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Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory
Q1: Why is this topic called a "conspiracy theory" in the title?
A1: Because that's what the
reliable sources call it, and Wikipedia follows what
reliable,
independent,
secondary sources say. See the sources listed in the footnotes in the lead of the article, for example. Q2: Why is it labeled "far-right" and "antisemitic" in the first sentence? Doesn't that show a biased, leftist point of view?
A2: See answer
#1; because that's what the reliable sources call it; see the citations for the first sentence. Q3: Dworkin (1997) has the term in the title of his book, so the field clearly must exist.
A3: Not if he's the first one to talk about it. Dworkin said (on
page 3) that "My account is the first intellectual history to study British cultural Marxism conceived as a coherent intellectual discipline". If he's the first, then either it's not a preexisting field, or no one has discovered or named it before him. Either way, that would be a different
topic; this article is about the conspiracy theory dating to the 1990s. Q4: I came here to read (or edit) about scholars who apply Marxist theory to the study of culture.
A4: Much of this is covered at a different article,
Marxist cultural analysis. Q5: Why is this labeled "antisemitic"? Plenty of people involved with the Frankfurt school were Jewish!
A5: This article is about the
Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory dating to the 1990s, and the reliable sources consistently identify it as antisemitic. The
Frankfurt school is a different topic, and dates back to Germany in the 1920s. |
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A warning about certain sources: There are two sources on the subject of "Cultural Marxism" that represent a citogenesis or circular reporting risk to Wikipedia as they plagiarize verbatim directly from an outdated draft that came from Wikipedia, which can be found here (2006 revision here). The sources are N.D. Arora's Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2013) and A.S. Kharbe's English Language And Literary Criticism (2009); both are from publishers located in New Delhi and should be avoided to prevent a citogenesis incident. |
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This topic is tricky, it's a bit like the "Criticism of Wikipedia" article but for academia. The result is 94 citations from various academic pieces, but a singular POV. And lets be real, a true encyclopedic description of this topic would need to include the history of this page itself, making this intractably self-referential.
The subject matter is real, but despite numerous citations, there's too little viewpoint diversity. I may add some more sources, but wanted to first post here to hear others' thoughts before submitting any changes. My goal is just to include something to indicate that this is a live issue, and
NPOV: This page conflates the general phrase "cultural marxism" with the specific topic, the "Cultural Marxist conspiracy theory", in a way that editorializes in violation of NPOV. Eg, starting with "'Cultural Marxism' refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory that misrepresents the Frankfurt School..." immediately conflates the two. We can't just assert "Cultural Marxism is this particular esoteric conspiracy theory", and the cited sources don't even claim that. I'd propose something like "The term 'Cultural Marxism' is associated with a far-right antisemitic conspiracy..."
Weakness of sourced literature: This page glaringly omits the actual coinage of the term. It might be Richard Weiner's Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology (1981), but this book is not mentioned anywhere within this article, despite its whopping 94 citations. Wiki articles frequently include etymology, it's informative and helps establish a neutral starting point. But this is glossed over to jump to the 90's conspiratorial usage of the term.
At first I took this as proof of this page's bias and went to fix it. But unfortunately, the academic literature also glosses over Weiner's work entirely. So it'd be original research if I added a section saying "The term may have been coined in 1981...", since no one has chosen to note this fact anywhere. Frustrating. I'll put Weiner's work aside, but hopefully this is convincing that we should be careful about taking the underlying literature too literally, when it's obviously incomplete.
Addition: I'll look at adding Yascha Mounk to the Analysis section. He criticizes the term "Cultural Marxism", but put forward the term "Identity Synthesis," and published a well-researched book that would help give a broader perspective. Eg, he gives a straightforward description of non-conspiratorial usage of the term: "The idea of cultural Marxism, basically, is that you take the classic Marxist side of ideas, you take out categories like social class, you put in identity categories like race and gender and sexual orientation, and boom."
