Brad Alles

The United States is in the midst of a cultural war that has been building for decades. It is a war of worldviews: a Judeo-Christian one on which Western civilization is built versus a Marxist worldview that seeks to transform America. Why is this happening?

Marxists believed that the poor would overthrown their rich oppressors and make a better world. As time went by, Marxists were confused about the lack of uprising by the poor against the rich. Where was the revolution? Why had the people not overthrown their oppressors?

Eventually, an Italian journalist and political theorist named Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) believed he had the answer. The oppressed had assimilated to Western culture instead of rejecting it. Gramsci said a “persistent and prolonged propaganda campaign” was needed to “undermine people’s confidence in traditional values and religious beliefs” making them open to rejecting Western values and embracing socialism. Other like-minded Marxists joined in his vision. 

Georg Lukacs (1885-1971) was a Hungarian philosopher who had a favorite saying: “Who will free us from the yoke of Western civilization?” Clearly, Lukacs viewed the West as the main cause of humanity’s suffering. He also believed that the greatest obstacle to Marxism was religious-based morality, specifically Christianity. Therefore, Lukacs called for “annihilation of the old values and the creation of new ones by the revolutionaries.”

Such an annihilation of Christian values could be accomplished through education. Consequently, Lukacs helped establish the Institute of Social Research in 1923 in Frankfort, Germany. (This is also known as “The Frankfort School.”) This school synthesized Marxism, Social Darwinism, and Freudian psychology. The purpose of the school was to train students in the exposing the “corruption” of Western principles of capitalism and the Judeo-Christian ethic.

After the Nazis closed it in 1933, The Frankfort School professors moved to Columbia University in New York. There they propagated the Neo-Marxist interpretation of West called “Critical Theory.” This theory spread to other universities across America. The next blog will explain Critical Theory in detail.