The Secret Marxist Conspiracy

this episode is brought to you by ground news if a new form of leftism that has infected institutions across our nation this form of cultural marks they offer the brand new book unwoke how to defeat cultural Marxism in America the president is together with a band of his closest thugs Misfits and marxists cultural Marxism cultural Marxist cultural Marxism today we're talking about cultural Marxism what it is where it came from and why conservatives seem to love talking about it but if you don't want to stick around for the whole video here's the gist cultural Marxism is a conservative buzzword one that the right uses pretty carelessly to frighten its voters Inspire hate crimes and make people think that America is and can't be anything but a white Christian and patriarchal country you've basically already heard how the right uses cultural Marxism before it's used as a label for a conspiracy theory that the right has given a lot of names to over time names like political correctness wokism or multiculturalism all of which have been used at one point or another interchangeably with cultural Marxism each of these words of course means something normal political correctness basically means not saying bigoted things woke means being aware of structural injustices and multiculturalism means it's good that there's not just one kind of people here but to a reactionary audience they also have a secondary meaning their names for a trend in our society behind which the right believes there's a powerful conspiracy a conspiracy to quote destroy the West supposedly being led by an elite of academics corporate and media Executives and activists all of whom the right believe are marxists and maybe also Jewish but we'll get to that part later the point of using the phrase cultural Marxism is to scare conservative voters misinform them about Progressive politics and who holds institutional power under capitalism and Advance a violent white supremacist agenda and if you're a conservative watching this video I know that right now I probably sound like a lefty stereotype but I promise that's really what this rhetoric is about and I can actually show you if you let me walk you through the evidence why don't we start with a quick history lesson the cultural Marxism conspiracy theory first appeared in the U.S in the mid 90s early 2000s ish but it's possible to trace a similar idea back to 1930s Germany and the Nazis when the Nazis came to power they designated as one of their enemies something they called cultural bolshevism or alternatively judeo-bolshevism cultural bolshevism was a conspiracy theory promoted by Hitler Goebbels and other prominent Nazis that a plot of Jewish Communists was out to destroy German society and the West Hitler and Goebbels would make a point of calling Marx Carl Heinrich Marx kind of like how some conservatives call Obama Barack Hussein Obama and would repeatedly mention that important figures in socialist history were Jewish likely on Trotsky or Rosa Luxembourg then they would claim incorrectly and without any basis in fact that a few Jewish people controlled the world the banks the government that they were Communists and that they were bringing about chaos destruction and degeneracy all justifications the Nazis would then use for the Holocaust and the mass executions of left-wing opposition during their rule here's a couple of quotes of the kind of stuff they said thank you anyway Flash Forward 60-ish years later in the US now the cultural Marxism conspiracy theory is created by these guys Michael minichino Gerald Atkinson and William Lind throughout the mid-90s and early 2000s all three of these paleo-conservative authors alongside a few others wrote articles with some random mix of the words cultural Marxism Frankfurt School and political correctness in the title and Lins ended up becoming the most influential of the bunch and kickstarting the cultural Marxism craze so that's what we'll focus on in this video like his two buddies Lynn lays out the basic idea behind what he thinks cultural Marxism is and why he thinks it's a problem for starters he thinks cultural Marxism is to blame for basically everything he doesn't like where does all this stuff we've heard about this morning the victim feminism the gay rights movement the invented statistics the Rewritten history the lies the demands all of the rest of it where does it come from for the first time in our history Americans have to be fearful of what they say of what they write and of what they think they have to be afraid of using the wrong word a word that is denounced as offensive or insensitive as racist sexist or homophobic where does it come from what is it we call it political correctness political correctness is cultural Marxism for our country that's been steeping in Red Scare rhetoric for nearly a century at this point associating basically anything with socialism Marxism or communism is a pretty safe bet to get conservatives to hate it and you probably already know that this rhetoric hasn't changed since the perspective is that anything white is bad because that's the dominant culture you dehumanize people you don't treat them as individuals it is a Marxist ideology uh you know the culture Marxist what they thrive on is uh chaos personal chaos people being made miserable people living in fear if you live in fear you can't run a business you can't build your business build your family spirituality goes out the window and that's how they win these are the rights favorite lies in truth not many people would object to what's actually taught in women's queer or black studies