Btw, I think he describes the post-2016 situation well:
"It's really remarkable that there have been barely any academics who have tried to tell the story of the origin of these ideas. I think it’s part of the way in which serious consideration of these ideas and criticism of these ideas has become taboo in the academy. It’s very strange to me, because our whole universe of intellectualist historians who somehow have not thought that this obviously quite major change in how the left thinks about the world, is worthy of that kind of study. And so, the kinds of people who have stepped into that space are political activists like Chris Rufo." — Preceding comment posted at the request of ParanoidAltoid ( talk · contribs) actually added by Ohnoitsjamie ( talk · contribs)
the academic literature also glosses over Weiner's work entirelyyou'll find a lot of this, as beyond being a vague illusion to The Frankfurt School, the two words cultural and Marxism when put next to each other - particularly where the first is lower case, and the second is upper case (eg. the only proper noun in the pairing), "Cultural Marxism" isn't really a thing. The Frankfurt School never used the term, and in academia it's usually "cultural Marxism" two words next to each other, rather than a well defined singular concept. It's appeared in the titles of some books (so is capitalized because of that).
The idea of cultural Marxism, basically, is that you take the classic Marxist side of ideas, you take out categories like social class, you put in identity categories like race and gender and sexual orientation, and boom.black civil rights, progressive politics, feminism, gay rights, and trans rights, were all pre-existing movements well before The Frankfurt School even formed. Progressive politics and identity politics don't actually require any Marxist beliefs and have been an organic progression. No one is manipulating ideology as you're suggesting. It's simply that the rightwing has fairly successfully constructed a simplistic narrative that this has been a type of replacement of economic Marxism. It wasn't and it hasn't been. Economic Marxists still exist... and things like Women's Rights actually predate the birth of Karl Marx himself.
"Cultural Marxism" isn't really a thingAgreed, the original 2014 version that just discussed it as a coherent, self-identified movement was just presenting the conspiracy theory as fact.
The thing is, that "mundane result" isn't generally called "Cultural Marxism" except by conspiracy theorists. It is called identity politicsWhite nationalism is identity politics.
most people who use the term are actually describing. In fact, the WP:HQRS on this topic often note explicitly that what "conservative" culture warriors are in fact doing, whether consciously or not, is invoking tropes of the far-right conspiracy theory.
"Marxism with identity swapped for class"is identity politics by definition (and indeed was the topic of most early scholarship on identity politics). The fact that identity politics of one group runs counter to the identity politics of other groups (including reactionary politics) is a truism of identity politics; it is by no means surprising or paradoxical that one identity politics opposes another. Newimpartial ( talk) 10:28, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
«he gives a straightforward description of non-conspiratorial usage of the term: "The idea of cultural Marxism, basically, is that you take the classic Marxist side of ideas, you take out categories like social class, you put in identity categories like race and gender and sexual orientation, and boom."» => This is the conspiratorial usage of the term. According to Samuel Clowes Huneke, Yascha Mounk’s Woke Straw Man, newrepublic.com, 2023-10-26, https://newrepublic.com/article/175779/yascha-mounks-woke-straw-man the book by Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time, Penguin Press, 2023 endorse the Cultural Marxism narrative. The last article in Yascha Mounk's website is titled How The New York Times Went Woke. Visite fortuitement prolongée ( talk) 19:39, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Change the title "Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory" to just "Cultural Marxism"
All similar conspiracy theory pages on Wikipedia do not mention the words "conspiracy theory" in the title. Apply this change for consistency and to mitigate bias. The fact that it is currently a conspiracy theory is already explained in the definition on the first paragraph. TDBY ( talk) 12:04, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
this is a different kind [...]. /
this is [...] different. / No it's not. See FAQ Question 1. TucanHolmes ( talk) 12:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
"This is a different kind of conspiracy theory designation"
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31Auto-archiving period: 30 days |
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
Discussions on this page often lead to previous arguments being restated. Please read recent comments, look in the archives, and review the FAQ before commenting. |
Frequently asked questions Some common points of argument are addressed in the FAQ below, which represents the consensus of editors here. Please remember that this page is only for discussing how to improve this article. Frequently asked questions about
Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory
Q1: Why is this topic called a "conspiracy theory" in the title?
