WOKE and proud of it....

[Gary Childress]

According to my understanding, Marx was a communist and saw democratic socialism as flawed. Democratic socialism is generally the belief in democratic ownership and operation of major social institutions, most notably economic ones. It stands in contradistinction from hierarchical economic organizations that are seen as primarily benefiting the top tier, administrative, management and monied investment owners. It's supposedly somewhat similar to some strains of anarchism (anarcho-syndicalism for example) in various ways. All those movements are considered "leftist". The anarchist, Bakunin was a famous critic of Marx (among others). I've generally looked at Marxism as a somewhat separate thread of leftist thought.

Probably Marx's most pronounced departure from others was his belief in the "dictatorship" of the proletariat as a necessary stage toward "communism". Equating all leftist thought as "cultural Marxism" seems like an oversimplification from what I've read and how I understand things. there's a lot more nuance to the so called "Left" than to elevate Marx as the ultimate culmination of leftist thought. It's a bit like equating all leftist thought to "cultural Rousseauianism" (sp?) or the entire Western philosophical tradition as "Descartianism".

[Alexis Jacobi]

Some interesting thoughts by Michael Millerman on Rightwing anti-Liberalism.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Cultural Marxism is really a thing; but what it is according to political science is different from what it is according to right-wing conspiracy theorists.

I glanced over your two references. Your position in respect to the question, I gather, is likely skewed to your first reference (Kellner). Your second reference seems skewed by prejudice to a POV that doesn’t accurately represent the sound critical position toward Cultural Marxism I am familiar with.

A sound critical position — and a trenchant one — is offered by James Lindsay who is doing consistently good work in this area.

Introduction to the Marxification of Education

Education has been stolen from our society and from our kids. This should be intolerable. Doing something about it, as we're learning, requires understanding how this robbery has occurred and how it keeps running. Fortunately, that's comprehensible and can be summarized in a single short sentence: our kids go to Paulo Freire's schools. You may not know who Paulo Freire was, but his theory of education (critical pedagogy, as it came to be called) explains a great deal of what has gone wrong in our schools. To make this subject comprehensible and pull back the veil on Marxist praxis in education over the last fifty years, James Lindsay, host of the New Discourses Podcast, has written a new book called The Marxification of Education: Paulo Freire's Critical Marxism and the Theft of Education, which is available now.

[Peter Kropotkin]

More interesting stuff.

According to a U of Toronto study (2016), the following four factors were by far the strongest predictors of Wokism:

1. Low verbal intelligence -- the greatest predictor, by far.

2. Being female.

3. Having a female temperament (male gammas, presumably).

4. Having taken even one of the PC courses at university.

The Wokes differed from earlier Left-leaning liberals in having absolutely no compunction about applying various forms of force in order to advance their agenda.

K: I have been rather busy at work, but I am unable to find such a study to
look at their methodology... please cite said study so I can take a look at it....

Kropotkin

Cited by J. Peterson, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grNLfzFwPpg&t=712s

K: have you actually watch the video in question? at no point in time does either
person (and I have no idea who either one is) but at no point in time, do
either one mention a study from the university of Toronto.....

In fact, all that was said were just opinions that had no basis in facts, or
at least no facts were talked about... at least verifiable facts....
I heard fancy words that I am sure mean something in a classroom,
but in real life, no one actually uses....it was a waste of time, that
I will never get back......

Kropotkin

[Gary Childress]

Some interesting thoughts by Michael Millerman on Rightwing anti-Liberalism.

I remember studying Heidegger a fair amount. One of my two most favored professors (Professor Froman) was a Heidegger scholar and a member of the Heidegger society. (My other favorite, professor Holman, was versed in the Analytical tradition).

Professor Froman devoted his life to the study and teaching of Heidegger. I admired him a lot but Heidegger's philosophy didn't seem objectively grounded in science. Professor Froman tended to lead his students around like the head of a choir trying to get us all to philosophize on cue or something. I was very much enamored with his personality, but in the end, I have to say it may have been a waste of my time.

I missed out on two of Professor Holman's best classes (20th Century Analytic Philosophy and Epistemology) because I thought Analytical philosophy was full of "unfounded assumptions"--as professor Froman would say. Looking back with hindsight, the classes that I did take of Professor Holman's (Philosophy of Mysticism, Political Philosophy and Philosophy of Mind) were probably some of the best philosophy classes the school offered, in my opinion now. The classes on Heidegger didn't turn out to be worth it, looking back. Or at least, I'm still trying to figure out what I got out of them that was useful other than to familiarize myself with Heidegger.

