Blog

What is ‘Cultural Marxism’ and Why is It the New Conservative Boogyman?

[I must thank John Fea’s blog The Current for drawing this Jacobin article to my attention.]

One can rarely find a conservative discussion of America’s so-called

Karl Marx

“culture wars” without discovering that most, if not all, “liberal” activism in favor of social justice or cultural transformation, alongside CRT, BLM,  feminism and gay rights, can all be solidly dismissed as scurilous examples of “cultural Marxism.”

Cultural Marxism is one of the Right’s new magic words. Somehow, by simply linking the two words together nothing else needs to be said;  incisive critique and definitive dismissal are miraculously accomplished, simultaneously. Voila!

My own attempts at uncovering the intended meaning of the label “cultural Marxism” has led me to conclude that — whether or not the person using the term has thought this through — it is used to criticize any attempt at instigating social or cultural change. That’s it.

Apparently, since Karl Marx is considered a revolutionary who wanted to change western society, anyone else who tries to change something that they perceive to be a social problem must also be a (cultural) Marxist.

Black Lives Matter activists want to change policing practices in America, so they must be cultural Marxists.

Union activists who want better working conditions for America’s working class must also be cultural Marxists.

At the end of the day, cultural Marxism descibes anything that scares conservatives. (For me, personally, that means all vampires are cultural Marxists.)

Unfortunately, evangelical Christians who consider themselves to be cultural critics have become especially enamored with this label. But while it appears to make its user sound smart, it only reveals the shallowness and dishonesty of their analysis.

To better understand why this is the case, I highly recommend this article by Ben Burgis.

Burgis has written a good article at Jacobin titled “Conservatives Think ‘Marxism’ is Anything That Scares Them.” He clearly explains what Marxism really is and why this new label consistently misunderstands the issues involved:

Here is an excerpt:

Earlier this month, best-selling author Jordan Peterson declared that “climate justice” is “the new guise of murderous Marxism.” The same day, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis appeared at a town hall event sponsored by WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire. A voter asked DeSantis, who often rails against all things “woke,” to define his favorite term. DeSantis replied that “woke is a form of cultural Marxism.” Speaking of Manchester, a few days after the DeSantis event a member of New Hampshire’s legislature accused the city’s mayor, Joyce Craig, of promoting “Marxist indoctrination” in the public schools.

“Marxism” seems to be taking up a lot of space in the heads of contemporary conservatives. But, as they use the term, what does it mean?

All too often, it’s a catch-all term for every left-coded trend they find frightening. . .

. . . What does Marxism mean here? What could it mean that’s consistent with the idea that “major corporations” are in Marxist hands? One would think any “Marxist activist” would want those corporations to be either nationalized or turned over to some form of worker-ownership. Why haven’t the Marxist activists controlling them taken steps in this direction since the summer of 2020?

If Marxist activists have taken over “most important news media,” shouldn’t such media be agitating for expropriating the means of production? If they’ve taken over the universities, shouldn’t economics departments long filled with mainstream, pro-capitalist economists now be populated by, well, Marxist economists?

You can read the entire article here.

Remembering that Forgiveness is a Christian Imperative

Mark Galli, former editor at Christianity Today, now manages of personal blog called “Peripheral Vision.” His most recent post is titled, “What to Do with Notorious Sinners: Maybe Befriend Them? Really?”

It is a fine post which I repost here because the church struggles with implementing Jesus’ teaching on this subject.

Of course confession, repentance and a request for forgiveness are important components in the overal process of personal forgiveness. But the radical — and I mean RADICAL — nature of Jesus’ teaching on the necessity of forgiveness cannot be sidestepped by the seemingly reasonable, psychological provisos that so easily qualify the Christian imperative of forgiveness.

Sit down and reread  one of the Synoptic Gospels and notice how often Jesus emphasizes the importance of forgiving others with the same graciousness with which God has forgiven us.

I am afraid that, on this score, we regularly lose sight of just how unbelievably radical is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here is an excerpt of Galli’s article:

A friend has committed a grave sin, and even broken the law—let’s say by having sex with a minor.  We may find it morally reprehensible even to remain friends, especially if we have a teenage daughter.  We may wonder if continuing the friendship will signal indifference to what the offender has done. Or we simply may be confused about how to reach out. In the end, we may not make a conscious decision to reject the offender, but we simply don’t reach out, we don’t stay in touch, we just slowly walk away from that relationship.

That response is understandable—we’ve all done it. But at this personal level, here’s the deal: Though God lets sinners walk away from him, he never walks away from sinners. (my emphasis)

You can read the entire article here.

Solving a Problem Begins with a Correct Diagnosis

Christian denominational leaders continue to fret over how to recoup the attendance losses suffered during the covid shutdowns.  Church attendance has not rebounded to its pre-covid levels, making sociologists and church-growing afficionados eager to offer their professional analysis, complete with recipes for reinvigorating local church life.