departments professors in these departments all more or less research and then teach pretty easily verifiable truths like some groups in the US are marginalized on the basis of their class race gender and or sexual orientation some parts of our culture and of our economy make this marginalization both easier and cause it to feel more normalized historical and contemporary facts point to the conclusion that this is more of a feature not a bug of capitalism they're not teaching white kids to hate themselves or rewriting history or whatever it's all pretty obvious stuff similarly not many people are opposed to the Civil Rights or gay rights movements and their demands for equality but conservatives will lie and imply these movements are basically promoting butchering straight white people in their sleep and grooming children which they're not and again not many people object to the idea that if someone says something racist someone else is allowed to say shut up that's free speech but conservatives like to call this censorship which it's not but it does sound worse when pundits talk about cultural Marxism they'll take the these mischaracterizations and tie them to another word most people have trouble defining a word conservatives already distrust Marxism then they'll take these mischaracterizations both of Marxism and of various Progressive beliefs and say that they're the product of some hidden Elite the hegemony of the people currently in charge they're doing it in secrecy the Socialists are in charge of the White House nowadays conservatives are pretty explicit when they call Progressive politics elitism Lin's a little more indirect with his approach first he starts by bringing up a few Marxist academics and Herbert marcusa the members of the frogford school are Marxist then he says the Frankfurt School is at the root of the cultural Marxism conspiracy that the Frankfurt School I believe are the origins of the mass we find ourselves in our culture right now they're The Architects of the destruction of American culture as we know it when you look at the background of critical race Theory this comes out of critical theory where does that come from comes from a school called the Franklin School that comes out of Berlin and then he tells a story from the anti-war protest through to the civil rights movement and up to the highest level of government and media corporations Lind at all claimed that everything cultural Marxism starts with the Frankfurt School and their writing about critical theory according to Lind the ideas of a few lesser-known Marxist academics somehow became the dominant ideas of the elite in U.S Civil Society everything basically thanks to a couple of pretty Niche books influential only within their field for example Lin says that horkheimer developing critical theory created all the queer black and women's studies departments in universities it didn't then he says these departments teach students to divide Society into oppressors and victim groups and this is why America is divided that's not what they teach then he says this division was the Frankfurt school's intention because division makes America weak and therefore vulnerable to Communism which is what they wanted all along and all of this sounds sort of plausible until you remember that racial gender and economic divisions straight up already existed way before horkheimer like Lind makes it seem as if horkheimer pointing these things out which he wasn't the first or last to do by a long shot made racism and a struggle against it exist all of a sudden as if this country being divided was the fault of people resisting their oppression not the fault of the people doing it he also briefly implies that cultural Marxist total control of society and culture happened because one of the members of the Frankfurt School worked for the OSS and then two of them moved to Hollywood I just thought that was funny like they literally just moved to LA they didn't make movies or anything but that's his explanation for all the shady going on anyway The quick summary of the last section is that cultural marxists rule the world because some people acknowledge racism instead of pretending it doesn't exist the cultural Marxism conspiracy would have you believe that behind every liberal Centrist politician saying black lives matter there's a secret communist what's missing from Lin's analysis is the truth we have a government almost entirely made up of Centrist and right-wing Millionaires and billionaires lobbied by every major corporation from weapons to Pharmaceuticals business Executives run most major universities every econ Department in the country teaches capitalist economics at the 101 level to hundreds of thousands of students as if it's the only thing that exists and every major media company is owned by billionaires and funded by other billionaire advertisers you couldn't get a more capitalist dominated system but sure a few social science departments teaching the work of one of the most influential political thinkers of the time is proof that anti-capitalists who can't even get one percent of the vote are running the country apparently all the power of the capitalist class is just a facade one day the Communists will come out from the Shadows just wait while in the meantime Biden approves more oil and gas drilling on public lands than Trump he'll show his true colors one day though trust me the thing is the only way you could think that marxists are running the US is if you won defined Marxism as saying things like black lives matter regardless of what you actually do after saying it for example pumping billions