Have you read any of Heidegger's writings? They seem obsessively self-indulgent. Brilliant, perhaps, but his obsession with creating his own original words for things didn't seem like it was very helpful in terms of philosophical literacy. He seemed like a species all his own.

Back in those days, the big sensation with the conservative students was Ayn Rand. Oddly enough, Milton Friedman was a follower of Rand IIRC. He was a Laissez-faire economist who ended up preaching for the abolition of borders so that labor could travel freely from one country to another. That seems a little counter to the ideals of the right these days, though.

[phyllo]

K: I have been rather busy at work, but I am unable to find such a study to
look at their methodology... please cite said study so I can take a look at it....

Kropotkin

Cited by J. Peterson, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grNLfzFwPpg&t=712s

K: have you actually watch the video in question? at no point in time does either
person (and I have no idea who either one is) but at no point in time, do
either one mention a study from the university of Toronto.....

In fact, all that was said were just opinions that had no basis in facts, or
at least no facts were talked about... at least verifiable facts....
I heard fancy words that I am sure mean something in a classroom,
but in real life, no one actually uses....it was a waste of time, that
I will never get back......

Kropotkin

At the 3:24 mark, he talks about doing studies which were published in 2016. But he doesn't identify them in sufficient detail, so it's not possible to find them.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I admired him a lot but Heidegger's philosophy didn't seem objectively grounded in science.

I'd be curious to know: Which philosophy is *grounded in science*?

[Gary Childress]

I admired him a lot but Heidegger's philosophy didn't seem objectively grounded in science.

I'd be curious to know: Which philosophy is *grounded in science*?

Analytical philosophy generally has had a closer relationship with the empirical sciences than continental philosophy. Heidegger, for example, rebelled against modernity and in his later writings was very much critical of technology.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Marx was a communist and saw democratic socialism as flawed.

The Communists fight with courage and devotion on all sectors of the international class front, in the firm conviction that the victory of the proletariat is inevitable and cannot be averted. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their aims can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of the existing social conditions. Let the ruling class tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

-- Program of the Communist International, N.Y., 1936, p.85.

If I were to begin with what I think is the most relevant and active aspect of Marxian thinking, I would start from, let's say, its *call to action* that is expressed in this quote and in so many quotes.

If I were to *make statements* about the various Critical Theories and also about Cultural Marxism, I would begin by making statements again about its *call to action*. That is to say, one is invited to get involved with critical theory in the sense that one is invited to become an active agent -- an acid -- whose aims could be this and could be that (there is openness to what subject is chosen) but that it is the destructive, or deconstructive, mode that is predominant.

In a vulgar sense -- that is to say the attraction to a vulgar man (common man, not necessarily informed by a clear sense of philosophy of values) -- what is presented to that man is a means by which his will can become powerful in a given present. The appeal is to that will and no matter how grounded or centered that will is in formal ideas and values. Seen in this way then the appeal is made to the individual that "You can become powerful". You can and you will act powerfully within history and within your present.

However, it is the philosophical foundation of Marxianism which, when disclosed with clarity and honestly, is a structure built strictly within a set of reductionisms. These require exposure and enunciation.

The general critique of Cultural Marxism in our present is, it is certainly fair to say, something like shots in the dark. Meaning that many people react intuitively, or perhaps even psycho-physically, to those extremely rapid transformations occurring in the social world, and feel that there are *agents* around them (unseen enemies but really enemies in the realm of ideas) who carry forward a revolutionary project within those categories we are all aware of: the activities of a (in my view distorted and distorting) philosophy of queering within all established categories where, to speak generally, average people have constructed their value-system.

Queering

American children are learning a lot about sex, "gender," and sexuality in their schools. District administrators, teachers, and even librarians are obsessed with pushing inappropriate topics onto kids, all in the name of fostering "inclusion." Children today learn that they were "assigned a sex at birth" and can change their sex or "gender" at will. Kids are no longer learning to read, write, or do math, but they are learning how to be "radical gender" activists. Meanwhile, school districts keep parents in the dark, hiding critical information about the health and well-being of their children from them.

