“Cultural Marxism,” Myths and Other Bogus Monsters

The current conservative movement is not really conservative in the American, traditional sense. It’s more akin to fascism and Mussolini, than it is to Reagan and Goldwater. Like authoritarian movements around the world it concocts mythical beasts that threaten… well that’s often unclear but save the children!

Until they invented the fake “drag” grooming hysteria and the threat of trans kids in the schools they were shreiking about “cultural Maxism,” an enemy they borrowed directly from the Nazis of Hitler’s Germany. Conservatives today have abandoned any pretense of intellectualism and now get their directions from the rabid preachers in evangelical pulpits—men (mostly) who are far more likely to “groom” children than any drag performer.

Instead of a being guided by philosophers and economists, as in the past, they now take their cues from QAnon, buffoons such as Jordan Peterson, or out and out Nazis in the alt-Right.

They are morons adrift in a sea of ignorance looking for any port in a storm. That means they are getting more and more toxic, as well as more dangerous and deadly. They have become traitors to the basic values of America — as was demonstrated by their violent attack on the Capitol at the behest of the Orange Grifter.

Absent any intellectual foundation they invent slogans, devoid of any objective meaning, to smear others. “Woke” is anything they dislike, as is “political correct.” But when such phrases are used the only thing you know is the speaker doesn’t like who ever they are labelling. It tells you nothing factual about the target of the smear, only the inner hatred of the speaker.

Consider the utter nonsense of using right-wing slurs such as “cultural Marxism.” This is a term originating in Nazi Germany, where the term Kulturbolschewismus (Cultural Bolshevism) was used to describe an alleged Jewish plot to spread communism. Nazis argued Marxism was a Jewish plot and so was capitalism, which was under the control of a cabal of Jewish “international bankers.” Many anti-Semites still push the banker conspiracy but often truncate it to say “international bankers,” knowing full well they are still signaling an anti-Semitic concept to the neo-Nazi types.

The Historical Dictionary of the Weimar Republic says: “The term ‘cultural Bolshevism’ is difficult to disengage from the extreme Right, especially Nazism. It is tied to an anti-Communist notion that cultural and political subversion are intrinsically linked. According to Alfred Rosenberg, as Bolshevism was the revolt of racially inferior elements against the rule of old elites, Kulturbolschewismus was an equivalent revolt in the cultural sphere.”

The problem is, like many slurs and insults, it has no objective meaning. Note how only liberals are “triggered,” yet you see Donald Trump and his childish followers constantly throwing tantrums over what other people say. It’s free speech when they do it, just not when you do. When you don’t like it, you’re triggered, when they don’t like it, they’re patriotic.

The misnamed Capitalist Institute, which was made of up for students from an evangelical college and appears defunct now went so far as to attack the libertarian Students for Liberty as “cultural Marxists” with “animosity towards Western civilization” who “champion the Islamic totalitarian cause.” They claimed libertarians openly endorse “governments that behead adulterers, jail Christians and vocally support destroying Western civilization through terroristic means.” They even laughingly claimed SFL has “communist sympathies.”

This was all because SFL supported social freedom and equality of rights, two things every Marxist regime in history has worked to stamp out.

Nazis used the term “cultural Marxism” to denounce art they didn’t like. But the art the Nazis produced and the art produced by the Soviet Communists were rather similar in nature. In fact, the cultural values of the Communists and the cultural values of today’s “Republicans” are frighteningly similar.

There is little doubt Republicans are making scapegoats of transgender individuals and the LGBT community in general. They have gone off the deep end with hate. Texas Republican’s adopted a platform explicitly attacking gay people as abnormal and said there should be no “criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.” At the same time they supported criminal penalties against any who discriminate against Christians.

They also say there should be criminal penalties for anyone who treats trans youths. So it’s not up to the parents, something they claimed they support, it is up to the government to decide. It really is the kind of compulsory measure lots of Marxists would have loved.

The reality is Marxists treated LGBT individuals so badly around the world you could easily confuse them with your local evangelical church. In 1980 the Cuban Freedom Flotilla took place as tens of thousands of people fled Castro’s Marxist paradise . Huddled in those boats were some 10,000 homosexuals desperate to escape the anti-gay violence Castrol inflicted, such as his concentration camps for LGBT people simply for existing.

Castro tried to dismiss the persecution and blame it on the West. He claimed “he didn’t pay enough attention to what was going on against the gay community” because there were “so many traitors” in the pay of the CIA. But it wasn’t something “going on” it was measures his government was actively doing. Castro set up the “re-education camps” to turn gays into heterosexuals. This he minimized by saying “homosexuals had traditionally been discriminated in Cuba as black people and women.” The difference was Castro didn’t set up concentration camps for women or blacks, only for gay men!

When gay rights advocate Andre Gide visited the Soviet Union he saw first hand the oppression of the Marxist. He warned:

I doubt whether in any country in the world, not even in Hitler’s Germany, have the mind and spirit been less free, more bent, more terrorized over, and indeed vassalized — than in the Soviet Union… Humanity is complex and not all of a piece — that must be accepted — and every attempt at simplification and regimentation, every effort from the outside to reduce everything and everyone to the same common denominator, will always be reprehensible, pernicious, and dangerous.