As I read such articles I am continually amazed at how many of them never bother to touch on the basic question of what a church is supposed to be. They never mention Jesus or the gospel message or worship or what it means to be the Body of Christ in a fallen world. [For one recent, woeful example, see this article in Christianity Today.]

Thankfully, today I came across the most perceptively biblical account of this issue I have yet seen. Dr. Kirsten Sanders offers an acute analysis of both the problems and the “solutions” that must be understood by anyone hoping to “restore” their local church.

Her article, addressing the question of “Why I should be a part of a local church?”, is titled “Why Church is the Wrong Question“. I highly recommend it, especially if you are asking similar questions yourself.

It is also found in Christianity Today.

Here is an excerpt:

One question I encounter regularly these days is why the local church matters. This, I think, is the wrong question.

Disaffected Christians want to know why they should attend church when it has sheltered so much harm. Pastors and leaders want to know how to communicate to others, especially young adults, what good the church has to offer.

We are in a crucible that should burn off wrong answers about the church. Two years of pandemic-related church shutdowns has led many congregations to move their worship online. Church services were livestreamed and accessed in people’s living rooms. Communion was sometimes taken at the kitchen table, or not at all. Music was streamed virtually. And Christians gathered—or didn’t—with their immediate families to worship.

It would be misguided to suggest that such arrangements are not worship. Indeed, the psalmist says, “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and the Lord himself says, “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I” (Ps. 19:1; Matt. 18:20). The instinct that God can be encountered in living rooms, in nature, and even on a TV is not wrong. The entire Christian tradition insists that God is not hindered by anything and can be near people through matter—even when conveyed by data packets to a screen. God indeed dwells with his people, gathered in homes across the world.

Yet it would be incorrect also to call such a presence “church.” The church is not God’s guiding, consoling presence in one’s heart or the very real consolation and correction that can come when a group of Christians meets to pray. Nor is it what we name the occasional gathering of Christians to sing and study in homes or around tables worldwide.

In the Bible, the concern of God in creating the church is not to form persons but to form a people. . .

. . .What God called for, however, was not a moral or powerful people, but a peculiar one. Now it is true that part of the church’s peculiarity should exhibit itself in a certain morality. But morality itself is not peculiar in this particular way. What makes the church peculiar is its knowledge of itself as called by God to be his representative on the earth, to be marked by unwieldy and inconvenient practices like forgiveness, hospitality, humility, and repentance. It is marked in such a way by its common gathering, in baptism and Communion, remembering the Lord’s death and proclaiming it until he comes.

A peculiar church is one that realizes that its existence is to witness to another world, one where the Ascension is not a sorrow alone but an invitation to live into a new moment when the Son is indeed seated at the right hand of the Father. Its witness to another kingdom, a commonwealth in heaven (Phil. 3:20–21), is what justifies its existence.

This is not to say that churches should become internally preoccupied and aloof from their communities. The church has an implicit social ethic, as Hauerwas discusses, and is guided by Jesus’ call to imitate him in love for neighbor and sacrificial concern.

But the church’s reshaped community is formed out of its worship, which witnesses to another world where the Lord is King. The authors conclude, “The church, as those called out by God, embodies a social alternative that the world cannot on its own terms know.”

You can read the entire article here.

Caitlin Johnstone: Disrupt The Culture Wars

Ever since the rise of the “Religious/Christian Right,” culture war combat

Caitlin Johnstone

has been the number one activity highlighted by some sectors of the evangelical/ fundamentalist church.

I believe that this has been the root cause of the widespread fracturing we have seen among Christian churches in the Trump era. Such is the deceptive power of culture war combat ideology. We are told that the battle is for the casue of Christ. When, in fact, Christ has never called us to do any such thing.

Blogger Caitlin Johnstone offers a good analysis of this error embraced by today’s culture-warriors. They miss the bigger picture. American evangelicals are particularly guilty of this particular blindness.

Because evangelical Christianity has always preferred to identify with the wealthy and the powerful, the church rarely addresses the class war continually being waged in this society.

Fortunately, addressing the class conflict between the haves and the have-nots does not require an either/or decision, choosing between either class or cultural issues.

It is possible to address both at the same time. Sadly, evangelicals prefer to remain blind to the one and pour all their energy into the other.

Though I do not fully endorse Ms. Johnstone’s solution to this problem of neglecting the class issues in our society. I do find her social analysis to be spot on.

Here is a brief excerpt:

One of the great challenges faced by westerners who oppose the political status quo today is the way the narrative managers of both mainstream factions continuously divert all political energy away from issues which threaten the interests of the powerful like economic injustice, war, militarism, authoritarianism, corruption, capitalism and ecocide and toward issues which don’t threaten the powerful at all like abortion, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia.

