Talk:Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory

Wikiprojects

Hi Dimadick, I see you reinstated links to Wikiprojects Skepticism and Alternative views. Maybe I am not understanding something about WikiPorjects, but neither seems to be fitting here. For Alternative views, I don't see how this conspiracy theory is an "alternative view" to anything really. (what's the alternative?) For Skepticism, I don't see a rationale at all. This has nothing to do with Skepticism? Also relatedly, I don't see how this Conspiracy Theory has anything to do with Judaism - yes, it is antisemitic, but certainly not everything that is antisemitic, is related to Judiasm? Maybe you can explain your reasoning here? Thanks --Mvbaron (talk)

The main article conspiracy theory is covered by Wikiprojects Skepticism and Alternative views, which also cover most conspiracy theories. Antisemitic canards such as this are covered by either WikiProject Judaism or WikiProject Jewish history. Dimadick (talk) 08:33, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Ah interesting! So by default, all other CTs should also be in Skepticism and Alternative views? Okay then, fair enough. Thank you! Mvbaron (talk) 08:35, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Scholarly analysis section

I object to the creation of a "scholarly analysis" section as if the rest of the article shouldn't contain scholarly analysis; obviously, the entire article consists of scholarly analysis (this is a similar problem to one of the issues with WP:CSECTIONs, in that the implication of creating a section of this nature is to confine to one section something that ought to be worked throughout the the article.) The material there is better covered elsewhere, such as in the origins or aspects section. --Aquillion (talk) 19:48, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

(ec)I agree, there should be a section "Overview", or no section at all after the ToC, or the material in question culd be part of the "Origins" section, but we have to rely on high quality sources anyway, so a "scholarly analysis" makes no sense unless it is significantly different from just a normal descrition of the conspiracy theory. --Mvbaron (talk) 19:52, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

The reason I proposed such a section in the first place is that there was no obvious section in which to include the kind of high-level overview analysis for which the Braune piece was cited in the lede, and the previous situation - in which the lede made claims that were not substantiated in the article body, using a source that was not cited in the article body - was not compliant with policy.

I am not wedded to this solution - much less the section heading text - but I have noticed that some of the subsections preceding the "Analysis" (in current placement) move quite awkwardly from more or less thick description to high level analysis as they move from claim to claim. It is my view that - using the best sources available at all times - the article would work best for readers if the high-level analysis were all gathered into the one section, which could then inform the lede. The relationship between lede and body on previous drafts of the article (since the split) has not been close to ideal. Newimpartial (talk) 20:00, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

I think the solution for now is to keep analysis in the appropriate parts of the body (adding new, more specific subsections if we have analysis that doesn't fit squarely into an existing subsection) and to rewrite the second paragraph of the lead to broadly summarize high-quality sources discussing the conspiracy theory rather than focusing on just one such source. See the section I created below for discussion about that. --Aquillion (talk) 20:05, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

I disagree. Please see my reply under your new Talk section heading - why you have insisted on splitting this discussion into three locations on the Talk page, I have no real idea. Good thing I have some practice with WAC-a-mole. :p

Also, in addition to what I say below, my sense is that adding new, more specific subsections would tend to make the article worse, rather than better, in terms of my sense of ENCyclopaedic treatment. What we have is already both choppier and more pointillist than it could be, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 20:09, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Braune and Braune2

What is the difference between the source Braune and Braune2? They look identical, but obviously someone else must have seen this if they numbered one of them as 2. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:56, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

no difference, just someone working further down the article not realizing that it was already used up top? Can just be unified. Ill do it. Mvbaron (talk) 20:06, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Second-paragraph lead summary.

I don't disagree that the second paragraph of the lead shouldn't focus exclusively on Braun; but we do need a paragraph focused on the fundamentally inaccurate and invented nature of the conspiracy theory as described by reliable sources, since that makes up basically the entire body and almost all reliable coverage. Other sources from the body that I would summarize in that lead paragraph are Martin Jay ("demagogic propaganda") and Matthew Feldman (especially describing it as a reiteration of the Nazi-era charge of "Cultural Bolshevism"); Andrew Woods and Samuel Moyn describing it as an antisemitic; Jérôme Jamin describing it as something invented by American ultraconservatives after the fall of the Berlin Wall to replace the "red menace" of communism and as a way for racist authors to avoid racist statements, and probably a few others. These can reasonably be summarized into a paragraph in the lead summarizing the conspiracy theory's fundamental focus as described by the highest quality sources in order to avoid putting so much weight on Braun. (Of course, this would be in addition to Braun, not excluding her, though we'd probably summarize her much more briefly.) --Aquillion (talk) 20:03, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't disagree with any of this, but I do think that putting together a better "Scholarly analysis" section first, then editing the Lede, would be less likely to produce SYNTH than trying to edit this on the Talk page. Newimpartial (talk) 20:05, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

But most of the things I mentioned are already in the body in more appropriate sections. Are you suggesting we pull all the analysis out of each section (leaving much of the article just a reiteration of the conspiracy theory in the words of the people promoting it?) Or are you suggesting we duplicate all the existing analysis, which comprises most of the article, into a second section? My point is that there's already supposed to be a part of an article that summarizes all the scholarly analysis in the article, and that is the lead, since it summarizes the article and most of the article should already be scholarly analysis. We could add headers to individual sections summarizing them, perhaps but - what do you see the "origins of the conspiracy theory" and "aspects of the conspiracy theory" sections containing, in your proposed rewrite? Since it feels like the only source we're having trouble placing is Braun, rather than drastically restructuring the article to move all the scholarly analysis to one section, I think it would make more sense to create a subsection in "aspects of the conspiracy theory" for "Relationship to the Frankfurt School" or the like, and put Braun there. --Aquillion (talk) 20:09, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

No, I do not think we should pull all the analysis out of each section (leaving much of the article just a reiteration of the conspiracy theory in the words of the people promoting it?) For one thing, we should be using PRIMARY sources as little as possible, and sourcing descriptive claims from secondary sources. Secondly, I am distinguishing between "high level" analysis dealing with the CT as a whole, and more thick description or mid-level analysis that is more specific to the CT's aims, typical moves, tropes etc. To me this distinction seems quite clear, and that the article would be less of a dog's breakfast if we tried to maintain such a distinction - both the "origins" and the "aspects" can be described without high-level analysis, and they mostly are already.

And I really do think SYNTH can better be avoided by making the distinction I'm talking about and writing a new section than by editors performing their own high-level summary, especially in this politically charged topic.

It might be possible to separate the high level analysis into "origins" and "aspects", but I'm not sure how much credence I'd give that distinction, to be honest. Newimpartial (talk) 20:21, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

I think it is important to capture the current consensus (on WP, which I disagree with) that the Conspiracy Theory is anti-semitic. Further I think we should include an up-front indication that the Conspiracy Theory is widely refuted by Academia. Consequently I am proposing the following language for the first two lead paragraphs:

Paragraph 1: Cultural Marxism is a conspiracy theory with strong ties to anti-semitic and far-right groups which claim that Western Marxism is the basis for an on-going academic and intellectual conspiracy to subvert Western Culture. Conspiracists claim that Marxist theorists and Frankfurt school intellectuals are subverting western society with a culture war intent on undermining Christian values and traditionalist conservatism. They further claim that conspirators work to promote the cultural liberal values of the 1960s counterculture, that multiculturalism, progressive politics and identity politics are part of the conspiracy, and that political correctness was created by critical theory.

Paragraph 2: The conspiracy theory originated in the United States in the early 1990s and though widely-debunked by academia as steeped in implicit racism, anti-semitic tropes, and misinformation, the conspiracy theory is nevertheless a frequent talking point of alt-right, far-right and neo-nazi groups. 47.197.54.139 (talk) 02:13, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

This is a conspiracy theory which is false, or a hoax. This theory is refuted by many reliable sources, not just academia, so Wikipedia treats it as wrong. The article must be based on reliable sources. Moving "widely-debunked" to the second paragraph would be missing the point. This theory is covered by reliable sources exclusively because it's a conspiracy theory. The theory does not merely have strong ties to antisemitic groups, it is antisemitic. Some groups which push this theory are not inherently antisemitic, but the theory itself is an almost naked antisemitic canard. Since pretty much everything proposed by this conspiracy theory is wrong, or at least strongly contested by more qualified sources, it would be a bad mistake to present it on its own terms. Per WP:FRINGE, we need to spell-out that this theory is wrong. We cannot presume that readers who only browse the first paragraph will realize just how batshit this theory is on its own merits. Sources are clear, and so we should be clear as well.

As an additional note, the paragraph 2 proposal is editorializing. Nevertheless is an editorializing term which implies that it is somehow unexpected that "alt-right, far-right and neo-nazi groups" would push an antisemitic conspiracy theory. It's completely expected. alt-right, far-right and neo-nazi groups are not known for their academic rigor, they are known for antisemitic conspiracy theories. Grayfell (talk) 04:07, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

"With strong ties to anti-Semitic and far-right groups" is weasel-wording, because it doesn't specify what those ties are. The tie is that the theory is anti-Semitic, so that is what we should say. It's not a consensus on WP, it's the consensus in reliable sources. We should not argue about the merits of the conspiracy theory, but about how to accurately report how it is perceived in reliable sources. If they say it's true, the article should say it's true, if they say it's an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, that's what the article should say. TFD (talk) 04:58, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Your suggested language just doesn't read properly.. This is an article on a conspiracy theory. It is an abstraction that does not hold any political or other beliefs. Only the behaviors and actions of its adherents can be anti-semitic. Also it's not weasel-wording to summarize. I've suggested before that we explore those ties in greater depth in an anti-semitism section. This objection to creating a clean separation between the theory and it's adherant appears to be a desire to enforce a POV phrasing that makes using the phrase "Cultural Marxism" verboten, to make it synonymous with holding anti-semitic beliefs. It's a certainty that there are those who adhere to it who hold no such beliefs, and a couple already-referenced source make mention of that, so such a treatment of the subject would be wrong. Let's avoid speaking from a place of personal bias and political agenda and help write a neutral article. I think we strike a good balance by calling it out as rhetorical favorite of anti-semites and neo-nazis. We are not, after all, proposing to explore any other usage. 47.197.54.139 (talk) 05:50, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

IP, it has already been pointed out to you repeatedly (mostly in the section titled Talk:Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory#Anti-semitism as an Essential Quality - which sounds a lot like an undergraduate essay about Aquinas) that Anti-semitism is not always a term labeling conscious beliefs; it is also an appropriate label for unconscious motives, and also for the results of actions that were not necessarily based on anti-semitic motives. Think of that last point as parallel to Systemic racism and maybe you will get it. By insisting that every use of the term "anti-semitic" relate to "beliefs", you are running counter to the way the reliable sources use the term and thereby engaging in STRAWMAN argumentation, which is not recommended on Wikipedia. Newimpartial (talk) 12:15, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not an essay "debunking" topics. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:39, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Adding my comment back in after user Greyfell reverted it. See their talk page for other examples of people complaining about biased reverts wherever "antisemitism" is at issue. I think it's important for editors of this article to understand the impact of their behaviors. My original reply to Emir is follows:

It's reasonable to think that way. However, nothing short of a hit piece vilifying this topic and anyone who may have the temerity to address it in a neutral way is accepted here. You see this all over WP with far-left activists using "anti-semitic" to stigmatize subject matter that calls into question progressive ideology. The Co-Founder of Wikipedia has declared NPOV "dead" because of agenda-ridden tripe like that. Imagine asserting "anti-semitism" as a descriptor for "unconscious motives" as mentioned above! Literally using Critical Theory as the framework to attack criticism of Critical Theory. The absurd disregard for NPOV in this article is being defended as right and necessary. That's not what makes an encyclopedia, it's propaganda. In my recent experience with this article, should you succeed in pointing out the implicit bias in phrasing here, you will be inundated with personal attacks, harassment, and appeals to the authority of academia. All the while you may anticipate the far-left bias to manifest as precious promotion of Fringe SELF-STYLED radical left academic activists as "expert sources". At the same you can anticipate the fact that academic publishing is the purview of wildly left-leaning University professors to be utterly ignored. Further, should you present a dissenting opinion, any source which contradicts the approved leftist narratives will be decried as "Fringe" or "Questionable" because it is not in a peer-reviewed, leftist-currated journal. It's all so tiresome. I'm here to build an encyclopedia. They are here to control a narrative.47.197.54.139 (talk) 05:35, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

"The absurd disregard for NPOV in this article is being defended as right and necessary." I doubt that your approach adheres to NPOV. Per Wikipedia:Neutral point of view:" While it is important to account for all significant viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity. There are many such beliefs in the world, some popular and some little-known: claims that the Earth is flat, that the Knights Templar possessed the Holy Grail, that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax, and similar ones. Conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but currently unaccepted theories should not be legitimized through comparison to accepted academic scholarship. We do not take a stand on these issues as encyclopedia writers, for or against; we merely omit this information where including it would unduly legitimize it, and otherwise include and describe these ideas in their proper context with respect to established scholarship and the beliefs of the wider world." Those "leftist currated journals which you reject represent academic scholarship. Dimadick (talk) 08:39, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

IP, the concept of "unconscious motives" isn't specific to Critical theory; it is a basic psychological concept. And as Consolidated (band) once so wisely said, "crusading rap guys are a real downer". Maybe it's time to let the windmills be. As I have said before, you might be more comfortable contributing to some other user-generated encyclopedia, where you can claim. that academic publishing is the purview of wildly left-leaning University professors without coming across as a conspiracy theorist yourself. In fact, I sense a Global warming conspiracy theory coming on. Newimpartial (talk) 11:02, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Indeed theories can be anti-Semitic and can express beliefs or political views. TFD (talk) 04:55, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Maybe they can be. But this one isn't. This conspiracy theory has nothing to do with Jewish people. Aside from sources already proved to be unreliable and radical leftist FRINGE no one out there is really claiming this Conspiracy Theory is intended to defame Jewish people. Cultural Marxism Conspiracy Theory is about MARXISM. So unless you are making the extraordinary claim that all Marxists are Jewish, this whole anti-semitism thing is an anti-conservative "canard." In any case I'm adding this link back. Here is the definitive "antisemitism" definition from the organization most qualified to describe it (ADL): https://www.adl.org/anti-semitism There's no way starting from that definition that you can label this Conspiravy Theory antisemitic.47.197.54.139 (talk) 06:10, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

"Aside from sources already proved to be unreliable and radical leftist FRINGE" You have not actually proved anything of the sort. You have just made unsubstantiated accusations to dismiss sources that you disagree with. That you do not like what they say does not make them unreliable. Dimadick (talk) 08:43, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Also, IP, please read WP:OR and stop doing it. Newimpartial (talk) 11:02, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

What you call "radical leftist FRINGE" is what Wikipedia calls reliable sources. I'll assume good faith that you have a reason for saying that the ADL is most qualified to define anti-Semitism. However note that they classify the term cultural Marxism as a "lean negative" label used against Jews. The ADL uses it as a keyword in identifying anti-Semitic postings on social media. Indeed I do not identify Jews with Marxism, which is why I voted to delete Jews and Communism at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jews and Communism (2nd nomination). The identification of Jews and Communists is however a popular view on the Right, it's called Jewish Bolshevism and is the foundation of the cultural Marxism conspiracy theory. TFD (talk) 11:07, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Interesting read regarding the conspiracies use among far-right pundits in Australia

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504630.2020.1787822?scroll=top&needAccess=true Bacondrum (talk) 22:57, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Quotation needed template

On my reading of relevant guidelines, the appropriate context for requesting quotation is if the source is in another language. I don't understand why Emir of Wikipedia is going around adding the quotation needed template to random English language citations. Is there a reason to do this or is this just disruptive editing? Bacondrum (talk) 22:07, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

What are these guidelines, because the page you linked literally says "This is used to request a direct quote from the cited source, so that it may be verified that the source can verify the statement or that the editor has interpreted the source correctly." Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:09, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Can you please undo my self revert to restore my edits? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:12, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Could you not send me the edit warring template again. This is beginning to seem like disruptive editing. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:14, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