American education wasn't like this forty years ago. The cult of Queer Theory changed everything. Inspired by the religious teachings of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Queer Activists "queered" American education. Schools are no longer teaching children how to flourish in society—they are initiating children into the cult of Queer Theory. Once initiated, children "experience the queer" as they adopt a new cult identity and embark on the destructive path of social and medical "transition."

In this book, The Queering of the American Child, Logan Lancing and James Lindsay explain what Queer Theory is, where it comes from, how it got into schools, and what it's doing to children nationwide. The cult of Queer Theory preys on children, and it must be understood if we are ever to stop the madness.

However, the fuller definition of what *queering* refers to needs to be more profoundly examined. It means -- if you follow my previous analysis -- becoming an intellectual acid in relation to some, even perhaps any, established category of value and focusing an attacking will on it and against it. The arming of the will is what I have found to be the most telling aspect. So queering in that sense takes a stand to say that normativity within sexual categories is arbitrary; expressive of *power dynamics*; is oppressive and distorting of what is redefined as *genuine*.

In my view, many people and even perhaps most people struggle to clarify to themselves first what it is they perceive themselves to be fighting: i.e. they cannot well or accurately define their enemy, and so they *grope* for those intellectual armaments that are presented to them or that lie close at hand.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What's the easiest way to discredit something? Call it an "antisemitic conspiracy theory".

This is a philosophy forum located, in legal terms, in Great Britain. In Great Britain there is, effectively, no such thing as *the right to free-speech* and, all should be aware, if you say something that the government does not like you can get yourself into a whole mess of trouble.

One topic that must necessarily always be skirted -- really out of respect to the owners and managers of this forum -- is what has become known (again) as The Jewish Question. Any such talk will, naturally, make those who manage this site nervous. So for that reason it is best avoided.

[Immanuel Can]

K: have you actually watch the video in question?

I did. Did you?

[phyllo]

What's the easiest way to discredit something? Call it an "antisemitic conspiracy theory".

This is a philosophy forum located, in legal terms, in Great Britain. In Great Britain there is, effectively, no such thing as *the right to free-speech* and, all should be aware, if you say something that the government does not like you can get yourself into a whole mess of trouble.

One topic that must necessarily always be skirted -- really out of respect to the owners and managers of this forum -- is what has become known (again) as The Jewish Question. Any such talk will, naturally, make those who manage this site nervous. So for that reason it is best avoided.

Sure, you can be charged with a "hate crime".

And even the possibility of that is enough to discourage some people from voicing their thoughts.

It can used to effectively intimidate and manipulate people.

[Gary Childress]

Marx was a communist and saw democratic socialism as flawed.

The Communists fight with courage and devotion on all sectors of the international class front, in the firm conviction that the victory of the proletariat is inevitable and cannot be averted. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their aims can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of the existing social conditions. Let the ruling class tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

-- Program of the Communist International, N.Y., 1936, p.85.

If I were to begin with what I think is the most relevant and active aspect of Marxian thinking, I would start from, let's say, its *call to action* that is expressed in this quote and in so many quotes.

If I were to *make statements* about the various Critical Theories and also about Cultural Marxism, I would begin by making statements again about its *call to action*. That is to say, one is invited to get involved with critical theory in the sense that one is invited to become an active agent -- an acid -- whose aims could be this and could be that (there is openness to what subject is chosen) but that it is the destructive, or deconstructive, mode that is predominant.

In a vulgar sense -- that is to say the attraction to a vulgar man (common man, not necessarily informed by a clear sense of philosophy of values) -- what is presented to that man is a means by which his will can become powerful in a given present. The appeal is to that will and no matter how grounded or centered that will is in formal ideas and values. Seen in this way then the appeal is made to the individual that "You can become powerful". You can and you will act powerfully within history and within your present.

However, it is the philosophical foundation of Marxianism which, when disclosed with clarity and honestly, is a structure built strictly within a set of reductionisms. These require exposure and enunciation.

The general critique of Cultural Marxism in our present is, it is certainly fair to say, something like shots in the dark. Meaning that many people react intuitively, or perhaps even psycho-physically, to those extremely rapid transformations occurring in the social world, and feel that there are *agents* around them (unseen enemies but really enemies in the realm of ideas) who carry forward a revolutionary project within those categories we are all aware of: the activities of a (in my view distorted and distorting) philosophy of queering within all established categories where, to speak generally, average people have constructed their value-system.

