Post: #1

Even though I can't recall the actual statistics, there is a disproportionately high number of far-left wing and even outright Marxist professors and staff in many public US colleges.

Considering how fringe these ideologies are and disregarded by most normal people, it's scary that they're able to openly proselytize these views to impressionable students on taxpayers dime (much more scary to me than some private Bible college like Bob Jones University); imagine if public colleges were full of professors who were outright fascists or Neo-Nazis, and what the MSM's reaction would be - yet our public stewards are allowed to spread ideologies which lead to the deaths of over 60,000,000 people with little to no calling out other than by right-wing media sources.

Any information on how and when this shift occurred? I'm going to assume it started sometime in the Cold War, likely the 1960s.

Post: #2

As best as I can tell, it started around that time; the 60's and 70's.

I read an article back around the 2000 election claiming the push to bring Marxists into colleges happened during the Nixon administration. His cronies were trying to neutralize them as a threat.

Post: #3

I'd say probably the 30s or 40s.

Post: #4

I don't know when exactly, but the how and why are probably just as important..

Post: #5

Probably because they're the easiest to infiltrate. Once you have tenure, they pretty much have to keep you, and you have direct access to all the impressionable young minds of the next generation. I supposed if I were a Soviet infiltrator with a long term view, that's where I'd start.

Post: #6

You have Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, and Bertolt Brecht to thank for Marxism/leftist ideology infiltrating the U.S. colleges.

When Hitler rose to power, these Marxist theorists fled the country. Guess where they landed? Santa Monica California.

Soon after they founded the Frankfurt School.

Google "Frankfurt School" and you'll be in for a long read.

But if you want a great summary on what these people did and the tactics they use (and still use today) read Andrew Breitbart's, "Righteous Indignation." He gives a great description and goes into more detail about this subject around chapter 6.

Post: #7

It's very hard to quantify this question, but it seems reliably certain that through most of the 1950's academia was solidly anti-Marxist, partially due to the Red Scare and McCarthyism at the opening of that decade. However, I don't think that Marxism was the initial vector of radicalization: the Beatniks weren't really Marxist ideologues, and anyway much of the radical transformation was initiated or at least invited by naive college authorities themselves. In the 1960's, campuses began to turn co-ed as part of a general trend of left-leaning liberalism throughout the middle-to-upper classes of the country, and the environment at this time appears to have been rather conducive to the growing cult of equality and diversity. From the little I know of the first marches at around this time, there were professors who supported anti-establishment students. Leftist ideologies are so often formed from this sort of snowball effect: from wanting to tear down natural distinctions like gender, it's a very short leap to opposing all distinctions. It mirrors very closely the same process of incremental insanity that one can observe in all revolutions (the French Revolution being the clearest expression of this, probably).

Further, I think it's crucial to note the contribution of the wider American ideology. In watching documentaries on 60's radicalism, the repetition by the activists that "We found that America wasn't the fair country we were taught it was supposed to be" (or statements to that effect) should stand out as profoundly telling. The Baby Boomers grew up in a time of unparalleled prosperity and abundance, but also a time of tremendous optimism and (I would argue) modernism. This generation grew up in new suburbs built from scratch, a project that overturned the urban-agrarian America that preceded it and essentially created a brand new country on top of the remnants of the old. That theme, that the new has the right to so comfortably triumph over the old, would appear to the Boomers as simply natural law, for they had known nothing else; the idea that the inheritance of one's ancestors ought to be maintained as a legacy for posterity simply didn't occur to them, and that modernist mindset (of near-fanatical insistence) has far more to do with the cultural revolutions of Levittown than with the tattered doctrines of Lenin.

Consonant with the 1950's radical break with the past, a new ideology was being developed that attempted to justify the new order. The idea of America as a place of fairness, justice, equality and everyone getting along was invented, created purely from platitudes. Of course, earlier generations all the way back to Jefferson had talked of these ideals and preached them at home and abroad, but they had understood them to be ideals that had to coexist with (and often be superseded by) the cultural and social makeup of the country's constituent communities. To them, equality of citizenship was a good, but it did not and could not eliminate the duties every citizen owed to his or her family and church and neighbors. Earlier Americans had (I think) understood that there was an "American way" (however defined), but that the American people (the volk) preceded the American way, and that the ideal of the American way needed to be balanced with the bonds and loyalties that inevitably exist in people. Without the people, they thought, there could be no union, much less a more perfect one.

