“Cultural Marxism” – the alleged conspiracy of alleged secret Marxists allegedly trying to destroy Western Civilization through Political Correctness and feminism and racial equality – is a favorite boogeyman of the far right.
That includes, of course, large sections of the “Red Pill” world. Roosh V’s Return of Kings site publishes reactionary diatribes with titles like Cultural Marxism Produces Matriarchy and Tactics For The War Against Cultural Marxism In 2015; Heartiste rails against the alleged evils of “cultural Marxism, feminism, equalism, and … racial self-annihilationism.”
Though Cultural Marxism does not, you know, exist, the far-right obsession with it has made inroads amongst Men’s Rights Activists and #GamerGaters as well.
The Spearhead wrote about “the Menace of Cultural Marxism” as far back as 2009; more recently, British MRA Angry Harry has blamed it for what he sees as a cultural assault on “white heterosexual men.” A Voice for Men’s “Resident Historian” Robert St. Estephe, meanwhile, warns that “Cultural Marxism (“Feminism”) is About Destruction,” and that its insidious strategy “absolutely requires the destruction of the family and the emergence of authoritarian indoctrination of children.” And the MRA-adjacent right-wing videoblogger Bernard Chapin can’t shut up about it.
Among #GamerGaters the Cultural Marxist conspiracy theory is if anything even more prevalent. The bumbling would-be documentarian duo behind The Sarkeesian Effect are making Anita S’s alleged Cultural Marxism a big part of their story. (It’s a longtime obsession of the Anton LaVey-looking Davis Aurini; his shaggy collaborator Jordan Owen is still reading up on it.)
And on Twitter, #GamerGate footsoldiers warn anyone who will listen about the (cultural) red menace.
https://twitter.com/GibberAUS/status/559114680204275713
https://twitter.com/RearAdmiralGate/status/557926692636086272
@RearAdmiralGate Cult Marxists are driving policy & helping to write legislation,enshiring Cultural Marxism into law #GamerGate
— EscapeVelocity (@EscapeVelo) January 20, 2015
@crecenteb All of them. I don't care to play video games or read reviews that seek to indoctrinate me using Cultural Marxism.
— GamerGate TRUTH (@GamerGate_TRUTH) January 20, 2015
I should probably mention that the Cultural Marxist conspiracy theory is virulently anti-Semitic, with side orders of misogyny, white supremacy, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia and assorted other more specialized bigotries. For many of those on the far right, including numerous Manospherians, these are features, not bugs; they’re always happy for more excuses to rail against the Jews.
But not all #GamerGaters and Men’s Rights Activists are literally Nazis; indeed, many of them, including some who have embraced the Cultural Marxist conspiracy theory, like to think of themselves as liberals or even leftists. Some even profess great love for people of color, gay and trans folk, and many of the other groups that the far right loves to vilify – #NotYourShield and all.
If you know one of these people, you might want to point them in the direction of Bill Berkowitz’ still-relevant 2003 history of the CM conspiracy theory in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, making clear how thoroughly anti-Semitic it’s been from the start.
But there’s an even easier way to reveal just how horrible most of those obsessed with the alleged dangers of cultural commies destroying the world really are: do a Google image search for “cultural marxism.”
Your results will be filled with some of the most vile propaganda this side of posters actually put out by the Nazis during their time in power. You will also see posters actually put out by the Nazis during their time in power, posted online by people who think that the Nazis had some pretty good ideas, if you think about it.
But don’t take my word for it. Here are some of the pics that came up in my results. I didn’t have to sift through pages of results to find examples this bad; these images are actually rather typical, and I’ve left out some of the worst. (You may recognize the “Happy Merchant,” #GamerGate’s favorite anti-Semitic caricature, in several of the pics below.)
#GamerGaters and MRAs: when you embrace the CM conspiracy theory, you’re getting into bed with the people who made these pictures.
[CONTENT WARNING: Every kind of bigotry you can think of.]
@Cyberwulf. I think you’re right. But I though “political correctness gone mad” used to mean those acts of white folk so desperate not to be offensive that they become patronising, like removing books with illustrations of pigs from school libraries *in case* any of the Muslim children or parents complain about it (y’know, without actually consulting anyone, otherwise they’d have realised it was a non-existant problem). Or I know some kids are actually taught to sing “Baa-Baa Rainbow Sheep” in nursery, despite literally nobody having a problem with the descriptive use of the colour black to describe non-human things.
