Commentary on "Why Is ‘Cultural Marxism’ So Offensive?"(by GILAD ATZMON)

https://www.unz.com/gatzmon/why-is-cultural-marxism-so-offensive/

One may wonder why ‘Cultural Marxism’ is so offensive to some?
Because ‘Cultural Marxism’ is obviously truthful and precise in its capacity to encapsulate a crucial and disastrous transition in the evolvement of 20th century Left thinking.
As opposed to traditional Marxism that theorizes over the necessary condition toward social change by means of class struggle, ‘Cultural Marxism’ aims to introduce a change by cultural shift. At a certain stage some (neo) marxists and socialists were clever and honest enough to accept that the revolution wasn’t going to happen. The working class couldn’t be bothered and even if they could, they were too busy attending their jobs. The revolution had to be facilitated by different means.

Meaning of Cultural Marxism has changed over the years. There's a lot of misunderstanding because people conflate today's brand of 'Cultural Marxism' with Antonio Gramsci's concept of Cultural Hegemony. Such is misleading.

The fact is Gramsci was a genuine communist. He believed control of culture would play a significant role in the revolution, and this revolution would ultimately lead to prole victory.

As for the Frankfurt School, they were more about Marxian possibilities than certainties. They preferred Marx's earlier works when he was searching for an answer in 'critique' mode than his later works when Marx the Prophet pontificated as if he'd figured it all out. Frankfurters wanted to return to the spirit of the early Marx when socialist radicalism hadn't yet hardened into dogma and decree.
And they were increasingly sure that the Soviet Union wasn't the answer and maybe communism wasn't either. But one thing for sure, they were ANTI-CAPITALIST and seeking out new social theories and experimentation to arrive at what they hoped would be a better future.

Fast forward to today, and what goes by the name 'cultural marxism' has NOTHING to do with Gramsci and little to do with the Frankfurt School. Gramsci was a real communist, whereas today's 'cultural marxists' aren't. The Frankfurters and today's so-called 'cultural marxists' may have something in common in their fixation with psychology, esp of the sexual kind. But the decidedly anti-capitalist stance of the Frankfurters made them hostile to much of popular culture and advertising, which were deemed to be 'commoditizing' and cheapening the true meaning of humanity. Their idea of sexual liberation was more on the personal level, not something to be mass-marketed into pornography or vice industry.

Also, Gramsci and Frankfurters were first-rank intellectuals, agree with them or not. The book about German cinema, FROM CALIGARI TO HITLER(by Siegfried Kracauer, affiliated with the 'School'), is very impressive even if you disagree with its conclusions.

https://press.princeton.edu/titles/30251.html

In contrast, today's 'cultural marxists' are superficial and infantile. In some ways, the higher quality of past intellectuals owed to bourgeois repression and the fact that Jews and women didn't have it so good back then. Bourgeois norms pressured people to be mature and serious about stuff and grow up. If Pauline Kael and Susan Sontag had been raised as millennials, they could have ended up like Lena Dunham and Emma Sulkowicz. Also, the fact that many Jews weren't so privileged back then meant that they had really had to work hard and prove their worth. And women back then had to really prove their mettle in men-dominated fields. No one coddled them, and they had to be tough, like female characters played by Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, and Barbara Stanwyck. There was no OLEANNA-ish bullshi* back then. In contrast, so many of today's Jewish elites and women writers have been coddled all their lives in rich homes and/or by PC culture. They are easily triggered princelings who can't fight for themselves and immersed in precious bratriarchy.



Also, there is no interest in communism among today's 'left'. Rachel Maddow and her ilk incessantly badmouth Russia's communist past. They also side with right-wing Israel while denouncing left-wing Venezuela. (In the past, many liberal and certainly leftist media people at least sympathized with Cuba and China and faulted the US for making the Cold War worse than it needed to be.) Some college professors do claim to be communists, but it's all a joke because their MAIN obsession is 'man with a wig is a woman' and 'we must work with uber-capitalists to destroy the white working class'. Gramsci was a communist, and the Frankfurters were, if not hardline communists, at least anti-capitalist and deeply troubled by materialism and pop culture.