No, seems disruptive to me, littering the article with "quotation needed" templates. The sources are in English, you can read. If there's a particular issue with a source you can discuss it here. Don't edit war. Bacondrum (talk) 22:15, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

An editor is free to put in quotation needed templates. The template says ""This is used to request a direct quote from the cited source, so that it may be verified that the source can verify the statement or that the editor has interpreted the source correctly.", it does not say it can't be used on a source that is English. What seems disruptive is using a deceptive edit summary saying " I see no reason all these citations need quotes", when you are making edits other than just removing those tags. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:18, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Did you seriously just accuse me of edit warring again when you undid my self-revert, even though I came here to discuss? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:21, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't realise that was a self revert, restored everything except the excess quotation needed templates. This is why edit warring is a problem, things get messy. I can't see why all those quotation needed templates are warranted. Why not just add the quotes if you think quotes are needed? Bacondrum (talk) 22:23, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Sorry I mixed up the tags. It looks like the page had been reorganised a bit since my last edit. I have corrected my self and put the the failed verification and better source needed tags. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:28, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Cool, sorry for the misunderstanding. Bacondrum (talk) 22:32, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

No worries. Now I just need to figure out where the quotes were needed or if that is all fixed now. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:36, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I hope we are clear that the "quotation needed" template was not the right one in these cases. As far as the Braune and Kesvani sources are concerned, the Braune shouldn't be cited where it stands in Origins, and I suspect it arrived there out of precious slice and dicing of material characterizing the CT. Meanwhile, I understand that Kesvani is in the "Voices" section and might be understood as an op-ed; however, all the citation is actually doing is pointing to two readily verified primary sources that document what the sentence is saying; I would make the argument that in such an instance it is more elegant to cite the analysis that lends weight to these sources rather than the primary sources themselves, but the statement they are supporting seems quite obviously to have been backed up by this evidence in toto. In general I think editors have a tendency to read op-ed sources without great consistency, regarding them as reliable when the editor agrees with statements in the op-ed and as unreliable when they disagree. In this instance Kesvani is pointing to clear evidence while lending it weight, and I don't think the article is relying on Kesvani's expertise in particular. Newimpartial (talk) 22:48, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

The Times and The Spectator

So, User:Bacondrum, I do disagree with the removal of this material here, here and here. Your attempt to make the article "more discerning" actually makes it considerably more US-centric. The fact that major broadsheets in the UK have elaborated the CT within their national context is not "trivial", as you suggest in your edit summaries. Newimpartial (talk) 00:12, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Agree with Newimpartial on both comments. Just saying. Davide King (talk) 00:38, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Those claims are undue, IMO. A social commentator hardly anyone has ever heard of saying this "If I were a cultural Marxist, I would think about giving up" is trivia...I've certainly never heard of the fellow and its a throw away comment in an op ed - we can't list every comment by every opinions writer that mentions the conspiracy theory. We should focus on the most notable proponents, the most prominent proponents and the loudest proponents...those who really carry on about it. Also, the sourcing is poor or simply does not back the claim. The first claim about The Times is not backed by the source at all (I searched the entire paper, The Times does not receive a single mention), so that one must go, obviously. The second is a fleeting mention in a op-ed sourced to an opinions piece...not lede worthy, that's for sure - I'm up for discussing it in the body, though I think it's undue in the body too, even with better sourcing, it'd be undue IMO. With Tim Montgomerie the same applies, he's not a significant figure in the debate, its a throw away comment in a throw away opinions piece in a throw away paper, sourced from a much better paper, but its an opinions piece. You guys have always been fair and reasonable editors in my experience, I hope you can see my intent is purely about due weight and reliable sources. We simply can't make a list of every person who ever used the term. Bacondrum (talk) 02:29, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

First we cannot use opinion pieces as reliable sources. The phrasing anyway is misleading. The Times does not promote conspiracy theories, like other mainstream publications, they publish a broad range of opinion pieces including those by right-wingers. We don't say that they promote socialism for example just because they also publish opinion pieces by socialists. It's also unfair to single out publications. TFD (talk) 02:32, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, spot on. Then there's also a question of undue weight. I agree, a paper publishing an editorial does not mean they are advocating the writers position. And none of this meets the standard for sourcing or due weight. Bacondrum (talk) 02:38, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Bacondrum, The Four Deuces, I hear you. I do not hold strong views on the matter either way, but I would like to hear back from Newimpartial from more input; if they have changed their mind, then there is no longer an issue or dispute. Perhaps it may be removed from the body, but the two individuals may be re-added. Or perhaps, if there are reliable sources discussing this, we may add a sentence discussing how some on the right have turn the cospiracy theory into the mainstream, at least on the right, and that it is no longer relageted to the far-right fringe; this does not imply that it is no longer far-right or antisemitic as the various IPs and users above argued, it just means that a far-right and antisemitic conspiracy theory has been mainstreamed by and on the right and is held by individuals that may not be personally far-right or antisemitic but that, whether they realise it or not, believe in the conspiracy theory. Davide King (talk) 03:00, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

We are not here to collate some kind of black list of those who espouse the conspiracy theory, a great many people have espoused it. They must be due, those two and their comments are not even close to being due, IMO. Nor are we here to analyze the motivations of people who espouse the theory, we are here to write a nuetrally worded encyclopedic article on the subject. As for "Or perhaps, if there are reliable sources discussing this, we may add a sentence..." Editors should read reliable sources and let the reliable source lead what you write, editors shouldn't be coming up with a position then seeking out sources to affirm that position. Bacondrum (talk) 03:36, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Bacondrum, where did I argue for a "black list" of those who espouse the conspiracy theory? We should only list those widely discussed in reliable sources and perhaps add move to the body the ones reported by green sources such as this case. Since you asked sources, we have "How the 'cultural Marxism' hoax began, and why it's spreading into the mainstream" by David Neiwert, author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump; and "'Cultural Marxism': The Mainstreaming of a Nazi Trope" by Ari Paul, who has covered politics for The Nation, The Guardian, Jacobin, The Forward and In These Times, among other news outlets; both of which are referenced by Joan Braune. We also have "Is 'cultural Marxism' really taking over universities? I crunched some numbers to find out", already in body, by Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy at Deakin University, stating that "[t]he term 'cultural Marxism' moved into the media mainstream around 2016, when psychologist Jordan Peterson was protesting a Canadian bill prohibiting discrimination based on gender. Peterson blamed cultural Marxism for phenomena like the movement to respect gender-neutral pronouns which, in his view, undermines freedom of speech." Honestly, I have not been surprised at all by the IPs and other users' comments lamenting that "Cultural Marxism" is somehow not a far-right and antisemitic conspiracy theory as it has been disseminated by mainstream media. Those sources referenced by Baune try to explain this. I also think that both you and Newimpartial gave valid arguments and rationales, albeit arguing in opposite directions, so I hope they and other users can reply you back and we get more input for some consensus. Davide King (talk) 06:37, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi David sorry if I came across as accusing you of arguing for a "black list". It was more a general comment on listing people who have espoused the conspiracy theory, that we need to be discerning and only add really notable instances and promoters. I was really trying to say we are not here to list offenders or expose anyone. Bacondrum (talk) 20:51, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, cultural marxism moved into the media mainstream the same way that climate change denial did: through motivated reasoning by grifters. Being part of the mainstream doesn't stop it being bullshit. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:15, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

JzG Hit the nail on the head. Spot on. I think the issue is that some people are rightly embarrassed to find out they have been regurgitating a Nazi era antisemitic conspiracy, so they get upset about it and make up excuses. Bacondrum (talk) 21:44, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Bacondrum and JzG, I do not know if you may have misunderstood what I said, or maybe I did not explain myself clearer, but that is my whole point. That several mainstream media, especially right-wing media, has moved the conspiracy theory in the mainstream (by mainstream, I do not mean at all that it is no longer an antisemitic, far-right conspiracy theory; I simply mean that is now no longer promoted by the far-right but by more mainstream right-wing media). I believe we should discuss this in the article and clarify exactly that "that some people are rightly embarrassed to find out they have been regurgitating a Nazi era antisemitic conspiracy, so they get upset about it and make up excuses", that "Being part of the mainstream doesn't stop it being bullshit." That "cultural marxism moved into the media mainstream the same way that climate change denial did: through motivated reasoning by grifters" should perhaps be mentioned, explaining that the rebranding did not make it any less far-right or antisemitic, that it is, precisely, still bullshit.

As noted by The Four Deuces below, the conspiracy theory is also framed and rebranded as 'political correctness' (this rebrand does not make it any less far-right or antisemitic). The sources I gave above may not hold weight on themselves, but both were referenced by Braune, so I believe they can be used and properly attributed. Not only Ron Paul and Jordan Peterson rebranded the far-right, antisemitic theory, but in one of the sources I listed above it is stated even The New York Times and The Wahington Post are guilty of that, not for the rebranding, but for not explaining clearly that it is a far-right, antisemitic conspiracy theory and letting a few opinion pieces by people using the rebranding.

Some relevant quotes include how "columnist David Brooks (New York Times, 11/26/18) lamented that today's youths 'tend to have been influenced by the cultural Marxism that is now the lingua franca in the elite academy,' giving them a 'clash of oppressed and oppressor groups' worldview. Also in the Times, contributor Molly Worthen (4/20/19) quoted the phrase 'cultural Marxism'—not approvingly, but not explaining what it meant, either, just offering it as an example of what 'conservatives' were complaining about. A Times story in 2017 (8/11/17) about a former White House aide reported that the aide believed 'globalists' would 'impose cultural Marxism in the United States'—again, without defining for the layperson what that might mean. The Washington Post (like other newspapers) invoked the phrase in its reports on Bolsonaro’s rise to power last year, and even on the hipster styles of the new wave of American white nationalists: In November 2016, the Post (11/30/16) reported that the style of shaved sides with long hair combed back is 'worn by men who feel their whiteness has been infringed upon by the ‘cultural Marxism’ of the Americas.' And opinion-haver Andrew Sullivan took to New York (2/9/18) to denounce 'cultural Marxists' for inspiring social justice movements on campuses. [...]

Like others on the right, the National Review (8/9/18) saw proof of the plot in the Frankfurt School [...]. It's far from a cultural grappling with the Frankfurt School's actual ideas, which live mostly in academia. As Spencer Sunshine, an associate fellow at Political Research Associates, points out, the focus on the Frankfurt School by the right serves to highlight its inherent Jewishness. 'A piece stands in for the whole,' he said. This isn’t one of those 'yeah, it could be interpreted as antisemitic' things—it's straight from Nazi ideology, with just enough cosmetic changes to make it acceptable for the modern right. [...] What should be shocking is the cavalier way some traditional media, like the Times and the Post, are allowing it to live on their pages. Brooks rebrands cultural Marxism as mere political correctness, giving the Nazi-inspired phrase legitimacy for the American right. It is dropped in or quoted in other stories—some of them lighthearted, like the fashion cues of the alt-right—without describing how fringe this notion is. It's akin to letting conspiracy theories about chem trails or vaccines get unearned space in mainstream press. And it's not as if the Times doesn’t know this. In 2018, Columbia University historian Samuel Moyn wrote in a Times blog post (11/13/18) [referencing "The Alt-Right’s Favorite Meme Is 100 Years Old" article] [...]. It would be sensible, when the term is invoked by far-right extremists, to provide readers with a definition of the phrase and its origin. And unless it is invoked in a quote, writers like Brooks should be encouraged not to use it all. 'They should define it as an antisemitic conspiracy theory with no basis in fact,' Sunshine said of mainstream news editors. Failure to do that, as places like the Times and Post are guilty of, has bitter consequences. 'It is legitimizing the use of that framework, and therefore it’s coded antisemitism,' Sunshine said."

The other source I gave cites Fox News, Jordan Peterson, The Daily Caller, Pajamas Media, The Federalist and Spectator USA, among others, for moving the conspiracy theory in the mainstream, resulting in this 'political correctness' rebranding used as cover to hide what is essentially something "straight from Nazi ideology." Davide King (talk) 23:31, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists#Embedded lists says they "should be used only when appropriate; sometimes the information in a list is better presented as prose." In general I would avoid lists except when dealing with a short finite one, for example list of elements. Otherwise we get into issues of of who to include. If they're not mentioned in the text, then they're not important enough to add to the list.

Also, lists are supposed to be helpful as navigation tools. Someone might click on William S. Lind to find out more about the topic, since Lind was the creator of the theory. But not everyone who has ever used the term is significant to the topic. Nonetheless I think that the current list is informative. I just think that it would be better to incorporate it into the article.

Incidentally, I found an article, "Ron Paul Tweets Out Racist Message While Denigrating Marxism". In a tweet he asked if people knew what Cultural Marxism meant and included racist caricatures of a Jew, an Oriental, a brown skinned person and a black man. He later replaced the tweet where he replaced the symbols with political correctness. it might be a useful illustration.

TFD (talk) 22:23, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, I agree that some of those in the list may well be incorporated in the article (hence why I opposed the removal of those in The Times and The Spectator promoting the conspiracy theory from the article; if not worthy for the list, they may be appropriate for the lead and attributed) while we list only the ones most significant and move to the body those that may still be worth mentioning. I knew about that tweet and I agree it is a useful illustration to make and point out, hence the whole point of my comment above. Davide King (talk) 23:36, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

The first issue is sourcing, The Times was not mentioned at all in the source citing that claim, and The Spectator claim is from an opinion piece. Then there's due weight, using the term cultural Marxism is not in and of itself noteworthy, the use by whomever we are including needs to have recieved widespread coverage, it needs to be a notable event. For example, Fraser Anning made national headlines here in Australia for days, his promotion of the conspiracy theory received widespread coverage, that makes it due. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=fraser+anning+cultural+marxism Bacondrum (talk) 12:23, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Bacondrum, you have a point. What do you think of "Cultural Marxism: far-right conspiracy theory in Australia’s culture wars" saying that "[t]hrough the lens of the Cultural Marxist conspiracy, however, it is possible to discern a relationship of empowerment between mainstream and fringe, whereby certain talking points and tropes are able to be transmitted, taken up and adapted by 'mainstream' figures, thus giving credence and visibility to ideologies that would have previously been constrained to the margins." We already state that "[t]he conspiracy theory of Marxist culture war is promoted by right-wing politicians, fundamentalist religious leaders, political commentators in mainstream print and television media and white supremacist terrorists." I believe we should clarify and expand a bit on the bolded part in body rather than in the list; I provided a few sources that discuss this, both of which are referenced by Braune. I also agree with your points below that it would be better to incorporate the list in the body and have a smaller list (I think the current one is mostly fine) with only the most 'famous' or noted proponents that are due, but do you also think that expanding a bit or clarifying on the bolded part is undue? Or am I missing something? Davide King (talk) 04:06, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

I think that makes sense and works with those sources. Bacondrum (talk) 21:12, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Another good journal paper

An interesting read about media and the conspiracy: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335680303_The_Alt-Right%27s_Discourse_of_%27Cultural_Marxism%27_-_A_Political_Instrument_of_Intersectional_Hate Bacondrum (talk) 03:39, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Talk page mention

Please note that this talk page has been mentioned (and mischaracterized) here. Newimpartial (talk) 12:54, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Oh my. What a tantrum. Oh well, bye...WP:NOTCOMPULSORY That thread makes me want to quit, what a bunch of whinging bullshit. Bacondrum (talk) 20:52, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Bacondrum, somewhat unkind. It is undeniably true that the right has a number of shibboleths that we reflect as false. The error is to assume that this is a problem of Wikipedia, rather than of the right adhering to false beliefs, but any veteran of the creation / evolution wars will recognise this and at least sympathise with those who have been fed bullshit by people they trust. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:13, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Hey Guy, it's true I am being somewhat unkind, but it's a response in kind. You are right as usual. It's true we should pity those who buy into bullshit, but I'm not in the pity game...if one was born in a rich country, got to go to school, had a warm bed, three meals a day, has a brain, can read and write etc...then there's really no excuse. For me ignorance is only excusable in cases where one has experienced serious deprivation. No Nazi's. Bacondrum (talk) 21:37, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Bacondrum, not pity, but empathise. After a few years when the privilege of the white male has seen some resurgence, the arc of the moral universe appears to be bending once more toward justice. That has to hurt. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:53, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Hahaha! I'm not so sure about which way we are heading, but it's a nice thought. Bacondrum (talk) 22:38, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Bacondrum, JzG and Newimpartial, that is precisely why we should highlight what I wrote here, so that the readers can understand how a conspiracy theory "with no basis in fact" has been 'mainstreamised' and that now it is not only the far-right that "get[s] upset about it and make up excuses." And that "[b]eing part of the mainstream doesn't stop it being bullshit. [...] [T]hat some people are rightly embarrassed to find out they have been regurgitating a Nazi era antisemitic conspiracy [...]." Davide King (talk) 23:42, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, I think I understand your point, but it's unclear to me how, for example, something like the blood libel could be transformed by being mainstreamed by grifters into anything other than an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Scratch any of the pseudointellectual defences of the existence of "cultural marxism" and you'll find the name George Soros almost immediately. Guy (help! - typo?) 07:33, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

