--Radical Chic: The Frankfurt School's Real Legacy
Article by Matthew Dunnyveg:
The Frankfurt School's legacy has long been supplanted by postmodern liberalism with a few notable exceptions. One of those exceptions is the nature of the radicals. Because of the Frankfurt School, radicalism isn't what it used to be.
The phenomenon of radical chic I write about here is hardly new. When what I describe below was still very new, conservative novelist Tom Wolfe wrote a pamphlet titled Radical Chic. The following is from Wikipedia's entry on radical chic:
Unlike this bunch, I actually have grudging respect for groups like Mohammedan terrorists and real communists, and it's not because of what they stand for. I can have grudging respect for these groups simply because they represent something that can no longer be found in our post-American liberal utopia. I'm referring to people who don't act for money or social standing, but for what they genuinely believe in--believe in strongly enough in many cases to die for. This is in marked contrast with the venality and oppressive elitism of today's "radicals". Try as they may, these radical elites can't buy what these old-school radicals had. Some things just aren't for sale at any price.
Particularly before WWII, before Stalin enslaved eastern Europe and conducted his mass murders, the West had real communists back when being a communist carried a heavy price. Being a communist in many parts of the West meant a life of absolute penury, and being a hunted fugitive that meant either death or a long prison sentence. This is where the romantic image of the radical revolutionary came from. Radicals fearlessly waged war on the most powerful group on earth, the liberal elites, who had money, and thus power. Since the radicals ostensibly weren't in it for money or power, they came to occupy the moral high ground.
The Frankfurt School (FS) never fit into this mold. They were a bunch of privileged academics who were subsidized by what we'd call a trust fund baby today, Felix Weil. Felix Weil got the money to subsidize the FS from his father, Hermann Weil, who was at the time the richest grain merchant in the world. As a result, the FS became among the most unromantic of Marxists, academic Marxists who lived lives of luxury. But this all came to a stop when Hitler was elected, and this bunch had to leave Germany in a hurry.
To justify their lives of luxury, the Frankfurt School quickly became heretical Marxists. Stalin would've shot on sight had they been foolish enough to request asylum in the Soviet empire. Instead, they were invited to come to the US not surprisingly by a post-American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The problem for the FS is that without Weil's backing, they quickly found themselves no longer able to function as any kind of group due to lack of money, and this group started coming apart.
To raise money not only to meet the needs of their group, but to meet living expenses, the FS had to come to terms with potential funding sources, such as Columbia University, the Princeton Radio Project, and important jobs in government. What this bunch quickly figured out was that they would have to compromise their ideals somewhat. What they found out was that the liberal elites were equally anxious to tame the radicals by co-opting them. So, an unholy alliance began to develop between the radicals and the liberal elites. Since fighting off the radicals cost the liberals a lot of money and lost reputation, they were more than happy to compromise. In fact, the liberal elites were so willing to compromise to solve the radical problem that by the end of WWII, the FS was so thoroughly embedded in government and academia that they were intimately involved in the post-war de-Nazification project.
The Frankfurt School presaged the problem the native Western middle and working classes saw when communism finally fell apart in the early nineties. There were no longer any checks on the liberals' power, and they quickly adopted an open borders and free trade regimen that impoverished untold numbers of Western workers. Those of us who are old enough remember the perennial battles between management and labor. Management won an unconditional victory, and wages and working conditions have been declining ever since. Western workers could no longer threaten to turn communist; they quickly found themselves without champions anywhere.
This problem was largely started by the Frankfurt School. What the Frankfurt School had to do was to subtly shift their ire from the liberal elites toward the working classes whose cause real communism purports to champion. Poor white people--the working class--became the enemy of the radicals. In other words, radicals sold out the very people they were sworn to protect and defend for cushy, lucrative sinecures in government, academia, the churches, and big business. And as long as the radicals continued to wage war on the non-elite white enemies of the liberal elites, they continued to receive their thirty pieces of silver.
This is why naive non-elite liberals are so confused about what liberalism really is. All kinds of ideas are floated by liberal quacks. But the only ideas that go anywhere are the ideas that the liberal elites are willing to subsidize, which are those that benefit the liberal elites, and to the detriment of everybody else. Getting a message out on the national level costs money few have.
Because of this situation, our entire system is owned by the liberal elites; non-elite whites have no champions anywhere other than ourselves. This is why virtually every Western nation now has an ethnonationalist movement that has either claimed power, or is at least in the ascendancy.
As a result, we are witnessing an historical anomaly. Since the days of the French Revolution--which was actually an elitist affair, along with all communist revolutions--the left has been telling us that they want a revolution from the bottom up. Now that the left has their revolution from the bottom up--rather a counterrevolution--the left is uniformly horrified. This is because the left long ago sold us out; they are now the real oppressor class.
This is an original article by the poster Dunnyveg
Dunnyveg
The Frankfurt School's legacy has long been supplanted by postmodern liberalism with a few notable exceptions. One of those exceptions is the nature of the radicals. Because of the Frankfurt School, radicalism isn't what it used to be.
