Comment by clydethefrog
3 hours ago
There was a major campaign the last decade from many pro-capital and libertarian thinkers to label Adorno and other philosophers as the root cause of many people grievances. Remember Peterson et all all warning about "Cultural marxism" and "postmodernism"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...
I try not be against new terms like "enshittification" or "dopamine fracking" for this reason, the tech people at the levers that might be convinced to change course seem to be more open to substack and blogpost concepts (see SSC / rationalist popularity for all this new terminology that just describes old continental philosophical concepts) instead of having to read old European thinkers that use too much Marxist terminology.
Edit: case in point, literally users here are now linking to SSC essays explaining critical theory lol
This is one of those half truths that makes for especially virulent memes. Early critical theorists drew heavily from Marxist thought and especially Marxist nomenclature and motifs. And you can draw a pretty straight line through to modern identity politics.
And like with all heretical movements, actual Marxists, now guardians of the orthodoxy, are today some of the biggest critics of progressive identity politics, because identity politics displaces class struggle with race and gender struggle. Marxists variously might see this as an unnecessary/unhelpful distraction or a reactive or even deliberate response by the capitalist system to protect itself from growing class consciousness.
The conspiracy angle is ridiculous, and Marxism was but one, albeit significant, influence. And modern conservative thought since the 90s has drawn heavily from critical theory and adjacent schools, e.g. the relationship between narrative and truth and power. (Nothing new about the notion that controlling the narrative is key to power, but deconstructionists, critical theorists, etc built theories and tools re narrative that conservatives now draw heavily upon. It's not a conspiracy anymore than the the above; it's just a consequence of these ideas seeping through academia and the political culture, and most conservative politicians and pundits went to the same schools their progressive/liberal foes did, and they all internalized certain core concepts.)
> There was a major campaign the last decade from many pro-capital and libertarian thinkers to label Adorno and other philosophers as the root cause of many people grievances.
I feel it's still ongoing, the reactionary elements are campaigning against anything circa modern (not modernist as in art but modern as organisation of society, so also anything that can be traced back to Enlightenment) and later, postmodern etc. They are actively destroying natural sciences too, which is a part of this effort. Feels like going back to feudalism.
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