CULTURAL MARXISM IN THE CHURCH
From the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Sympathy for the Devil
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith,
giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.” 1 Timothy 4:1
Barbara Aho
September, 2017
German philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831) hypothesized that history unfolds through dialectical processes of thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Karl Marx (1818-1883) adapted Hegel’s dialectical philosophy to the Communist Manifesto of agitating the masses toward world revolution. But alas for Marx and his successors the proletariat did not revolt against the bourgeoisie as planned when they witnessed the brutality and carnage of Communism; therefore a different strategy was needed to overthrow Western Civilization. In 1923, the Communist International funded a group of Jewish intellectuals to set up the Institute of Social Science at Frankfurt am Main—where also the Jewish banking family, the House of Rothschild, had long been established.
“Frankfurt School Cultural Marxism”
“The early beginnings of the Frankfurt School emphasised the reformulation of Marxism. The Marxist proletariat revolution was not going according to plan, as signified by World War I (the working classes, rather than aligning with their class, gave preference to their nations and fought each other), and by the socialist regimes under Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin in Russia spawned by the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Marxist intellectuals gathered in the Weimar Republic to discuss why the revolution had not taken place in Europe, and returned to the drawing board to perform a ‘searching reexamination of the very foundations of Marxist theory with the dual hope of explaining past errors and preparing for future action.’ The Frankfurt School was explicitly created to do this research and planning ‘to become a major force in the revitalization of Western European Marxism in the postwar years.’
“As they reworked Marxist theories they developed a new strain of Marxism that gave priority to the radical transformation of the cultural superstructure (foundations) of Western civilization. They perceived Christianity and Western cultural traditions as obstacles to the revolution, which needed to be severed at their roots. This Marxist ideology came to be called cultural Marxism, a non-violent but revolutionary collectivist ideology that seeks the gradual gain of power via the modification of laws, institutions, and social organisations.
“Other than [Karl Korsch (1886-1961)], there were three European Marxist theorists who had a significant impact on Frankfurt School cultural Marxism: in the initial founding stages, Georg Lukács (1885-1971), and in the later stages, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), whose writings were particularly influential in the 1960s, especially on the British-created Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, or the Birmingham School (1964) and the counter-culture movement and the New Left.
“While he was Deputy Commissar Lukács sought to destroy society along with the traditional values of the West, writing: ‘I saw the revolutionary destruction of society as the one and only solution,’ and:’ ‘A worldwide overturning of values cannot take place without the annihilation of the old values and the creation of new ones by the revolutionaries.’ His methods became known as cultural terrorism. One of these methods to undermine traditional Western culture was the introduction of a radical sex education program; ‘special lectures and supportive literature were developed to instruct Hungarian children’ about free love and sexual intercourse, to repudiate middle class family codes of monogamy, and ‘to deride and ignore the authority of parental authority, and precepts of traditional morality.’ In addition, the promiscuity and rebellion of women against patriarchy was promoted.
“Lukács participated in the 1922 Marxist work week in Thuringia, and thus helped found the Frankfurt School. In 1923 he published History and Class Consciousness, the same year that Korsch published his Marxism and Philosophy. Lukács argued that the Christian cultural institutions of the West were oppressive, intolerant, and had ‘blinded’ people ‘to their true class interests’ (Bill Lind, The Origins of Political Correctness). He wanted to destroy the cultural institutions of the West so that power would ‘fall into their laps like ripened fruit’ and the Communist state could be created.15
“Lukács also influenced the Frankfurt School development of Critical Theory.”
