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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27937 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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The issue with a genealogical approach is that theory is more like a lattice than a tree, with extensive lateral gene flow and different branches being reabsorbed into the main.

For instance, we have a Marx -> Marcuse -> New Left -> Social Justice lineage. But what do we make of Carl Schmitt's significant influence on Marcuse (who found his critique of liberalism very strong)? Does that mean woke activism is just a far right extension of Nazi legal theory adapted to modern times?

Does that mean woke activism is just a far right extension of Nazi legal theory adapted to modern times?

I don't know if that's what it means, but this is certainly an elegant summary that mostly accurately describes what woke-ism is. Woke-ism is just the latest iteration of an ideological structure for justify bigotry against types of people one dislikes, that has been adapted to be palatable to high status people. In the past, it might have been things like "grace of God" or "they're genetically predisposed to being lesser than us and thus belong in the fields" or whatever, but in modern times, it involves narratives around "oppression means that people we dislike are actually each individual, down to the last baby, guilty of [crime]."

Does that mean woke activism is just a far right extension of Nazi legal theory adapted to modern times?

Thus, the feminazi :)

Does that mean woke activism is just a far right extension of Nazi legal theory adapted to modern times?

Clearly not an extension in the sense of merely being an appendage of. However, it would be fair to say that there is some degree of cross-pollination (though the influence can certainly be overstated; significantly less than Freud and the psychoanalysts, for example).

Freud was a much bigger influence. But, a quote from him, to highlight the issues with the genealogical approach:

The Communists believe they have found a way of delivering us from this evil. Man is wholeheartedly good and friendly to his neighbour, they say, but the system of private property has corrupted his nature... psychologically [communism] is rounded on an untenable illusion. By abolishing private property one deprives the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, a strong one undoubtedly, but assuredly not the strongest. It in no way alters the individual differences in power and influence which are turned by aggressiveness to its own use, nor does it change the nature of the instinct in any way. This instinct did not arise as the result of property; it reigned almost supreme in primitive times when possessions were still extremely scanty; it shows itself already in the nursery when possessions have hardly grown out of their original anal shape; it is at the bottom of all the relations of affection and love between human beings.

Freud was a classical liberal in his politics. But we can draw a very clear line from his thought to the Frankfurt School. Can we then conclude that the Frankfurt School was anti-socialist? No; the existence of a genealogical relationship is interesting and often a useful lens to view things through, but to stop there without looking into the content of the theories can lead to very wrong conclusions.

Not "just", "partially inspired by", the same way it was by Marx.

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