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Free Congress Commentary - March 24, 2000
Who's Nuts? By Paul M. Weyrich
A brief history lesson is in order here. The ideology commonly known as political correctness has its origins in the work of the Frankfurt School, formally the Institute for Social Research, which was established at Frankfurt University in Germany in 1923 and relocated to New York City in 1934.
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CB: What happened to Marx , Engels and the Bolsheviks as the originators of political correctness ?
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From 1930 onward, its chief members, Horkheimer, Adorno, Fromm and Marcuse, labored to translate Marxism from economic into cultural terms, largely by crossing Marx with Freud. This resulted, first, in Critical Theory, the basis for all the oh-so-PC "studies" departments in modern American universities, and then in the Institute's "studies in prejudice." These studies, especially as embodied in Adorno's immensely influential book The Authoritarian Personality, argued that anyone who defended or adhered to traditional Western culture and morals had a psychological problem. They - we - were, as Mr. Cohen summarizes it, all "nuts."
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CB: Pretty much
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Why does it surprise me to find Richard Cohen adhering so slavishly to the line laid down by the Frankfurt School? I am sure he does not know that Political Correctness was their creation, nor that it is a variant of Marxism, quite different from the Marxism of the old Soviet Union, but Marxism nonetheless. But surely he must recognize that Political Correctness is an ideology. The classic hallmark of ideology is all over it, in that it demands that people live a lie.
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CB: Does Weyrich know that he got his definition of "ideology" from Marx and Engels ?
Have we uncovered a conspiracy of the Spectre of Communism , more subtle than even Weyrich can detect ?
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