A1: Because that's what the
reliable sources call it, and Wikipedia follows what
reliable,
independent,
secondary sources say. See the sources listed in the footnotes in the lead of the article, for example. Q2: Why is it labeled "far-right" and "antisemitic" in the first sentence? Doesn't that show a biased, leftist point of view?
A2: See answer
#1; because that's what the reliable sources call it; see the citations for the first sentence. Q3: Dworkin (1997) has the term in the title of his book, so the field clearly must exist.
A3: Not if he's the first one to talk about it. Dworkin said (on
page 3) that "My account is the first intellectual history to study British cultural Marxism conceived as a coherent intellectual discipline". If he's the first, then either it's not a preexisting field, or no one has discovered or named it before him. Either way, that would be a different
topic; this article is about the conspiracy theory dating to the 1990s. Q4: I came here to read (or edit) about scholars who apply Marxist theory to the study of culture.
A4: Much of this is covered at a different article,
Marxist cultural analysis. Q5: Why is this labeled "antisemitic"? Plenty of people involved with the Frankfurt school were Jewish!
A5: This article is about the
Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory dating to the 1990s, and the reliable sources consistently identify it as antisemitic. The
Frankfurt school is a different topic, and dates back to Germany in the 1920s. |
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article has been
mentioned by multiple media organizations:
|
There have been attempts to recruit editors of specific viewpoints to this article. If you've come here in response to such recruitment, please review the relevant Wikipedia policy on recruitment of editors, as well as the neutral point of view policy. Disputes on Wikipedia are resolved by consensus, not by majority vote. |
A warning about certain sources: There are two sources on the subject of "Cultural Marxism" that represent a citogenesis or circular reporting risk to Wikipedia as they plagiarize verbatim directly from an outdated draft that came from Wikipedia, which can be found here (2006 revision here). The sources are N.D. Arora's Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2013) and A.S. Kharbe's English Language And Literary Criticism (2009); both are from publishers located in New Delhi and should be avoided to prevent a citogenesis incident. |
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
This topic is tricky, it's a bit like the "Criticism of Wikipedia" article but for academia. The result is 94 citations from various academic pieces, but a singular POV. And lets be real, a true encyclopedic description of this topic would need to include the history of this page itself, making this intractably self-referential.
The subject matter is real, but despite numerous citations, there's too little viewpoint diversity. I may add some more sources, but wanted to first post here to hear others' thoughts before submitting any changes. My goal is just to include something to indicate that this is a live issue, and
NPOV: This page conflates the general phrase "cultural marxism" with the specific topic, the "Cultural Marxist conspiracy theory", in a way that editorializes in violation of NPOV. Eg, starting with "'Cultural Marxism' refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory that misrepresents the Frankfurt School..." immediately conflates the two. We can't just assert "Cultural Marxism is this particular esoteric conspiracy theory", and the cited sources don't even claim that. I'd propose something like "The term 'Cultural Marxism' is associated with a far-right antisemitic conspiracy..."
Weakness of sourced literature: This page glaringly omits the actual coinage of the term. It might be Richard Weiner's Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology (1981), but this book is not mentioned anywhere within this article, despite its whopping 94 citations. Wiki articles frequently include etymology, it's informative and helps establish a neutral starting point. But this is glossed over to jump to the 90's conspiratorial usage of the term.
At first I took this as proof of this page's bias and went to fix it. But unfortunately, the academic literature also glosses over Weiner's work entirely. So it'd be original research if I added a section saying "The term may have been coined in 1981...", since no one has chosen to note this fact anywhere. Frustrating. I'll put Weiner's work aside, but hopefully this is convincing that we should be careful about taking the underlying literature too literally, when it's obviously incomplete.
Addition: I'll look at adding Yascha Mounk to the Analysis section. He criticizes the term "Cultural Marxism", but put forward the term "Identity Synthesis," and published a well-researched book that would help give a broader perspective. Eg, he gives a straightforward description of non-conspiratorial usage of the term: "The idea of cultural Marxism, basically, is that you take the classic Marxist side of ideas, you take out categories like social class, you put in identity categories like race and gender and sexual orientation, and boom."
