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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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Oh, I'll happily grant that the term 'cultural Marxism' has referents. When someone like Joy Pullmann says 'the cultural Marxists', I know who she means and what they believe.

I don't think it's quite the same as the Mormon case, because Mormons do claim to be Christians. I don't think Mormons are Christians, but if I say that where a Mormon can hear me, I know they will disagree. So I and a Mormon will have a debate about whether 'Christianity' is the right word to use for what Mormons believe.

By contrast, most of the people identified as cultural Marxists don't claim to be cultural Marxists. In fact, they mostly decry the term and claim that it's a conspiracy theory. Some claim to be (generic) Marxists, but most do not. We might still have a debate about whether 'cultural Marxist' is an appropriate word for what they believe, but the direction of that debate will be different.

If those debates happened, I'd insist on the Mormon/Christian distinction because as a Christian I feel I have an interest in policing the boundaries of orthodoxy - essentially I want to clarify that Mormons aren't affiliated with me and I lend no support to their beliefs, which I consider wrong. I would not, I think, insist on 'cultural Marxist' as a label because it's not a label that achieves any of my goals re: the discussion of social justice or wokist politics. In fact I think it muddies the waters by confusing wokist beliefs with Marxist beliefs, and another term would be more clear.

They would probably then also disagree with being called 'wokists' or 'SJers' or whatever other term I came up with, but we have to use some label, so, well, that Freddie post. You know how this goes.