However, the American Way of the 1950's (which, really, is still with us) had no time for such understandings, and rejected (consciously or otherwise) the traditional recognition of people and communities before ideology. Ideals and dreams for this or that, not duty and propriety for country and kin, came to be identified with this New America. The Boomers were raised by not just their teachers but also big business to believe that America wasn't a country, but an ideal, an ideal that could be changed to suit each passing fancy. And when America the country frustrated their attempts to achieve utopia (as real people, places and things always do), their first and only course of action (so implicit in their minds as to not merit debate or even consideration) would be to erase the country in the name of their ideal.

But back to the mid-to-late 60's. As a result of radical student bodies (or loud, aggressive fractions of those bodies) and timid or complicit college administrators, identity politics departments began to be founded in the late 60's and early 70's (the first women's studies department opening in 1969). This is of paramount importance because it represents an unprecedented shift in American society: the establishment would actively fund the teaching of ideas that undermined the very same establishment. How ironic that at the very same time that Mao's Cultural Revolution in China was reaching its apex, a veritable cultural revolution was just beginning in what used to be the center of American thought.

However, the far left of the generation that graduated in the late 60's (during and after the height of SDS) was probably the first major wave of the institutionalization of radicalism. Many of them entered academia first as PhD candidates and then as professors, and the influence from that point on needs no explanation. Moreover, it's at just around the time many of those radicals would have been finishing their graduate studies and creating courses of their own, and the years that the first classes of underclassmen would have been taught by identity politics departments for their entire time at college (1972-75 or so) that we see radical feminism gaining a wide following on campuses around the country.

From then on, the problem compounded itself through the deliberate indoctrination of each proceeding generation, and the constant demonization of any contrary opinion. Additionally, radicalism manifests itself so comfortably because of academia's isolation from the real world: idealism is always the likely tendency for people who never have to work or face the consequences of their ideology. We could go through the details of its impact in each department (usually the displacement of genuine thought for the benefit of institutionalized stupidity), but entire books could be (and have been) written on the subject.

Post: #8

It goes way back before this. I would say it was the 1880's or sometime around that. The concepts of limited government and political economy died in the academy around that time. It climaxed when Wilson was elected President. He remains America's only PhD President. He was one of America's worst Presidents and perhaps the most destructive person in the 20th Century.

Post: #9

I'd say 80s.

Thats when they took the media and education system.

These are self perpetuating industries, once your in, its hard to get knocked out because you have the power.

Post: #10

(01-28-2016 07:56 PM)Saga Wrote:  It's very hard to quantify this question, but it seems reliably certain that through most of the 1950's academia was solidly anti-Marxist, partially due to the Red Scare and McCarthyism at the opening of that decade.

Only point here is that academia and the media were both leftist in the wake of World War 2 and the Depression. And one might note that McCarthy is now considered to have been right in most of his principal accusations. The State Department was compromised by communist infiltrators from around World War 2 onwards, as FOI-released documents from FBI archives have shown.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #11

(01-28-2016 07:31 PM)memcpy Wrote:  You have Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, and Bertolt Brecht to thank for Marxism/leftist ideology infiltrating the U.S. colleges.

When Hitler rose to power, these Marxist theorists fled the country. Guess where they landed? Santa Monica California.

This was one of the dumbest decisions the US immigration clerks ever made: These persons had failed to stop Hitler, ran away at the first sign of danger, the US let them in and fought Hitler, and as the conclusion, the Frankfurt school (I rather think of a different word starting with sc...) wrote that the American character was thoroughly fascist. They deserve an anti-price for ingratitude.

Post: #12

Feminism rejected Marxism in the 1970s. Very few Marxists exist in universities today, contrary to what you might think.

Post: #13

(08-27-2016 02:55 PM)churros Wrote:  Feminism rejected Marxism in the 1970s. Very few Marxists exist in universities today, contrary to what you might think.

Huh? I read excerpts of Marx in Poli Sci classes, philosophy, sociology, women's studies, and even literature classes.

Marxism is alive and well on college campuses and if you listen and read what these fools are writing you'd see it clear as day!

