Consul wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2024 11:29 pmLindsay’s books do contain good stuff (that survives fact-checking); but what I don't like about Race Marxism, The Marxification of Education, and The Queering of the American Child (whose main author isn't Lindsay but Logan Lancing) is that the justified criticism therein is overshadowed by a wild rhetoric of demonization, distortion, and exaggeration.
I have had similar thoughts. And as a result have tried to make some sense of it. First, it is crucial to always maintain some distance from the intensity of The Culture Wars since, in war, pure truth does not function well enough as a devastating weapon and propagandistic
truth-statements are in that sense concoctions, pointed reductions, weaponized talking-points whose function, as in advertising and polemics, is to channel opposition into a fighting mass that can
win.
Another necessary fact to remain conscious of is that when one examines the stars and celebrities of the social media Right one must remember that many of them -- the entire team of The Daily Wire for example -- have come into many millions of dollars as a result of their activist-performances.
I am not trying to set up a condemnation of James Lindsay on this basis however his discourse *went viral* and his idea-armaments were needed and welcome among those who struggle against a rather vast machine of Left- and Progressive-oriented activism summed up in Gramscian terms as "the long march through the institutions" (in fact attributed to Rudi Dutschke but the point still stands). It is generally understood, I think it is verifiable, that *the institutions* in question are dominated by people with a Left-Progressive orientation. To illustrate this point see
this interview with Michael Millerman which I have posted a few times). Simply put, in present-day academia, Left theorists are studied extensively, Right theorists less so (according to Millerman and his interviewer). So there is a whole range of ideas that are
excluded from consideration and a bias toward a *politically-correct* set.
My sense is and has been that the issue revolves ultimately around *interpretation*. We must interpret our world. Every person who examines the present, their present, must interpret it, and to do so one needs conceptual tools to organize one's view. In a world that is steeped in principles of advertising and sound-byte politics, a popular figure with intellectual pretensions must formulate idea-weapons in the form of bullet-points and talking-points in order to communicate with an audience -- and an audience likely incapable of and not interested in depth-analysis.
Once that person has concretized a position, the position is transformed into a sort of intellectual rehearsal. It is a marketable product that is sold. And it is bought because the purchaser agrees with the core message and wishes to see it distributed.
So in a sense, and in the midst of The Culture Wars, we receive
simulacra in greater or lesser degrees.
1. any image or representation of something
2. a slight, unreal, or vague semblance of something; superficial likeness
You mentioned the work of Douglas Kellner, right? I think his view of
The Persian Gulf TV War could well illustrate some part of what I am alluding to. And if this is so then we must remain aware that we are receiving images and concepts -- reductions, condensations -- wherever we turn these days.
What he doesn't mention is that brute violence (terror, torture, incarceration, execution) was part and parcel of Mao's "cultural revolution". Do we see queer activists doing the same in American society, at American kindergartens, schools, and universities? This is not to say that purely psychological indoctrination is harmless—it isn't!—, but the comparison with Maoism is nonetheless very flawed.
If one employs that Maoist model of 'cultural revolution' as a top-down enterprise in the Gramscian sense, I do not think it necessarily has to include "terror, torture, incarceration, execution" to be considered as
real. If you insist on such a correspondence you will, naturally, strip the notion of validity.
But I would certainly agree with you (and I think Gary makes a good point) that American Progressivism is not rooted, necessarily or thoroughly, in Marxist theory. Some have proposed that the real engine of American Sixties activism was in Personalism, and Personalism of this sort has roots in Catholicism and Catholic social doctrine. (See:
The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism by James J. Farrell).
However, it is also generally understood that more radical, and certainly Marxian-derived activism, was brought into the political sphere as the battle-lines took shape.
It does not seem to me possible to deny the Marxian influence even if the theorists of it (as facsimile) may not have been *true Marxists*.
the comparison with Maoism is nonetheless very flawed
I understand why you say this, but I do not think I would discount the American-adaption of Maoist technique, though in our culture it is always a hodge-podge and
pastiche.
Lindsay coined the term "Race Marxism" (for Critical Race Theory), and in the latest book we find "Queer Marxism" (for Queer Theory). The entire contemporary "Woke Left" (post-70s Academic Cultural Left) with all the various cultural/critical studies/theories it spawned is demagogically denounced as part of the World Marxist Conspiracy—the conservatives' & fascists' favourite bogeyman.
We live in
a world that is demagogic. I think that what I mean is that good, fair and sensible ideas, when they are brought into this *world* will always become distorted -- bent, twisted even -- to serve some faction or interest-set.
What matters most to them for propagandistic purposes is that their conservative audience reads the term "Race/Queer Marxism" as a name of Pure Evil: "Wokeism" = "Woke Marxism/Maoism/Stalinism"!
The entire Woke Left is portrayed as a satanic brood of "abnormals" with evil intentions—Lindsay's & Lancing's political message being: Let's make America great again by making it normal again!
The way I understand these things is -- I am sure I've made it reasonably clear and I am sure you understand what I mean -- that perspectives become weaponized. They have to be fashined into propaganda tools in order to be useful for those fighting the battles. The Left, for example, utterly vilifies the Right and Conservatism (to speak generally). Any move toward Right-tending ideas is portrayed as the beginnings of a Hitlerian take-over.
What I understand to be happening now is that there is a
reaction taking shape where the Right, or Conservatives, or *average people* who are concerned and alarmed by social trends taking shape, seek out conceptual and rhetorical weaponry so that their struggle, their movement, has an articulate-able
base.
the conservatives' & fascists' favourite bogeyman.
This is one reason why I suggested to Immanuel Can that the general Marxian Narrative, or the hybrid narrative that is referred to in reductionist terms (Woke Marxism, etc.) is actually extremely powerful and it tends to
convince people.
When and if you attempt to articulate an alternative position you must step into the articulation of unpopular ideas. For this reason I have (often) presented a more radical presentation that deals on *what has happened to us* or *what we have allowed to have happen to us*.
It necessarily involves
a more militant set of ideas and principles.
Clearly, HAMAS had prepared to incite these overseas protests, and the Wokies walked right into their propaganda with their empty heads hanging down, never seeing they were being played. What fools!