Brief: The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy Theory (w/AJA Woods)
AJA Woods (The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy) joins Matthew to trace how "cultural Marxism" mutated from Nazi "cultural Bolshevism" and the British Union of Fascists' attacks on modernist art, through Lyndon LaRouche's CIA-brainwashing lore, into Paul Weyrich and William Lind's 1990s "political correctness" rebrand, Pat Buchanan and the Tea Party's free-floating panic, Andrew Breitbart's arugula jokes, before finally landing as Christopher Rufo's anti-CRT crusade and James Lindsay's "Race Marxism."
Woods argues the throughline isn't honest scholarship on the Frankfurt School but a recurring move: relabel any liberation struggle—civil rights, feminism, trans rights, climate action—as an elite conspiracy, so its gains can be revoked as "foreign" corruption. Should sane people keep participating in these "debates" or refuse the frame and point to material stakes instead?
Show Notes
Jack Z. Bratich, Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture
Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism
James Lindsay, Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis
