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In 2011, when far-right terrorist Anders Breivik murdered 77 peoplethe majority of whom were young Norwegian Labor Party membersin the massacre on Norways Utoya island, he justified his actions as part of the fight against Muslim and Marxist attacks on the West. His thought (if one wants to call it that) subscribed to the theory of cultural Marxism, according to which feminism, the LGTBI movement, environmentalism, atheism, multiculturalism, etc. are working together to destroy the free world. These elements have managed to inject the fatal virus of political correctness into society, corroding it and leading us toward a totalitarian future. Marxism continues to be a specter that haunts the world, now hidden in new forms. Breivik claimed to be fighting against it.

Popular with the extreme right and alternative right, cultural Marxism is a conspiracy theory that contends that the left, incapable of winning in the political and economic realms, has inserted itself into everything else to triumph in the cultural domain (here, the term refers to culture in the broad sense, not just cultural products). Progressive ideas would permeate society as a whole, and it would fall victim to mass brainwashing. We are not going to back down from this cultural and Jewish Marxist brainwashing weve been indoctrinated with to become useful idiots for international finance, capitalism, and war We simply want to defend working-class whites, our rights, and our nation, US alt-right agitator Mike Enoch declared at a rally.

As with all stories of this type, there are different variations, but the following one is quite descriptive: it all began after the Russian Revolution when the Soviet model failed to spread to other countries. Philosopher Antonio Gramsci argued that it was necessary to achieve cultural hegemony, that is, to dominate the landscape of thought, art, education, media, common sense, beliefs, and morals. If Marx had established how important it was to transform the economic base and that the superstructurewhere societys cultural aspects are locateddepended on it, the Italian theorist turned that theory upside down by including culture as another equally important battlefield.

The Frankfurt School philosophers (Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse, who synthesized Freud and Marx), the New Left, and the countercultural movements of the 1960s followed in Gramscis footsteps. As a consequence, believers say, minorities and identities have come to conspire against capitalism, Christianity, the traditional family, and the free market; they have managed to silence dissent through the so-called muzzle of political correctness. All of this would be a successful translation of Marxs thesis to the cultural field: the aforementioned minorities would replace the working class as agents of revolution, and indoctrination would occur largely through universities infiltrated by these ideas. Large companies, governments, and political parties of almost every stripe would have accepted cultural Marxism in their environmentalist, LGTBI, and feminist elements.

This theory frames the ideological rearmament of the extreme right, which, since the late 1990sfirst in the United States and then in Europehas decided to stake everything on the culture wars. In their absurd simplicity, conspiracy theories offer an interpretation of the world where everything seems to fit. Thats why theyre successful, says Italian historian Steven Forti, the author of Extreme Right 2.0 (Siglo XXI). A suggestive story is an effective way to make far-right ideas go viral against a spectral and fearsome enemy. Voxs leaders have referred directly to these ideas. For example, Santiago Abascal, the leader of the party, has occasionally pointed out the urgent need to curb cultural Marxism. Similarly, though not quite as explicitly, PP politician Isabel Daz Ayuso has proclaimed her resonant slogan, communism or freedom. In his book, The Return of Communism (Espasa), journalist Federico Jimnez Losantos warns of this threat and associates queer theory-allied feminism with the alleged return of communism. They tend to see crypto-communists ready to destroy their freedom everywhere.

Some see traces of similar logic in earlier currents. As in Judeo-Bolshevism, cultural Marxism homogenizes large groups of shadowy enemies and attributes a secret plan to disrupt society to them, Yale University Professor Samuel Moyn writes in the New York Times. The Hollywood Red Scare, provoked by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the subsequent witch hunts followed a similar pattern.

These days, in certain quarters (most notably, on social media), even climate change is seen as a hoax to justify installing a green dictatorship. Of course, conspiracy theorists favorite businessman, George Soros, is usually in the mix. When Santiago Abascal talks about a progressive dictatorship or Donald Trump mentions a dictatorship of political correctness, they are largely talking about the same thing, Forti points out. Curiously, on the left, rather than feeling that they have surreptitiously dominated the world, the opposite sensation prevails: the sense of constant defeat and an uncertain future amidst capitalism thats stronger and more deregulated than ever.

Actually, the theory of cultural Marxism contains a grain of truth, which is why many people find it credible. Indeed, since Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, through counterculture and the New Left, the left has increasingly emphasized cultural and identity issues. Nevertheless, were dealing with a conspiracy theory because it takes some real trendsthe fact that the left lost influence in a changing working classto create a story about the coordinated infiltration of institutions. It is the idea that theres an army of moles undermining Western culture, says Argentine historian Pablo Stefanoni, the author of Has Rebellion Become Right-Wing? (Clave Intelectual/Siglo XXI). As Stefanoni notes, many of the dynamics attributed to cultural Marxism (the de-structuring of the family, the waning influence of religion, the mixing of cultures, etc.) stem from the dynamics of post-industrial capitalism itself.

Other far-right conspiracy theories also take small grains of truth to create an absurd story. For example, the great replacement theory, advanced by Frenchman Renaud Camus, uses the challenge of migration to invent a worldwide conspiracy of globalist elites who intend to replace Western civilization with Islamic civilization in just one generation. Generally, this type of thought attributes bad intentions to certain political and social trends in order to delegitimize them. The critics of so-called cultural Marxism are trying to revive the Cold Wars anti-Communist fervor at a time when communism practically no longer exists. Its a sort of zombie anti-Communism that fosters a sense of existential threat and combines ideological proposals, demographic and cultural changes, and socioeconomic processes with distinct and heterogeneous sources under the same demonizing label, Stefanoni concludes.

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Marxists are brainwashing us: The conspiracy theory taking hold among some on the right - EL PAS USA