Thus, the founding Marxists of the Frankfurt Institute set out to destroy the traditional values of Western civilization by declaring war on the family: “…the introduction of a radical sex education program; ‘special lectures and supportive literature were developed to instruct Hungarian children’ about free love and sexual intercourse, to repudiate middle class family codes of monogamy, and ‘to deride and ignore the authority of parental authority, and precepts of traditional morality.’ In addition, the promiscuity and rebellion of women against patriarchy was promoted.” In Hungary, however, Georg Lukacs’ sexual revolution was aborted by Roman Catholics whose “bishops asked the community not to follow the world. Not to cooperate with the communists.” (Dr. Anca-Maria Cernea)
“Lukacs was well-suited to the Comintern task: he had been one of the Commissars of Culture during the short-lived Hungarian Soviet in Budapest in 1919; in fact, modern historians link the shortness of the Budapest experiment to Lukacs’ orders mandating sex education in the schools, easy access to contraception, and the loosening of divorce laws—all of which revulsed Hungary’s Roman Catholic population.” (The Frankfurt School: Bolshevik Intelligentsia)
“In 1918, a man named György Lukács became the minister of culture in the short-lived Communist government of Béla Kun in Hungary. Being of the opinion that Marxist theory could only be implemented where the family unit and sexual morals were broken down, Lukács implemented a bold program of social reform that mandated sex education in schools. The Hungarian people were horrified by this outrage, as well as other aspects of the Kun regime, and this Marxist government of Hungary lasted only about 180 days. Sadly, 1949 would bring a much longer lasting Communist regime…” (Cultural Marxism Versus The Church)
In 1933, the Frankfurt Marxist Jews fled Nazi Germany and were welcomed by the U.S. There they set up shop at Columbia University and proceeded to apply their “critical theory” to American culture.
“The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory”
“The Frankfurt School, also known as the Institute of Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), is a social and political philosophical movement of thought located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It is the original source of what is known as Critical Theory. The Institute was founded, thanks to a donation by Felix Weil in 1923, with the aim of developing Marxist studies in Germany. The Institute eventually generated a specific school of thought after 1933 when the Nazis forced it to close and move to the United States, where it found hospitality at Columbia University, New York.
“The academic influence of the ‘critical’ method is far reaching in terms of educational institutions in which such tradition is taught and in terms of the problems it addresses. Some of its core issues involve the critique of modernities and of capitalist society, the definition of social emancipation and the perceived pathologies of society. Critical theory provides a specific interpretation of Marxist philosophy and reinterprets some of its central economic and political notions such as commodification, reification, fetishization and critique of mass culture…”
Fast forward to 2017 in the United States of America:
“How The Cultural Marxists Of The Frankfurt School Subverted American Education”
by Beau Albrecht of ReturnOfKings.com
“Perhaps you’ve wondered why so many college professors are so left-wing. In your freshman year, you might have noted with dread—as I did—some of your fellow students ‘going with the flow’ and molding their beliefs to fit in. Perhaps one of them was you, before you grew up and snapped out of it! The Frankfurt School is the answer to why so many universities are Social Justice Warrior factories.
The origins of the Frankfurt School
“They found themselves unwelcome in Germany during the 1930s, and one of the two reasons was that all of them were Communists. They moved to the USA, settling down in Columbia University. How did they repay the country that gave them refuge? By subverting it, of course. If all this sounds like McCarthyist alarmism, note that the Communists themselves claim them.
“Because the proletariat just wasn’t interested in revolution, they rebranded Communism, taking out the elements of class struggle, and adding contributions from Freudian theory. This was a mistake; Communism emphasized hard work and heroism; that much is respectable even if the rest of the ideology is badly flawed…”
Note: Marx and Engels also mocked homosexuality; Stalin and Castro criminalized sodomy. Today, however, Mariela Castro, the daughter of Raul Castro and a member of Parliament, is leading the LGBT movement which is supported by the Cuban government.
How Cultural Marxism took root
“They had two strategies: ensconcing themselves into academia, and the criticism of society (hence ‘critical theory’). Ultimately, this meant ideological subversion and basically badgering society to death. (It seems incredible that they did so much without picking up a single rifle.) They stressed moral relativism and the ‘question everything’ atmosphere that became the 1960s counterculture zeitgeist. A few of their books, such as Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse and The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno, have become classics in academia.
