Talk:Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory

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Frequently asked questions

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Frequently asked questions about Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory

Q1: Why is this topic called a "conspiracy theory" in the title?

A1: Because that's what the reliable sources call it, and Wikipedia follows what reliable, independent, secondary sources say. See the sources listed in the footnotes in the lead of the article, for example.

Q2: Why is it labeled "far-right" and "antisemitic" in the first sentence? Doesn't that show a biased, leftist point of view?

A2: See answer #1; because that's what the reliable sources call it; see the citations for the first sentence.

Q3: Dworkin (1997) has the term in the title of his book, so the field clearly must exist.

A3: Not if he's the first one to talk about it. Dworkin said (on page 3) that "My account is the first intellectual history to study British cultural Marxism conceived as a coherent intellectual discipline". If he's the first, then either it's not a preexisting field, or no one has discovered or named it before him. Either way, that would be a different topic; this article is about the conspiracy theory dating to the 1990s.

Q4: I came here to read (or edit) about scholars who apply Marxist theory to the study of culture.

A4: Much of this is covered at a different article, Marxist cultural analysis.

Q5: Why is this labeled "antisemitic"? Plenty of people involved with the Frankfurt school were Jewish!

A5: This article is about the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory dating to the 1990s, and the reliable sources consistently identify it as antisemitic. The Frankfurt school is a different topic, and dates back to Germany in the 1920s.

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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

David Auerbach (2014-12-11). "Encyclopedia Frown". Slate. Recently, an adequate and fairly neutral page on 'Cultural Marxism,' which traced the history of Marxist critical theory from Lukács to Adorno to Jameson, simply disappeared thanks to the efforts of a single editor.
Russell Blackford (2015-07-27). "Cultural Marxism and our current culture wars: Part 1". The Conversation.
Russell Blackford (2015-08-02). "Cultural Marxism and our current culture wars: Part 2". The Conversation.
McKinney, Kara (2021-11-29). "Tipping Point". One America News Network.
Alexander Riley (2022-05-12). "On Cultural Marxism, the Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory? Woke Deception at Wikipedia". Minding the Campus.
Shuichi Tezuka (2023-12-11). "Introducing Justapedia". Quillette.
Paul Gottfried (March 19, 2025). "Twisting the truth: Wikipedia's ongoing misinformation war". TheBlaze.com. Retrieved March 20, 2025.

A warning about certain sources: There are two sources on the subject of "Cultural Marxism" that represent a citogenesis or circular reporting risk to Wikipedia as they plagiarize verbatim directly from an outdated draft that came from Wikipedia, which can be found here (2006 revision here). The sources are N.D. Arora's Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2013) and A.S. Kharbe's English Language And Literary Criticism (2009); both are from publishers located in New Delhi and should be avoided to prevent a citogenesis incident.

Sources should be more accessible

For a controversial subject like this, it should be encouraged to have sources linking to accessible websites that aren't paywalled or have to be viewed through academic journals or books. Yourlocallordandsavior (talk) 10:28, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That’s not our problem and we can do nothing about it. Dronebogus (talk) 10:44, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On paywalled sources, see WP:PAYWALL. Sadly the WP:BESTSOURCES are not always open access and for a contentious topic we should use best sources. I don't see excessive use of paywalled sources here. Are there specific contentious factual claims we make here that you are concerned about the sourcing of? BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:08, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Academic journals and book are generally the best sources. A lot of them are viewable through the Wikipedia Library. TarnishedPath^talk 14:20, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cultural Marxism was highly influential throughout Europe and the Western world, especially in the 1960s when Marxian thought was at its most prestigious and procreative. Theorists like Roland Barthes and the Tel Quel group in France, Galvano Della Volpe, Lucio Colletti, and others in Italy, Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton, and cohort of 1960s cultural radicals in the English-speaking world, and a large number of theorists throughout the globe used cultural Marxism to develop modes of cultural studies that analyzed the production, interpretation, and reception of cultural artifacts within concrete socio-historical conditions that had contested political and ideological effects and uses. One of the most famous and influential forms of cultural studies, initially under the influence of cultural Marxism, emerged within the Centre for contemporary cultural studies in Birmingham, England within a group often referred to as the Birmingham School.