into police departments and two defined being an elite as simply displaying these quote-unquote Marxist beliefs regardless of wealth status or power that is in fact precisely how DeSantis defines it institutional power wealth influence heading a Fortune 500 company none of that makes you an elite if you're focused on regular capitalist things like squeezing more profit out of your workers by any means necessary this way Murdoch Coke musk and all their buddies aren't part of the elite at all because they say socialism is bad but a few college students staging a sit-in and asking just asking for a higher minimum wage and less discrimination are the shadowy cabal threatening the very foundations of America not only is this idea of a Marxist takeover not based in any kind of reality with this narrative Lind and these other pundits are trying to make it seem like all these different movements for equality and social change from the 60s onwards are illegitimate he makes social progress look deeply objectionable and this story about cultural Marxism taking over because of a few books makes it seem like the change happened through a top-down conspiracy of a few privileged woke people instead of what really happened millions of people protested went on strike and organized from the bottom up marching and fighting against the prevailing classism racism sexism and homophobia that brutalize them and their peers only to achieve partial success gaining legal equality without material equality alongside a little more positive representation in popular media to imply that those who are the victims of capitalism those who are the most oppressed most marginalized are actually behind the curtain controlling everything is just wrong and contrary to every piece of evidence we have about who has wealth and power in this country anyway after making the claim that the Frankfurt School and the progressive elite are behind everything conservatives already hate Lin then goes on to mention a few key details about them one they're foreigners and two he feels it's important to mention that they're Jewish how does all of this stuff come here how does it flood into our universities and indeed into our lives today the members of the Frankfurt School are Marxist they are also to a man Jewish in 1933 the Nazis come to power in Germany and not surprisingly they immediately shut down the institute for social research and its members flee they flee to New York City now is he mentioning that they're Jewish just because they fled the Holocaust maybe but did he also deliver this speech at a Washington Holocaust denial conference hosted by an anti-semitic Journal yes so you know who's to say why he thinks bringing up the Jewish thing is important like in other examples of conservative rhetoric Lind is playing on the xenophobic idea that foreigners are to blame for problems in the U.S not a domestic capitalist ruling class cultural Marxism in the Frankfurt School comes from a school called the Franklin School called the Franklin School [Music] it comes out of Berlin he's a group of marxists one of the gentlemen fled Hitler came to the United States this framing can be used as a way to impose stricter immigration controls which the right is fond of order my government to deny entry to all communists [Applause] [Music] it serves as a good way of framing socialist and Progressive ideas as Un-American because foreigners are the ones that had to import them finally we get to the core of the cultural Marxism conspiracy the white supremacy stuff the point where the cultural Marxism story culminates is what these marxists supposedly do once they're here gramshi said that the workers can never see their true class interest as defined by Marxism until they are freed from Western culture and particularly from the Christian religion he also theorized that the great obstacle took the creation of a Marxist Paradise was the culture it was Western Civilization itself for conservatives the main goal of cultural marxists is to destroy the West in the west but anti-west the forces destroying this country and the West so everything rides on this we don't want them when they want to destroy our country when conservatives talk about cultural marxists it's not just to scare conservatives it's not just to imply that marginalized people are really the ones in charge cultural Marxism is a foil against which the real America and the West can be defined basically everything that cultural marxists are the West is not in their eyes the US's quote constituted by selective ethno-racial sexual religious and economic characteristics America's ethno-racial composition is white Anglo-Saxon and European America's gender sex regime is patriarchal heteronormative and centered around the nuclear family its religious order is Christian its economic structure is capitalist the values of individualism meritocracy and private property are sacrosanct for conservatives then cultural marxists pose an outside threat to this so-called real America either because they're foreigners or because holding Marxist beliefs makes you not American according to their definition the hectoring lifestyle liberals the one who worked to crush the American Spirit freedom and Independence of Mind masculinity because they are Godless they could care less about the capitalism property and they hate that the nuclear family conservatives don't care that socialist ideas have been well established in the U.S for over a century and promoted by Americans like Eugene dibs and MLK never mind that America has never been a country populated entirely by white people or Christians never mind