“Many of their students graduated and became professors elsewhere, just in time for the 1960s. Young people are at the most impressionable time of their lives, so indoctrinating college students was a very effective strategy. It’s little wonder that campuses became hotbeds of student activism! College draft deferments surely helped them reach more students sympathetic to their message.
“Further, the ideological seeds of the Frankfurt School—along with the Communist Party USA—fell onto fertile ground. There were several groups that they—cultural Marxists and garden variety Communists—infiltrated and subverted, for instance:
“There was already a feminist movement, mostly moderate and mostly simply about equal rights (a goal which was nearly complete by then). Under leftist influence, second wave feminism began, which was anything but moderate and effectively about deconstructing society.
“There was already a beatnik counterculture. With a little encouragement, this became a much larger youth counterculture, the hippies. Having a significant toehold in academia put the Critical Theory folks in a very good position to influence the young Baby Boomers.
“There was already a civil rights movement, which the Communists had put a lot of effort into influencing. This included figures such as W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Stanley Levison (MLK’s top advisor), and Frank Marshall Davis (called ‘Pops’ in Obama’s autobiography).
“The gay movement was heavily influenced in the beginning by the Mattachine Society, founded by Harry Hay, of which most members were Communists.”
The Cultural Marxists were also ensconced in the churches, notably the United Methodist Church which was on the vanguard of promoting Gay Liberation. Their publication, motive Magazine, was circulated from 1941 to 1972. It was pro Gay and pro-Communist. The final issue of motive looks and sounds every bit like publications of the LGBTQ today.
“motive (always spelled with a lowercase ‘m’) was the official magazine for the Methodist Student Movement from its founding in 1941 and, for a few years at the end of its life, for the entire University Christian Movement (UCM). Much celebrated even at the time for its avant garde editorial and artistic vision, in 1966 Time magazine said it stood out among church publications ‘like a miniskirt at a church social.’ It was the single runner-up to Life as Magazine of the Year in 1965. Ultimately, its strong stands on civil rights, Vietnam, and emerging gender issues became more than the Methodist Church officials could take. The magazine ceased publication in 1972. Even so, an entire generation of religious activists were shaped by its vision.”
That generation of activists included Hillary Rodham Clinton who now aspires to become a Methodist minister.
“A new Washington Post story about Hillary Clinton’s time as Secretary of State describes her as ‘a wonky Methodist who believes she is supposed to make good things happen.’” Clinton has in the past credited motive magazine as an important formative influence.” (Hillary Clinton: Methodist)
Returning to “How The Cultural Marxists Of The Frankfurt School Subverted American Education” by Beau Albrecht:
“Earlier I had assumed that the Frankfurt School was an independent movement, with no particular encouragement or guidance from the USSR. Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that. Franz Leopold Neumann, identified by the Venona decrypts as a Soviet spy, was in contact with leading figures Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and also the spy Hede Massing, the wife of Paul Massing (another Frankfurt school figure). Later, he became a professor at Columbia University…
“…KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov noted that only 15% of the KGB’s efforts were spying; the other 85% went into ideological subversion; this is what he was assigned to do in India, until he got disgusted with it and escaped. He explained,
“‘It’s a great brainwashing process, which goes very slow[ly] and is divided [into] four basic stages. The first one [is] demoralization; it takes from 15-20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years which [is required] to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged, or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism (American patriotism).
“The result? The result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the sixties (drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals) are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, [and the] educational system. You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated; they are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind[s], even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. In other words, these people… the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To [rid] society of these people, you need another twenty or fifteen years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded and common sense people, who would be acting in favor and in the interests of United States society.’
