The Frankfurt School: Important & Insidious

There are many phrases that get tossed out in the Dissident Right and many proper nouns that are mentioned and never defined. Cultural Marxism is one of those terms which people tend to use to mean anything from Blackwashing folktales and fiction by portraying historically White mythical characters with nonwhites, to teaching kids to be the opposite gender, to full blown communism and advocacy for White genocide.

Another one of these nouns is the Frankfurt School.  When asked what the Frankfurt school was or is, I always respond by asserting “it was a group of academics, philosophers, and medical personnel who advocated sexual degeneracy.”  The response to that is usually “oh.”  Occasionally, I would get a response like “give an example” to which Magnus Hirschfeld, the Jewish physician who was behind the first transgender surgery in recorded history (Lili Elbe, whose birth name was Einar Wegener).  He also founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and World League for Sexual Reform, with the former being the first advocacy group for homosexuality and transgenderism.

If people want more than that, I’d usually send them a link, but as is so often the case in the Dissident Right, the websites which I originally used for this have since been scrubbed by the internet (either by censorship or a lack of funds to keep the website up), so I thought it useful to do some research and reveal it to you as concisely as possible.

To start, I want to be clear what the Frankfurt School is not.  The Frankfurt School is not a university campus with surprisingly liberal professors.  This isn’t Berkley.  It is more in line with how there is the Austrian or Chicago school of economics.  There certainly is a focal point (Austria or the faculty at Chicago) but there are many writers and proponents of, or affiliated with, those schools of thought that have never been to either location. 

Vox, a left-wing source, rather openly says that the “Frankfurt School consisted mostly of neo-Marxists who hoped for a socialist revolution.”  Wikipedia defines it as a perspective of critical investigation based upon Freudian, Marxist, and Hegalian premises of idealist philosophy.  Encyclopedia Britannica goes a bit more clearly in it:

 “They used basic Marxist concepts to analyze the social relations within capitalist economic systems. This approach, which became known as “critical theory,” yielded influential critiques of large corporations and monopolies, the role of technology, the industrialization of culture, and the decline of the individual within capitalist society. Fascism and authoritarianism were also prominent subjects of study. Much of this research was published in the institute’s journal, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (1932–41; “Journal for Social Research”).”

Alright, case closed for 99% of people who want to know whether it’s good or bad.  It’s Marxists (or rather “neo-Marxists,” as if that distinction matters here) who want socialist revolution. For the fence-sitters who need more, or those of you who anticipate spirited debate with fence-sitters, let’s delve a bit deeper.

Looking at the history of them may lead to more clarity.  The Frankfurt School came from the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research.  That Institute was, in turn, founded by Felix Weil who was a student of Marxist philosopher Karl Korsch.  Interestingly, Weil sounds like Engles in that he came from money and was happy to accept the money but still use the money to undermine the system by which he acquired said wealth (this institute was funded by Felix’s father).

The second director of the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research was Carl Grünberg, a Marxist historian who gathered together fellow “orthodox” Marxists at the Institute, including his former pupil Henryk Grossman.  So, the background of the Frankfurt School is that it is based on, and full of, Marxists.  That’s certainly not a good sign, but what did they do other than spout Marxism?

A good way to find out the specifics and to see who these people are and what they did that was controversial is to look at the books written by them and the book burnings done in National Socialist Germany. This also serves the additional purpose of showing you that while the book burnings were probably overkill, (burning All Quiet on the Western Front comes to mind), many of the books were absolutely terrible.  There is certainly a large overlap between Frankfurt Philosophy and those book burnings.  As stated above, these people based their ideology, at least in part, on Freudian thought and Freud’s writings were amongst those burned.  The Oedipus Complex, the claim that incestuous urges are universal among men and natural, is perhaps his most well-known theory and no-doubt was disseminated through the Frankfurters.

Herbert Marcuse is the next name that pops out, both from the book burnings and the Frankfurt School.  His book, Eros and Civilization, was influential for the “gay liberation” movement in the United States.  One could argue he was essentially the uncle of that movement, rather than the father (that title likely belonging to Harry Hay Jr) and therefore the great-uncle of drag queen story hour.  He has been influential on such varied writers as Angela Davis, Andrew Feenberg, William Leiss, and Paul Gottfried (the latter of whom seems to be the only decent one).  Adorno and Horkheimer are other Frankfurters, notable for their contributions to critical theory, notably in Dialectic of Enlightenment, for which I’ll go into detail a little later.     

Erich Fromm is another Frankfurter and an odd one because he’s a fairly widely read writer amongst pseudo intellectuals here.  He was an avowed atheist, but his philosophical framework came from the Talmud and Hassidism.  Presumably, that makes him a “cultural Jew.”  One view of his which stands out and should be sufficient to get any normal Christian to disavow him is his belief that Adam and Eve eating the apple was a good thing because it gave them knowledge and was resistance against “authoritarian” moral values.  So, he was a Jew who thinks it’s good to disobey God’s will.