Given the sheer number of people in the world, I’m sure that somewhere, some desperately unhappy radical is calling for the genocide of white people. But that still doesn’t mean it’s happening. It is perfectly possible to say that someone deserves a punishment which they are not currently suffering.
Example: Roosh V isn’t currently in jail for rape, but he deserves to be!
This was in BoingBoing today. No mockery, but quite relevant to anyone who’s wondering what these bozos are on about.
Or just what they’re ON, period.
Just going to throw this out there as a former of the Canadian communist party and a guy who still has many communist friends. The modern communists as he or she or any other gender is today does not expect a violent revolution. The communists I know tend to be in support of more fair and equal resource distribution; but they’ve pretty much given up on dictatorship of the Proletariat and inevitable revolution.
Also communists are a pretty diverse lot and have some very reasonable and very unreasonable beliefs as people go.
@lith–I think they’re supposed to be in mid-jump. As in jumping for joy.
One thing I’ve always wondered…why do people have such hatred for Jewish people? I mean, I think in this day and age it has gone beyond the “they killed Jesus” bullshit. But I am genuinely baffled. And afraid to google, tbh.
“Divide and concur”—oh man, I love dumb foibles like that even in the happiest of circumstances. (I’ve made a few hilarious blunders).
@AltoFronto: that’s how the term may have begun, yes. But it was quickly co-opted to mean anything from “changing golliwogs to teddy bears in new editions of Enid Blyton books” to “calling out racist and sexist jokes as racist and sexist” to “calling transfolk by their preferred pronouns” to pretty much anything that requires privileged folk to consider the feelings of people who don’t look like them. It’s like how tokenism can mean “they threw in one girl character and her whole personality is that she’s a girl, lazy fuckers” and also “I fucking hate that character, she’s only there because everything has to have the token girl now, fucking feminazis.”
WHY ARE WOMEN STILL ON THE BOTTOM IN THE FUCKING PYRAMID
god damn it back to formula
I love how the “dummies” guide author thinks rich is spelled “ritch”. They really think so because they did it twice. *squee!*
I’m getting a vibe from the Japanese schoolgirls that kind of makes me uncomfortable, but I can’t put my finger on it and I feel icky trying.
Poor ol’ Vivian just seems so excited to be talking about Political Correctness.
@Falconer:
How about the fact that the girl on the left is furiously blushing while a fish tail is pressed up against her crotch?
They’re standing on the “necrophilia” stair, so I think they’re supposed to be zombies.
@Bina I think for a lot of these guys it isn’t so much that they’re virulent racists or misogynists. It’s that they know that racism, sexism etc are Bad Things, and they’re Good. So if someone points out that something they like is a bit sexist, that’s like saying they’re Bad. And they’re not Bad and would never enjoy a Bad Thing, so whoever says the thing is Bad must be the one with the problem.
It’s like stepping on someone’s foot. Few people do it on purpose. But some people who do it accidentally and are upset that they’ve done something Bad, will reframe the whole thing as “And then she GLARED at me and yelled GET OFF MY FOOT really loud and everyone was looking and her fists were clenched and I thought she would hit me and I said it was an accident and I called her a bitch but she YELLED and she said she was calling the cops and I can’t even eat, I didn’t even do anything.” Even though all she said was, “Dude, you’re on my foot.” It feels much better to be the wronged party because then you have the moral high ground, and you don’t have to watch where you put your feet.
The straw “SJWs” these people come up with are just hilarious. I’ve spent lots of time around lefties of various stripes. I’ve known liberal Democrats, socialists and anarchists. Never once have I heard anyone say that there should be a white genocide or that having kids with someone of the same race is racism. If you can’t argue with what your opponents actually say and think and have to make shit up, you’ve lost before you even begun.
That’s not been my experience. In fact, the ISO seems pretty firm in their stance that violent revolution followed by mass executions is necessary and anyone who questions that is obviously deluded and a tool of the capitalist establishment.
I’d be way more sympathetic to modern Marxists if a group of them hadn’t attempted to organize a harassment campaign against my spouse.