Post: #14

(08-27-2016 02:55 PM)churros Wrote:  Feminism rejected Marxism in the 1970s. Very few Marxists exist in universities today, contrary to what you might think.

Feminism (as well as multiculturalism) are, so to speak, evolved stains of Marxism.

Post: #15

Read "The Devi's Pleasure Palace" by Michael Walsh. All about the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory. The Frankfurt School was kicked out of Nazi Germany and landed in Columbia University.

Post: #16

Frankfurt school has nothing to do with feminism.

Excerpts mean nothing. In America, you do not have Marxist professors. You have liberal professors.

To explain all liberal thinking as a strain of Marxism is incorrect. What do you think the Russian civil war was about?

American feminism is a product of liberal capitalism. Straight from CA and NY. I promise you, it is all-American, all capitalist.

All this talk of "cultural Marxism" is red-under-the-bed nonsense. Marxism never existed in the USA.

Post: #17

I quickly Googled "when did us colleges start being publicly funded".

I think some major factors would be identified there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Land-Grant_Acts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill

Marxism and leftism are particularly heinous versions of public property / statism. I would imagine that the relative effectiveness of colleges was set on this path when they ceased to be privately funded institutions with privately paying members.

Post: #18

Marx actually advocates the abolition of the state. Don't let reading the actual book disrupt your little notions, though.

Post: #19

(08-27-2016 05:48 PM)churros Wrote:  Frankfurt school has nothing to do with feminism.

Excerpts mean nothing. In America, you do not have Marxist professors. You have liberal professors.

To explain all liberal thinking as a strain of Marxism is incorrect. What do you think the Russian civil war was about?

American feminism is a product of liberal capitalism. Straight from CA and NY. I promise you, it is all-American, all capitalist.

All this talk of "cultural Marxism" is red-under-the-bed nonsense. Marxism never existed in the USA.

(08-27-2016 06:10 PM)churros Wrote:  Marx actually advocates the abolition of the state. Don't let reading the actual book disrupt your little notions, though.

Do you have an argument to make or are you going to just sit their smuggly letting people know how they've misinterpreted your favorite book?

Liberalism is to Marxism is to feminism. All cut from the same cloth and it all comes from the same ideological laziness. Do you think children do not inherit their parent's traits either?

If you have a point, make it. Otherwise

Post: #20

I can't think of any sort of leftist movement whether it be Socialism, Anarchism, or Communism that isn't at least sympathetic to feminism. I would actually agree that there is a difference between liberalism and Marxism/Socialism and I've pointed out a few times on the forum that I think the American tendency to use the world liberal to encompass everything that's left of center is a mistake since it puts figures like John Locke and Karl Marx into the same category but I don't see anyone can argue against the fact that Marxists and feminism has always come together. Marxists have constantly supported feminism through out it's many iterations since the 19th century. Go look at any online gathering spot for leftists and Marxists and see for yourself what their stances on feminism is.

Hell, go look at the anarchism subreddit and see what image they have at the very bottom.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/

Post: #21

(08-29-2016 01:45 AM)Wutang Wrote:  I can't think of any sort of leftist movement whether it be Socialism, Anarchism, or Communism that isn't at least sympathetic to feminism. I would actually agree that there is a difference between liberalism and Marxism/Socialism and I've pointed out a few times on the forum that I think the American tendency to use the world liberal to encompass everything that's left of center is a mistake since it puts figures like John Locke and Karl Marx into the same category but I don't see anyone can argue against the fact that Marxists and feminism has always come together. Marxists have constantly supported feminism through out it's many iterations since the 19th century. Go look at any online gathering spot for leftists and Marxists and see for yourself what their stances on feminism is.

Hell, go look at the anarchism subreddit and see what image they have at the very bottom.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/

Locke and Marx are pretty much on the same scale in my humble opinion albeit somewhat apart. Most Americans are smart enough to understand the continum that political and ideological beliefs run on.

The basis of Locke's Tabula Rosa (blank slate) of consciousness is essentially what drives most year zero ideologies today. Especially the degenerate behavior of chopping little boy's pennies off and telling them they're women.

Though I'm pretty sure Locke would find Marx and his followers to be lazy do nothings.