JzG, the blood libel has not been 'mainstreamised' like 'Cultural Marxism' is, that is the point; my point is that the far-right, antisemitic 'Cultural Marxist' conspiracy theory has been propagated by more mainstream media and unfortunately is now no longer held just by the far-right fringe (just to be absolutely clear, the theory is still far-right and antisemitic; just because it is now held by individuals who are not far-right on other issues, it does not mean the conspiracy theory is no longer inherently far-right and antisemitic as several IPs or users have been wrongly led to believe). I am not sure you did understand my point (we already state in body that "[t]he conspiracy theory of Marxist culture war is promoted by right-wing politicians, fundamentalist religious leaders, political commentators in mainstream print and television media and white supremacist terrorists."), which is simply noting that the conspiracy theory has been propagated by more mainstream right and that even mainstream media did not always made it clear that it is an antisemitic conspiracy theory and that even had opinionists rebranding it as 'political correctness'. I believe this is worth adding and expanding. I am referring to what Newimpartial lamented here and I believe that not only should that content be restored but perhaps it should be expanded because it has not only been The Times and The Spectator in the United Kingdom that had opinionists promoting the conspiracy theory. Fox News (̈*shocked Pikachu face*), The Daily Caller, Pajamas Media, The Federalist and Spectator USA propagated the far-right theory to the mainstream right and individuals such as Peterson and Brooks have been described as rebranding and essentially whitewashing the conspiracy theory as 'political correctness'. All of this may be undue, but I believe what I am arguing for has not been properly understood. Davide King (talk) 03:53, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

JzG, "Cultural Marxism: far-right conspiracy theory in Australia’s culture wars" says that "[t]hrough the lens of the Cultural Marxist conspiracy, however, it is possible to discern a relationship of empowerment between mainstream and fringe, whereby certain talking points and tropes are able to be transmitted, taken up and adapted by 'mainstream' figures, thus giving credence and visibility to ideologies that would have previously been constrained to the margins." This is what I am saying and arguing. Davide King (talk) 03:59, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Davide King, that makes sense. Guy (help! - typo?) 10:56, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, that does make sense. I reckon you can go ahead and add that. Bacondrum (talk) 21:01, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Bacondrum, JzG, thanks! But I do not know yet exactly how to word it or where to put it. Do you have any idea or suggestion, using Template:Talk quote inline, of how should we do that? Davide King (talk) 09:19, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Davide King give it a crack, I'm sure you can write well and know how to reflect sourcing. If there's any issues we can discuss and work on it. Go for it! Bacondrum (talk) 06:28, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Smashed it Davide, nice work! Bacondrum (talk) 21:58, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

It's similar to a lot of false theories propagated by the right on global warming, homosexuality, Islam, recreational drugs, gun control, prison sentencing, the death penalty and other topics. They formulate beliefs based on little or no evidence then accuse "liberals" and "leftists" of promoting views based on a hidden agenda. Note that a number of these views were popular among liberals too until recently. While we should acknowledge fringe views, I don't think it is our role to explain to people why they are wrong. We just say this is what experts say and if you disagree get policy changed or go away. TFD (talk) 06:46, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Maybe try disambiguation?

I have been thinking about the constant attacks on this page, and I occurs to me that an attempt to disambiguate between reality and conspiracy theory might be worth trying. So in the domain of things that actually happen, we have Critical Theory and Postmodernism as academic movements originating in the Marxist and Post-Marxist left, and we have Identity politics and Intersectionality that Venn more into the domain of political strategy, I'm not saying it would have to be exactly these that are used, but disambiguating e.g. those four topics from the Cultural Marxism CT article, in the usual way, might at least cut down the flow rate of abuse of Talk page guidelines while pointing some readers to where they actually want to go. And disambiguation doesn't imply any actual connection between the reality and the CT, which is somewhat important in this context. Newimpartial (talk) 12:34, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Newimpartial, the risk there is that we end up with a POV fork where the IDW theory of "cultural marxism" (i.e. "I am not getting the adulation I deserve, must be all those marxists") is reflected as if it were anything other than the self-serving bollocks it is. Guy (help! - typo?) 12:56, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I see that I wasn't clear. I am not suggesting a disambiguation page for Cultural Marxism (which would indeed be a magnet for further hijinx) but rather disambiguation notices at the top of the CT page. Newimpartial (talk) 13:07, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't think we should take the feelings of conspiracy theorists into account. TFD (talk) 13:18, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure, I tend to lean towards TFD's view, but I guess we could, there's something similar at Jewish Bolshevism. Bacondrum (talk) 21:12, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Listing promoters

I don't think we should list individuals who promote the CT. Look at other similar CT's like Blood libel. The list is problematic for a number of reasons. Who do we include? Where does it end? The list could be endless. And the list starts making the article look like a black list of people being shamed for espousing the CT rather than an encyclopedic article - it's inviting tendentious editing. I think notable proponents should be included in the article and the history of the CT rather than listed the way we do and some are probably not due for inclusion. What do others think? Bacondrum (talk) 21:12, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

My general preference is to avoid lists in non-list articles, so my tendency is to agree. However, the list is currently the main treatment in the article of the spread of the conspiracy theory in the 21st century, so I would like to see that treatment developed in another format. Newimpartial (talk) 21:21, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I think most of it is due and should be kept, just developed in prose rather than a list. A subsection about its 21st century proponents in the history section? I'm happy to do the work if others agree to treating that content that way. Bacondrum (talk) 21:26, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Looking at the article I think we should create a history section drawn from and including most the info in the lists. Bacondrum (talk) 21:30, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Verification tags

Bacondrum, The Four Deuces, Newimpartial et al., could any of you help me verify the tags added by Emir of Wikipedia? Thank you. Davide King (talk) 01:03, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Looks like drive by tagging by the user. I looked at the first one which asked for a quotation which isn't necessary and doesn't make sense. In the other cases, editors should add the necessary cites or raise the issue on the talk page. Give them some time to explain themselves or just remove them all. If the first objection made no sense, why should we spend time investigating the others? TFD (talk) 01:27, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, I agree. I have done so and actually verified them. The only tag remaining is a better source needed for Kesvani, Hussein (March 27, 2019). "Opinion: 'cultural Marxism' is a far-right conspiracy in murky internet forums – so why is a Tory MP now using it?". The Independent. Retrieved October 6, 2020. This source is used to verify that "[d]uring the Brexit debate, a number of Conservatives and Brexiteers espoused the conspiracy theory." This is already supported by the other sources in the section anyway, so there is no need to tag it there too. And to verify that "Tim Montgomerie wrote about the conspiracy in "The 20th Century was Far from an Overwhelming Victory for the Right: Though Revolutionary Marxism Died, its Fellow Traveller, Cultural Marxism, Prospered" (2013) in The Times. Similarly, Toby Young asked the whereabouts of the theory in "Are the cultural Marxists in Retreat, or Lying Low?" (2015) in The Spectator. Writing for The Independent, Hussein Kesvani cited those as examples that the conspiracy theory entered mainstream discourse." It is properly attributed and it is more a matter of weight. Still, I think Newimpartial gave a valid rationale and that now it is not used to support a list of conspiracy promoters as it was before but the aferomentioned sentence.

Newimpartial stated that "all the citation is actually doing is pointing to two readily verified primary sources that document what the sentence is saying; I would make the argument that in such an instance it is more elegant to cite the analysis that lends weight to these sources rather than the primary sources themselves, but the statement they are supporting seems quite obviously to have been backed up by this evidence in toto. In general I think editors have a tendency to read op-ed sources without great consistency, regarding them as reliable when the editor agrees with statements in the op-ed and as unreliable when they disagree. In this instance Kesvani is pointing to clear evidence while lending it weight." Emir of Wikipedia tagged sources because they failed to mention Cultural Marxism, when in most cases they are used to verify quotes. In this case, Cultural Marxism is actually used in both primary and secondary given sources. Davide King (talk) 02:34, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

It is not drive by tagging. I have made multiple edits to this article, and contributed to discussions as per above the above discussion. Also I am not sure why 3 other editors were tagged and not me, almost seems like someone just wants to remove them with any excuse and not chance for me to offer any explanatio needed. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 18:04, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Emir of Wikipedia, make up your mind. First, you complain that we ping you too much and now that I have not pinged you. Since you complained about getting pinged and that you were editing the page, I simply assumed you would see this talk and there was no need to ping you; there was no grand plan from "someone" to "remove them with any excuse and not chance for me to offer any explanatio[n] needed."

Anyway, you removed several sources such as you have done here with Copsey, Nigel; Richardson, John E., eds. (2015). "'Cultural-Marxism' and the British National Party: a transnational discourse". Cultures of Post-War British Fascism. ISBN 9781317539360. Archived from the original on September 29, 2020. Retrieved September 11, 2020 regarding Weiyrich.

You also removed this image which is relevant because Cultural Bolshevism is its forerunner and it is supported in the body. You again removed this source even though it does not disqualify that and it is more a matter of weight than better source needed; and Newimpartial gave a valid argument about it, but we can discuss it more. However, several of the edits you did were unjustified.

You even removed this when I literally provided the quote in my edit summary here. "Spencer, who co-edits Altright.com and Radix, promulgates stories such as 'Ghostbustersand the Suicide of Cultural Marxism' (Forney 2016), '#3 -Sweden: The World Capital of Cultural Marxism' (Right on Radio 2016), and 'Beta Leftists, Cultural Marxism and Self-Entitlement' (Follin 2015)." Davide King (talk) 18:52, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I tried to start some sections below, but there was technical difficulties something might have got mixed out. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:05, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

• I think the Emir's "drive by tagging" can and should stop, this isn't the first time objections to this odd way of contributing has been brought up. I also think there's no malice evident, but it is disruptive - please stop with the wanton tagging, Emir of Wikipedia. Bacondrum (talk) 21:23, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

  Bacondrum, they have removed "Tim Montgomerie wrote about the conspiracy theory in 'The 20th Century was Far from an Overwhelming Victory for the Right: Though Revolutionary Marxism Died, its Fellow Traveller, Cultural Marxism, Prospered' (2013) in The Times. Similarly, Toby Young asked the whereabouts of the theory in 'Are the cultural Marxists in Retreat, or Lying Low?' (2015) in The Spectator. Writing for The Independent, Hussein Kesvani cited those as examples that the conspiracy theory entered mainstream discourse." I believe the issue was bigger when the same ref was used as part of the list, but I do not see the issue if it is worded like this and I agree with Newimpartial's comment that "all the citation is actually doing is pointing to two readily verified primary sources that document what the sentence is saying" and that this avoids the issue of using this ref to verify them as part of a list, which I would agree it was more problematic to use. Davide King (talk) 21:36, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with removing Tim Montgomerie and Toby Young claims. Poorly cited IMO, but that's besides the point - they are undue, I can't see any reason to include them, unless we are attempting to complile a list of everyone who ever uttered the words. Bacondrum (talk) 22:29, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

It is not an attempt to compile "a list of everyone who ever uttered the words" but that the conspiracy theory has been proposed or in some cases re-branded by political commentators in mainstream print press. Davide King (talk) 22:36, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Not saying you are wrong, I just can't see how they are due, they are not significant players and their actions are not significant, as far as I can see. Bacondrum (talk) 22:41, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I wish Newimpartial could weight in their thoughts too (as far as I can see, they have not replied back to some objections raised and I would be open-minded to see their response), but I can understand if they are undue. However, Toby Young has published at least three articles about it ("Are the cultural Marxists in retreat, or lying low?", "If I were a cultural Marxist, I might be thinking about giving up" and "The neo-Marxist takeover of our universities"), so he may not be an insignificant player; and while this is an opinion piece by The Guardian, it says: "Or consider the Times, supposedly a paper of record, which has published Tim Montgomerie bemoaning the prospering of 'cultural Marxism'. Or Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, who believes young Britons are brainwashed by the 'delusions of cultural Marxism'. It’s not clear whether these people were aware of the phrase’s loaded nature – they surely should have been more careful – but many readers would certainly have heard a dog whistle. As Britain’s own counter-terrorism chief said last week, mainstream newspapers are helping to radicalise the far right with irresponsible reporting." This latter part is cited to a non-opinion piece by The Guardian entitled "Newspapers help to radicalise far right, says UK anti-terror chief". Davide King (talk) 23:15, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure what I am being asked here - I stand by my previous comment, which is that while we can't use opinion pieces, we can certainly use them for commentary, and they can lend weight to observations that are documented in primary sources. The idea that we "can't use" opinion pieces is simply false - we just can't source facts to them. Newimpartial (talk) 00:07, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Newimpartial, I am moved by your comment. While I can understand why it is undue (that would be a better tag rather than better source needed), I believe you have point and I still lean for inclusion exactly for the reasons you outlined. I would argue the fact Toby Young has written at least three articles about Cultural Marxism means he is notable and not a non-significant player. Tim Montgomerie is also relevant because, as noted by The Guardian and other sources which "lend weight to observations that are documented in primary sources", The Times is one of the most mainstream newspapers in Britain. The propagation, or re-branding, of the conspiracy theory so that now is held also by more mainstream, or otherwise non-fringe, people, is supported by scholarly sources. Davide King (talk) 10:24, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

• I also have to disagree - I find Emir has generally removed poor references in my opinion (opinion pieces, a questionably OR picture) and certainly nothing disruptive here. The passages have also been brought to the talk page here for discussion, I think this is productive. Mvbaron (talk) 21:41, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

It's the "drive by tagging" that is disruptive, objections to this behavior have been raised before, it should stop. Bacondrum (talk) 22:29, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

File:Ausstellung entartete kunst 1937.jpg

Should this page include the file file:Ausstellung entartete kunst 1937.jpg? with the captioning and sourcing below? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:00, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I see no issue in pointing this out or using this image. I believe sources show enough weight that this is relevant and that "the etymology of the term Cultural Marxism derived from the antisemitic term Kulturbolschewismus (Cultural Bolshevism)." Davide King (talk) 21:38, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, I think the picture is borderline OR and I dont' think it particularly helps the article, but I saw one source that made the connection at least indirectly... Mvbaron (talk) 21:43, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree, it's borderline OR, although it makes sense on reading the sources. It's borderline. We could use an image to illustrate the Nazi connection that's less debatable? Like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:German_antisemitic_and_anti-Soviet_poster.JPG or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wochenspruch_der_NSDAP_28_September_1941.jpg perhaps? Bacondrum (talk) 22:46, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Extended content
The Cultural Marxism conspiracy recycles Joseph Goebbels opinions from the Degenerate Art Exhibition (July–November 1937) which the Nazis said proved that modern art was part of the cultural Bolshevism conspiracy meant to morally weaken German society Sources

Civitas Institute speech and republication

Should this page include the Civitas Institute speech and republication with the sourcing below? No quote has been provided from the source "Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us". "Death of the Moral Majority?" does not even mention Cultural Marxism. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:54, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I have clarified the primary source is for the speech; the secondary source, which is verified and again one does no need to provide always a quote (it just needs to be verified), is that he promoted the conspiracy theory. I see no reason to exclude this. Davide King (talk) 21:51, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Davide, this speech is mentioned in a lot of the cited material, Like Breivik's manifesto it seems to be one of the most widely discussed efforts to promote the CT. If there's an issue i's about selecting the best source/sources. Bacondrum (talk) 22:50, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

That does not clarify how a source that does not even mention Cultural Marxism should be included. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 18:36, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Cultural Marxism is in the primary source by Weyrich; I see the Moonves reference as adding weight to the Weyrich quote, and for at purpose I don't see why it has to use the term "Cultural Marxism"

What are you talking about, it uses the term Cultural Marxism multiple times:

Those who came up with Political Correctness, which we more accurately call "Cultural Marxism," did so in a deliberate fashion. I'm not going to go into the whole history of the Frankfurt School and Herbert Marcuse and the other people responsible for this.