The phenomenon of radical chic I write about here is hardly new. When what I describe below was still very new, conservative novelist Tom Wolfe wrote a pamphlet titled Radical Chic. The following is from Wikipedia's entry on radical chic:
"Radical chic" is a term coined by journalist Tom Wolfe in his 1970 essay "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's" to describe the adoption and promotion of radical political causes by celebrities, socialites, and high society. In languages such as American English, French and Italian the term has become widely used to indicate people identifying themselves as socialists or radical leftists while conducting upper-class lifestyles.
Unlike dedicated activists, revolutionaries, or dissenters, those who engage in "radical chic" remain frivolous political agitators—ideologically invested in their cause of choice only so far as it advances their social standing
Unlike this bunch, I actually have grudging respect for groups like Mohammedan terrorists and real communists, and it's not because of what they stand for. I can have grudging respect for these groups simply because they represent something that can no longer be found in our post-American liberal utopia. I'm referring to people who don't act for money or social standing, but for what they genuinely believe in--believe in strongly enough in many cases to die for. This is in marked contrast with the venality and oppressive elitism of today's "radicals". Try as they may, these radical elites can't buy what these old-school radicals had. Some things just aren't for sale at any price.
Particularly before WWII, before Stalin enslaved eastern Europe and conducted his mass murders, the West had real communists back when being a communist carried a heavy price. Being a communist in many parts of the West meant a life of absolute penury, and being a hunted fugitive that meant either death or a long prison sentence. This is where the romantic image of the radical revolutionary came from. Radicals fearlessly waged war on the most powerful group on earth, the liberal elites, who had money, and thus power. Since the radicals ostensibly weren't in it for money or power, they came to occupy the moral high ground.
The Frankfurt School (FS) never fit into this mold. They were a bunch of privileged academics who were subsidized by what we'd call a trust fund baby today, Felix Weil. Felix Weil got the money to subsidize the FS from his father, Hermann Weil, who was at the time the richest grain merchant in the world. As a result, the FS became among the most unromantic of Marxists, academic Marxists who lived lives of luxury. But this all came to a stop when Hitler was elected, and this bunch had to leave Germany in a hurry.
To justify their lives of luxury, the Frankfurt School quickly became heretical Marxists. Stalin would've shot on sight had they been foolish enough to request asylum in the Soviet empire. Instead, they were invited to come to the US not surprisingly by a post-American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The problem for the FS is that without Weil's backing, they quickly found themselves no longer able to function as any kind of group due to lack of money, and this group started coming apart.
To raise money not only to meet the needs of their group, but to meet living expenses, the FS had to come to terms with potential funding sources, such as Columbia University, the Princeton Radio Project, and important jobs in government. What this bunch quickly figured out was that they would have to compromise their ideals somewhat. What they found out was that the liberal elites were equally anxious to tame the radicals by co-opting them. So, an unholy alliance began to develop between the radicals and the liberal elites. Since fighting off the radicals cost the liberals a lot of money and lost reputation, they were more than happy to compromise. In fact, the liberal elites were so willing to compromise to solve the radical problem that by the end of WWII, the FS was so thoroughly embedded in government and academia that they were intimately involved in the post-war de-Nazification project.
The Frankfurt School presaged the problem the native Western middle and working classes saw when communism finally fell apart in the early nineties. There were no longer any checks on the liberals' power, and they quickly adopted an open borders and free trade regimen that impoverished untold numbers of Western workers. Those of us who are old enough remember the perennial battles between management and labor. Management won an unconditional victory, and wages and working conditions have been declining ever since. Western workers could no longer threaten to turn communist; they quickly found themselves without champions anywhere.
This problem was largely started by the Frankfurt School. What the Frankfurt School had to do was to subtly shift their ire from the liberal elites toward the working classes whose cause real communism purports to champion. Poor white people--the working class--became the enemy of the radicals. In other words, radicals sold out the very people they were sworn to protect and defend for cushy, lucrative sinecures in government, academia, the churches, and big business. And as long as the radicals continued to wage war on the non-elite white enemies of the liberal elites, they continued to receive their thirty pieces of silver.
This is why naive non-elite liberals are so confused about what liberalism really is. All kinds of ideas are floated by liberal quacks. But the only ideas that go anywhere are the ideas that the liberal elites are willing to subsidize, which are those that benefit the liberal elites, and to the detriment of everybody else. Getting a message out on the national level costs money few have.
Because of this situation, our entire system is owned by the liberal elites; non-elite whites have no champions anywhere other than ourselves. This is why virtually every Western nation now has an ethnonationalist movement that has either claimed power, or is at least in the ascendancy.
As a result, we are witnessing an historical anomaly. Since the days of the French Revolution--which was actually an elitist affair, along with all communist revolutions--the left has been telling us that they want a revolution from the bottom up. Now that the left has their revolution from the bottom up--rather a counterrevolution--the left is uniformly horrified. This is because the left long ago sold us out; they are now the real oppressor class.
This is an original article by the poster Dunnyveg
Dunnyveg
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