It’s absolutely insane that “not everyone should be able to vote” is something a political candidate can say and still get people to hold their noses and vote for her.
https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1665525934580015104?s=46&t=8YxmIZtIVphjDW1pnpmmuA
DeSantis recently defined woke as a form of cultural Marxism. I have no idea what cultural Marxism is, figured it was just made up word salad aimed at using some key words that people don’t like.
I got bored and googled cultural Marxism. Turns out that while some people do use the phrase, it is most popular as an anti-semitic conspiracy theory.
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This inspired me to google. The wiki is fairly extensive, and it’s revealing to see where this language is getting popular traction now:
Another potential piece of the puzzle: the frankfurt school created “critical theory.” many of these philosophers were jewish, or at least of jewish descent.
this “critical theory” has a very specific meaning, and as far as i can tell has never been opposed to the idea of objectivity. in fact it argues that reason has lost too much objectivity. it is heavily influence by marx, but in a broader philosophical sense.
critical theory also has a broader meaning, in the context of post modernism. the subjectivity of language is stressed. it also is often very marxist. this heavily influenced critical race theory.
i don’t know my philosophy well enough to understand how “critical theory” got its broader meaning. nor do i understand how the narrower vs broader “critical theory” influenced critical race theory.
but this is probably the source of the comment.
ADDED: i have also seen a number of what i consider to be pseudo intellectual conservative summaries of philosophical history, in which they confuse the narrower and broader meaning of “critical theory.” and then they frame all of this as a marxist attach on traditional anglo-american enlightenment values.
Cultural Marxism to a conservative means the government is going to tell you what to say and think. Marxism is when the government controls the means of production. Cultural Marxism means the government defines the culture.
This may indeed be your definition and the definition for some, but I don’t think this is remotely close to what it means to much of the alt right or MAGA advocates. That crowd believe the government should define the culture. Who you can sleep with, what medical procedures you can have, what books you can read,..should all be proscribed by the government.
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Remember that marxism doesn’t only mean the government controlling production.
It can also mean interpreting history as being motivated primarily by material considerations, as opposed to ideas for example. From a philosophical and academic standpoint, i think this is the more important influence.
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Under that definition, it doesn’t remotely make sense for DeSantis to say woke is a type of cultural Marxism. Disney making a movie the way they want to or Target selling merchandise that they want to sell isn’t the government defining the culture, but is woke according to DeSantis.
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In other candidate news, I just learned that Doug Burgum, yes that Doug Burgum, is going to announce his candidacy on Wednesday.
Edit: Candidacy for President, just in case you aren’t sure who he is.
Woke is simple, anything Conservatives don’t agree with is woke.
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Logical consistency is not a requirement.
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+1.
I expect a lot of 1984 slogans this election cycle.
The Republican Party needs the government to brainwash you, in order to protect you from being brainwashed.
It’s time to start burning books to protect the public library from cancel culture!
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Im just explaining what it means to them. No one thinks they are being pushy when they are pushing their own beliefs on others. They do however notice it acutely when it is being done to them.
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They sure didn’t notice the first time, though.
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Cultural Marxism is when the government makes you do things you don’t want to do or stops you from doing things that you want to do.
When the government makes other people do things they don’t want to do or stops them from doing things that they want to do but you agree with the government, that’s called Making America Great Again.
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I can understand conservatives feeling like economic forces are trying to impose alien values on them, or at least on their children.
At one point, there was an old truism that Democrats wanted to work in the 50s, while Republicans wanted to live there.
I’d say that now, Democrats want the government to protect people from the full unfettered economic power of companies through the welfare state, while some Republicans want the government to protect people from companies’ unfettered cultural power.
To my mind, it is not really the same because it is much more dangerous for the government to interfere with companies’ cultural products than to intervene through a welfare state. But I understand the impulse.
Perhaps Trump can legitimately claim fake news this time
TIL that there are DeSantis campaign flags. They look a lot like Trump flags. Unfortunately the context is a picture of a bunch of Nazis outside of DisneyWorld. I wonder if DeSantis will refuse to condemn them again.
I honestly thought you were saying that the Nazi flags were the Desantis campaign flags.
I guess they sort of are…