Btw, I think he describes the post-2016 situation well:
"It's really remarkable that there have been barely any academics who have tried to tell the story of the origin of these ideas. I think it’s part of the way in which serious consideration of these ideas and criticism of these ideas has become taboo in the academy. It’s very strange to me, because our whole universe of intellectualist historians who somehow have not thought that this obviously quite major change in how the left thinks about the world, is worthy of that kind of study. And so, the kinds of people who have stepped into that space are political activists like Chris Rufo." — Preceding comment posted at the request of ParanoidAltoid ( talk · contribs) actually added by Ohnoitsjamie ( talk · contribs)
the academic literature also glosses over Weiner's work entirelyyou'll find a lot of this, as beyond being a vague illusion to The Frankfurt School, the two words cultural and Marxism when put next to each other - particularly where the first is lower case, and the second is upper case (eg. the only proper noun in the pairing), "Cultural Marxism" isn't really a thing. The Frankfurt School never used the term, and in academia it's usually "cultural Marxism" two words next to each other, rather than a well defined singular concept. It's appeared in the titles of some books (so is capitalized because of that).
The idea of cultural Marxism, basically, is that you take the classic Marxist side of ideas, you take out categories like social class, you put in identity categories like race and gender and sexual orientation, and boom.black civil rights, progressive politics, feminism, gay rights, and trans rights, were all pre-existing movements well before The Frankfurt School even formed. Progressive politics and identity politics don't actually require any Marxist beliefs and have been an organic progression. No one is manipulating ideology as you're suggesting. It's simply that the rightwing has fairly successfully constructed a simplistic narrative that this has been a type of replacement of economic Marxism. It wasn't and it hasn't been. Economic Marxists still exist... and things like Women's Rights actually predate the birth of Karl Marx himself.
"Cultural Marxism" isn't really a thingAgreed, the original 2014 version that just discussed it as a coherent, self-identified movement was just presenting the conspiracy theory as fact.
The thing is, that "mundane result" isn't generally called "Cultural Marxism" except by conspiracy theorists. It is called identity politicsWhite nationalism is identity politics.
most people who use the term are actually describing. In fact, the WP:HQRS on this topic often note explicitly that what "conservative" culture warriors are in fact doing, whether consciously or not, is invoking tropes of the far-right conspiracy theory.
"Marxism with identity swapped for class"is identity politics by definition (and indeed was the topic of most early scholarship on identity politics). The fact that identity politics of one group runs counter to the identity politics of other groups (including reactionary politics) is a truism of identity politics; it is by no means surprising or paradoxical that one identity politics opposes another. Newimpartial ( talk) 10:28, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
«he gives a straightforward description of non-conspiratorial usage of the term: "The idea of cultural Marxism, basically, is that you take the classic Marxist side of ideas, you take out categories like social class, you put in identity categories like race and gender and sexual orientation, and boom."» => This is the conspiratorial usage of the term. According to Samuel Clowes Huneke, Yascha Mounk’s Woke Straw Man, newrepublic.com, 2023-10-26, https://newrepublic.com/article/175779/yascha-mounks-woke-straw-man the book by Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time, Penguin Press, 2023 endorse the Cultural Marxism narrative. The last article in Yascha Mounk's website is titled How The New York Times Went Woke. Visite fortuitement prolongée ( talk) 19:39, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Change the title "Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory" to just "Cultural Marxism"
All similar conspiracy theory pages on Wikipedia do not mention the words "conspiracy theory" in the title. Apply this change for consistency and to mitigate bias. The fact that it is currently a conspiracy theory is already explained in the definition on the first paragraph. TDBY ( talk) 12:04, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
this is a different kind [...]. /
this is [...] different. / No it's not. See FAQ Question 1. TucanHolmes ( talk) 12:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
"This is a different kind of conspiracy theory designation"