Cultural Marxism is succeeding in its war against our culture. The question becomes, if we are unable to escape the cultural disintegration that is gripping society, then what hope can we have?

Here is another page it's on: https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/1999/02/16/letter-to-conservatives-by-paul-m-weyrich/ - here it is in SLATE: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1999/02/weyrich-goes-off-the-grid.html

I don't think anyone denies the text. Google that second statements with quote marks around it and you'll see how many references there are for it.

Extended content
In a speech to the Conservative Leadership Conference of the Civitas Institute in 1998, Paul Weyrich presented his conspiracy theory equating Cultural Marxism to political correctness. He later republished the speech in his syndicated culture war letter. Sources

Weyrich quote

Should this page include the below quote on Weyrich with the sourcing below? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:02, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I do not see why not. We also do not need every ref to have a quote. The term Cultural Marxism is used in the book and Weiyrich is mentioned, so it is verified and I see no reason to remove this. You should assume more good faith that the user or users who added did verify it first. Davide King (talk) 21:42, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Can't see any issue really, there are a number of sources for this throughout the article. Bacondrum (talk) 22:52, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I cannot see the term Cultural Marxism at all in the 3rd reference. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 18:37, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Cultural Marxism is in the primary source by Weyrich; I see the third reference as adding weight to the Weyrich quote, and for at purpose I don't see why it has to use the term "Cultural Marxism". Newimpartial (talk) 18:55, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Extended content

Paul Weyrich promoted the conspiracy theory as a deliberate effort to undermine "our traditional, Western, Judeo-Christian culture" and the conservative agenda in American society, arguing that "we have lost the culture war" and that "a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture." Sources

Excessive citations for Breivik quote

Should this page include the excessive citations for Breivik quote with the sourcing (not defined here) below? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:02, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Extended content

Breivik wrote that the "sexually transmitted disease (STD) epidemic in Western Europe is a result of cultural Marxism", that "Cultural Marxism defines Muslims, feminist women, homosexuals, and some additional minority groups, as virtuous, and they view ethnic Christian European men as evil" and that the "European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg is a cultural-Marxist-controlled political entity." Sources

• Yes, I think that 4 cites for 1 quote is excessive, I've removed two and left one each of the strongest news and academic sources, bundled them also. Bacondrum (talk) 21:25, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

  I agree, especially if those same sources are already used elsewhere, so no source would be lost. However, I disagree with the bundling; it is only two refs now and I do not see the need to bundle, especially if at least one of the sources is also already used elsewhere in the article. Davide King (talk) 21:44, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Daily Kos

What makes Daily Kos a WP:RS to use here despite what it says at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources? --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:02, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

My understanding is that non-green sources may be used if an expert has written from it and that exception may be for authors. In this case, the author is David Neiwart, also author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump; and the piece was cited by Braune. Davide King (talk) 21:29, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Unsupported claims regarding Peterson and Farage

Article states "Peterson blamed the conspiracy for demanding the use of gender-neutral pronouns as a threat to free speech, often misusing postmodernism as a stand in term for the conspiracy", referenced source makes no mention of Peterson using "postmodernism" as a stand-in for "cultural marxism". Assuming someone who frequently uses the term "postmodernism" actually means "cultural marxism" is just willful misrepresentation unless you can establish that the speaker considers the two things to be interchangeable. In a similar vein it is stated as fact in the UK section that Nigel Farage uses "cultural marxism", as an anti-semitic dogwhistle, a serious accusation that Farage denies, source is a guardian article that claims cultural marxism is an anti-semitic dogwhistle, it does not establish on any factual basis that this is how Farage intends or uses the term. I appreciate that these figures are unpopular with some people but there's no way you can justify these kinds of claims with the current references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.127.199.53 (talk) 12:50, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Scholarly analysis says that postmodernist philosophers are commonly alleged to be 'Cultural Marxists', the given source says "'post-structuralist' (or 'postmodernist')", with the latter, alongside 'neo-Marxist' being indeed used as a stand-in for the conspiracy theory, in spite of the fact the Frankfurt School theorists being directly in opposition to the theories promoted by postmodernist philosophers. We already write at Jordan Peterson that "Peterson's perspectives on the influence of postmodernism on North American humanities departments have been compared to Cultural Marxist conspiracy theories." As for Farage, he did actually say 'Cultural Marxism', so there is no excuse that he did not say that. See also MANDY. Davide King (talk) 16:45, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

These are specific claims about intentionality that are unsupported. Saying that postmodernist philosophers are commonly alleged to be cultural Marxists in no way establishes than when Peterson criticises postmodernism this is a stand-in for cultural marxism. Otherwise you could claim that anyone who talks about postmodernism is really talking about cultural marxism, from where are you deriving this claim about his intended meaning when using the word postmodernism? Farage at least did indeed use the term cultural marxism, but the article states that he intended this as an anti-Semitic dog-whistle, again, from where are you deriving this claim about intent? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.127.199.53 (talk) 10:07, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

We are not even outright saying that Peterson is a proponent of the conspiracy theory, just that he has popularised the term and moved it into the mainstream, all the while misusing the term postmodernism, both of which are true and supported by reliable sources and scholarly analysis. As written here, "[a]ppearing in videos such as 'Identity Politics & the Marxist Lie of White Privilege' (Peterson 2018) and 'Postmodernism and Cultural Marxism' (Peterson 2017), Peterson has tapped into the alt-right’s discourse of cultural Marxism and cashed in on the anxiety and anger of a large and growing alt-right fan base (Southey 2017). Peterson is not a fascist and he often says he hates Nazis, but Peterson's deployment of 'cultural Marxism' as a term of opprobrium when ranting against 'political correctness' and 'social justice' in Canada appeals to reactionaries worldwide. Every usage of 'cultural Marxism' is not essentially fascist, but this phrase is used by contemporary fascists as an ideological weapon. When Peterson berates 'cultural Marxism,' he may be helping the alt-right bring its conspiracy theory of hate into the mainstream (Berlatsky 2018)."

Or as written here, "Peterson has tweaked this argument a bit. In his lectures, he mostly traces cultural rot to postmodernists like Derrida (whose work Peterson comically garbles) rather than to the Frankfurt School. In Peterson's new book, though, he does explicitly link postmodernism to the Frankfurt school, and in other venues he regularly uses and approves the term 'cultural Marxism.' One of his videos is titled 'Postmodernism and Cultural Marxism.' On Facebook, he shared a Daily Caller article titled 'Cultural Marxism Is Destroying America' that begins, with outright racism, 'Yet again an American city is being torn apart by black rioters.' The article goes on to blame racial tension in the U.S. on ... you guessed it: the Frankfurt School." As for Farage, you wrote it yourself "Farage at least did indeed use the term cultural marxism" and that "the article states that he intended this as an anti-Semitic dog-whistle."

You seem to believe that Cultural Marxism is not antisemitic but this was discussed at length and both of those articles explains this. In addition, many on the left are not personally antisemitic but some of them are called as such because, whether they realise it or not, in their criticism of Zionism and Israel, some of them may indeed be using antisemitic undertones, so the same happens here. Even if Jordan Peterson may not be personally antisemitic, that does not mean that the conspiracy theory, which he helped popularise to the mainstream as reported by reliable sources and scholarly analysis, suddenly stops being an antisemitic dog-whistle. Davide King (talk) 12:45, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

You seem to view any criticism of post-modernism and of the Frankfurt school as an opportunity to ascribe all sorts of nefarious motives to people, but that's not how an encyclopedia works. In order to ascribe a motive to an individual, or to state that when they say "A" they actually mean "B", you need evidence. In the context of philosophical or political views the only real evidence you're likely to get is the person's own account of their motives and meaning, whether that's an account given publicly or privately. Perhaps I can demonstrate what I mean by example. An encylopedia might say something like:

"A number of critics have suggested the term "Cultural Marxism" has anti-semitic or far-right implications and it has been described as a "dog-whistle code for antisemitism". People who have used the term include Nigel Farage, yadda yadda yadda."

Where as what we have currently is:

"Nigel Farage has promoted the cultural Marxist conspiracy as dog-whistle code for antisemitism in the United Kingdom"

If Farage denies this and if there's no actual evidence presented that he intends or means the term to be taken as a dog-whistle for antisemitism then the statement becomes impossible to justify. It's one thing to claim the term is associated with anti-semitism, it's another thing to extend that to claim an anti-semitic intent on the part of anyone who uses the term, regardless of their meaning or understanding of the term. This straw-manning slight of hand is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.69.176.245 (talk) 22:33, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

First of all, that is a strawman. I provided quotes from sources which report how proponents of the conspiracy theory explicitly ties it both to the Frankfurt School and 'post-modernism'. As for Farage, he literally mentioned Cultural Marxism and you can not assume that he did not mean exactly what he meant by it either. He said 'Cultural Marxism' and scholarly analysis show us exactly what it means. Given source concludes "Farage's representatives did not respond to a request for comment", so it is not even true that he denied it and we have not to worry about it since he did not comment further and it is original research on your part to assume he did not mean exactly what he meant to say. Ironically, "that is not appropriate for an encyclopedia" actually applies to your comments and suggestions. That you do not like the scholarly analysis does not change the facts as reported by reliable sources. Your wording is wrong and misleading as it is not been 'critics' who said that, but scholarly analysis. Scholarly analysis says that Cultural Marxism has indeed antisemitic, far-right implications and has been described as a dog-whistle code for antisemitism. Some of proponents of Cultural Marxism may not realise this but it is what it is. I redirect you to MANDY. Davide King (talk) 23:02, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

A number of critics have suggested... demonstrates the underlying issue. Calling them "critics" misses the point. Reliable sources have documented this. They have not "suggested" this as a vague possibility, and the conspiracy theory's direct connection to antisemitism, including terrorism, is indisputable. Dismissing this as nebulous "criticism" would falsely imply that this is subjective opinion, or that it is disputed by others who are equally credible. The article should present the mainstream position according to reliable sources. Whether or not those sources are "critics" is a distraction, at best.

Also, it's ironically postmodern to try and analyze Farage and Peterson's supposed intentions for context, but this only highlights the gap between this conspiracy theory and the underlying ideas. Grayfell (talk) 00:35, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

These are some really unsubstantiated leaps, establishing that critics of postmodernism may link it to cultural marxism does not justify the claim that when any particular individual says one he means the other, unless you have some evidence that relates to the individual and their intent. Otherwise you could substitute any potentially linked term for any other and claim that's what the speaker meant, that's not a reasonable way to report someone's views. Similarly, the article makes a positive and definite claim that Farage's use was intended as an antisemitic dog-whistle, but your justification of this is that "scholarly analysis shows us exactly what it means". I'm puzzled by how you seem to think language works, particularly given it has already been established people use the term "cultural marxism" in a variety of different ways. What Farage means by "cultural marxism" is not determined by what Braune writes in the Journal of Social Justice, it's determined by Farage. Your argument isn't even internally consistent because if cultural marxism really did only have one possible meaning then it couldn't function as a dog-whistle could it?

As to the critics and the sources involved, which specifically do you feel establishes "objectively" a single meaning for this term that is universal to all speakers? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.69.176.245 (talk) 00:21, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

• Failing evidence to the contrary, we rightly assume Farage and Peterson know precisely what they are saying when they say it. Certainly it beggars belief to suggest that either of them does not know what is meant by the term, anyone who is invested in politics in any meaningful way knows this term and its meaning. We don't need to cite that the sky is blue, Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass. Bacondrum (talk) 00:32, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
• Who said anything about "objectively"? Again, it's ironically postmodern to try and dispute what is and is not "objective" based on context. Reliable sources are pretty consistent in defining what "cultural Marxism" means -It's a conspiracy theory which uses the specter of Marxism to imply nefarious intent. It is not appropriate to editorialize, especially about fringe topics. There will always be outliers who craft a boutique definition in support of their causes. We are not obligated to play stupid to this sophistry. reliable sources have analyzed conspiracy theory. We reflect reliable sources. This article is not a platform for public relations from Farage or anyone else, so his meaning, if it's worth discussing at all, must be supported by reliable sources. Grayfell (talk) 00:38, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

This discussion has drifted away from the wording of the article, and its support (or otherwise) from the sources.

(1)The IP is correct on the point originally made: there is nothing in the source cited (M Sharpe, ‘The Conversation’ ) to support the wording regarding Peterson: ‘….often misusing postmodernism as a stand in term for the conspiracy’, so I have deleted those words. If they are to be reinstated, a source to support them is required.

(2) The source N Berlatsky (Pacific Standard) says: ‘Peterson isn't an ideological anti-Semite; there's every reason to believe that when he re-broadcasts fascist propaganda, he doesn't even hear the dog-whistles he's emitting. ‘ It is also of interest that according to the Jewish Chronicle source I recently added in connection with Suella Braverman, the Board of Deputies of British Jews accepted that Ms Braverman was not antisemitic. So there are 2 sources which I think say, roughly, that the ‘Cultural Marxism’ theory can be interpreted as antisemitic, but that those who say they are opposed to ‘Cultural Marxism’ might not realise this. Does anyone have a suggested wording to cover this aspect? Sweet6970 (talk) 10:43, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

The Berlatsky source is one of many which directly supports the point you have removed. I have adjusted the placement of the citations accordingly. Gain consensus before removing this content again. Grayfell (talk) 19:59, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

(1) I checked both the Berlatsky and the Sharpe sources before I deleted the words ‘often misusing postmodernism as a stand in term for the conspiracy’ and before I made the statement on this Talk page. Neither of the references says this. You should either provide another reference supporting this wording, or you should self-revert. Consensus cannot override the need to have statements supported by a source.