The reality is the gay community did badly under Marxism in general. It may have fluctuated some but it was relatively consistent in the same repressive direction. There is a reason the movement for equality of rights for the LGBT community arose in the West and not behind the Iron Curtain or under the iron fist of Mao.

The point in recounting this is when it comes to actual cultural values the Marxists and the Republicans are two peas in a pod. The GOP isn’t fighting Marxist culture, if that is what they think they are doing, they are promoting it.

Marx himself did mention gay people in his correspondence but in a manner that was ridiculing, much as so many Republicans do today. Marx sent Friedrich Engels a pamphlet by Karl Ulrichs on the topic of homosexual. Ulrichs used the term “urning” to refer to homosexuals. Here is what Engels replied to Marx upon reading it.

“The Urning you sent me is a very curious thing. These are extremely unnatural revelations. The pederasts are beginning to count themselves, and discover that they are a power in the state. Only organization was lacking, but according to this source it apparently already exists in secret. And since they have such important men in all the old parties and even in the new ones, from Rosing to Schweitzer, they cannot fail to triumph. Guerre aux cons, paix aus trous-de-cul [War to the cunts, peace to the assholes] will now be the slogan. It is a bit of luck that we, personally, are too old to have to fear that, when this party wins, we shall have to pay physical tribute to the victors. But the younger generation! Incidentally it is only in Germany that a fellow like this can possibly come forward, convert this smut into a theory, and offer the invitation: introite [enter], etc. Unfortunately, he has not yet got up the courage to acknowledge publicly that he is ‘that way,’ and must still operate coram publico ‘from the front’, if not ‘going in from the front’ as he once said by mistake. But just wait until the new North German Penal Code recognises the drois du cul [rights of the asshole]; then he will operate quite differently. Then things will go badly enough for poor frontside people like us, with our childish penchant for females. If Schweitzer could be made useful for anything, it would be to wheedle out of this peculiar honorable gentleman the particulars of the pederasts in high and top places, which would certainly not be difficult for him as a brother in spirit.”

In response to a letter from a man believed to be gay Marx wrote Engels but his acolytes translated warmbrüderlich as “warm fraternal” when scholar Hubert Kennedy wrote: “a protest is necessary at this point. Readers with a knowledge of German will have guessed that in describing Schweitzer’s letter Marx used the term ‘warmbrüderlich,’ which, with or without quotation marks, does not mean ‘warm fraternal’ in English. It means ‘‘queer’ (in America, also ‘faggoty’), and indeed in a pejorative sense.” It would seem that when either Engels or Marx used insulting terms they were translated into a far more polite English.

Kennedy wrote:

The translator has similarly bowdlerized their use of the term “schwül.’’ For example, in 1868 Marx sent Engels the book of Dr. Karl Boruttau, Gedanken über Gewissens Freiheit (Thoughts on Freedom of Conscience), which, although it does not discuss homosexuality, does promote sexual freedom in general. Engels inquired on July 21: ‘‘Wer ist dieser Schwüle Dr. Boruttau der ein so empfindliches Organ für die Geschlechtsliebe an den Tag legt?’’ Our translator gives this as ‘‘Who is this sultry Dr Boruttau, who displays such a sensitive organ for sexual love?’’ But Engels certainly used ‘‘Schwüle’’ in a pejorative sense, which is also reflected in Marx’s reply: ‘‘Von dem Dr. Boruttau, dem Schwanzschwülen, weiß ich weiter nichts, als . . . ,’’ which our translator gives as ‘‘About Dr Boruttau, the man with the sultry prick, I know nothing except . . .’’ Today a clear distinction is made between ‘‘schwul’’ (‘‘queer’’ — and not necessarily in a pejorative sense in the current gay movement) and ‘‘schwül’’ (‘‘sultry’’), but this distinction was not so clear in the mid-nineteenth century. I believe that Marx and Engels used the term ‘‘schwül’’ with the connotation of ‘‘queer’’; not that they believed Boruttau to be homosexual, but that ‘‘queer’’ expresses the pejorative way they wished to refer to him.

Marx’s cultural values didn’t just stop with hate for gays. He was quite prone to use the N-word to insult people including his son-in-law, who was Cuban with some black ancestors. When Lafargue was a candidate for office in Paris Marx wrote his daughter about him: “Being in his quality as a ni**er, a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district.” In addition his essay On the Jewish Question reeks of anti-Semitism as well, and his sympathy for the rights of women was quite low.

The evidence indicates when it comes to culture, the “cultural Marxist” is really closer to today’s Republicans than to liberals, libertarians and progressives. Today’s critics of cultural Marxism have two choices. They can either embrace the theory as it was originally intended, which was openly and blatantly anti-Semitic and promoting a Jewish conspiracy theory, or they can say it means the cultural values of Marx. But if they pick the latter to avoid the problems with the former, they are stuck with Marx pushing cultural values similar to today’s Republican Party.

SUPPORT THIS PAGE AT PATREON

Your support to fund these columns is important, visit our page at Patreon.

Follow our daily comments at Twitter. If you wish to subscribe, free of charge, to this page you can have all new essays emailed to you. Just sign up here. If you wish to leave a one time tip see the link below.