Unfortunately, as I pointed out earlier, the websites which included the long lists of these men have been scrubbed from the internet, but other Frankfurters advocated necrophilia, bestiality, and incest with such “stunning” arguments like, “who is harmed by necrophilia or by non-reproductive incestuous intercourse” and “animals can consent to sex and certainly do not consent to being eaten, so how dare you say this is wrong?”

The other thing about the Frankfurt School worth noting is the so called “Critical Theory.” Critical theory is defined with a bunch of ten-dollar words in such sterile academic speak that it’s difficult for people to really understand what it is.  It largely justifies moral relativism, or at least disavows moral realism, and can be used to attack sexual mores and social norms, like the above incest and bestiality arguments.  A good way to understand what it is would instead be to have some examples: feminism and Marxism are both explicitly viewed as examples of Critical Theory.  “Postcolonialism” is another such doctrine, which attempts to pretend to be a neutral analysis of colonialism, but really is just meant to demonize any Western power for its successes.  Generally speaking, it seems to be any attack on pre-existing systems for the purpose of deconstructing and replacing them.

Anyone familiar with the phrase “greater than the sum of its parts” should see the obvious issue with such a process and anyone familiar with the fruits of Marxism and feminism should be aware of why it is wise to stay away.  For those without familiarity in those two fields, one need only look at the death toll and the accounts of life under Stalinist and Maoist regimes for the former, and for the latter one need only glance at the writings of Andrea Dworkin or see the clear descent from advocacy for female suffrage and the right to work transitioning to the right to kill babies.  Occasionally, the mask will slip and a rabid feminist will say in a moment of honesty, only to pretend it’s a “joke”, that they demand “the right to kill babies.”  They’ll sometimes go so far as to do a mock patriotic rally.

Critical Race Theory is an example of Critical Theory which we are all too familiar with.  A philosophical framework in which blacks are not accountable for their actions because of past “wrongs” done by White people, but modern Whites are held accountable both for the actions of their ancestors and for those same now morally guiltless blacks.  You can read a 70,000 word CRT dissertation, or you can simply accept that above summary.

Overall, the Frankfurt School is bad for the reason that so many of our enemies are: it opposed tradition, God, and plain common sense in order to revel in destruction.  It was an institution built up for the purpose of tearing down what was great of Europe.  While the truth of the stabbed-in-the-back myth regarding Jewish and/or communist infiltration of the German military is still unclear, there is no doubt that the members of the Frankfurt School did attempt to destroy Germany.  Additionally, with it being unclear as to the extent, it certainly seems likely to some degree, evidenced by the fact that communist infiltration of the Russian military was a large part of how the communists took power there, and the fact that the communists started a civil war in Germany immediately after WWI.  My takeaway from that is that any infiltration communist citizens of the German or Austrian empires did of the militaries there in WWI was merely less successful than Russia’s, rather than nonexistent.

The Frankfurters attempted to destroy Germany by deconstructing things taken for granted in order to create people that feel smugly satisfied in not being beholden to old institutions.  Everyone is beholden to something, all men have a master, and such men are instead beholden to brand new shibboleths of destruction.  Look at the artwork and architecture of those opposed to tradition and see how they revel in vulgar ugliness.  That is the visual representation and result of the dissemination of the ideas of the Frankfurt School. 

One of the reasons why the Frankfurt School is so important and insidious is because of what it focused on.  As someone in the Vox article above said, “They [the Frankfurt academics] became irrelevant because people didn’t worry too much about culture.”  People don’t worry about culture, but that’s like saying fish don’t worry about water.  It’s something that’s ever present and ephemeral.  Admittedly, most people don’t bother with it explicitly.  However, those that shape culture are anything but irrelevant.  These people who worry about the culture and shape it are who determine whether the society itself flourishes or flounders.

You can see this now with the deep rot pervading every aspect of our society.  You’re experiencing it now with the tearing down of statues, with Washington an inevitable next step, and Theodore Roosevelt and Abe Lincoln already torn down in some places.   

Your kids get it with the Critical Race Theory in schools, where White kids are taught feel guilt for being White and take blame for the crimes of nonwhites while the nonwhites take no accountability even for their own actions. The youth are also getting it with the deconstruction of gender and emphasis of transgenderism (a direct byproduct of Magnus Hirschfeld and other Frankfurters).

So, what was bad about the Frankfurt School?  They used their intellectual gifts and their hatred of beauty, hierarchy, and God to poison whatever society they could infiltrate.  First in Germany, and then more insidiously when they fled elsewhere.  While there were various causes for why it managed to flourish in Weimar Germany, it helped facilitate the degeneracy of the period.  Everything is downstream of culture.  Even with the economic woes of the late 20s, it would be hard to imagine that the rampant pornography and the rampant prostitution (including mother-daughter duos and crossdressers) would have occurred in a society without the Frankfurters.  After all, the United States didn’t start getting it until much later…after those Frankfurters fled the National Socialists for greener pastures.