Post: #22

(08-27-2016 05:48 PM)churros Wrote:  Frankfurt school has nothing to do with feminism.

Excerpts mean nothing. In America, you do not have Marxist professors. You have liberal professors.

To explain all liberal thinking as a strain of Marxism is incorrect. What do you think the Russian civil war was about?

American feminism is a product of liberal capitalism. Straight from CA and NY. I promise you, it is all-American, all capitalist.

All this talk of "cultural Marxism" is red-under-the-bed nonsense. Marxism never existed in the USA.

+1 Churros for differentiating between porpoises and killer whales.

Marxism may not be here, but intellectual laziness, with jingoistic buzzwords regularly used by all factions for female-style, emotional argument sure are. Including by those who believe themselves to be prescient "red-pill" visionaries.

The adoption of "liberal" as a catch-all condemnation comes in an environment where commenters feel free to rail at the government, a situation which could never occur without a huge amount of Enlightenment openness and liberalism.

Those who use the term "liberal" pejoratively seem to have no understanding that the stage before liberal democracy was the "divine right of kings" and something far worse.

To glibly comment that a Frankfurt School is responsible for current societal problems is to argue that the bulk of society is so dumb they would argue for something that is totally against their interests.

The idea of good liberalism is that all views can be entertained as long as you're not advocating for extrajudicial violence. Those who claim special knowledge and an implied noble right or duty to force his enlightened view onothers, are back to the retrograde stage of claiming their version of the "divine right of kings." No thanks, I'll take a Republican president over a Fascist, and a SJW liberal over a Marxist. Extremism is a worse enemy than democracy.
I'm in my sixties and the most horrible things I've seen during my time were all by people who were so sure they were right, the death squads in South America and Central America, and the Khmer Rouge, and even the United States in Vietnam. Save me from those who know a "special truth."

Of course, you need some extreme voices to provide a background for discussion leading to reasonable, sustainable societies.

Liberal tolerance ( true liberal, not radical censorship version liberal like toxic feminists of the "safe spaces" type) is why hard rights get to rant in USA just like the open borders nuts do.

I like what I believe Winston Churchill said: " Democracy is absolutely the worst form of government, except everything else."

It's the Frankfurt school! It's the Bilderburgs! It's the alt-right!

As long as we're ranting and not shooting at each other, I prefer that to living in something like the French Revolution or 1933 Germany.

But if you want a particular policy in effect ( highly educated, proven stable immigrants only , anyone?) it might be better to specifically argue for something observable and real, rather than ranting about "Marxists", "alt-rights" , and other vague and divisive, intellectually lazy buzzword labels.

Now arguing for specific, enforceable policies, requires knowing something about an area.
Learning facts and listening to professionals. I mean, that's WORK.

Like, to keep American economy stable, do we need negative one million immigration a year ( deporting illegals) , or positive immigration of just 200,000 doctors from abroad? I don't know, that's a whole career's worth of learning to offer an intelligent opinion on .

Nah, I'll just rant.

Post: #23

(08-27-2016 06:01 PM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  I quickly Googled "when did us colleges start being publicly funded".

I think some major factors would be identified there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Land-Grant_Acts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill

Marxism and leftism are particularly heinous versions of public property / statism. I would imagine that the relative effectiveness of colleges was set on this path when they ceased to be privately funded institutions with privately paying members.

In a democracy you are free to engage in campaigning to stop public funding of colleges.

However, I think it's a very hard sell to the common man, who in the USA does have the belief there are people who are smarter than he is who can improve his life if supported.

For instance the invention of something like the Polio vaccine.

Post: #24

(08-29-2016 06:51 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:  

(08-27-2016 05:48 PM)churros Wrote:  Frankfurt school has nothing to do with feminism.

Excerpts mean nothing. In America, you do not have Marxist professors. You have liberal professors.

To explain all liberal thinking as a strain of Marxism is incorrect. What do you think the Russian civil war was about?

American feminism is a product of liberal capitalism. Straight from CA and NY. I promise you, it is all-American, all capitalist.

All this talk of "cultural Marxism" is red-under-the-bed nonsense. Marxism never existed in the USA.

+1 Churros for differentiating between porpoises and killer whales.

