The argument from @ConceptualJames that "woke Jews" and "the Frankfurt School" are somehow a prompt for reasonable/understandable anti-Semitism is literally the subject of three books by Kevin MacDonald, who is a major figure among white supremacists and an actual neo Nazi

These "ideas" of James's are ripped straight from the pages of The Culture of Critique, they are indistinguishable from the utterly sincere and openly anti-semitic theories of a confessed neo-Nazi

But let's not ONLY decry James Lindsay here. The truth is, hostility to "wokeness" and "critical race theory"--and, yes, you leftists who hate "idpol"--is entirely an outgrowth of this intellectual lineage

Before it was "wokeness" and "cancel culture," it was "political correctness." Before it was re-branded as "political correctness", it was the overtly anti-semitic conspiracy theory of "Cultural Marxism"

There is, in fact, a traceable, concrete intellectual history here that goes back to the paleocon movement in the 80s and 90s with people like Kevin MacDonald, the professor I mentioned above, as well as William Lund and Pat Buchanan, among others

These men, quite deliberately, aimed themselves rhetorically at the idea of critique, branding it a form of censorship. They did this--again, quite openly and deliberately, when writing to their own audience--to try to rehabilitate their extremism

See, by the late 80s and early 90s, the Buchanan types had lost out in the inter-right war over how to advance white supremacist policy. The Lee Atwaters had won--the guys who understood you can't just say slurs and root for lynchings. You have to be "tough on crime" and "busing"

That you had to cut social spending to defeat "welfare queens" and stop the "moral decay" of drugs in the "inner city." Lee Atwater was, if you're not familiar, an advisor to Nixon and Reagan who infamously said the following:

cw: racist slurs

Anyway, the overt, explicit, deliberate white nationalists like Lund and Buchanan had lost out to the more neoliberally-oriented, plausibly-deniable racism of Reagan and Atwater.

Their ideas--the Buchanan types--were no longer acceptable in the political or academic mainstreams

They knew this, and they knew they had to rehabilitate these ideas, find a way to make them acceptable to speak in public again. And they latched onto "cultural marxism" as they answer. Claim that criticism of them was not sincere but a cynical program of censorship

Instead of having to defend their ideas directly, now they only need to defend *the right to state* their ideas in a public forum. And this proves much more effective. And results, of course, as intended, in their being able to return gradually to the public sphere

Because Cultural Marxism quickly morphed into the more mainstream terminology and concept of "political correctness" as championed by not only conservatives but centrists and even liberals like Jonathan Chait (then a student journalist, later to be a PC-hating liberal writer)

To clarify: Chait did write about and decry PC in his time as a student journalist at UM. Not, funnily, about Arline Geronimous, the professor who came up with the Weathering Hypothesis, though.

That's odd because while she was receiving torrents of public criticism and even death threats for suggesting that Black women's health outcomes had to do with chronic stress and racism, Chait never penned a word in her defense.

instead he focused on the menace of...critical theory! Right out of the Kevin MacDonald playbook. Great job, Jon

Sorry for the tangent but I really do despise Jonathan Chait.

Anyway, today we see the thriving descendants borne of this intellectual genealogy: Trumpism, Proud Boys, 4chan nazis, and the anti-idpol "left". All branches on this rotten family tree

And of course the "skeptics" and "centrists" like James Lindsay or Jonathan Chait. All working together in harmony, even when in apparent disunity, to do the handiwork of paleocon anti-semites to make overt white supremacy palatable again in the political mainstream

It's always important to remember that your ideas come from somewhere. Very few ideas that anyone has are truly original. Most of them have a clear genealogy that can actually be traced. And while that doesn't necessarily invalidate an idea on its own, it gives useful information

If the ideas you've absorbed and are acting on were originated by neo-Nazis in a deliberate effort to re-familiarize the American public with overt white nationalist politics, that should give you pause.

Of course, these paleocons didn't really even pioneer these ideas. They go back much further--European anti-Semitism has characterized Jews as corrosive agents that create discord and prompt reasonable retaliation for centuries.

Even the Frankfurt School--Critical Theory--was in its own time targeted for extermination by the Nazis.

But the paleocons reformulated the conclusions of this theory in a way that detached it from the premises that most Americans had come to see as unacceptable

By simply repackaging those conclusions about nefarious mysterious elites that clamp down on discussion and debate and use their power of criticism to censor regular white working people from standing up for themselves, they could achieve the same result

And they did! The Paleocons clearly won this battle. They got what they wanted--a gullible, reactive, angry white public with skulls full of oatmeal and Q Anon conspiracy theories and fears about the Great Replacement

And I'll never trust all the people that served them along the way. You have your own parts in this. Even many of you who claim to be on the left.

I don't trust people who crusade against the very notion of drawing social and political boundaries of the acceptable. Because that's always a fucking lie. It's been a lie from the start but racists have used that lie to worm their way back into the realm of respectability

Everyone draws boundaries around what's acceptable--what the tolerated range of opinions and theories and beliefs is. Everyone has lines. People who lie and crusade day in and day out against *the notion of drawing lines* itself are liars, every one

And worst of all, they're lying in the service of white supremacy. Critique is good, actually. Social and political consequences for reactionary bullshit are good, actually. That shit has to be actively suppressed

And the fact that much of the left in the Western world has been persuaded by these lies to unilaterally disarm is pathetic.

So, disagree all you want about whether someone has incorrectly labeled something racist, sexist, transphobic, etc. On the merits. In specific. Fine by me--people get that shit wrong all the time.

But crusade broadly against "wokeness" or "PC" or "cancel culture?" Nah.

When you do that you're carrying water for dead nazis and guys like Pat Buchanan, and nothing about what you intended to do can change that. You're simping for white nationalists, past and present. I bet they appreciate your help, but I don't.

Whenever I say all this, a lot of people get extremely mad, but as they say: facts don't care about your feelings