(2) Do you have any suggested wording on my second point? Sweet6970 (talk) 23:12, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

I correctly moved the refs as it is Berlatsky that explicitly make the point, writing: "Peterson has tweaked this argument a bit. In his lectures, he mostly traces cultural rot to postmodernists like Derrida (whose work Peterson comically garbles) rather than to the Frankfurt School. In Peterson's new book, though, he does explicitly link postmodernism to the Frankfurt school, and in other venues he regularly uses and approves the term 'cultural Marxism.' One of his videos is titled 'Postmodernism and Cultural Marxism.' On Facebook, he shared a Daily Caller article titled 'Cultural Marxism Is Destroying America' that begins, with outright racism, 'Yet again an American city is being torn apart by black rioters.' The article goes on to blame racial tension in the U.S. on ... you guessed it: the Frankfurt School." So where is the issue? You are free to suggest a re-wording to better represent what sources say but that postmondernism is misunderstood and has been discussed as part of the conspiracy theory is not disputed. Scholarly analysis also shows that postmdernism and postmodernist philosophers, who are frequently individuated by proponents of the conspiracy theory as leading examples of Cultural Marxism, are misunderstood as the Frankfurt School was in direct opposition to them and none were part of an active movement or international conspiracy to destroy Western civilisation. Davide King (talk) 23:21, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

• From the source I just added: Peterson proposed that funding for Liberal Arts programs across the province—and indeed, across Canada and everywhere—be slashed, not because of failing enrollments or incompetent students, but because students are (allegedly) being brainwashed by Left-wing professors who inculcate them with “cultural Marxism” and “postmodernism”—terms he uses interchangeably— And further down the section it makes it clear that this usage is inaccurate: Peterson blames this state of affairs on postmodernism, which he takes to be an offshoot or expression of “cultural Marxism” or “neo-Marxism.” But rightly or wrongly, for better or worse, Marxism is really an extension of the Enlightenment project, whereas postmodernism is rooted in the anti-Enlightenment sensibilities of Nietzsche and Heidegger --Aquillion (talk) 23:27, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

  Aquillion, this was really helpful, thank you. Perhaps this should be clarified at Jordan Peterson#Postmodernism and identity politics? We just says "as well as other fields of study that he believes are corrupted by 'post-modern neo-Marxists'" (previously, it stated, without quotation marks, Neo-Marxist ideology) but perhaps we may add or clarify that "post-modern neo-Marxists" is a contradiction in terms and that he has used post-modernism as a stand in term for cultural Marxism. Davide King (talk) 23:47, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

@Aquillion: Thank you for providing the new source, which is much more to the point. I can only access the Abstract, so thank you for providing the quotations. @Davide King: I do not agree that the Berlatsky source supports the existing wording. There is nothing in it about ‘misusing postmodernism as a stand in term for the conspiracy’. Rather than this wording, I suggest we closely follow the new source, so that the sentence becomes:

‘Peterson blamed the conspiracy for demanding the use of gender-neutral pronouns as a threat to free speech, and mistakenly takes postmodernism to be an offshoot or expression of cultural Marxism.’ Sweet6970 (talk) 23:52, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

On reflection, this reads a little oddly, as there does not seem to be any obvious connection between pronouns and post-modernism. So perhaps these should be 2 separate sentences: ‘Peterson blamed the conspiracy for demanding the use of gender-neutral pronouns as a threat to free speech. He also mistakenly takes postmodernism to be an offshoot or expression of cultural Marxism.’ Any comments? Sweet6970 (talk) 15:19, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

I do not see any benefit to this change. The confusion here comes from Peterson himself, who has decided to incorrectly use these terms interchangeably despite many, many opportunities to correct this error. Grayfell (talk) 06:54, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

The benefit of this change is that the proposed wording would better align with the source. I note that you do not have any objection to the change. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:41, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

"I do not see any benefit to this change." = "I object to this change". Civil POV pushing is still POV pushing. Grayfell (talk) 20:20, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

I object to the accusation of POV pushing, which has been made without any explanation or evidence.

What is your objection to the proposed change in the wording? Sweet6970 (talk) 23:02, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Your comments are the evidence. Peterson is wrong about this, per many sources. He is not qualified to explain the topic for multiple reasons, so how he "takes" this would have to be contextualized by a reliable source. The above source provides this context, but your change would bypass this. Ignoring this context and including the line anyway is a form of editorializing. Grayfell (talk) 00:30, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

@Grayfell:(1) Stop making baseless accusations. Surely you know that this is not allowed, per WP:NPA. (2) You say ‘Peterson is wrong’. My proposed wording says ’ He also mistakenly takes postmodernism to be an offshoot or expression of cultural Marxism.’. i.e. I am proposing that the article should say that Peterson is mistaken. Would you accept ‘He also wrongly takes postmodernism to be an offshoot or expression of cultural Marxism.’? Sweet6970 (talk) 11:46, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Sweet6970 You are flogging a dead horse. Please don't WP:bludgeon the debate. Bacondrum (talk) 04:10, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

@Bacondrum: This discussion has only recently started, when User:Aquillion helpfully provided a new source. So there is no equine corpse, and I am not bludgeoning anyone. According to the quote provided by Aquillion, the new source says: ‘Peterson blames this state of affairs on postmodernism, which he takes to be an offshoot or expression of “cultural Marxism” or “neo-Marxism”. But rightly or wrongly, for better or worse, Marxism is really an extension of the Enlightenment project, whereas postmodernism is rooted in the anti-Enlightenment sensibilities of Nietzsche and Heidegger.’I have proposed the wording: ’ He also mistakenly takes postmodernism to be an offshoot or expression of cultural Marxism.’ as a summary of this. I am trying to follow the source more closely than the current wording in the article. Do you object to the proposed wording|? If so, what do you propose as an alternative? Sweet6970 (talk) 11:49, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

My apologies, I thought you were just rerunning the IP's arguements. Yes, I think something like this works "He incorrectly takes postmodernism to be an offshoot or expression of cultural Marxism." would be fair and accurate. Bacondrum (talk) 22:14, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

@Grayfell: It is now more than 24 hours since I pinged you, and there has been no response from you. I prefer User:Bacondrum's version to my original suggestion, as it avoids the awkward ‘mistakenly takes’. If you do not respond in the next 24 hours, I will assume that you agree with this wording. Sweet6970 (talk) 13:58, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

As I said I do not think this is an improvement, and by distancing Peterson's misuse of the term from the conspiracy theory, this change would whitewash the article to make Peterson's position more reasonable. This is, obviously, totally inappropriate. Peterson is "blaming" this for a reason. Changing this to imply that this reason is a "mistake" is both editorializing, and also unrelated to the topic of the article. Remember that this article is about a conspiracy theory Peterson has a documented history of pushing. As I've tried to explain to you many times, we have to look at what these sources are saying in context, not merely as cherry-picked factoids.

Further, I consider your ultimatum to be inappropriate. To not ping me again for any reason. There is no deadline. Grayfell (talk) 21:37, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, Grayfell is spot on, reading over the sources again and all the arguments, this does actually look like an attempt to make Peterson look like he bumbled into a conspiracy theory, which with his level of education in his field begs credulity, he’d know exactly what he was saying and no source suggests didn’t. And ultimatums are not on, there’s no rush. Bacondrum (talk) 22:51, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

For what is worth it, I too agree with Bacondrum and Grayfell's take. Davide King (talk) 06:16, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

I do not make ultimatums. In the absence of any response from the other editor, I was trying to find out whether they had any objection to Bacondrum’s suggested wording, before I made the change. There is no deadline; there is no virtue in delay.

User:Bacondrum has referred to attempting to make it look as if Peterson ‘bumbled into a conspiracy theory’. I am not attempting to make Mr Peterson look stupid, though, on reflection, I can see that my original suggested wording ‘mistaken’ might allow for that interpretation. I am attempting to get a wording in the article which is securely supported by the source. The other editor used the word ‘incorrectly’ in their post of 11 November: The confusion here comes from Peterson himself, who has decided to incorrectly use these terms interchangeably despite many, many opportunities to correct this error. and it was suggested by Bacondrum, but when I say I agree with it, it seems that it becomes unacceptable, and a sign of some nefarious purpose.

I did suggest previously that the wording could be ‘He also wrongly takes postmodernism to be an offshoot or expression of cultural Marxism.’ Does anyone have any other suggestions for the wording to summarise the source? Sweet6970 (talk) 13:04, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

I do not think this change is necessary, and the proposal is still too simplistic to properly summarize the source. Since he is not a topic expert, and also has a documented history of being completely wrong, we would need a specific reason to present this as his "take", and that reason would need to come from the same source. Grayfell (talk) 20:05, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

As you are saying that the proposed wording is too simplistic to properly summarise the source, then a possibility would be to include the whole of the quotation supplied by Aquillion. Alternatively, since you say ‘we would need a specific reason to present this as his “take” ‘, are you saying that there should be nothing at all about his conflation of postmodernism and the conspiracy theory, i.e. that the current wording: ‘often misusing postmodernism as a stand in term for the conspiracy’ should be deleted? Sweet6970 (talk) 12:08, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Aquillion, Bacondrum, The Four Deuces, Grayfell and Newimpartial, a similar discussion is ongoing at Talk:Jordan Peterson. I did use the wording suggested by Sweet6970 but it was partially reverted. Davide King (talk) 14:27, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification. Although this was my original suggestion, I now prefer 'incorrectly' to 'mistakenly'. I am watching the discussion on Jordan Peterson, but I have not so far commented, because my interest in, and knowledge of, Mr Peterson is limited. I would suggest that whatever wording is agreed there should be used in this article. Sweet6970 (talk) 15:43, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@Davide King: I was hoping that the discussion on the Jordan Peterson talk page would end in a wording which could be used in this article. But the discussion on that page seems to have stalled, and the current wording in that article would not fit into this article. What wording do you favour for this article? Sweet6970 (talk) 12:02, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Sweet6970, I think the wording on both page is fine now. Davide King (talk) 07:29, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Suella Braverman and the Board of Deputies of British Jews

@Davide King: You have deleted the inf about the Board of Deputies of British Jews apologising to Suella Braverman for accusing her of antisemitism, whilst keeping the reference. Is this your intention? We now have a statement in the article that the Board condemned Ms Braverman as antisemitic, when in fact they withdrew this. This is a BLP issue. Sweet6970 (talk) 10:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Sweet6970, that is more relevant for her own article. The Board of Deputies of British Jews does not contradict what other sources have reported, i.e. that she used or referred to the conspiracy theory. The theory is antisemitic but since it has been 'mainstreamised', people who may not be personally antisemitic, unconsciously or not, whether they realise it or not, are believing in the conspiracy theory. Davide King (talk) 10:56, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

That same source notes "Mrs Braverman, the MP for Fareham, was alerted to this connection by journalist Dawn Foster but defended using the term." Davide King (talk) 10:58, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

This is not the point. This is a BLP issue, and we should not be misinforming readers by saying that the Board condemned Ms Braverman, when in fact they apologised to her. You thanked me for this edit when I originally added the inf about the apology. Sweet6970 (talk) 11:16, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

It is not a BLP issue because we are not saying she is antisemitic, we are saying she promoted the conspiracy theory, which the article about the Board's apology is not; it is about her being antisemitic but sources and text do not say she is antisemitic, just that she promoted the conspiracy theory, which is true and she knew about it. The Board's apology only says that she is not antisemitic, not that she did not promoted the conspiracy theory, which they note it is antisemitic. That same source notes "Mrs Braverman, the MP for Fareham, was alerted to this connection by journalist Dawn Foster but defended using the term." In addition, it is not Jewish groups and MPs are saying Farage has promoted the conspiracy theory as an antisemitic dog-whistle, they are condemning for it; that he has used antisemitic dog-whistle is stated as 'fact', with The Guardian explaining it is "a term originating in a conspiracy theory based on a supposed plot against national governments, which is closely linked to the far right and antisemitism." So it makes no sense to say "[t]he Board of Deputies of British Jews has said that Nigel Farage has promoted the cultural Marxist conspiracy as dog-whistle code for antisemitism in the United Kingdom" when the source does not support this wording; the Board is condemning him over antisemitic dog-whistles. Davide King (talk) 11:24, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

The article says ‘Her use of the conspiracy theory was condemned as hate speech…’ This means she has been accused of antisemitism. Therefore, it is important to show that the Board does not consider her to be antisemitic.

(See the separate section below about the Guardian article and Nigel Farage.) Sweet6970 (talk) 11:41, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

I disagree. Since when hate speech is synonym with antisemitism? Islamophobia, among others, is hate speech too. Since we are not saying she is antisemitic, just that she has promoted the conspiracy theory, which even the Board did not dispute, it is not relevant to this article but to her. The Board is retracting that she is antisemitic but we never wrote she is antisemitic, just that she has promoted the conspiracy theory, so I see no issue or BLP violations. Davide King (talk) 11:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Same thing for Farage, Peterson et al. We are not saying they are antisemites, we are saying they have promoted the conspiracy theory. Whether that makes them antisemites is a matter to be discussed at their own articles, if it is something notable, not here, which is about the conspiracy theory. Davide King (talk) 11:52, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Re Suella Braverman only:

The only possible ‘hate speech’ in this context is antisemitism. If you accuse someone of hate speech, you are accusing them of trying to stir up hatred against the group in question. The only possible interpretation of the statement Her usage of the conspiracy theory was condemned as hate speech by other MPs, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the anti-racist organization Hope Not Hate. is that she has been accused of antisemitism. This is a very serious allegation. If this allegation is not intended, then the statement should be deleted. Sweet6970 (talk) 14:11, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Actually, it says "[h]er usage of the conspiracy theory was condemned as hate speech." So that still means her usage of the conspiracy theory was antisemitic, not that she was antisemitic herself, hence why I felt there was no need for it and that the same source could be instead used to report "Mrs Braverman, the MP for Fareham, was alerted to this connection by journalist Dawn Foster but defended using the term." It would be helpful if more users could weight in rather than going back and forth between you and I. Davide King (talk) 15:23, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@Davide King: If we say that a theory is being used in an antisemitic way, this is an accusation of antisemitism by the person concerned. Sweet6970 (talk) 15:45, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure that is the case. Sources are not saying she is antisemitic but that she promoted the conspiracy theory; and scholarly analysis discusses how the conspiracy theory is propagated by people who are not antisemites or Nazis themselves, yet the conspiracy theory remains antisemitic and an antisemitic dog whistle. The Board's apology is more about her alleged antisemitism than the conspiracy theory, hence why I think that is for her own article since here we are not saying she is antisemite or that she was accused of being one; we are saying she promoted the conspiracy theory and she was aware of the term, that is all. Davide King (talk) 16:15, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Guardian article about Nigel Farage

I read the Guardian article [1] closely before I made the change about Nigel Farage, for which you thanked me. It says: The Board of Deputies of British Jews said Farage’s airing of claims about plots to undermine national governments, and his references to Goldman Sachs and the financier George Soros, showed he was seeking to “trade in dog whistles”.’ and ‘Amanda Bowman, vice-president of the Board of Deputies, said: “If Nigel Farage continues to trade in dog whistles and tropes about George Soros and Goldman Sachs, his decline into obscurity will continue apace. Mr Farage would do well to remember that this proud country has always rejected this sort of prejudice and fought wars to defeat it.” These are the only references to ‘dog whistles’, and they are both from the Board. The Guardian does not state this as a fact. Sweet6970 (talk) 11:27, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate you noted I 'thanked you', but I use that even for things I may disagree with while appreciating the effort. One can also change one's mind. I do not think the addition of "the Board of Deputies of British Jews said that she is 'not in any way antisemitic'" is relevant to this article since the Board of Deputies of British Jews are saying that she is not antisemitic, not that she did not promote the conspiracy theory, which is indeed antisemitic. You would have had a point if our text argued she was antisemitic, but we are just reporting she promoted the conspiracy theory; that the Board concludes she is not antisemitic does not change this and they do not say she did not promote it. As for Farage, The Guardian gives a plethora of examples and states "Farage said the UK faced 'cultural Marxism', a term originating in a conspiracy theory based on a supposed plot against national governments, which is closely linked to the far right and antisemitism." The Guardian does not attribute this to the Board, about which it says only what you quoted. My understanding is that it is misleading to say it is the Board who has characterised Farage as promoting the conspiracy theory, as The Guardian gives a plethora examples, without attributing them to the Board or others. So my understanding is that the Board has condemned him over antisemitic tropes, not that the Board "has said that Nigel Farage has promoted the cultural Marxist conspiracy" like your wording does. In short, this is not just the Board's opinion. Davide King (talk) 11:45, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Replying re Nigel Farage only:

i) You have quoted the Guardian article saying: “Farage said the UK faced 'cultural Marxism', a term originating in a conspiracy theory based on a supposed plot against national governments, which is closely linked to the far right and antisemitism." This is already in the article: Farage said "the UK faced 'cultural Marxism', a term originating in a conspiracy theory based on a supposed plot against national governments, which is closely linked to the far right and antisemitism.". This is not quite correct, as this is not a direct quotation from Mr Farage, but from the Guardian. So this should be reported speech: Farage has said that the UK faced 'cultural Marxism', a term originating in a conspiracy theory based on a supposed plot against national governments, which is closely linked to the far right and antisemitism.

ii) There seems to be a misunderstanding here. The wording which needs attribution is not that Mr Farage has promoted the conspiracy theory, which is not in dispute, but that he has promoted it as a dog whistle for anti-semitism. It is only the Board which is reported to have said this. It is misleading to have this statement before the general statement which comes from the Guardian. It would make sense to have the ‘dog whistle’ statement moved so that it is immediately after the statement in (i). The Guardian article refers to many people and organisations, but it is only the Board which talks about dog whistles. The Guardian article is very careful about this (presumably they employ libel lawyers) and we should be equally careful. Sweet6970 (talk) 13:55, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