Today's 'cultural marxists' are totally with capitalism, oligarchy, materialistic decadence, commodification of humanity via advertising & pornography, gluttonous infantilism(of piggery, tattoos, piercing, and etc), neo-aristo self-indulgence with homo-celebration, narcissism(with slut pride), racial supremacism(worship the badass Negro), deep state & pro-imperialism(calling for more Wars for Israel) via the military-industrial complex, and etc.

Now, some on the Right use the term 'cultural marxism' to imply that today's 'leftists' gave up on economics(socialism or communism) in favor of 'culture wars', but such has to be seen as a deviation from(and even betrayal of) the original intent of both Gramsci and Frankfurters, for whom the culture war was a means to either bring about communism or to seriously undermine capitalism. In contrast, today's so-called 'cultural marxists' are immersed in trashy pop culture(concocted by super-capitalists), vanity & narcissism, spoiled-brat tantrums, and celebrity worship. They are not communists or Marxists. And their feeble idea of 'socialism' is NOT about justice for workers but "Give us free stuff so that we can lead happy hipster lives sipping starbucks and listening to reggae & hiphop(and a tattoo on my arse)." Their idea of justice has less to do with ideology or principles than idolatry of Jews, Negroes, and Homos as propped up by media and academia mostly controlled by Jews. (Jews are having some troubles though because they count as white and are rich as hell. Also, PC psychology is getting awfully neurotic on the issue of holy Jews beating up on POC Palestinians. So, even some Jewish 'leftists' are beginning to denounce Zionism and Israel because the contradiction between Jewish abuse of power and Jewish image of victimhood is getting more problematic.)

When Gramsci and Frankfurters were devising cultural strategies, they weren't about wallowing in pop culture but offering a counter-culture to the dominant one controlled by the 'bourgeoisie'. But today's so-called 'cultural marxist' are delighted with junk-trash culture. For them, pop culture is the END than the means. (For many, pop culture is their only real passion.) Now, they do believe that pop culture must be politicized to serve the 'resistance', but what are the 'values' and 'dream's that they aspire to most? Stuff that are loved by oligarchs, capitalists, privileged decadents, deep state goons, and etc. They love homomania, a tool of rich Jewish capitalist hegemonists. Their reverence for blacks has less to do with Civil Rights Movement than rap music, sports, and sex. And they blabber about platitudes like 'diversity' and 'inclusion' via endless immigration-invasion without understanding that such actually undermine mass unity(to take on elite power). They fail to see that 'diversity' is a ploy used by elites to shift moral advantage from the working class to the elite class. Because working class types tend to be more tribal(by instinct if not necessarily by ideology), the 'compassionate' privileged elites can hug immigrants and minorities and morally condemn the native masses of 'racism'. Thus in the UK, the moral advantage went from white masses making demands on white elites to white elites sneering at white masses as 'racist' and 'xenophobic'. Of course, the elites get 'good diversity', whereas masses get 'bad diversity'. Rich whites are more likely to rub shoulders with the Obamas, whereas poor whites are more likely to be punched by Mike Tysons. Elites the get the prime cut of diversity whereas the masses get the entrails.
And naturally, there isn't much CRITICAL discussion of Jewish power(that is so supremacist, hegemonic, and ultra-capitalist) since the controllers of the elite institutions are largely Jewish.

Naomi Wolf is a ditz, but she was good enough to notice that today's 'cultural marxists' are actually working with the War Department to conflate 'empowerment of women' with US imperialism. Today, many 'cultural marxists' are totally on the side of US war-making because their idea of the highest value is globo-homo stuff. Since the US is now homo-metropole of the world, hell yeah, US should seek hegemony to spread hegehomony. And 'cultural marxists' support new cold war with Russia cuz... Russians won't bend over to 'gay pride' stuff(funded by super capitalists and Hollywood and Wall Street).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/16/katy-perry-military-pop-cultural-complex

Today's 'cultural marxists' should really be called 'cultural capitalists'. It wasn't so much that Marxists took over the culture of capitalism but that capitalism totally transformed or subsumed the character of the Left so that there was no longer any real left left anymore. A 'cultural marxism' that is at home in the pages of Us and People magazines hardly has any moral value as an ideology.