This method of social control serves the powerful in some very obvious ways, and is being used very effectively. As long as it remains effective, it will continue to be used. The worse things get the more urgent the need to fight the class war will become, anf the more urgent the need to fight the class war becomes the more vitriolic and intense the artificial culture war will become in order to prevent political changes which inconvenience the powerful. This is 100 percent guaranteed. And what’s tricky is that all the vitriolic intensity will create the illusion that the culture war has gotten more important, when in reality the class war has.

It’s just a straightforward fact that the more miserable, impoverished and disempowered the public becomes, the more hateful and all-consuming the artificial culture war will be made to prevent revolution. That’s what’s been happening, and that’s what will continue to happen. You can hate hearing it, and you can hate me for saying it. But it is a fact, and I think we all pretty much know it’s a fact.

You can read the entire article here.

John Mearsheimer Analyzes the Ukraine War

John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of political science and international relations at the University of

WASHINGTON, USA – FEBRUARY 21 : John Mearsheimer speaks during a panel organised by Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) Foundation in Washington, United States on February 21, 2019.
(Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Chicago.

He provides a rare, sane voice in the American landscape disagreeing with the pro-war, pro-Ukrainian, anti-Russian propaganda dished out day after day by mainstream news networks.

For a well-balanced perspective integrating factors typically ignored or covered up in US broadcasts, check out Mearsheimer’s analysis here.

His most recent article appears here. It is titled, “The Darkness Ahead: Where the Ukraine War is Headed.”

Here is Prof. Mearsheimer’s most recent YouTube interview with one of my favorite, award-winning journalist, Aaron Mate.

Israel’s New Legal Changes Removes the Last Obstacle to Limitless Settler Expansion

Massive protests continue in Israel even though the series of judicial review laws being protested have successfully begun to be passed.

Here is the best overview I have seen of the different issues involved, produced by VPRO, the Dutch Public Broadcasting Service.

It is fairly well rounded and allows the viewer to hear voices that are typically left out of the American conversation. It offers a good perspective on what all the anger and uproar has been about, and why it will not end anytime soon.

My only complaint, which is actually a major flaw, is that no Palestinian Israelis are allowed to speak for themselves.

Here are my suggestions of what to look for:

Notice the arrogance and entitlement of the Jewish settlers-colonizers. Like early American pioneers, they are blind to the legitimate claims of the native people, the Palestinians. They simply presume to have a divine right to take as much land as they want, wherever, whenever, from whomever they wish. What in the world do biblical stories about Abrahamic land purchases have to do with Israeli land theft today????

Notice the legal benefits that the current judicial reforms will offer to these settlers-colonists. This point is highlighted towards the end of the 30-minute documentary. I suspect that THIS is the primary, driving force behind the push for this new legislation. The Supreme Court can no longer impede settler expansion in the Occupied Territory.

Notice the stratification of Israeli society. Not only is there a wide divide between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. There is also a considerable divide between Ashkenazi Jews of European descent and Mizrahi Jews of Arab descent. This discussion begins at the 17:00 minute mark. Even though they are often treated as second-class citizens by the Ashkenazi, the Mizrahi tend to be among the most vehement Zionists. Note how they refer to Ashkenazis as a “white elite.”

Notice the hero of the piece Netta Amar-Schiff. She appears at the 25:45 mark. She is a Jewish Israeli human rights lawyer who defends the rights of embattled Palestinians in the face of ever-expanding Israeli encroachment. Netta says it plainly, “Occupation and democracy do not go together.” One of the great failures of the current protest movement is its the omission of this key perspective from their demonstrations.

You will never hear about any of these issues or perspectives on a Christian news network. You’re unlike to hear it on the mainstream networks, for that matter.

Harvard Political Review: Barack Obama is a War Criminal

My inaugeral post on this website five years ago castigated my liberal, democratic friends for cheering former president Obama as an exemplary American president. He was not.

I pointed out only some of his war crimes in that post. But now the online journal, The Harvard Political Review, offers a more extensive examination of the presidential acts and decisions that irrefutably make the former president guilty of war crimes.

If justice were truly available in this world, both George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama would spend the rest of their lives in prison.

The article is by Prince Williams.

Here it is:

In 2009, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided that the Nobel Peace Prize would go to a Harvard Law School graduate, an elected junior senator of Illinois, and the first Black President of the United States, Barack Obama. According to the Committee, “Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons” served as the driving force that awarded him a Nobel. However, President Obama would go on to approve more drone strikes in his first year in office than President Bush carried out during his entire administration. The alleged peacemaker, very much like his predecessors, should be considered for the label of international war criminal.