You write "[t]he wording which needs attribution is not that Mr Farage has promoted the conspiracy theory, which is not in dispute, but that he has promoted it as a dog whistle for anti-semitism." But the conspiracy theory itself is a dog whistle for antisemitism, hence I do not really see the issue. So that you write "it is only the Board which talks about dog whistles" misses the point the theory itself is a dog whistle for antisemitism as this article clearly shows. I think it is your suggested wording that is misleading and redundant, not mine, which reflects the extensive literature of the conspiracy theory itself being an antisemitic dog whistle. Either way, it would be helpful if more users could weight in, so I ping Aquillion, Bacondrum, The Four Deuces, Grayfell, Newimpartial et al., hoping we can get more input. Davide King (talk) 15:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

You say: But the conspiracy theory itself is a dog whistle for antisemitism, hence I do not really see the issue.You are making a judgment that the conspiracy theory is a dog whistle for antisemitism. It is not for Wikipedia editors to make judgments of this kind. We can only follow the sources, and the source only says that the Board says Mr Farage is using the theory as a dog whistle. Wikipedia must follow the sources. Sweet6970 (talk) 15:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

This ignores the extensive scholarly analysis that the theory is an antisemitic dog whistle, hence why we say it is an antisemitic theory. I also disagree that it is just the Board saying that about Farage. Davide King (talk) 16:00, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

It's an antisemitic, globalist conspiracy theory. It begs credulity to suggest right-wing politicians just bumble around throwing the term about without understanding its meaning. Like the Peterson section, I see no issue as is. Bacondrum (talk) 20:10, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Bacondrum, thanks for your comment, I agree. I have reworded it like this, although I think saying that this has been condemned by other MPs and Jewish groups, when "[i]t begs credulity to suggest right-wing politicians just bumble around throwing the term about without understanding its meaning", may incidentally give credence that the theory is true, especially since we already report "Farage's spokesman 'condemned previous criticism of his language by Jewish groups and others as 'pathetic' and 'a manufactured story.'" Davide King (talk) 01:50, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

@Davide King: I am basically in agreement with your latest edits – thank you. I have slightly amended the wording – I hope you agree. Sweet6970 (talk) 10:10, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Sweet6970, I am glad to hear that, although I am still unsure why we must say the Board said when, as noted by Bacondrum too, the conspiracy theory itself is an antisemitic dog-whistle. Davide King (talk) 10:14, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• To be honest, this all looks like WP:SEALIONing to me. Bacondrum (talk) 20:12, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@Bacondrum: I deny that I’m a sealion; I’m no good at balancing balls on my nose. I’ve read the essay: I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not pushing any POV, just trying to get the wording of the article to align with the sources. Sweet6970 (talk) 10:12, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Fundamental issues

There seems to be an assumption that answers to the following questions will be obvious to the average reader, but they are not obvious to me. Could somebody help me out?

The second sentence in the article starts: “The conspiracists claim that...” Who are the conspiracists? Is this article intending to imply that anyone using the term “cultural Marxist” is a conspiracist, regardless of what he or she means by that term?

The article talks about “proponents” of the conspiracy theory, as well as about those “espousing” or “promoting” or “holding” the theory. Do all these terms refer to anyone who uses the term “cultural Marxist”? — Swood100 (talk) 23:45, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Given that no reliable sources suggest that "Cultural Marxism" is anything other than a conspiracy theory, both of your questions are to be answered in the affirmative. Is the article unclear about this? Newimpartial (talk) 23:57, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

The article on antisemitism says, “A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite.” So, according to this article Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, is an anti-Semite? This seems somewhat counterintuitive.

The antisemitism article says that antisemitism “is hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews.” Elsewhere on this page you wrote: “Anti-semitism is not always a term labeling conscious beliefs; it is also an appropriate label for unconscious motives, and also for the results of actions that were not necessarily based on anti-semitic motives.” Your description seems not entirely congruous with the definition given above. You referred to an explanation in a section titled Talk:Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory#Anti-semitism as an Essential Quality. I looked back in the archives and found a section with this name but it contained no such explanation. Could you provide a link to the explanation, or give me a summary here? — Swood100 (talk) 17:51, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

You can read the sources, we are not here to do your reading for you. If you find specific issues with specific claims and sources then please raise them. Bacondrum (talk) 23:03, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Well, is this article claiming that, according to the sources, Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, is an anti-Semite? (I located the talk section I referenced above but it doesn't explain how this would make sense.) If the answer is "yes" then wouldn't an explanation in the article for such a puzzling conclusion make sense? — Swood100 (talk) 23:57, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't say he's an antisemite; it says he is promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Is this distinction not clear enough to you? Newimpartial (talk) 00:10, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I reckon peddling antisemitic globalist conspiracies does make the peddler antisemitic, but that's my POV. The article does not claim he is antisemitic, as Newimpartial has already pointed out. It reflects the facts presented in reliable sources. You'd have to ask Shapiro about the contradiction, he;s the one peddling antisemitic conspiracies despite being Jewish himself, his motives are a mystery. Bacondrum (talk) 10:48, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Given that no reliable sources suggest that "Cultural Marxism" is anything other than a conspiracy theory How does this article handle sources such as the following?

• The term, in other words, has perfectly respectable uses outside the dark, dank silos of the far right.
• To complicate the issue further, the term “cultural Marxism”, when used informally, often seems to refer to nothing more than left-wing cultural criticism. ...

Sometimes, when people complain about “cultural Marxism”, their emphasis seems to be on something more specific. They are thinking, perhaps, of a left-wing variety of cultural authoritarianism: a tendency to criticize movies, video games, and other cultural products in a very harsh way that implies a need for government censorship. Short of that, it may at least imply the need for aggressive social policing and an environment of public shaming. ...

Meanwhile, we can conclude that the term “cultural Marxism” has a variety of uses – scholarly, ideological, and more popular. It is employed by extreme right-wing ideologues, such as Breivik, in grandiose theories that have little credibility, and it is used popularly in ways that show little understanding of its history or its original meaning. Nonetheless, it is has also been useful for mainstream scholars who tend, themselves, to be Marxists or sympathetic to Marxist thought – for example, Trent Schroyer and (more recently) Dennis Dworkin.

• “Cultural Marxism” is used accordingly as a shorthand phrase to describe the Left’s onslaught on core Western precepts. As Braverman said, “We have culture evolving from the far Left which has allowed the snuffing out of freedom of speech [and] freedom of thought.” — Swood100 (talk) 15:13, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Well, the archives are now divided between the ones at this Talk page and the ones at Talk:Frankfurt School, but I believe all of those sources have been discussed. You can look for yourself. Newimpartial (talk) 15:59, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I didn't locate the one in the Jerusalem Post. No return for "Jerusalem" or "Phillips". Nor did I find this one:

• While cultural Marxists did accept the ideological bases of their own theoretical and political positions, and consequently had begun to recognize the problematic, contingent nature of their own interpretive activities, it was poststructuralism that gave Marxists the vocabulary with which to begin theorizing their own determination. — Swood100 (talk) 17:16, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

The Jerusalem Post piece is by Melanie Phillips, who has been discussed in the archive on this page and is certainly not a RS on this tppic.

And while I don't recall discussing Cary Grossman here, that text is using "cultural Marxism" to mean something like "Marxist approaches to culture", not as a term that would be relevant to this article. As has been discussed many times on both this Talk page and its predecessor, that juxtaposition of words is not the referent of the conspiracy theory, nor is it a label for some kind of "movement" that would show that "Cultural Marxism" exists as a real thing outside the conspiracy theory. So while it shows up in a word search for "cultural Marxism", it isn't helpful for editing this article in any way. Newimpartial (talk) 18:06, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I saw Melanie Phillips mentioned but I didn’t see this specific article mentioned. Is the Jerusalem Post not a reliable source? What about this source makes it not reliable?

that text is using "cultural Marxism" to mean something like "Marxist approaches to culture", not as a term that would be relevant to this article.

Here’s another reference to cultural Marxism from that same page (emphasis added):

In the middle and late 1960s (although it did not reach England and America until the late 1960s and the early 1970s), Marxism underwent a profound interchange with structuralism and semiotics, an interchange that marks the beginning of the third moment of Marxist revision and established the context within which the essays in this book were written, including the apparently humanistic essays by Schacht and Golding. While the second generation of humanist Marxists–who became known as cultural Marxists–placed the active human agent (understood both individually and socially) at the center of their theoretical perspective, it was the intersection of Marxism with structuralism and semiotics that gave the study of culture new momentum in the 1970s, both within Marxism and across a wide range of disciplines and theoretical perspectives.

The authors say that “humanist Marxists” became known as “cultural Marxists.” They are not talking about a Marxist approach to culture, but rather about a specific school of thought. Here are earlier references to humanist Marxists (emphasis added):

The humanist (and often Hegelian) Marxism that emerged, ranging from Lukács to Korsch to the members of the Frankfurt school, increasingly emphasized experience as a mediating term in the relations between social structures and individual lives. ...

Following on a critique begun, in fact, by Engels, this humanist Marxism typically attempted to rethink (or at least problematize) the unidirectional causality implicit in the base/superstructure model and often focused on questions of meaning, experience, and individuality as mediations. ...

As the implications of this second appearance of a humanist Marxism began to be recognized, it became clear that cultural analysis needed to be concerned with all the structural and meaning-producing activities by which human life is created and maintained. — Swood100 (talk) 19:32, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I think you would need more than just the one source to convince other editors that "humanist Marxism" really means "cultural Marxism" and so we should see this discussion as relevant to the current article. Since subscribers to the CT are generally confusing Marxism with Postmodernism, it seems unlikely to me that they are actually referring to "humanist Marxism" in particular, which is pretty much the opposite tendency.

As far as the Phillips piece goes, it is clearly a piece of "analysis" that would be subject to WP:RSOPINION, and she is not a reliable source in this domain (notably, because she subscribes to the CT). Newimpartial (talk) 20:10, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Since subscribers to the CT are generally confusing Marxism with Postmodernism, it seems unlikely to me that they are actually referring to "humanist Marxism" in particular, which is pretty much the opposite tendency. I think that a great many people talking about “cultural Marxism” are not talking about the CT described in this article but are using the term loosely to describe some combination of political correctness, identity politics, a postmodern frame of mind, and/or a desire to ‘cancel’ those who disagree with them. This supposition seems especially reasonable with respect to an Orthodox Jew. The theory of this article, as I understand it, is that it doesn’t matter what they subjectively mean by “cultural Marxism” because that term has only one objective meaning. I think you would need more than just the one source to convince other editors that "humanist Marxism" really means "cultural Marxism" and so we should see this discussion as relevant to the current article. Perhaps if the source were saying something that seems inconceivable or preposterous, or if the reliability of the source were in doubt, one source might seem insufficient. But there is nothing inconceivable about this term in this context and I would be surprised if the reliability of this source could be impugned. Nevertheless, as to whether “humanist Marxism” and “cultural Marxism” refer to the same thing, see this article (emphasis added):

The main aim of the article is to suggest what and how a contemporary, revised version of humanism, inflected with critical realism and Marxism, can contribute to sociology. I focus primarily on two areas in which sociology is often found lacking today: theorizing the relationship between structure and agency, and deciding what to do with moral evaluations in sociological analyses. I argue that the solution to both lies in attempting to finally transcend the traditionally hostile and mutually exclusive paradigms of “humanist” or “cultural” Marxism on the one side and “anti-humanist” or “scientific” Marxism on the other. This enables us to carefully reinstate the agency of human subjects and the moral dimension, both of which were and still are dismissed by anti- or post-humanist social science, without neglecting the objective and causally relevant existence of social structures at the same time.

See also this article, which connects this concept to Lukacs and Korsch, just like the Grossberg & Nelson do (emphasis added):

Debates on Marx’s economics are easy to dismiss as obscure spats among technical specialists. This misunderstands their significance. “Economics without Marx” catalysed a broader trend, for which economics of any kind was a dispensable embarrassment. Recoiling from the mechanical materialism of the Second and Third Internationals, Western Marxists were drawn to dissident ideas on philosophy, politics, sociology or aesthetics from Gramsci, Lukacs or Korsch, ignoring equally challenging economic ideas from the likes of Grossman or Rosdolski.

“Cultural Marxism”, an extreme variant, sought in effect to free aesthetic criticism from all economic trappings. Its roots lie in the Institute for Social Research, endowed by multimillionaire Felix Weil, which on taking refuge from Nazi persecution in New York became an incubator for post-1968 Marxism. Kuhn (2007:186) records its directors’ hostility to the outstanding economic work of Institute member Henryk Grossman, arising from fear that its conclusions would alienate funders...

We can discard the idea, which has dogged Marxist theory and indeed provoked Cultural Marxism’s secession, that capitalism’s laws are mechanical or inevitable.

What this establishes is that the CT is not the only objective meaning of “cultural Marxism”. At a minimum, this needs to be pointed out in this article, as a disambiguation. But beyond that, what is the rationale for concluding that any use of “cultural Marxism” can only be a reference to the CT, especially when that involves the dubious assertion that an Orthodox Jew is promoting anti-Semitism? — Swood100 (talk) 23:37, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

The object of the conspiracy theory is "Cultural Marxism", not "cultural Marxism", and the article explains what it means. Ben Shapiro and Melanie Philips are not in any way discussing "cultural Marxism"/"Marxist humanism"; they are discussing the object of the conspiracy theory: the attempt to subvert Western values through cultural hegemony in the universities, or something like that.

No matter how much nostalgia you try to bring back for me, Swood, by reminding me of the delicious aroma of my first love (Marxist humanism), you will never make it relevant to this article, although there are many other articles where it is downright important. Newimpartial (talk) 00:13, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

The object of the conspiracy theory is "Cultural Marxism", not "cultural Marxism"

Search on the page for “cultural” and take a look at the references. Do we need to remove all the ones will a lower-case ‘c’?

Ben Shapiro and Melanie Philips are not in any way discussing "cultural Marxism"/"Marxist humanism"; they are discussing the object of the conspiracy theory: the attempt to subvert Western values through cultural hegemony in the universities, or something like that.

If you asked Ben Shapiro if he was talking about a theory that is anti-Semitic, he would say no. If there are two potential “objective” theories what is the justification for assigning him to the CT? Why are you saying that his subjective intention is suddenly relevant when you've been denying that all along? How does his subjective intention influence our conclusion as to whether he is promoting the CT? — Swood100 (talk) 00:39, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Then it's probably a good thing that Ben Shapiro is not a reliable source about himself, or Cultural Marxism. Cultural Marxism is based on a conspiracy theory dating back to at least the 19th century. Whether someone considers it sufficiently removed from, or disconnected enough from the inherent anti-Semitic -ness of it all, is not a topic suitable for encyclopedic evaluation in most cases. It's still a conspiracy theory with those origins, and those people are still promoting it. Their lack of awareness is not relevant. It's pretty simple--- we go with what reliable sources say about a subject. Why does it matter whether Shapiro would deny it's anti-Semitic? Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 00:55, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Why do we say that Shapiro's statements are a reference to the CT rather than to the version of "cultural Marxism" discussed by Nelson and Grossberg? — Swood100 (talk) 01:01, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Because they're two very different subjects. Shapiro is very obviously not referring to the obscure academic ephemera of Nelson and Grossberg. To say otherwise would be misrepresenting our sources. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 01:09, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Because he is talking about Marxist Culture War, not the hippy dippy world of 1960s Marxist humanists. There are indeed two "objective" movements that can be discussed in this context: (1) Marxist humanism and more generally Western Marxism, which were actual intellectual and political movements of the 20th century, and (2) "Cultural Marxism", which is a conspiracy theory used as a shibboleth in the Culture War. The former describes real phenomena and is seldom described in RS as "cultural Marxism"- compared to the use of other labels - and never as "Cultural Marxism". The object of the conspiracy theory is generally described as "Cultural Marxism", and even without the extra capital it refers to a cultural conspiracy to corrupt the yout' and prejudice them against Western values. You can tell which of these two references an author is making - Western Marxism or the "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory - based on what they actually write about. It isn't hard. Newimpartial (talk) 01:24, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I believe you are saying that we will examine the beliefs people have and then characterize them as holding either Belief A or Belief B depending on which one we think they are closest to, but we can’t characterize them as holding the actual belief they hold. So if they are closer to Belief A, then they get tarred as holding an anti-Semitic belief, whether they actually do or not, because that is a component of Belief A. Do I have this right? — Swood100 (talk) 16:18, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Neither the historical literature around Marxist humanism nor scholarship about the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory depends on "beliefs" in any particular way. People who are writing historical scholarship about Marxist humanism (and more broadly Western Marxism) are writing about what a set of thinkers said and wrote. People who are writing analysis of the "Cultural Marxism" CT are describing how that construct or rhetorical device was constructed (from a few key elements including antisemitism) and how it has been used. These topics do not overlap and are not identified in terms of the "beliefs" of those writing about them.