that who counts as white has never been consistent never mind that capitalism is destructive exploitative and leading us to extinction because these are the things that marxists believe they are un-American beliefs two conservatives the U.S has always been Christian white straight and capitalist and these foreigners and their foreign ideas are trying to destroy that in other words pundits that use the cultural Marxism Theory are getting their audience riled up about defending America and then sneaking in that defending America means defending all the stuff we've already listed basically every facet of the existing social hierarchy against people whose only real demand is equality but who they portray as wanting chaos because to them an America that isn't dominant donated by white Christian patriarchal straight or capitalist culture is chaos this rhetoric inspires conservatives to see Centrist politicians like Biden and left of center social Democrats like AOC and Bernie as hardcore Communists and for most of them that's all they really need to see Trump and DeSantis as the Lesser evil but on top of that this rhetoric will also inspire a select number of people to commit horrific acts of violence against those who do not conform to this vision of the U.S either because of who they are or what they believe for example conservative cultural Marxism rhetoric is what inspired people like Anders Breivik who in 2011 killed over 70 people in Norway in his Manifesto Breivik explains he was defending Norway against cultural Marxism political correctness and multiculturalism during his trial he justified killing close to 70 children at the Norway labor party summer camp calling them Traders quote committing or planning to commit cultural destruction including deconstruction of the Norwegian ethnic group and deconstruction of Norwegian culture the point is the cultural Marxism Theory works for the far right it gets people to think a conspiracy of Jewish marxists is behind social progress and that social progress leads to chaos it gets them to vote for politicians always further to the right to ignore the visible power of capitalists and for a few of them it inspires them to acts of Terror against socialists and those who in any way shape or form do not conform to their idea of who is Western who is us who is We the People this is dangerous and that it continues to resurface is a problem we must address we talked a lot about how the right weaponizes buzzwords like cultural Marxism in this episode so I wanted to take a second to give an example of what that looks like in practice using today's sponsor ground news one of the things right-wing media does really well is painting a picture of society that whips their viewers into an angry terrified frenzy let me show you what I mean here we have three examples of right-wing coverage of cultural Marxism notice how each article employs buzzwords like wokism and Trigger phrases like destroy the west and erode the family there's never any explanation of what that means or how exactly it's happening but that's the point as long as your rhetoric is incendiary enough and makes your reader feel like they're under attack you don't actually need to provide evidence as you saw with the examples throughout this video the far right Playbook is to attempt to make the reader fear for their children's safety or that their faith is being taken from them by some outside force two very compelling emotional claims and this is the approach they take with every topic everything is turned into a cultural struggle of Us Versus Them the key here is to remember who benefits from this kind of coverage and ground news goes a long way towards helping the reader understand what interests are funding each of these Outlets this is something I get asked about a lot how do I help parents or friends break out of their little propaganda bubble it's great to analyze rhetoric like this examining wording to look for bias and determining who's behind each outlet but it's a lot of work and none of us have time for that that's why I always recommend people check out ground news because it has a ton of really useful tools to make building media literacy skills a lot easier ground news is a web and mobile app that Aggregates over 50 000 news sources and offers intuitive easy to understand comparison tools so you can do things like what we did here investigate how cultural rhetoric is weaponized you can also see the political leaning factuality rating and ownership of every single news source right in the app no tedious research required now full disclosure as a socialist I obviously disagree with the placement of some of these outlets for example I don't think CNN should be placed as far left as it is but honestly this might be a good thing when trying to educate your friends and family if you come at them with well actually CNN is a right-wing Network they're not going to take you seriously ground news is the perfect first baby step towards media literacy if you're looking for a way to give your friends and family a great set of tools to understand media bias who it serves and how how to spot it I highly recommend you check out ground news at the link below and if you really like it they're currently offering a 30 discount for their Vantage subscription to all second thought viewers you can only redeem the discount at ground.news second thought so be sure to click the link below if you enjoyed this video consider dropping a like if you hated it a thumbs down you can check out my other work by following the links on your screen thanks for watching and I'll see you next time [Music]