Rightwinger Blames Targeted Group for Oslo Terrorism
            rightwing blogosphere affirms Breivik's analysis

Anders Behring Breivik, the accused Oslo terrorist, made "cultural marxism" one of the major villains behind his attacks that killed almost one hundred people. Others on the right also made the point, in a less violent and direct fashion.

If you destroy civilization, the monsters that fly out will surely destroy you. That is the lesson of the barbarian who killed almost one hundred innocents in Norway last week.

The Left will manage to blame the usual scapegoats, the way it always does. In fact, it is the Left itself that has opened Pandora's Box by systematically destroying the pillars of Western civilization, even bringing in Muslim terror preachers to speed up the destruction of civilized life. Saul Alinsky dedicated Rules for Radicals to Lucifer. Nothing better captures the destructive mind of the cultural Left, and we can see the results all around us.

Last week the Beast came to bite them back.
        John Lewis         Pandora's Box in Norway¹

Actually, the real lesson is Lewis's backhanded support for the rightwing Christian and Islamophobic terrorist who murdered almost 100 people in Oslow. And in a followup Lewis manages to use one of today's rhetorical devices in the political right: scapegoating the victims of the terrorist attack he begins by claiming he opposes scapegoating. read more about Lewis's defense of Breivik's analysis

"Cultural Marxism:" Gramsci for beginners, Melanie Phillips-style
            David Osler
            November 10, 2009

Sometimes a particular combination of headline and author catches your eye and you just know where the article is going to go. So I must admit a certain sense of keen anticipation when I spotted the words 'We were fools to think the fall of the Berlin Wall had killed off the far Left. They're back -- and attacking us from within' in conjunction with the name 'Melanie Phillips'.

At first reading, the piece appeared to be a corker, right down to our the stab at summarising Gramsci for a Daily Mail audience. Sure, I know that idea sounds counterintuitive, in a 'Richard Littlejohn outlines his debt to the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr' or 'Seumas Milne ponders the downsides of Serbian nationalism' kind of way, but to my mind that just made it all the better.

So imagine my disappointment, dear reader, when a quick Google revealed that both the underlying thesis -- not to mention chunks of text -- are simply rehashed from a 2007 piece authored by Linda Kimball on the US far right fringe website American Thinker. It transpires that Ms Phillips may not have read Prison Notebooks after all, and really should cut Kimball in for at least 50% of the presumably not ungenerous fee she got for the feature.

But in District Line terms, the argument advanced by these two women is totally Dagenham, as psychiatrists dub patients who are clearly three stops beyond Barking. If Kimball and Phillips are to be believed, me and my mates are running the world. Yep, the liberal left has only been pretending to be on the back foot for the last three decades, the better to gull the masses. read more about Oster's critique of Melanie Phillips on Gramsci

"Cultural Marxism:" A Look At Real Marxists on Cultural Matters
            Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky's Critique of Richard Wagner

What passes for research in today's political right is often little more than generalized references to some obscure academic writing on some topic only summarized by the rightwing propagandist and otherwise inaccesible to the reader. If you want to see real Marxists writing on real cultural topics you need to look elsewhere.

But if one can dismiss rightwing claims that the academic of their choice reflects real "Cultural Marxism" how is one to avoid making the same mistake, simply selecting another unrepresentative individual with another unsubstantiated claim?.

There are several ways..

The first is to select several examples by Marxists from different countries on writing on different topics. The second is present to actual articles and let the reader decide how closely they correspond to rightwing claims..

We start by presenting an essay by Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky who was the minister of culture in the Bolshevik government's from 1917-1929. He can hardly be dismissed as some unimportant academic. He wrote on Richard Wagner, probably the individual at the top of a list people think about when "rightwing artist" is mentioned. His essay was also written in 1933 and republished by Soviet sources in 1965. Expressed another way, it was written well-after today's political right claims the Frankfurt School was inventing "Cultural Marxism" and it continued to reflect Soviet views on cultural topics well into the 1960s. read Lunacharsky's essay on Richard Wagner

a note on our planned publications of Marxists writing on cultural topics

Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilyevich. Theses on the Problems of Marxist Criticism.1928.

