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I suppose the main way I view this differently is that I don't see the masterminding of a strategy / the Third International etc. as being necessary at all. If I imagine two possible worlds:
I really don't see much difference in outcome (in which case scenario two would win as it involves less complexity). Part of the reason I think this is because it has been quite a gradual development, happening over multiple decades, which seems more plausible to me as driven bottom-up rather than top-down.
I guess what I'm saying is, what makes you say that what we see today is the result of masterminding by socialist leaders, rather than the result of an emergent shift in the culture? There was certainly a fair amount of propaganda coming from the USSR, as well as Western apologists, but is the idea that there was more than this? The idea of a counter-culture forming in academia seems fairly unremarkable to me, as does the idea that it would attach onto socialist ideas given the existence of the USSR, but I am open to being shown clearer links between the two.
If I had to speculate, I'd put the changes down to the institutionalisation of science and academia post WWII. A model of government funding by committee allows for the emergence of fields that are uncorrelated with either reality or the broader community, and if there's funding to be had academics will be drawn there.
I wanted to point out that not all cultural programs arise from the same source, and gay marriage seemed like a good example of that. From my experience the debate generally came before the dominance of 'wokeness', and the more radical leftists were not supportive - in my experience the Marxists and socialists regarded marriage as a patriarchal, heteronormative and capitalist institution that perpetuated the status quo, while queerness offered a way of destabilising that. The argument for gay marriage was driven by liberal (in the John Stuart Mill sense) and even to some degree conservative concerns, which I think accounts for its general acceptance.
Immigration is an interesting one, and there are quite a few facets to it. I follow the UK more closely than the rest of Europe, and it's worth noting that there have been very high rates of immigration under both the conservative and now the labour governments. It's known to be a major issue for the electorate, and governments have repeatedly promised to reduce the intake, so as you say why do they keep increasing it anyway? Here the answer is almost certainly economics - since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, most European countries (and Australia) have had essentially flat GDP per capita growth (see e.g. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=US-AU-GB-FR), so the only way to keep the economy growing is to import more people. This is not a good long term strategy, but a sharp cut to the immigration intake would result in recession, which are infamously unkind to the electoral prospects of governments. (A Home Secretary in the previous conservative government in the UK, Suella Braverman, has talked about this, and recounted being shut down by Treasury in Cabinet when trying to discuss reducing the immigration intake consistent with the government's election promises).
The US of course has different drivers, as the economic situation is quite different (though there would still be a strong demand amongst certain groups for low-wage workers). Media and the general attitudes of people in the PMC will have different drivers again, and here cultural explanations make more sense. I won't expound on these as I think the discussion of them is fairly widespread.
I took a while to respond to this because I needed time to think it over. You raise some good points, and I don't have all the answers.
There was probably a good mix of both of those sorts as academics in the 1960s. As well as normal people who just liked the job- it was a lot easier to become a professor back then. The universities were massively expanding with all the baby boomers, especially in America.
what I think happened was that, over time, some tactics just worked better than others. Nobody really pays attention to a professor writing papers about socialism. Even if it's very persuasive, we just ignore it. But it's hard to ignore a group of activists chanting slogans at you, and even harder when it's your boss ordering you to follow new policies to be more woke.
I don't think it's just a funding issue, because academia is famously low-paying. And many of the activist groups don't pay at all. In fact, many universities outright ignore areas that could be well funded (like military history or psychometrics) because it goes against their leftist ideology. You see the same thing in movie and game studios- they push for woke stuff despite it completely tanking their profits, over and over again.
It's also worth noting that the left was significantly more violent in the past, especially in the late 60s and 70s. This was a time of things like the Weather Underground planting bombs, environmental groups destroying bulldozers, and "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland. (edit- and the Black Panthers/Black Liberation Army- probably the best example since they were explicitly Marxist while also committing many acts of violence) None of those groups were related, but they seem to follow the same playback of student discussion group -> unreasonable political demands -> resort to force to get what you want. I think nowadays those groups have realized that other forms of force work better than naked violence, but the same playbook is there, looking awfully similar to the Russian Revolution.
It's sort of a joke by now that the environmental groups are usually also socialist. "The watermelon party, green on the outside and red inside" and such. They talk about environmentalism mostly, but if you ask them their economic views they will usually admit to being socialist, at least in their ideal world. And I feel like pretty much all the leftist groups are the same- regardless of their pet policy, they're also mostly socialists or communists.
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I've read documents from/describing the Communist Party of Finland in the 1960s, when a lot of academics entered it (for the first time in basically, well, ever), and the general feeling was that while they welcomed the influx they were also quite suspicious of the new recruits and constantly worried that this would eventually draw the party away from the working-class base (the fears were correct, as it turns out to be). The specific strategy of orthodox Marxism has always been based specifically organizing the working class as working class.
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