There are also people who believe in the Cultural Marxism CT. Some of them hold explicit antisemitic beliefs, while others explicitly oppose antisemitism (and still others express no public opinions about antisemitism one way or another). According to the RS on the topic, what these people believe in - like the Obama birthers and the 9/11 truthers - is a conspiracy theory, and this conspiracy theory is antisemitic in its origin and argumentation. Black Americans can be Obama truthers, and Jewish Americans can believe that Zionists brought down the twin towers: neither of those scenarios makes the CTs in question less racist or less antisemitic. So it is with the "Cultural Marxism" - we base our article on what reliable sources say, not on what anyone "believes". Newimpartial (talk) 16:41, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

No, when Ben Shapiro talks about “cultural Marxism” how do you know he is talking about the CT rather than about the version that evolved from “humanist Marxism”? Don’t you have to first analyze what he said and then assign it to one or the other? — Swood100 (talk) 18:27, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Newimpartial: Could you reply to the above? — Swood100 (talk) 21:00, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah; I analyze what he said and that is the basis of my statement, he is talking about Marxist Culture War, not the hippy dippy world of 1960s Marxist humanists. But it isn't a matter of "he has one belief, and the scholars have another" - it is a case where the actual published record allows a certain range of interpretations, but Shapiro doesn't accept that range of interpretations but instead believes a conspiracy theory, in the context of a perceived Culture war. But the people he thinks are on the "other side" of that war, who write about Marxist humanism etc., aren't offering a "theory" of postwar intellectual history to "believe in", they are offering an evidence-based account of actual events and writings. On this matter, at least, they are not "culture war"-ing at all. So to present the CT and the actual history as two competing beliefs or theories is, as I have said elsewhere, FALSEBALANCE of the worst kind. Newimpartial (talk) 21:34, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

As far as the Phillips piece goes, it is clearly a piece of "analysis" that would be subject to WP:RSOPINION The Phillips article is not labelled “opinion” like this one is. Why did you not object to that one? Furthermore, why would this article be unacceptable as an opinion piece? How do you distinguish the Phillips article from every other included article, on those grounds? and she is not a reliable source in this domain (notably, because she subscribes to the CT) Her article says:

Yet for stating the obvious about something that should concern all decent people committed to liberal values, she found herself disgustingly smeared by association with antisemitism and mass murder.

It doesn’t sound like she subscribes to an anti-Semitic CT, or do you read it differently? — Swood100 (talk) 00:51, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

She is making the argument of the conspiracy (Marxist Cultural Warfare!!) while denying that it is antisemitic. Most conspiracists claim to be describing a real phenomenon, and deny that they are spreading an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Their statements on this matter are not reliable.

As many WP editors have lamented, not all newspapers label their content into "opinion" and "news". Any thoughtful reader of the piece can tell from its use of evidence that the Phillips piece is "analysis", a.k.a. opinion, rather than investigative journalism.Newimpartial (talk) 01:24, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Swood100 Yawn, please stop WP:bludgeoning the debate, you've had your say, majority of editors are not convinced by your argument, move on. Bacondrum (talk) 01:04, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Coming late to the debate, I see no dead horse. It looks like the nub of the disagreement is that the term ‘Cultural Marxism’ was at one time a precise term, but is now used as a general criticism/insult for the kind of attitude which was once called ‘political correctness’. This is the kind of usage our readers are likely to have come across. It is, in fact, the usage I had come across, and I came to this article to find out what it was all about, since the expression seemed to be meaningless. Some editors may object to this use of the term, but, like all words and expressions, the meaning can change by use. The changed meaning explains why Jewish people such as Ben Shapiro and Melanie Phillips can use the term. The article is unrealistic in claiming that the term is always used in an anti-semitic way, and in this respect is misleading to readers. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:30, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Sweet6970, what you describe might be termed "cultural Marxism appropriation" - right-wing grifters appropriating a term because while everyone recognises political incorrectness as a dog-whistle for reactionary views and bigotry, most people are unaware that cultural Marxism is a conspiracy theory. In other words, it's classic IDW, or, to use a term from Usenet of yore, PISIP: Pseudo-Intellectual Self-Indulgent Penc. Penc is a ROT-13. Guy (help! - typo?) 12:43, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

JzG Am I correct in interpreting your comment as meaning that you actually agree with my point that the term is used in a way which is not explained in this article? Sweet6970 (talk) 13:54, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Any thoughtful reader of the piece can tell from its use of evidence that the Phillips piece is "analysis", a.k.a. opinion, rather than investigative journalism.

How do we objectively identify “opinion” or “analysis” pieces? Let’s take the first reference: Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe.By what objective criteria do we distinguish this one from the one in the Jerusalem Post? What about The Alt-Right's Favorite Meme is 100 Years Old? That one is labelled “opinion” right on it. What special treatment did you demand for it?

She is making the argument of the conspiracy (Marxist Cultural Warfare!!) while denying that it is antisemitic. Most conspiracists claim to be describing a real phenomenon, and deny that they are spreading an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Their statements on this matter are not reliable.

How can her statement about the theory she holds be not reliable? Do you mean that even though she writes “disgustingly smeared by association with antisemitism” we have no reason to suppose that she opposes anti-Semitism? This is not the type of assumption we normally make about what people write. Why is she different? She is saying that the belief that Jews are behind an evil plot to subvert American society is not necessarily a component of “Cultural Marxism” as understood by many people. Of course you understand this. It is undisputed in the case of Ben Shapiro, as it is with Jordan Peterson. Concerning Peterson, the Berlatsky article that is referenced even says:

Peterson isn't an ideological anti-Semite; there's every reason to believe that when he re-broadcasts fascist propaganda, he doesn't even hear the dog-whistles he's emitting.

If people say that they do not believe that there is an evil Jewish plot to subvert American society, why do you resist reporting this accurately, in accordance with the references? — Swood100 (talk) 16:04, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

First of all, please read WP:BLUDGEON and WP:SEALION, which this discussion is rapidly descending into.

Secondly, my own view is that WP:RSOPINION should always also be read in relation to WP:SPS, specifically in that statements by experts that would be RS if published on their blog, are also RS if published under an opinion masthead in a newspaper. For these cases, we look at who is writing and whether the evidence they use is in line with the norms of their professional community. In this way, we can easily tell the difference between Martin Jay's comments and those of Melanie Phillips, for example.

Finally, this isn't the Melanie Phillips article - in the latter, it might well be DUE to note that she has promoted the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory while denying that it is antisemitic (for one thing, it might make sense to invoke WP:ABOUTSELF in that context). But for the purpose of this article, the only way Melanie Phillips is relevant is as a garden variety conspiracy theorist who insists that her preferred conspiracy theory is real. She can't be a RS in how "Cultural Marxism is a real thing", because no such expertise exists because "Cultural Marxism" - as a cabal in the culture war opposing Western values - does not exist. That she believes it does cannot make her an expert in anything, and that she denies that it is antisemitic is also not relevant outside of a discussion of her personal beliefs. Since her beliefs are not in-scope for this article - except in so far as she is a verifiable supporter of the conspiracy theory - this simply isn't the place to discuss her personal opinions. The evident fact that not all the people Cultural Marxist CT supporters hold responsible for the corruption of our yout' are in fact Jews is irrelevant to the fundamentally false claim of an evil plot to subvert American society. I feel like I am listening to a puppet theatre where one puppet talks about this "evil plot" and another breaks in, "yes, but are they Jews?", and all the puppets continue to argue about how many of those involved in the evil plot are, or aren't, Jews. But the "evil plot" is still fictional, and the structure of that CT is still antisemitic regardless of arguments about the greater or lesser importance of Judaism within "Cultural Marxism".

As far as the beliefs of the Jordan Peterson hand puppet are concerned, they aren't notably relevant to this article either, although they might be worth parsing at Jordan Peterson. Newimpartial (talk) 17:02, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

For these cases, we look at who is writing and whether the evidence they use is in line with the norms of their professional community. In this way, we can easily tell the difference between Martin Jay's comments and those of Melanie Phillips, for example.

What evidence used by Melanie Phillips is not in line with the norms of her professional community.

she has promoted the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory while denying that it is anti-Semitic

This could be said about every source denying that Cultural Marxism is necessarily anti-Semitic. It begs the question by assuming its own conclusion. Any mention of "Cultural Marxism" is automatically a reference to the CT.

She can't be a RS in how "Cultural Marxism is real thing", because no such expertise exists because "Cultural Marxism" - as a cabal in the culture war opposing Western values - does not exist.

You’re misreading her. She acknowledges that there are many people who believe in what she calls “a demented conspiracy.” She refers to them as “neo-Nazis, white supremacists, antisemites and other conspiracy-theory fruitcakes”. These are the people who believe in a cabal. But then she says that there is also an actual political movement “propounded by far-left thinkers known as the ‘Frankfurt School,’ along with other Marxist theorists such as Antonin Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse and Saul Alinsky.” A political movement is not a cabal. Don’t you agree that “identity politics,” for example, is associated with a political movement? All experts agree that such a political movement does exist, and that is her position as well. She agrees with the RS that there is no real conspiracy, or cabal, except in the minds of “conspiracy-theory fruitcakes.” So your objection to her being an RS fails on this ground, right? Or do you think that a reference to a political movement can only be a reference to a cabal? — Swood100 (talk) 19:19, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

No, I am not misreading her. She says that, Yes, “cultural Marxism” surfaced in Nazi discourse as “cultural Bolshevism.” But it also has roots in an actual political philosophy propounded by far-left thinkers known as the “Frankfurt School,” along with other Marxist theorists such as Antonin Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse and Saul Alinsky. In other words, in spite of the antisemitic associations of the term, she claims that cultural Marxism ... has its roots in an actual philosphy and then cites the Frankfurt School, Gramsci, and Alinsky - who do not notably agree on anything - as "propounding" this political philosophy. This is still the conspiracy theory, folks, even though she uses a small "c", and making such claims devoid of any kind of evidence is not in line with the norms of her professional community, if we are to treat her as an expert in anything other than her own feelz opinions.

Phillips then goes on to argue that the Long march through the institutions was the actual plan based on this political philosophy, and that [t]his has been achieved to the letter particularly in the universities in the form of identity politics, victim culture, the progressive destruction of the traditional family, and moral and cultural relativism, in other words, the Culture War against Western values. (Personally, I find the accusation that "Cultural Marxism" has undermined the West by inculcating Nietzschean relativism particularly hilarious, especially since the last incarnation of actual Frankfurt School Marxism, Jurgen Habermas, is also one of the last effective defenders of Western liberal values against moral and cultural relativism. But I digress.)

What she has done here is reproduced the "Cultural Marxist" conspiracy theory in an unusually lucid formulation, but as factually wrong and devoid of evidence as all other versions of the CT must inevitably be. And please don't misread her statement about neo-Nazis, white supremacists, antisemites and other conspiracy-theory fruitcakes - she isn't saying that she has a view of Cultural Marxism that is fundamentally different from theirs; rather, she is promoting an equivalence between the "Cultural Marxism" theory and "anti-globalism" and arguing that neither is necessarily more antisemitic than the other. Which reliable sources do not actually support, sadly. Newimpartial (talk) 19:57, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh, and identity politics may well proceed from one, or more, political movements, but it does not proceed from (imaginary) "Cultural Marxism" or from (real) "Marxist humanism" or from Western Marxism in any of its other varieties, like the Birmingham School or the Frankfurt School. Or at least, that is what the reliable sources say, and we should follow them. Newimpartial (talk) 21:46, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

The following, written by Andrew Sandlin, is an example of a source that defines “Cultural Marxism” in a way similar to the way that many people use the term. There is no anti-Semitism. There is simply an explanation of an evolution of Marxism. Is there any objection to adding this source to the article, with the statement that not all sources include anti-Semitism as a component?

Here, then, is a provisional definition of Cultural Marxism. Sidney Hook defines it as ...a philosophy of human liberation. It seeks to overcome human alienation, to emancipate man from repressive social institutions, especially economic institutions that frustrate his true nature, and to bring him into harmony with himself, his fellow men, and the world around him so that he can overcome his estrangements and express his true essence through creative freedom. ...

Today, class consciousness has morphed into “identity politics.” Under Cultural Marxism, the conflicting classes have been expanded from the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to include men versus women, whites and Asians versus blacks and/or Hispanics, children versus parents, millennials versus the middle aged, wealthy versus poor, “middle class” cosmopolitans versus nationalists, and other binary categories. Cultural Marxists portray one pole of the binary (women, homosexuals, millennials, blacks) as oppressed. Then they demand that the state liberate these groups from their oppressors.

Maybe this guy is wrong about the Marxist roots of the phenomena he describes, but it still represents a widely-held viewpoint. — Swood100 (talk) 18:19, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Well, I won't speak for other editors (of course), but this was published in a journal specializing in biblical truth ... as it relates to law and legal institutions. This is about as relevant as citing a Lacanian psychoanalytic journal in a discussion of biblical inerrancy - which is to say, not especially relevant.

Sandlin begins by "quoting" Sidney Hook, who never wrote anything about "Cultural Marxism" or "cultural Marxism", and then makes a nonsequetur leap into binaries constituting oppressed groups - which might have something in common with Post-Marxism, but nothing to so wtih either "Cultural" or "Western Marxism" - and then refers to the liberating role of the State in a way that sounds like Maoism. In other words, Sandlin is engaged in what is generally denoted in the field as making things up, but insofar as he is writing about anything outside his own imagination, it is the Cultural Marxism CT as evoked by Peterson, Shapiro, Bolsonaro et al. Newimpartial (talk) 18:33, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Well, I won't speak for other editors (of course), but this was published in a journal specializing in biblical truth ... as it relates to law and legal institutions. This is about as relevant as citing a Lacanian psychoanalytic journal in a discussion of biblical inerrancy - which is to say, not especially relevant.

That would be true if his explanation of the origin and development of Cultural Marxism were biblically-based or relied on biblical concepts, but it is not. Surely you are not saying that a Christian cannot be a RS. The fact that he finds consequences for Christians is irrelevant.

Sandlin begins by "quoting" Sidney Hook, who never wrote anything about "Cultural Marxism" or "cultural Marxism"

According to Sandlin, Sidney Hook wrote this for an article on Marxism, in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Philip P. Wiener, ed., 157 (1973).

and then makes a nonsequetur leap into binaries constituting oppressed groups

I’m sorry, didn’t you see the ellipsis following the first paragraph?

which might have something in common with Post-Marxism, but nothing to so wtih either "Cultural" or "Western Marxism" - and then refers to the liberating role of the State in a way that sounds like Maoism. In other words, Sandlin is engaged in what is generally denoted in the field as making things up

So you disagree with his analysis. I appreciate that you have expertise in this area but are you citing your own expertise to contradict the RS status of this source? Even if you are, whether or not the analysis is correct is irrelevant. There are a number of people who trace “identity politics” back to a Marxist source. The relevant thing is that they have a theory that is different from the CT described in this article. — Swood100 (talk) 19:56, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

You have misunderstood me. I was not arguing that Christians cannot write accurately about Marxism, I was arguing that publication in a journal focused on biblical truth does not ensure that the resulting article is an RS on a topic that is not related to its mandate - to expand on this a little, the peer review processes of this journal were clearly unable to catch numerous errors of fact and scholarship, which is unsurprising since it is not the editors' areas of expertise.