A typical face of 'cultural marxism' is the atrocious Laura Dern in the latest STAR WARS fiasco. You see, the new rebellion is in a life-and-death struggle with the new empire, but notice she obviously spent many hours on her hair and dress to take command of the starship in the most crucial of times during the battle. It's all fantasy. The difference is when STAR WARS and SUPERMAN came out in the 70s, people took them for fantasy and nothing else. But now, we have 'cultural marxists' acting as if the real future of humanity hangs in the balance of what happens in STAR WARS, which is why it is so heavily politicized. It used to be, people got serious ideas from books(and some serious movies) and treated pop culture as escapist fantasy. Now, pop culture fantasyland is regarded as the main battleground of politics. As Chris Hedges said, we live in an empire of illusion where idolatry reigns over ideology. As 'cultural marxists' rule most of pop culture, it is said they have won the 'culture war'. But they won it for super-capitalists, neo-aristo homo narcissists, and tribal Jewish supremacists. The victory has nothing to do with real culture or anything resembling Marxism(or even classical progressivism).

In the radical films I AM CUBA and BATTLE OF ALGIERS, we see real revolutionaries putting their lives on the line for real world struggles. For them, it was not a game of Peter-Pan-ish fantasy. But what passes for 'cultural marxism' today is about taking control of Archie's Comics and STAR WARS franchise to churn out fantasies where the 'good guys(and gals and million other genders and intergalactic species)' come together to fight the 'bad guys' who look like MAGA people. And notice that the STAR WARS universe isn't so much about ragtag rebels vs the empire than about empire vs empire. So, the ultimate message is that militarism and blowing up the world is AWESOME and EXCELLENT as long as it's 'woke' according to Hollywood, Pentagon, Deep State, and the homo-hegemonic community.

The state of today's 'cultural marxism':

https://thereddoorstore.wordpress.com/tag/how-to-peg-your-man/

Commentary on "Mr MAGA and the end of Western Civilization:(by the Saker)

https://thesaker.is/mr-maga-and-the-end-of-western-civilization/

Alas, it also has a darker side: imperialism, racism, genocide, slavery, religious and political persecutions and, of course, two world wars.

Hardly different from rest of humanity.

By the way, race + ism should be defined as belief in reality of race and racial differences. ISM means belief, after all. Using 'racism' to mean 'mindless or groundless racial hatred of supremacism' is to fall into the trap of the enemy. Everyone is race-ist, explicitly or implicitly, because it's impossible not to notice racial differences.

But what the so-called “collective West” (aka the AngloZionist Empire) is showing today is the exact opposite of what the West is supposed to stand for. Here are just a few examples

When has the West, or any civilization, ever practiced what it preached?
I will grant that the hypocrisy is louder than ever under globo-homo Zionist control, but it's a matter of degree than substance.

International law: with the US/NATO aggression against the Serbian nation, a major feature of western civilization died: international law.

True to an extent. Serbia was targeted because it was the strongest state in Yugoslavia and because it was closest to Russia. Also, Jewish power, by coming to the 'rescue' of Muslim Albanians, wanted to propagandize itself as 'pro-Muslim' so as to prepare for wars against Muslim nations. Nice shtick: "Gee, how can WE AMERICANS be anti-Muslim when WE bailed out the Albanian Muslims?" Of course, Jews were being rank hypocrites. Jewish logic says the West had to help Jews take back the Holy Land BUT Serbians had no right to take back their ancient homeland from Albanians who'd come invading under Ottoman rule.

That said, US/NATO intervention in Serbia was a mixed bag. For most of the 90s, NATO had done little or nothing to stop the slaughter, just like the UN did nothing to stop the Rwandan genocide. There was a sense that SOMETHING had to be done to end the bloodshed and cycles of violence.
In retrospect, it was handled badly, but INTERNATIONAL LAW means that nations around the world must work together to stop excessive mayhem in a part of the world. In a more perfect world with a better superpower than the US, maybe something good have come of it. But the US had no credibility as it had used sanctions to kill 100,000s of kids in Iraq.