Memetic warfare
“Even though the Soviet Union fell apart twenty five years ago, the memes they launched are still out there. Many of the students the Frankfurt School taught became teachers and professors, who taught another batch of teachers and professors, and they’re now indoctrinating our youth. Some others became ensconced in the media or in government positions. This is what Italian Communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci called ‘the long march through the institutions.’ Only a fraction identifies with Communism, but they still practice the party line even if few are aware of where their views originated.
“If you’ve ever wondered where all of today’s Social Justice Warriors came from, now you know the story.”
The Cultural Marxists’ “long march through the institutions” has encountered little opposition as it marches through the Christian Church—which the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, recognized was the foundation of Western Civilization and the foremost obstacle to Marxist revolution.
“Gramsci’s signal contribution was to liberate the Marxist project from the prison of economic dogma, thereby dramatically enhancing its ability to subvert Christian society… The civilized world, Gramsci deduced, had been thoroughly saturated with Christianity for 2,000 years and Christianity remains the dominant philosophical and moral system in Europe and North America. Practically speaking, civilization and Christianity were inextricably bound together. Christianity had become so thoroughly integrated into the daily lives of nearly everyone, including non-Christians living in Christian lands, it was so pervasive, that it formed an almost impenetrable barrier to the new, revolutionary civilization Marxists wish to create. Attempting to batter down that barrier proved unproductive, since it only generated powerful counter-revolutionary forces, consolidating them and making them potentially deadly. Therefore, in place of the frontal attack, how much more advantageous and less hazardous it would be to attack the enemy’s society subtly, with the aim of transforming the society’s collective mind gradually, over a period of a few generations, from its former Christian worldview into one more harmonious to Marxism.” (Gramsci’s Grand Plan)
Reformed Pastor Bret McAtee has written many short but informative articles exposing the ideology of Marxism / Cultural Marxism and its subversion of the Christian Church and Western culture. In the following essay, Pastor McAtee identifies the main tactics employed by cultural Marxists to subvert Christianity.
“The Cultural Marxist Toolbox”
“The small and powerless minorities which struggle against the false consciousness and its beneficiaries must be helped. Their continued existence is more important than the preservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitutional power to those who oppress these minorities.” Herbert Marcuse, The Frankfurt School
“This ‘false consciousness,’ which one of the truly great Cultural Marxists railed against was the consciousness which has been shaped and formed by thousands of years of Christianity upon the West. It was this ‘false consciousness’ that Marcuse and his cohorts at the Frankfurt School desired to overthrow and so the oppressed must be protected from this ‘false consciousness’ even if it meant denying the proper protection of law to those who were [designated] as the ‘oppressors.’ In this quote Marcuse is styling his worldview and beliefs as the true consciousness vis-a-vis the false consciousness that he and his ideological soul mates were waging civilizational war against.
“This false consciousness would be overthrown by use of the tool-kit developed by the Cultural Marxists. These tools came to be known as,
Critical theory
“In Cultural Marxism via the work of critical theory, every aspect of a person’s identity is to be questioned, be it gender, sexual orientation, family, race, culture, religion, in order to benefit supposedly oppressed groups. By deconstructing heretofore stable and unchanging identity social categories (part of the false consciousness problem) those who were part of moral, ethnic, racial, and religious minority groups could pull down and destroy the whole idea of norms that arise in cultures that are comprised of distinct majorities.
“The underlying and enduring aspect of critical theory common to all its multitudinous expressions is the creation and application of interdisciplinary theories growing out of a worldview dedicated to overturning the false consciousness of traditional Christian thought and social order and so serving as an instrument of social transformation. Critical theory comes in all shapes, sizes, and expressions but the one thing it has in common is criticizing any residual influence of Christianity that remains on any and all of our Western institutions and disciplines. It typically expresses itself as the voice of the oppressed and the aggrieved and in doing so seeks to employ ‘social justice’ and ‘fairness’ as the sting within the theory. However, in order to do so Critical theory must invert and redefine almost all realities in order to be able to secure the superior position of the oppressed.
The New Proletariat