Marxism may not be here, but intellectual laziness, with jingoistic buzzwords regularly used by all factions for female-style, emotional argument sure are. Including by those who believe themselves to be prescient "red-pill" visionaries.

The adoption of "liberal" as a catch-all condemnation comes in an environment where commenters feel free to rail at the government, a situation which could never occur without a huge amount of Enlightenment openness and liberalism.

Those who use the term "liberal" pejoratively seem to have no understanding that the stage before liberal democracy was the "divine right of kings" and something far worse.

To glibly comment that a Frankfurt School is responsible for current societal problems is to argue that the bulk of society is so dumb they would argue for something that is totally against their interests.

The idea of good liberalism is that all views can be entertained as long as you're not advocating for extrajudicial violence. Those who claim special knowledge and an implied noble right or duty to force his enlightened view onothers, are back to the retrograde stage of claiming their version of the "divine right of kings." No thanks, I'll take a Republican president over a Fascist, and a SJW liberal over a Marxist. Extremism is a worse enemy than democracy.
I'm in my sixties and the most horrible things I've seen during my time were all by people who were so sure they were right, the death squads in South America and Central America, and the Khmer Rouge, and even the United States in Vietnam. Save me from those who know a "special truth."

Of course, you need some extreme voices to provide a background for discussion leading to reasonable, sustainable societies.

Liberal tolerance ( true liberal, not radical censorship version liberal like toxic feminists of the "safe spaces" type) is why hard rights get to rant in USA just like the open borders nuts do.

I like what I believe Winston Churchill said: " Democracy is absolutely the worst form of government, except everything else."

It's the Frankfurt school! It's the Bilderburgs! It's the alt-right!

As long as we're ranting and not shooting at each other, I prefer that to living in something like the French Revolution or 1933 Germany.

But if you want a particular policy in effect ( highly educated, proven stable immigrants only , anyone?) it might be better to specifically argue for something observable and real, rather than ranting about "Marxists", "alt-rights" , and other vague and divisive, intellectually lazy buzzword labels.

Now arguing for specific, enforceable policies, requires knowing something about an area.
Learning facts and listening to professionals. I mean, that's WORK.

Like, to keep American economy stable, do we need negative one million immigration a year ( deporting illegals) , or positive immigration of just 200,000 doctors from abroad? I don't know, that's a whole career's worth of learning to offer an intelligent opinion on .

Nah, I'll just rant.

This goal post moving is killing me.

People, culture, and even ideologies change over time. The "liberalism" of the 18th and 19th century which has founded modern governance is not the same liberalism of today.

Trying to argue otherwise is foolish. Culture, ideologies, and philosophies change over time. If you're not taking the ideology into reference with the de jure thinking of its adherents of the time then you're being at best a fool and at worst being intellectually dishonest.

This type of thinking is what leads us to fools saying, "But Russian, Chinese, Venezuelan, etc communism isn' " true" communism." Or better yet, "Marxism isn't liberalism."

No, Marxism is the degenerate child of liberalism raised in the same hallowed halls where liberal thought and philosphy came from. When we say liberalism should die, we don't mean we want our modern forms of government tossed out. No, we want it's nasty spawns to go away and back to a time when liberlism meant what it's creators intended it to be.

Post: #25

(08-29-2016 07:10 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:  

(08-27-2016 06:01 PM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  I quickly Googled "when did us colleges start being publicly funded".

I think some major factors would be identified there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Land-Grant_Acts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill

Marxism and leftism are particularly heinous versions of public property / statism. I would imagine that the relative effectiveness of colleges was set on this path when they ceased to be privately funded institutions with privately paying members.

In a democracy you are free to engage in campaigning to stop public funding of colleges.

However, I think it's a very hard sell to the common man, who in the USA does have the belief there are people who are smarter than he is who can improve his life if supported.

For instance the invention of something like the Polio vaccine.

In fact I am engaging in a campaign to stop public funding by writing in the thread (and attempting to convince people). It wasn't democracy that gave me that agency.

Yes, lots of things are hard sells to the common man. So what?

Are you saying that coercion and force are the only ways to accomplish anything?

To Churros -- how are you interpreting Marx's version of the post-capitalist state? Do you believe that in the absence of private ownership, there will be no coercion?