Law of War and Geneva Conventions: same here, the US is gleefully ignoring many of the most sacred provisions of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions

What of massive civilian bombings in WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, and etc. US support of right-wing death squads during the Cold War. 100,000s, possibly millions, slaughtered in Latin America.
It was always like this. Soviets backed their own bloody regimes in Asia and Latin America. Chinese backed the loathsome Khmer Rouge. The world didn't suddenly suck just now. It was always a mess.

Respect for alliances and partnerships. The AngloZionist Empire has no allies – only vassal states, puppet regimes and comprador 5th columnists.

One of the benefits of being an empire. Puppets are more reliable than allies. Allies can break off he alliance. Puppets always do as told. In that sense, we can't blame the US for preferring puppets to allies. Better off owning a trained dog than partnering with a lone wolf with a streak of independence.

When the Neocons finally came out and showed their true face, they did more than just affect the image of the US abroad, they also gave a signal to their colonial administrators that all pretense of decency could now be dropped.

Jewish tribal supremacist takeover of US empire has been most unfortunate. Though both the US and USSR got their hands dirty and bloody in the Cold War(and supported murderous proxies), there really was a clash of big ideas and visions relevant to much, even the majority, of humanity. It was a world conflict for world-ideas. Big power engaged in big action for big isms.

But, we now have the US as lone hegemon using its immense power and influence to serve the narrow interests of a single tribe(allied mainly with homo supremacists). There is so much tensions around the world to indulge the Jews, a tiny percentage of world population, and homos(the cherry-picked allies of Jews): Jewish King and Homo Queen. Since Jews know that it's too much to ask all the world to risk WWIII, IV, V, and etc. for Jewish interests, they couch their chosen conflicts in terms of 'human rights' and 'spreading democracy' and etc, but it rings so hollow. Or Jews try to spin the conflicts as holy crusades to spread homomania, which actually goes over well with many people in the West for whom queertianity is their new missionary-fairy faith.

Many Russians living in the West (such as Dmitri Orlov) have noted the numerous similarities between the late Soviet Union (especially the so-called “stagnation years”) and the modern US . I myself made such a list of similarities as far back as 2014 when I listed the following:

A bloated military budget resulting in an ineffective military

I dunno. US seems to be pretty effective in smashing nations. Just ask the Libyans, Iraqis, and Syrians. Maybe US sucks at nation-building, but it is an expert at nation-wrecking.

A huge and ineffective intelligence community

Ineffective? It seems very effective. US was able to mess up computer systems in Iran. It has hidden devices in computers all over the world. Also, Intelligence works closely with Jews and Israel, which means all the political dirt are known to Jews who can blackmail anyone.

A crumbling public infrastructure

Depends on where you look. Certain big cities are richer than ever. And even now, most roads in the US are better than roads in Russia or China.

A world record in the per-capita ratio of incarcerated people (US GULag)

Blacks. Evolution made them meaner and tougher. Have blacks, will have lots of inmates.

A propaganda machine which nobody trusts any more

I wish this were so, but plenty of morons trust every word of snakes like Rachel Maddow and S.E. Cupp. And all that anti-Russia hate news must have worked because the great majority of Americans now hate and fear Russia more than ever.

An internal dissident movement which the regime tries to keep silent

True of any society.

An industry whose main exports are weapons and energy

Isn't that Russia NOW? In contrast, the US is also a huge exporter of high-tech, medicine, media, entertainment, chemicals, foods, and etc.