Source Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies Douglas Kellner (http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/) Isaw (talk) 13:19, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

https://www.pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/articles.html Isaw (talk) 13:26, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Isaw From the sources presented to date (1) the primary name given to the field of study you're talking about was at no time "C/cultural Marxism"; it was usually called "Cultural Studies"; and (2) for the last 20 or 25 years, the clear primary topic for the phrase "Cultural Marxism" is the far-right trope/conspiracy theory, which has little or nothing to do with (Marxist) Cultural Studies as it existed in 1990s academia. The titles of a couple of publications in the 1980s and 1990s have no impact on either of those well-sourced conclusions. Newimpartial (talk) 15:56, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why has the info about the Barnes review been taken off?

William S. Lind gave a speech about the topic for The Barnes Review, which was primarily a holocaust denial magazine run by Willis Carto... seems like a pretty obvious way to prove the theory was popularized by White Supremacists. 117.102.129.40 (talk) 02:29, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah, sources:

https://web.archive.org/web/20020628141751/http://www.barnesreview.org/Conference/

https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/cultural-marxism-catching/

117.102.129.40 (talk) 02:32, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's an academic source on this too. Talks about The Barnes Review on pages 13 to 14.

[1]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0031322X.2024.2373578?scroll=top&needAccess=true 2A0A:EF40:4E:2301:D1FC:B58A:8048:1B72 (talk) 15:01, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cultural Marxism was not a white supremacist conspiracy theory. It was an established academic field in education in the 1980s and 90s. I would say most populated by leftist or left leaning academics. I know because I was in that field. I can supply sources. There were conferences and books discussing cultural marxism. The revisionism of cultural marxism being a conspiracy theory is a later development. It is very easy to check if such references exist. Isaw (talk) 11:51, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the academic topic, see: Marxist cultural analysis. This isn't revisionism, there certainly is a conspiracy theory pushed by the Heritage Foundation and Jordan Peterson, among others. 1101 (talk) 19:33, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

https://www.pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/articles.html clearly shows Cultural Marxism as an academic field in education in the 1970s and 1980s Isaw (talk) 13:27, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Isaw I'm afraid you aren't reading those sources correctly: from a quick perusal, precisely *none* of them establish that "Cultural Marxism" twas the name of an academic field in the 1990s (or earlier). Newimpartial (talk) 15:45, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The one entitled "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies" does, I think, unless I'm misunderstanding your point NI. @Isaw–You're right, of course, but what's your point? I mean, what change do you want to see here on Wikipedia? This is an article about the conspiracy theory, not the thing Kellner is talking about in that article. Says so right in the title. (To me, the main problem, if there is one, is that cultural Marxism redirects here.) ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:15, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ErikHaugen that source doesn't establish a field called "Cultural Marxism". If you could establish a field just by including a phrase in a book title, there would be a lot more academic fields! Newimpartial (talk) 23:34, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like you either didn't read the article or are making a subtle point that I'm missing, like, it isn't a "field of study" but is instead a <something similar to field of study>? I don't get it. It certainly isn't the only name for the thing, is that what you mean? We already have articles about it under different names.

Anyway, this guy Keller at least is using the term not to refer to any kind of conspiracy, but instead the other meaning that is at least adjacent to how e.g. Shapiro or Peterson use the term. For whatever that is worth :) ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 13:25, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ErikHaugen the subtle point is that Kellner uses "cultural Marxism" to mean "Marxian theory (used) to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production" - this is an application of Marxism, like political Marxism or economic Marxism, not a "field of study". The "Cultural Marxism" as a cultural or pooitical project, that Sapiro or Peterson talk about, is the conspiracy by definition, and in that sense is neither a field of study nor an "application of Marxism" à la Kellner. Newimpartial (talk) 14:48, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree that Peterson and Sapiro are using the term in the way that this article explains. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:26, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]