Queering

American children are learning a lot about sex, "gender," and sexuality in their schools. District administrators, teachers, and even librarians are obsessed with pushing inappropriate topics onto kids, all in the name of fostering "inclusion." Children today learn that they were "assigned a sex at birth" and can change their sex or "gender" at will. Kids are no longer learning to read, write, or do math, but they are learning how to be "radical gender" activists. Meanwhile, school districts keep parents in the dark, hiding critical information about the health and well-being of their children from them.

American education wasn't like this forty years ago. The cult of Queer Theory changed everything. Inspired by the religious teachings of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Queer Activists "queered" American education. Schools are no longer teaching children how to flourish in society—they are initiating children into the cult of Queer Theory. Once initiated, children "experience the queer" as they adopt a new cult identity and embark on the destructive path of social and medical "transition."

In this book, The Queering of the American Child, Logan Lancing and James Lindsay explain what Queer Theory is, where it comes from, how it got into schools, and what it's doing to children nationwide. The cult of Queer Theory preys on children, and it must be understood if we are ever to stop the madness.

However, the fuller definition of what *queering* refers to needs to be more profoundly examined. It means -- if you follow my previous analysis -- becoming an intellectual acid in relation to some, even perhaps any, established category of value and focusing an attacking will on it and against it. The arming of the will is what I have found to be the most telling aspect. So queering in that sense takes a stand to say that normativity within sexual categories is arbitrary; expressive of *power dynamics*; is oppressive and distorting of what is redefined as *genuine*.

In my view, many people and even perhaps most people struggle to clarify to themselves first what it is they perceive themselves to be fighting: i.e. they cannot well or accurately define their enemy, and so they *grope* for those intellectual armaments that are presented to them or that lie close at hand.

Marxism has always been a call to action, hence, Marx's famous statement that philosophy must "change" the world and not just "interpret" it. However, it's not the only stream of thought among those concerned with democracy and liberty. Marx himself didn't like liberalism, he thought it was an attempt to maintain the status quo by throwing the masses a few 'breadcrumbs' in order to keep them happy and stifle the revolution which was supposed to fix everything and result in "communism" (after the dictatorship of the proletariat). But there are other threads of liberalism out there that concern themselves with things like equality (in various forms), human rights, liberty and maintaining a democratic society that aren't revolutionary Marxism.

I've never been much of a fan of Marx, though, I do sympathize with his moral outrage over the excesses of the industrial revolution. He had a human side but his approach has ultimately proven itself to be false, I think.

[Alexis Jacobi]

James Lindsay:

What is he (Logan Lancing in his book The Queering of the American Child) talking about there why is there *queer*.

He says in any case does not designate a class of already objectified pathologies or perversions rather it describes a horizon of possibility whose precise extent in heterogeneous scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance. And has no limiting principles by definition.

It is from the eccentric positionality occupied by the queer subject that it may become possible to envision a variety of possibilities for reordering the relations among sexual behaviors, erotic identities, constructions of gender, forms of knowledge, regimes of enunciation, logics of representation, modes of self-constitution, and practices of community for restructuring that is the relations among power, truth and desire that is Queer Theory.

That's the definition of queer that's what is meant by queer and that is the kind of thing although not so specifically that Logan Lancing stumbled upon as a man who is now trying to figure out what to do raising children in a world where this ideology exists and where this ideology clearly targets children.

He goes on to say that it is not about homosexuality, but rather something like a strategy for an attack on all that is normative by whatever agent gets hold of the *theory* as a sort of praxis or tool.

In essence I would say that this is why Critical Theory and certainly Queer Theory is as devious as it appears, and why people are extremely threatened by it, but have a very hard time articulating both what it is and what can oppose it.

[Peter Kropotkin]

Cited by J. Peterson, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grNLfzFwPpg&t=712s

K: have you actually watch the video in question? at no point in time does either
person (and I have no idea who either one is) but at no point in time, do
either one mention a study from the university of Toronto.....

In fact, all that was said were just opinions that had no basis in facts, or
at least no facts were talked about... at least verifiable facts....
I heard fancy words that I am sure mean something in a classroom,
but in real life, no one actually uses....it was a waste of time, that
I will never get back......

Kropotkin

At the 3:24 mark, he talks about doing studies which were published in 2016. But he doesn't identify them in sufficient detail, so it's not possible to find them.

K: ok, thank you.... I was wondering about that.....

Kropotkin