Mehring, Franz. Charles Dickens, 1912.

Trotsky, Leon. What Is Proletarian Culture, and Is It Possible? 1923.

"Cultural Marxism:" ad Dei Gloriam Ministries Gets It Wrong
            Christian World's Theocratic Distortion of Marxism

A primary tenet of Marxism is the supposition that God only exists in the imagination of the economically downtrodden; that He is subjectively created as a wishful fantasy to remedy a person's misery or unhappiness. Thus, while American liberals generally view religion as the root of all evil, a true Marxist would view religion as the imaginary, but ineffective solution to evil, with the primary evil being an unequal distribution of wealth. If one could build an alternative system (under government control); a new world order in which all persons were monetarily equal (except the ruling elite, of course), then there would be no further need for religion. After all, why would someone cling to fanciful thoughts of a joyful hereafter when they could have a utopian paradise in their present life on earth? We, of course, see this "government is the solution to all our problems" theory promoted by many today.
        Candles, Marxists, and the Word of Truth
        The Real Issue: An "ad Dei Gloriam Ministries" Blog from a Christian World and Life View
        February 14, 2011

It would certainly amaze most well-read Marxists to hear that they attribute no religious beliefs to any church hierarchy or ruling classes. But this notion is inherent in the claim that religious belief exists only in the lower classes, "the downtrodden."

In truth, neither Marx nor Engels wrote much on religion; it was not entirely neglected as they focused on economics and history, but it was not a common topic of comment or criticism. Contrary to the writer at the Glorram website, in their most well-known statement about religion, they treated it as a pan-class pheonomenon, with references to "Man" and not "capitalist" or "worker." read more about 'Cultural Marxism:' ad Dei Gloriam Ministries Gets It Wrong

"Cultural Marxism:" The Phrase
            The term's been used but it's nothing like the rightwing's invention

There's nothing wrong with the phrase "Cultural Marxism." The problem develops when the term is used as a core concept in a propaganda campaign. The problem itself concerns how the term has been used, reused, misused, redefined, re-re-redefined, folded, spindled, and multilated by today's political rightwing, reflecting all manner of buffonishness to bolster their new propaganda campaign.

To understand this, think of Cultural Christianity. It's possible to write about a thing called "Cultural Christianity."

You can focus on things like Jesus Rock or on more esoteric studies like the amount of mascara, expressed in grams as a function of the number of TV viewers, worn by females in the televangelism industry. read more about 'Cultural Marxism:' The Phrase

Multiculturalism? Blaim it all on Ruddie ... 6 and 90 times
            Rudyard Kipling pushed it long before the Frankfurt School

There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And-every-single-one-of-them-is-right!

If you're not familiar with a term you might be inclined to accept the logic of today's Republican propagandists. They'll say that something is around today, tell you about somebody you never heard of who decades ago wrote about that thing, and claim that shows the past people are responsible for the thing today.

One of their new term's is "cultural Marxism" who they make even more responsible for society's various ills than they did the old Communists. There's logic behind their argumentative fallacies. One is that the old Communists were well defined via that object known as the "party card." Another group held responsible for problems were the less-well defined but infinitely more numerous "fellow travellers." But even these people had to travel behind the Communist Party with its well-defined program. read more about 'Multiculturalism: Blaim it all on Ruddie'

"Cultural Marxism:" The Rightwing Invents the Phrase, I
            Painting the Roses Red: Chuck Roger on Antonio Gramsci

First, invent your Monster Under the Bed. Then invent how The Monster came to be there. Finally, argue that all the problems of the day are due to The Monster whose existence you've just documented and whose mode of operation you've exposed.

It isn't that facts are unnecessary; facts are positively unwanted for they get in the way of creative falsehoods.

Thus Chuck Roger, in "Cultural Marxism In Education: The Gathering Revolt," informs his readers that: read more about 'Chuck Roger on Antonio Gramsci'"