@ Dan – I know there are plenty of totally reasonable Communists. Even within the SWP I’ve met some very reasonable good-hearted people willing to overlook some of the party’s problematic elements. It’s just the ones who still cling to the dictatorship of the Proletariat thing are still knocking around my local area, and I find them bemusing. 🙂
I’m a pretty solid Socialist myself; I just can’t get behind the silly sods who read Marx and Lenin and Trotsky and cling to it as if it’s complete and perfect and makes them the most enlightened persons in the room, impervious to criticism. They’re not interested in my liberation.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
Only if your purpose is to change/interact with your opponents. Making shit up works fine for rallying the troops in your giant echo chamber, othering your opponent and whipping your fanbase into a frenzy so that hopefully people will start fighting back, be it politically or otherwise.
Do people seriously think we’re born racist and have to unlearn it through political correctness indoctrination? Come on. If you put a group of toddlers of various races together, they all play together and don’t give a crap about skin color. It’s not until kids get older that you see friend groups getting more racially segregated. Racism and even just racial identity are learned. I didn’t realize I was white until elementary school age. Before that it’s just not a concept I had ever given thought to.
@kirbywarp:
Oh god, ew. All the ew. Not at the fish, though, but some people really do think young girls are for their gratification, don’t they?
*young girls and women
Hoo-lee eff.
So I am knee-deep in a WWII documentary kick (my ADHD sends me spinning off like this quite frequently) and just finished watching a bunch of stuff on concentration camps.
This anti-Semitic stuff is so, so, so wrong, but so, so, so familiar to me in this moment, because I literally just saw it in Nazi propaganda in this doc.
How the holy eff do these people a) think like this and b) not see the parallels between the same shit they are spouting and the same shit that lead to the systemic murder of millions of people?
But of course it’s us liberal pinko commies who have it wrong.
I am always so confused by their memes. There’s so much stuff on that last one that I’m a little confused about all the connections.
I am also confused by the language of #3 about white genocide. I have only heard that referenced when white supremacists talk about the fact that whites are becoming a minority. The “genocide” = the browning of America. But I’ve never heard anyone say that whites deserve genocide either, so the wording on that is just strange.
#2 is kinda funny. I’m a professor, and I have enough trouble getting my students to do the amount of studying necessary to learn the material for my class. I can’t imagine having that much influence over them!
Then, I’m also really confused about the imagery of the “What is Cultural Marxism?” one. What is up with the lady in white? It looks like an ad for Summer’s Eve!
On the one that says marrying in your own race is racist: who says that?!? I know some people in mixed marriages who get flak, even one where the man is Asian-American and the woman is Caucasian. I didn’t even think of them as a “mixed” marriage, but they apparently get stared at a lot and get lots of weird questions. Most people I know are married to someone of the same race, usually someone of the same religion too. And I’m confused about how marrying into your race is some preservation of your value system. I mean, I know what they are hinting at, but it’s so disconnected from reality.
“We’re defending our inclusive community from the bigots trying to bastardise #GamerGate to protect a media that spews their Cultural Marxism.”
Translation: “Our community is very warm and accepting, unless you have opinions we don’t like, in which case, die in a fire.”
Priceless.
@WatermelonSugar:
When talking to the outside world, their message is “The holocaust didn’t actually happen. If it were to happen, though, well… you know, Jews are trying to rule the world and all. Just saying.” When they’re talking among themselves, I have no idea what they’re thinking.
It’s a pretty safe bet that they know that same shit lead to the systematic murder of millions of people, and that’s just swell to them.
Re: Communist, Socialists, et al:
Interesting discussion.
It may be useful if the posters talking about their experiences mention their country or region, though.
I have the feeling that we might be talking crossways due to differing parties and working definitions being manifest in different areas and political climates.
The strawman bits about how SJWs allegedly link having a same-race partner to racism is thus:
Some people have met another person who happened to be of the same race, fell in love, and had a kid.
Other people who have done the exact same thing are also racist as fuck, and think that having a same-race baby is somehow ‘winning’ the demographic war.
The racist douchebags then try to claim that people calling them racist douchebags are doing that to the first group, hoping to get the first group to dismiss the SJWs. This only works if the target of the appeal already has their head so far up their rectum that they can lick their own tonsils, of course.