The Ideology that Captured Our Culture

In the Harry Potter book series, the evil Voldemort was referred to as “He Who Must Not Be Named.” Similarly, in today’s culture wars, the ideology we’re fighting is euphemistically called “the orthodoxy,” “race essentialism,” “social justice,” “identity politics” and “woke.” What is this ideology that must not be named?

In a word, it’s Marxism. Today’s Marxists have achieved unprecedented success by transforming classical Marxism into cultural Marxism.

Marxism applied to culture

The 200-year history of Marxism has long had Marxists working in culture. Neo-Marxists from the Frankfurt School such as Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer discussed “the culture industry” in their publications. In the critical theory they developed, everything was about culture, culture, culture. Similarly, the Communist Party USA, in its publication Peoples World, has long discussed “cultural workers” as vital to their plans.

Today in the U.S., Marxism totally pervades the culture. The ideology has infiltrated education, most institutions and American culture as a whole. According to Marxism expert and political science professor Paul Kengor, PhD: “Cultural Marxism is simply Marxism applied to culture.”

The summary of a video featuring Paul Kengor and Grace Reilly, titled the “Rise of Marxism in Culture and Education,” explains it this way:

Historically, Marxism’s oppressed-vs.-oppressor construct was narrow and class-based—the bourgeoisie vs. the proletariat. Today, in its expansion to the culture, Marxism comprises a much bigger tent that includes new victim classes: gender, race, and sexual politics. Identity politics aid the spread and relative attractiveness of Marxist ideology, as each group is provided a victimhood myth.”

Current mutations of Marxism

Kengor has authored many books and papers on Marxism and is an academic advisor at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. In the “Rise of Marxism in Culture and Education” video, Kengor identifies the many variants of Marxism present today:

Sexual Marxism. Gender Marxism. Race Marxism. Cultural Marxism. All these forms of Marxism—they took the general Marxist superstructure of oppressed versus oppressor. All of society is defined by an oppressing group and an oppressed group. Under classical Marxism it’s the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Under critical race theory, or race-based Marxism, it’s black versus white. In gender Marxism, it’s male versus female. There’s always a victim group versus the oppressor group.

The Marxists today are moving into sexuality and culture. If you now go into Peoples World, which is the successor publication to the Daily Worker, you will be shocked to find less articles about unions and tax cuts than a whole bunch about pride month. The first time I saw the acronym LGBTQIA+ was in Peoples World. Peoples World and Communist Party USA were supporting same-sex marriage in the early 2000s before Barack Obama flipped, before Hilary Clinton flipped, before the entire Democratic Party flipped. This is part of their progress, their progression that the progressive left is always ever evolving to. The Marxist dialectic of this forward revolutionary march. Revolutions are the locomotives of history, as Marx put it. Today’s cultural left is constantly pushing ahead with these ideas.

Additionally, Kengor warns about leftists’ new use of false narratives about cultural Marxism. On Wikipedia and other websites, Marxist supporters claim that cultural Marxism is an “anti-semitic conspiracy theory.” The Marxists came up with this bogus claim—projecting onto others what they do themselves—when they learned the public is starting to see through their cultural cover. For more on this topic, see the sources listed below under “For more information.”

Lastly, remember that Harry Potter was not able to defeat Voldemort until he was willing to say his name. Marxism.

For more information:

To view a 24-minute video of Paul Kengor identifying the current forms of Marxism in U.S. culture, go to the “Rise of Marxism in Culture and Education” at spectator.org/video-marxism-culture-education-bella-dodd/

“Cultural Marxism and Its Conspirators” by Paul Kengor - You can click on the audio at the top of the webpage to listen to this article: spectator.org/cultural-marxism-and-its-conspirators/

“Cultural Marxism and Its Conspirators: Part II” by Paul Kengor - You can click on the audio at the top of the webpage to listen to this article: spectator.org/cultural-marxism-and-its-conspirators-part-2/

“How Cultural Marxism Threatens the United States—and How Americans Can Fight It” by Mike Gonzalez: heritage.org/progressivism/report/how-cultural-marxism-threatens-the-united-states-and-how-americans-can-fight