Activity – Margaret W. – The Giza Forum (Legacy)

Margaret W. posted an update 5 years ago

An oft-banned video on youtube… the next stage, transhumanist technocracy: The Architects of Western Decline A Study on the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6l0JL6loXc
- Billy Bob replied 5 years ago
  Excellent overview of how to install a mind virus. I am of the age to recognize and validate many of these events, including a one on one class with my political science advisor (a conservative who later resigned from academia to head up South Dakota Senator Larry Pressler’s Foreign Policy) on Marcuse.
- ML light replied 5 years ago
  The problem is that many of us critique these cynics all without reading a single page of their prolific works. If you do read them, which is often quite difficult, you may, such as myself, find yourself unable to refute much of their criticisms (e.g., Horkheimer and Adorno’s critiques on American pop culture) which are often spot on. The problem with much of their work isn’t necessarily their critiques, it’s their prescriptions, those that are often based on cynical and compartmentalized conflict with the simple intent of a reversal of social power, not an equalization of power throughout society as many purport. (Marcuse is another story, he’s his own special kind of nutter who was truly dangerous, yet undoubtedly, a brilliant thinker) I always struggle to define these works as either eristic sophistry or revolutionary didactics as they often embody both potentials. Either way, we need to know these works as they are the fountain heads of much of our current social discontent. If we don’t intimately know their work, and the key points in their arguments, we tend to look just as fanatic, or as they say, just as reactionary, as we claim them to be when we respond to their often legitimate criticisms in barely pacified yet warranted rage. I regularly find myself flipping through my copies of Gramsci, Adorno, Marcuse, the later Foucault, Lyotard, Delgado, Apple, and the like. I find myself internally advocating their devilish prose so that the fallacies held within might permeate my Soul, illuminate my wit, and sharpen my tongue. To go full Hegel, I imagine myself in themselves, seeing myself in the cynicisms of the Other, and only then am I able to freely produce the syntheses that are my refutations to, and even at times, my agreements with their arguments. Anyhow. Avanti!, as Gramsci would say, Avanti!
  - Billy Bob replied 5 years ago
    Great post. I too over the years reread their works and yes they are difficult at first. I think because they think different. When I left college I was under their spell, took a few personal experiences and time to cast them off, though I was warned…being young and having “read the truth”…here I am.
  - FiatLux replied 5 years ago
    This post reminds me of something I’ve often thought when it comes to owning–and eventually retaking–the culture. I only know about the work and philosophy of the writers you cite from secondary sources (the excellent summaries of their ideas, as they apply to the “woke” movement, by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose). I don’t doubt some of these people had valid criticisms of society in their times. Such is often the case with revolutionaries. Just as often, the revolutionaries’ prescriptions are worse than the ailment they’re purporting to cure.
    
    Regarding the battle for the culture today: One thing I haven’t heard emphasized enough is that those who are opposed to wokery need to read Gramsci et al. in order to learn the strategies that have been so successfully applied in the West by cultural Marxism. My sense is that any long-term rebuilding of Western culture will depend on understanding those strategies in order to (1) combat them, and (2) use some of the same strategies to retake lost cultural territory.
    - ML light replied 5 years ago
      
      “Cynical Theories” is a good crash course into the history of Criticism. I truly appreciate both Lindsay and Pluckrose. Sometimes I think James inadvertently discredits himself with his own cynicisms on the topic as he doesn’t get challenged all that often.
      
      Anyhow, I’m reminded of an academic student I know who is an atheist studying Theology. This, for me, is the epitome of Learning. Thus, in this vein, and to prop up that devilish steel man: We (Mankind) are technically all Critics and Communists.
      
      We critique almost everything, at all times, whether we realize it or not. Humans are highly critical, discriminate, or “evaluating”, of their surroundings due to our primal instinct for survival. I’d posit that this is generally accepted as true in an evolutionary sense.
      
      According to Gramsci and many in the Frankfurt School, Marx was no prophet (clearly), he was simply an organizer in the purest sense, exemplifying that innate communal impulse we all share. Marx’s cultural ill intent from Gramsci’s radical view was all too necessary as the conditions of, roughly, 1818-1918 called for drastic measures in cultural and economic reorganization. A truly valid point! Even more so when the Frankfurt School decimated 1950-70’s American Culture with vicious, cynical, yet poignant critiques.
      
      Therefore, all of us in some sense are Critical Communists (i.e., evaluators and organizers), that is, according to Gramsci. This is a subtle argument which is always overshadowed by the few dozen million deaths that were committed during this Utopian pursuit. Go figure.
      
      Even so, and though this point is clearly, undisputedly, spot on, it still feels a bit sophistic in the technical sense. Which, from my estimation, is part of the reason why these anti-didactic doctrines persist even in the face of resulting madness. Though, I can make an argument for didactic materialism in the communist sense, but it crumbles quickly in the face of, say, the Socratic Method. But, since Utopians, I suspect, will always exist, we should aim at steel manning their positions for simply our own good and understanding. Hell, we are more than capable of, in the end, such mediocre tasks. Further, I posit that we should, at the very least, contradict the artisans of contraction with none other than dear Hegel himself. It’s truly sad that Hegel’s spiritualism was remade into the material basis for this milieu, but Hegel, in fact, may be one of our only hopes. I’m quite sure Hegel could never have imagined his Phenomenology being used by the Left to deconstruct the Principals of Transcendence, but here we are.
      
      In these truths, or maybe, “narrow” truths for those who find this hard to accept, lies the intrinsic Truth held within the Communist, Critical, and ultimately, Utopian Idealisms: that we are all, at some level, Idealists, Communalists, Critics, and Utopians. As who doesn’t want a refined group of harmonious thinkers and doers to live amongst? This renders common the undisputed allure of Communism which, at times, I find myself sympathizing with, even in spite of that small bloody blurb known as the 20th Century.
      
      This is simply another one of my straw men propped up in a casing of ill-fitted steel, so please feel free to keel him over…
      
      FiatLux replied 5 years ago
      
      You’ve brought up quite a lot of ideas, and I’m not even qualified to address some of them… I agree that the atheist studying theology is the epitome of learning. Or perhaps the atheist studying theology and agnosticism. Certainly, any atheist who wanted to counter theological arguments would need to study theology, which illustrates the principle I was aiming at in my comment. I don’t know Hegel nearly enough to comment on whether his philosophy could be used to counter cultural Marxism. I am, however, convinced that opponents of cultural Marxism generally have very little idea what they’re up against; this partly explains the rampant success of critical theory / wokeness. If people want to push back against the wokeness that’s fast overtaking and eroding (“disrupting and dismantling”) America’s and other countries’ institutions, they must learn the basics of the philosophy behind wokeness — critical theory and deconstructionism, as theorized by Gramsci, Horkheimer, Foucault, and the rest.
      
      As far as Marxism in general, and its various permutations, my personal objection to it rests primarily on two grounds, one philosophical, one empirical: I don’t believe Utopia is possible; and history has consistently shown that attempts to force Utopia on people (both in and prior to the 20th century) necessarily involve a bloodbath, a horrific tyranny, and ultimate failure.