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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   18483 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I believe that I am at least somewhat acquainted with leftist thought, not only through reams of videos and text produced by contemporary leftists online, but also through the works of the Frankfurt school (primarily Adorno and Marcuse), the works of Freudian psychoanalysts from Freud himself up through the 20th century and into the current day, and 20th century European philosophy in general. I have never once heard a leftist refer to themselves unironically as a "cultural Marxist".

Do the books, papers, Google ngrams graphs, etc. that people keep linking in these conversations, where the term is used self-descriptively, move the needle for you in any way?

But "cultural Marxism" is not a particularly good term for it, because the phenomenon isn't particularly Marxist, and the "culture" part is just obvious.

It's very Marxist. Like, anyone you'll drop the term in front of will instantly know this refers to a particular type of feminist / anti-racist / gay/trans/wathaever-rights advocate, that sees everything through the lens of patriarchy / white supremacy / cis-straight-heteronormativity, or if you want to take all these together - intersectionality, the same way Marx was looking at the world through the lens of relations to the means of production.

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