A population fearful of being spied on by the internal security services

Sadly, most Americans have learned to stopped worrying and love the spying. There was some fuss from progs about the Patriot Act during the Bush II presidency, but when Edward Snowden spilled the beans, the entire elite and proggy class denounced him. Conservatism Inc, the arm of the war state, didn't defend him either. It took mavericks like Glenn Greenwald and Oliver Stone to come to his defense. Progs claim to stand for ideology, but 'idology'(idolatry as replacement for ideology) is bigger among them. One of their main 'idological' obsessions is the Magic Negro. As Obama was a Magic Negro, progs just venerated him as a 'historic president' and turned a blind eye to all his warmongering. Progs are more 'Catholicist' than 'Protestantist'. They are more dazzled by 'idolic' symbols and spectacles than true to the letter of progressive ideology.

A financially catastrophic over-reach of the empire across the planet

US is financially over-stretched, but I don't think its overseas empire is the main problem. It's bankers privatizing profits and socializing losses, and it's the masses hooked to entitlements.

An awareness that the entire planet hates you

Nothing new here, but there was always love/hate between US and the world. After all, the world still wants to come to the US and become Americans. Few Americans want to move to Russia, but plenty of Russians want to come to US and become Americans. Even Muslims whose nations have been blown up by the US want to come to US and become Americans into rap and burgers.

A young generation which believes in nothing at all

That wouldn't be so bad. It would at least mean that young people are skeptical. But in fact, too many young people truly and really really believe in globo-homo, Afromania, and Jew-Worship, or the Holy Three. Young people worship MLK, Diversity, Inclusion, 'gay' rainbow, and etc.
In this, they are different from latter-day Soviet youth who really were jaded and felt that they were being lied to about the richer and more advanced West.
In a way, the sheer superficiality of current Western ideology and 'idology' makes them more effective. One problem with Marxism-Leninism was that it just seemed boring, dull, worn, same-old-same-old, and tiresome as the years went by... like someone reading Church dogma for the umpteenth time. In contrast, even as current Western ideology and 'idology' are pretty idiotic, they are always changing color and shedding (snake) skin according to fads and fashion. The conceit of novelty, newness, and 'change' keeps young idiots excited and thrilled: 'gay pride', 'slut pride', BLM, Pussy March, MeToo, tranny-mania, Green New Deal, climate change, 'migrants welcome', 'microaggressions', etc. It's 31 flavors ideology/idology. In contrast, Soviets had only one flavor: Red. Most young people are idiots and care more for pizzazz than meaning. As idiotic as the current Western ideology/idology is, it knows how to hook people to a 'vibrant' sense of 'celebration' and 'happening'. The Revolution has been Advertised. This is why so many youths are indeed 'passionate'(or childishly excited) about whatever flavor they're obsessed with at the Moment.

An educational system in free-fall, (the Soviet one was much better, btw)

Many schools are a mess because of blacks and maybe some browns. And of course, lower-income whites do poorly. But US education is pretty solid for Jews, Asians, and white middle class. If we compare US whites with whites in Europe and Russia, they usually come off better.

A massive and prevailing amount of corruption on all levels of power

This is problematic, mainly due to blacks and Latin Americans/Muslims/Asians who bring their norms to the US. Also, diversity increases distrust.

Anyway... one big difference between US and old USSR is this: The MAIN reason why USSR collapsed was not due to all those problems listed above. It was because its elites got tired of managing the system and taking care of the 'lazy' masses. They wanted to end communism and become super-rich oligarchs. And THAT is why the system collapsed. It was blown up from the top.
In the US, the top elites are super-rich oligarchs. Why would they collapse the system when they already have it so good? During the days of USSR, the Soviet elites envied the capitalist elites of the West who were richer, freer, and had more stuff. The only way they could have it all was by ending communism, which was destroyed from the top than from the bottom.

The elites have it better than ever in the West. Why would they do anything to end the system? Trump made noise about draining the swamp, but it looks like he's been totally co-opted by now. Trump is Scump, saying nasty shit about Queen Ann(Coulter).
Also, as problematic as diversity is, it is actually to the advantage of the elites(esp minority Jewish elites) because diversity makes it impossible for the various racial/ethnic folks to unite to challenge elite power. Also, as at least 50% of whites are totally for diversity & homomania and see 'white supremacy' as the biggest threat, they work with Diversity and globo-homo elites to suppress any effective white mass challenge to elite power.