"Cultural Marxism"

The Right uses “Marxism” to describe everything from LGBTQ rights to corporate diversity measures. It’s a deeply confused definition. But it’s not wrong about one thing: Marxists do indeed want to dismantle all forms of oppression.

The American right’s long tradition of red-baiting has always involved branding any kind of efforts at progressive social change, from the mild liberal variety to the genuinely radical, as socialist or communist. One of the most conspiratorial forms of this idea — with roots in the Nazis’ antisemitic theory of “Judeo-Bolshevism” — goes under the name “cultural Marxism.” That’s the theory that Jewish leftists fleeing Nazi Germany, including Frankfurt School theorists, plotted to subtly indoctrinate Americans in Marxist ideology, which they intentionally and surreptitiously rebranded in less-scary “cultural” forms like feminism and black liberation.

In other words, radical Jewish immigrant professors are behind all the movements for greater civil rights and social equality, which are actually a secret vehicle for the imposition of Soviet-style communism in the United States. There’s no evidence to back up this conspiracy theory, but that hasn’t interfered with its staying power. The cultural Marxist is just too attractive to the Right, tying together many of its favorite bogeymen into a neat story. The theory might not possess the mythology of the QAnon universe, but its utility for right-wing ideologues has kept it in play for the better part of a century.