Sidney Hook was writing about Marxism (actually "libertarian Marxism" if I remember correctly) but Sandlin substituted "Cultural Marxism". To AGF as much as possible, this is still a fundamental error of fact. And I was not basing comments on your quotes but on his actual argument; there is simply no basis for moving from Marxism to Post-Marxism (a term Sandlin doesn't use, perhaps because he doesn't know about it) to a kind of Maoism, and Sandlin does so without producing any evidence that anyone made the series of moves he is describing, much less that they were following some kind of "Cultural Marxist" strategy in doing so. If you wanted to see an analysis like this incorporated in this article, Swood, you wouid have to find a source that has some of the basic marks of reliability (professional reputation, relevant expertise, and effective peer review), which has not been true of anything you have presented so far. Newimpartial (talk) 20:09, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh Jesus, no. Not a reliable source. At best that opinion is fringe and undue. I'm starting to think an ANI report is coming soon. Swood, you are bludgeoning the debate, this is disruptive. Please stop filling the talk page with long winded and frivolous arguments. Bacondrum (talk) 20:35, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I second this. Swood100... Newimpartial has done a fantastic job of providing you with a cogent, detailed, and knowledgeable analysis of all this in response to the hypotheticals you’ve been posing. Which even I personally found somewhat edifying, I’ll admit. But it’s not something they were required to do in this situation past a certain point, and I think it’s ultimately just a courtesy; them assuming good faith, and trying to be helpful to you. No credible source makes the connections you’re positing here. The goalposts of your arguments keep moving, and you’re setting up straw men for other editors to knock down.

I’m going to assume less good faith than Newimpartial here at this point, and say that you’re probably not confused, or likely seeking any substantive clarification about the article text. From what I’m reading, it seems to me that you’re looking to make the case that Cultural Marxism is more than a conspiracy theory, but just might be a plausible state of affairs, woven from (excuse me for speaking figuratively) disparate threads of various schools of thought in social philosophy. There’s no tapestry of historical development to be found there, as Newimpartial spelled out; just a “yarn” spun by a few people, that falls apart when you actually pull at those threads.

Or that you also want to make the case that Shapiro is a credible commentator, who just might actually be discussing the theoretical framework underpinning Neo-Marxist thought, rather than subscribing to and propagating a conspiracy theory (as our sources say he is)... Even though he ascribes various motives to a variety of actors that he says undermine “western civilization” in the, well, manner of a conspiracy theory.

Both? Neither? I’d also point out that, assuming I’ve not misread, that these two hypothetical “hypotheses” that you’re proposed, out of several such lines of questioning (in the form of begging the question), are somewhat mutually exclusive, and even contradictory. Beyond that, neither line of argumentation is relevant to article improvement.

As I said, most of what I’m seeing here are moving goalposts, and straw men. It’s in no way conducive to building an article. WP:FRINGE applies to this article, and we can’t be unclear. We can’t use original research, such as speculating at what various people could or might have meant (or been thinking), and we can’t indulge in WP:SYNTHESIS of sources to make a point about something they themselves did not directly make. Beyond the hypotheticals, I’m also not seeing any actual edit proposals. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 02:56, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

• Does anyone object to collapsing this section? Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 09:19, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

  I'd give it, say, 24 hours, but after that I have no objection. Newimpartial (talk) 15:30, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Is this article open to including scholarly disputation of the premise of the article? The authors of Baudelaire Contra Benjamin: A Critique of Politicized Aesthetics and Cultural Marxism (2019) include the following in the preface to their book:

Finally, toward the completion of thIs work it came to our attention that the term "cultural Marxism," which, for decades, had been commonly used as more or less synonymous with critical theory, Western Marxism, and, cultural studies, when focused upon class, is now widely said to to be a figment of the imagination of right wing anti-Semitic crackpots. Wayne is old enough to recall the enthusiasm during the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s which greeted the reception, translation, and application of writings by the Frankfurt School, Benjamin, Gramsci, and others for applying Marxism to cultural critique. Thus he was originally bemused when he read Samuel Moyn's opinion piece, “The Alt-right's favorite Meme Is 100 Years Old,” for the New York Times (November 13, 2018), which after posing the question "What Is Cultural Marxism," assures the readers that "Nothing of the kind actually exists." As it turned out Moyn had been repeating an argument that, as far as we know, first appeared in the Intelligence Report of the Southern Poverty Law Centre in the essay "'Cultural Marxism’ Catching On" by Bill Berkowitz. What triggered Berkowitz's essay was the fact that a number of conservatives had already identified critical theory as an attempt to destroy American values, although the piece set in train the idea that because the Frankfurt school's leaders were Jewish, anyone who thought critical theory/cultural Marxism was socially toxic was an anti-Semite. The piece was as polemical and unscholarly as the "anti-cultural Marxist" authors it criticized. It was true, though, that an increasing number of conservatives, as well as “crackpots,” were saying that a range of destructive Marxist ideas, developed by the Frankfurt School, were thriving in the humanities, and having socially and culturally penicious affects. Whether the influence of the Frankfurt School is good or bad is a matter for disputation, but that it has been very influential in the humanities, especially in literary studies is indisputable.

In any case, Berkowitz's account has not only found itself repeated many times, but in December 2014 the Wikipedia entry on "Cultural Marxism," which, though brief, and uncontentious, was deleted. The decision was taken by three members of the Wikipedia board having reviewed a small forum (which has been preserved on Reddit) disputing the merits of the entry. The arguments in favor of deleting the entry were passionate, but grossly methodologically deficient in appraising what counts as "evidence" for the meaning of any term, or existence of a practice. The decision was made that anyone searching for "cultural Marxism" on Google was to be directed to the section "Cultural Marxism Conspiracy Theory" in the entry on the Frankfurt School (which still stands), though there is an entry on "cultural Marxism" in RationalWiki. The "RationaIWiki" entry also focuses upon the idea that the term is used by conspiracy theorists, while it concedes that "extremely rarely . . . [it] refers to an obscure critique of popular culture by the Frankfurt School." The fact that the term was littered throughout scholarly literature for decades can quickly be seen by entering it in Google scholar. It had also been commonly used as conversational shorthand for decades and, in all likelihood, even before the term initially appeared in print in 1973 in Trent Schroyer’s The Critique of Domination: The Origins and Development of Critical Theory. That a collection of interviews on North America's leading Marxist Literary theorist, Fredric Jameson, edited by Ian Buchanan in 2007, could appear under the name Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism, should confirm what anybody who has watched its evolution knows: that the term was not originally a pejorative term, it was purely descriptive, and was used rather loosely to cover a common approach to literary and cultural studies of the sort pioneered in critical theory by the Frankfurt School but also In British Marxist literary studies as found in Raymond Williams and his students.

After agonizing about whether to keep the term "cultural Marxism" subtitle in a book which (a) disputes the merits of making Marxian categories central to the study of literature in general, and Baudelaire, in particular, and (b) which identifies weaknesses in Marx's concepts of the nature of society, class and the economy, which are retained by Benjamin, we have decided not to cave in to a politically motivated rewriting of the history of language. We reject outright that we are dog whistling right wingers or anti-Semites, or that we use this book to advocate any social or political policy that could be designated as right (or any other) wing. This book offers a critique of politicized aesthetics, in general, and the problems of deploying Marx's ideas for the study of Baudelaire in so far as Baudelaire's ideas are too interesting to be held prisoner to flawed socioeconomic categories. — Swood100 (talk) 02:41, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

By the way, in Positioning Critical Educational Studies within the Field of Education: Rethinking Lagemann’s An Elusive Science, Isaac Gottesman identifies cultural Marxism with Marxist Humanism and with the opposition of the academic left "to rapidly expanding global capitalism and concomitant state sponsored oppression". If people come to this page looking for more on that shouldn’t they be sent to either Marxist Humanism or Western Marxism?

Gottesman writes that the Western Marxist tradition of Lukacs, Korsch, Gramsci and others, often labeled critical Marxism, humanist Marxism, and cultural Marxism, found its way into academia and underwent a revival in the 1960s and 1970s among radicals who "were looking for new language and frameworks to help them understand the complexities of culture and social structure and to help them strategize opposition to rapidly expanding global capitalism and concomitant state sponsored oppression. In the United States, as the 1970s wore on and the fragmented New Left became an Academic Left searching for answers to address the rise of neoconservatism and Reagan, the critical Marxist tradition became a staple for left academics attempting to theorize resistance in a post-Fordist world." See the section "The Critical Turn" starting on page six.

See also the essay by Roger D. Markwick in Saluting Aron Gurevich: Essays in History, Literature and Other Related Subjects which connects Western Marxism, humanist Marxism and cultural Marxism:

Marxist cultural analysis, as it emerged in post-war Western and Eastern Europe, was a reaction to the tendency within Soviet-style Marxism to treat culture as a mere secondary epiphenomenon of economic relations, of classes and of modes of production. Western European Marxists led the way. The humanist Marxism of the New Left, which first emerged in the late 1950s, increasingly engaged with anthropological conceptions of culture that emphasized human agency: language, communication, experience and consciousness. By the 1960s and 1970s Western cultural Marxism was engaged in a dialogue with structuralism, post-structuralism and semiotics.(citing Nelson and Grossberg)

Furthermore, the index of the above book equates "Cultural Marxism" with "Humanist Marxism". — Swood100 (talk) 03:04, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

• Swood100, please stop with the walls of text and bludgeoning the debate with arguments that have little or no support. Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass, This repetitive and long winded attempt to find some obscure source to support WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE claims is tired, and then some. This is pretty blatant civil POV pushing. Time to move on, please. I won't take you to the admins, but someone else will get jack of this soon enough. Bacondrum (talk) 03:16, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Look, I provided seven sources from scholarly journals (references 4 –10) to the effect that there is a recognized, legitimate meaning for “cultural Marxism” that is different from the anti-Semitic CT meaning, and there are countless others that I would be happy to supply. I know that it’s a lot easier to simply reply with an ad hominem and spew out WP clichés but why don’t you engage honestly? What fault do you find with these sources? Why no disambiguation? — Swood100 (talk) 15:18, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

• Other editors, is it okay to archive or collapse this long winded section that contributes little or nothing to improving the article? Bacondrum (talk) 03:18, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
• "we have decided not to cave in to a politically motivated rewriting of the history of language." That's funny, these academics, and their insular little research bubble, nobody really cares about this distinction expect a small cadre of similar academics, how many copies will that book actually sell? oh wait... none, it will end up in university deposit libraries, buried in the stacks, checked out by someone once a year. In providing a contemporary definition of the term, Wikipedia is addressing common usage, real world usage, no one is "re-writing" the "history of language," academics can moan all they like about it, if they cared enough, maybe they would have put some energy into sorting the matter out here, rather than writing prefaces to each other that "agonize" over how to deal with people applying the term in a context they don't like. Acousmana (talk) 13:13, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

OK, so scholarly journals aren’t best-sellers, but terms such as “humanist Marxism” and “Western Marxism” are only found in such journals and yet we have WP articles for those. So I have trouble understanding your argument that an equivalent term used in those circles is not important enough to be mentioned in Wikipedia. But apart from how widely read these scholars are do you have a principled reason to denigrate such observations as “The fact that the term was littered throughout scholarly literature for decades can quickly be seen by entering it in Google scholar. It had also been commonly used as conversational shorthand for decades...”? As far as coming and sorting the matter out here is concerned, what they say as a Wikipedia editor carries no weight. It’s what they say in the scholarly journals that carries weight for Wikipedia purposes. — Swood100 (talk) 15:53, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

"what they say as a Wikipedia editor carries no weight." If they don't contribute to an article's construction, and help shape discussion around issues they feel exist, then yes, no weight. It's also not a given that material published in an academic journal "carries weight," widely cited/high impact rating, then perhaps. Acousmana (talk) 16:42, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

• I would say, go ahead and collapse it now. All of these "new sources" clearly reflect the distinction between "cultural Marxism" as a synonym for Marxist humanism or the cultural turn, and "cultural Marxism" as a conspiracy theory/trope (in spite of their handwringing that one could be confused for the other). There is no actual confusion between these except among a small number of strongly motivated wikipedia editors. Newimpartial (talk) 13:23, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

the distinction between "cultural Marxism" as a synonym for Marxist humanism or the cultural turn, and "cultural Marxism" as a conspiracy theory/trope

If you recognize that there is such a distinction, and that “cultural Marxism” is used in the academic literature as a synonym for Marxist humanism, then why doesn’t this article include a disambiguation that sends the reader to the appropriate article? Do you find some fault with the sources? If I have provided an insufficient number I could supply many more that show “cultural Marxism” being used in a non-CT, nonpejorative sense, all from scholarly journals. Why the resistance? Should I start a new topic on the question of disambiguation? — Swood100 (talk) 15:14, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Swood100, what do you even actually propose? We already have articles about small-c cultural Marxism as "a synonym for Marxist humanism or the cultural turn" and capital-c Cultural Marxism as "a conspiracy theory/trope." Do you want that Cultural Marxism be a redirect to Critical theory, Marxist humanism, or whatever? I do not think that is possible because Cultural Marxism is overwhelmingly used to refer to the conspiracy theory and because we would give credence to the conspiracy theory that a movement by that name actually existed, when scholarly analysis has proved that is not the case. Do you propose that we add a hatnote and distinguish template where we explain the difference between "cultural Marxism" as a synonym from Marxist humanism (with cultural Marxism meaning a Marxist approach of culture, not the culture war the conspiracy theory entails, rather than an actual movement, the same way there are Marxist approaches to criminology, films, etc.) and "Cultural Marxism" as a reference to the conspiracy theory? Davide King (talk) 16:13, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@Davide King: I can't find the Wikipedia article 'cultural Marxism' (i.e. not the conspiracy theory) which you refer to. Sweet6970 (talk) 17:03, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

One more time: this article is about "Cultural Marxism", the conspiracy theory, and not "cultural Marxism", the beat-generation and hippie humanist vibe. Reliable sources do not confuse these, and do not use "Cultural Marxism" to refer to the cultural turn in Marxism (capitalizing a term in an index, Swood, is not the same as creating a proper noun).

Un-reliable sources, mostly conspiracy theorists and mostly on YouTube, do confuse these things as a small part of their much larger-scale "confusions" in which Marxism, poststructuralism, Nietzchean relativism and identity politics all appear to be manifestations of one underlying attempt by nefarious agents to undermine "Western civilization". This is nonsense, and there is no reason to give credence to this nonsense by adding in parenthesis that "some Marxists made a cultural turn after WWII" or "some thinkers abandoned Marxism and moved to identity politics" or "some poststructutalists are post-Marxists and some poststructuralists are Nietzscheans". Each and every one of these would represent original research in the context of the CT, and would be UNDUE for mention in an article about the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory.

If any non-marine mammal actually thinks readers are coming to this article expecting to find Western Marxism or Critical theory and need better signposts to their goal, I think that could be managed in the lede text, without creating a redirect that might appear to most readers as signposted a "real" Cultural Marxist threat to western values, versus the antisemitic CT version. That's not reality, folks, and we shouldn't give that framing any of the trappings of reality.

As a postscript, WP really does need some work on Birmingham School of Cultural Studies article, which currently offers more institutional than intellectual history, while I think the DUE treatment would be the opposite. I won't blame the conspiracy theorists (or Team Baudelaire) for that, though. Newimpartial (talk) 17:08, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

References

This article is becoming an essay

This is a nice work despite the difficulty of writing on the subject, but this article is mostly an essay, and precludes information of the reader on cultural marxism (major marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci is not mentioned even once in the article).

I'm not offering any readymade solutions to avoid pandering to the antisemitic conspiracy theory in question, but the whole concept of this article should be in question. Pm3003 (talk) 11:17, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I believe you may be looking for Western Marxism, the Frankfurt School, the Birmingham School, etc. Are these links not as prominent as they should be, given that this article concerns the conspiracy theory? Newimpartial (talk) 16:12, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

That's because cultural Marxism isn't something that exists or existed in the real world but only in the imagination of conspiracy theorists. We can therefore only give as much attention to Gramsci as they did. Usually they provide a superficial analysis of Marxist writers, then tie them to current issues such as transsexuals using bathrooms. TFD (talk) 03:54, 30 November 2020 (UTC)