempted face-saving by the political-Left intelligentsia." [End]
The following extended extract is from the article: The Origin of 'Identity Politics' & 'Political Correctness' "Identity politics (sometimes dubbed 'political correctness') is the result of a political-Left major backlash against the mass of ordinary people (in Europe and 'the West'), beginning in the 1920s/30s, in the wake of the persistent failure of Marxist theory to be realised in European 'revolution' or any real change through democracy. In shifting the blame away from Marxist theory and those gullible enough to adhere to it, and on to those the theory had prescribed and predicted would have been the beneficiaries, if only they had responded accordingly ('the [white, male] workers'); then the cognitive-dissonance within the political-left mindset caused by this crisis to an extent was salved" "As with any fervent ideology, a hallmark of the political-Left is interpreting anything and everything in its own ideological terms to claim as a manifestation of the ideology and its prophecy - jumping on a bandwagon, so to speak; though here only to hijack it. The bandwagon here was, of course, the American civil rights movement, which though enjoying ubiquitous support within black communities - to the point often of various forms of extremism - featured virtually nil endorsement of socialism ... It is from the time of this co-option that 'identity politics' dates; many considering that the movement was incorporated into the Left in the wake of King's assassination in 1968 - the major turning-point year in political-Left politics generally" "'Civil rights', as the first great 'single-issue' campaign, served not least to provide an acceptable cloak for the Left to avoid provoking a resurgence of McCarthysim. The major social upheaval of 'civil rights' with its large-scale and widespread rioting was easily the nearest thing in then recent US history to look like the promised Marxist 'revolution', and obviously was just the practical application the 'theory' was seeking. Moreover, the protagonists (black Americans) were eminently separable form the now despised 'workers' per se, in being presentable as a new 'group; from outside of the former fray of 'boss' versus 'worker'. "This accident of history served to add 'black' to 'woman' as 'the new oppressed' ... 'The worker' in effect was retrospectively stereotyped as both 'man' and 'white'. With the inverse of this stereotype of 'white' being not just 'black American' but 'black' - that is, ethnic-minority generically ... so it was that the new 'agents of social change' / 'disadvantaged' / 'oppressed' were extended from women to also include all ethnic minorities" "It is only with the knowledge of how this developed that sense can be made of why ethnicity is held above the myriad other possible differences that could be utilised as in-group markers, when in fact there is nothing inherent in ethnicity as an in-group marker to produce inter-group prejudice that is particularly more pernicious" "Indeed, the worst inter-communal conflicts nominally between different ethnicities usually are between different cultural heritages with no discernible 'racial' differences of any kind - and what (non-ethnic) differences there are can be minimal; the lack of contrast actually fuelling the intensity of conflict, such is the need for groups to feel distinguished from each other" "Furthermore, ethnic prejudice is anything but restricted to or even predominantly 'white' on 'black': inter-ethnic (eg, 'black' on Asian) and ethnic-on-'white' 'racism' can be, often is and may usually be the greater problem; and a negative attitude to a certain ethnicity does not imply a similar attitude to other ethnicities" "The specific US experience, given the highly divisive politics in the wake of the American Civil War over the basis of the Southern US economy in African slavery, does not translate to elsewhere; notably not to Europe - as was starkly evidenced in the experience of World War II 'black' American GIs stationed in England in how they were favourably received by locals, who sided with them when discriminated against" "'Racial divides' in European 'white' host countries are the result not of mutual antipathy but affiliative forces, principally within migrant enclaves and secondarily within the 'host' community; in both cases being through in-group 'love', not out-group 'hate'" [EMcD: though the latter part of this observation is indeed true in normal circumstances, this does not, of course, take account of the Islamic/Koranic doctrines of Al-Hijra (Immigration), Taqiyya (Lying and Deceit), and Razzia/Ghazwa (Rape and Slavery), Dawa (Cultural and Stealth Jihad), and Terrorist and Violent Jihad, carried out by fundamentalist Muslims as they settle in increasing numbers in Western countries with the sole and deliberate purpose of making every remaining Dar al-Harb ('House of War': i.e. any non-Muslim country) into a Dar al-Islam ('House of Submission': i.e all Muslim countries) until Islam finally achieves its longed-for global Caliphate.] [End of Extract]
"The Frankfurt School believed that as long as an individual had the belief - or even the hope of belief - that his divine gift of reason could solve the problems facing society, then that society would never reach the state of hopelessness and alienation that they considered necessary to provoke socialist revolution. Their task, therefore, was as swiftly as possible to undermine the Judaeo-Christian legacy. To do this they called for the most negative destructive criticism possible of every sphere of life which would be designed to de-stabilize society and bring down what they saw as the 'oppressive' order. Their policies, they hoped, would spread like a virus - 'continuing the work of Western Marxists by other means' as one of their members noted. To further the advance of their 'quiet' cultural revolution ... the [Frankfurt] School recommended (among other things): (1) the creation of racism
offences, One of the main ideas of the Frankfurt School was to exploit Freud's idea of 'pansexualism' - the search for pleasure, the exploitation of the differences between the sexes, the overthrowing of traditional relationships between men and women. To further their aims they would: (a) attack
the authority of the father, deny the specific roles of father and
mother, and wrest away from families their rights as primary
educators of their children,
"There are eight levels of control that must be obtained before you are able to create a social state:
"Woe unto them that call evil
good, and good evil;
© Elizabeth McDonald https://www.bayith.org bayith@blueyonder.co.uk
|