Let’s clarify: President Obama is not a pioneer of the illegal and offensive wars that the United States has engaged in during the last 20 years. Even still, he is an expansionist, reflected clearly in the development of his drone program. During his presidency, Obama approved the use of 563 drone strikes that killed approximately 3,797 people. In fact, Obama authorized 54 drone strikes alone in Pakistan during his first year in office. One of the first CIA drone strikes under President Obama was at a funeral, murdering as many as 41 Pakistani civilians. The following year, Obama led 128 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan that killed at least 89 civilians. Just two years into his presidency, it was clear that the “hope” that President Obama offered during his 2008 campaign could not escape U.S. imperialism. 

The drone operations extended to Somalia and Yemen in 2010 and 2011, resulting in more destructive results. Under the belief they were targeting al-Qaida, President Obama’s first strike on Yemen killed 55 people including 21 children, 10 of which were under the age of five. Additionally, 12 women, five of them pregnant, were also among those who were murdered in this strike. These blundered acts of murder by not only President Obama, but the U.S. government, are morally reprehensible.

Even more civilian casualties came out of Afghanistan throughout Barack Obama’s time in office. In 2014, Obama began removing troops currently deployed in the country. However, instead of this action by the president being one in a pursuit of peace and stability in the region, it only acted as an opportunity to drastically increase air warfare. Afghanistan had war rained upon them by U.S. bombardment, with the administration viciously dropping 1,337 weapons on Afghanistan in 2016. In total that year, the Obama administration dropped 26,171 bombs (drone or otherwise) across seven countries: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. The U.S., in cooperation with its allies including the Afghan government, killed 582 civilians on average annually from 2007 to 2016.

In his recent self-aggrandizing memoir “A Promised Land,” Obama defends his drone program through a messiah complex; he writes, “I wanted somehow to save them … And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.” President Obama would have the reader believe he wanted to help the suspected terrorist but simply couldn’t. In reality, he consciously and undemocratically decided the fates of thousands of lives, without due process.

With the exception of the wars themselves, the claim that former President Barack Obama is a war criminal also lies within the double-tap initiative. Double-tap drone strikes are as disturbing as they sound; these attacks are follow-up strikes on first responders as they rush to the bombed area trying to assist any survivors. In 2012, an attack on the Shawal Valley aimed at Taliban commander Sadiq Noor reportedly killed up to 14 people in a double-tap drone strike. These attacks are both morally and legally reprehensible, as they are conscious acts of murder against civilians.

These drone strikes make a strong case for categorizing Obama as an international war criminal. The 1949 Geneva Conventions, ratified by the United Nations, explicitly provides protections for not only the wounded, but also for medical and religious personnel, medical units, and medical transports. Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court states that “Intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations” is classified as a war crime. The law also states “intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians” also constitutes war crimes for the guilty party. Through the drone strike program and double-tap attacks, there is no question that former President Obama and his administration violated international humanitarian law. Obama’s symbolic significance cannot outshine his relationship with the imperial endeavors of the American Empire. 

You can read the article online by going here.

Why I am Supporting Dr. Cornell West for President

I’ve never voted for a Republican. I’ve rarely voted for a Democrat. Most of my presidential votes have gone to 3rd party candidates.

It is difficult, if not impossible to find a national candidate who represents my values, my Christian values.

None of the establishment candidates who call themselves “Christian” are anything more than establishment hacks who paste a Christian bumper sticker over their predictable, partisan political views. And most of them lie, anyway.

If you think Mike Pence is an honorable man, I’ve got some swamp land to sell you in Florida.

In this regard, the philospher Cornell West is unique. Even though he has no chance of winning, he believes and says the things that I believe. He analyzes the world in the way that I believe it ought to be analyzed. He prioritizes the issues that I believe a Christian public leader ought ot prioritize.

And this is exactly why he will never win. But at least by supporting him we can have a presidential campaign that speaks the hard truths that America needs to hear.

Check out this 30 minute interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald:

Prof. Avi Shlaim: Zionism is Racism

Avi Shlaim began  his academic career as an Israeli graduate student who went to England for his doctoral work.

He is now a long-time Oxford professor who has done pioneering historical research on the origins of the modern state of Israel and the history of Zionism.

He is one of those rare people of moral character who is willing to be self-critical. He is more committed to a consistent ethic applied equally to all than he is to nationalism or ideology.

Here is a brief excerpt from a longer interview with Human Rights Watch.

Former Soldier Denounces Israel’s Occupation of the West Bank

Breaking the Silence is an organization of former Israeli soldiers who are trying to educate their fellow citizens about the brutality of Israel’s military occupation over the Palestinian people in the West Bank.

Watch as this woman tells her story (with English translation). She explains how the Occupation is both persecuting Palestinians and poisoning Israel.