Adorno’s damaged life(newstatesman.com)
newstatesman.com
Adorno’s damaged life
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2022/02/adornos-damaged-life
39 comments
A well written article. I am looking at a copy of Minima Moralia on my bookshelf that I don't think I've opened since I was in my early 20s, 25+ years ago, and I might spend some time today flipping through it.
What I remember from it -- and the pieces of his book "Negative Dialectics" that I think it shares some content with -- is a deep and profound critique of Martin Heidegger, German pre-war existentialism, Romanticism, holism philosophy which left themselves open to impregnation by fascism. In Germany in the the 20s and 30s right wing authoritarianism freely absorbed adherents of the equivalent of today's "wellness" and "natural health" movements, who became allies in their opposition to modernism, communism, and the chaos of democracy. Heidegger himself was beguiled by the mystical quasi-spiritual language of the fatherland and blood and soil. Adorno saw this as it was happening and was disgusted.
So there are definitely parallels with today that are worth paying close attention to.
What I remember from it -- and the pieces of his book "Negative Dialectics" that I think it shares some content with -- is a deep and profound critique of Martin Heidegger, German pre-war existentialism, Romanticism, holism philosophy which left themselves open to impregnation by fascism. In Germany in the the 20s and 30s right wing authoritarianism freely absorbed adherents of the equivalent of today's "wellness" and "natural health" movements, who became allies in their opposition to modernism, communism, and the chaos of democracy. Heidegger himself was beguiled by the mystical quasi-spiritual language of the fatherland and blood and soil. Adorno saw this as it was happening and was disgusted.
So there are definitely parallels with today that are worth paying close attention to.
> today's "wellness" and "natural health" movements, who became allies in their opposition to modernism, communism, and the chaos of democracy.
First of all, lumping "modernism, communism, and [...] democracy" together in opposition to "right wing authoritarianism" makes little sense. Fascism had strong modernist currents (hence V2s, autobahnen, and Rube-Goldberg deathcamps (the Khmer Rouge didn't need all that)). And both it and Communism are illiberal and undemocratic in practice.
Second, the minute you translate these things outside "the West", the script flips 180. "Wellness", "natural health", and the rejection of "modernity" become "indigenous knowledge" (say, "ayurveda") and "anticolonialist".
I just don't think these free-associational patterns are terribly useful, because they don't actually work.
First of all, lumping "modernism, communism, and [...] democracy" together in opposition to "right wing authoritarianism" makes little sense. Fascism had strong modernist currents (hence V2s, autobahnen, and Rube-Goldberg deathcamps (the Khmer Rouge didn't need all that)). And both it and Communism are illiberal and undemocratic in practice.
Second, the minute you translate these things outside "the West", the script flips 180. "Wellness", "natural health", and the rejection of "modernity" become "indigenous knowledge" (say, "ayurveda") and "anticolonialist".
I just don't think these free-associational patterns are terribly useful, because they don't actually work.
Absolutely agree with your first point (ahem, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism), but your second point doesn't flip the script at all, it's completely consistent with it.
edit: India's anticolonialism is revanchist at this point, the British have been gone for a long time; Indians own India, and ayurveda is literally part of state religion. The BJP was openly patterned after European fascist movements.
edit: India's anticolonialism is revanchist at this point, the British have been gone for a long time; Indians own India, and ayurveda is literally part of state religion. The BJP was openly patterned after European fascist movements.
But there is no connection between fascism and occultism like Adorno wrongly implied. The merge is coincidental. Fascism and communism both opposed it, fascist maybe a bit less to take advantage of adherents. If he were here today, I think he would adapt some statements.
You deliver a great example how the anticolonialism is indeed revanchist in case for India. For good reason one might think. Same can be true for occultist currents.
Similarly superstition and fantasy can also be. Still, you need to look at the motivation. Homeopathy is different from painting yourself with some old nordic runes because of nationalistic ambitions. A generalization here is wrong.
You deliver a great example how the anticolonialism is indeed revanchist in case for India. For good reason one might think. Same can be true for occultist currents.
Similarly superstition and fantasy can also be. Still, you need to look at the motivation. Homeopathy is different from painting yourself with some old nordic runes because of nationalistic ambitions. A generalization here is wrong.
So, "we" might currently view the BJP that way. But at what point did Western consensus about "what nationalism in India is" change? I'm thinking about the Intermediate Value Theorem here. I think it started with, "anti-imperialism, yay!"
Or -- another example, because I don't want to pick on India. "We" now tend to view China as a Han-supremacist ethnostate (I think?), despite the Communist trappings. Nevertheless, at a point not long in the past, French students were carrying Mao's "Little Red Book".
North Korean "communism" is supposedly like this too -- very ethno-nationalist in character -- if you believe the analysis in The Impossible State.
Somewhat likewise, Soviet Internationalism turned into Soviet Imperialism and Russian Nationalism. Somehow now it's Putinism and the Orthodox Church is involved.
So then you move to other "leftist" and "indigenous" movements in South America, and, sure, there might be some red stars, but it seems to me that the force actually binding people together is ethnic nationalism. This is especially true for "indigenous" tribal identities. It's hard to get more "blood and soil" than their rhetoric. Hell, "#LandBack" is literal revanchism.
And every country that "fought (Ottoman) imperialism" in the Balkans, under the banner of "self-determination" (pop-quiz: What is the collective "self"?) did so using nationalism, which, half the time, quickly turned on local minorities.
So I am deeply skeptical of claims, by anyone, to be "on the left", or, even more than that, an "anti-imperialist". I think it's just a temporary and contingent thing, representing instantaneous balances of power, not fundamental principles. I am much more comfortable with liberal universalism.
Even the Nazis themselves marketed themselves as anti-imperialists to the left. Lots of people fell for it. People as smart as the ones in Robert Oppenheimer's social circles. "Yeah, we don't like the Nazis, but we'll use them to break the back of the British!"
So when, say, well-meaning white people go "Yeah! Africa for Africans!" I go: "Wait a minute. I mean, I get it. But have you really thought about this principle?" I think they cheer because, subliminally, they think the place isn't worth going to; they don't feel they're losing anything. They are also unaware that this means "expropriation without compensation" from a large class of South-Asians.
So I'm saying that a lot of this ethnic, "blood and soil" stuff seems to exist quite happily on what Westerners currently consider "the left". And then it grows, and then it gets powerful, and then later, retroactively, they go, "oh, I guess that was bad (== right)".
There's a blindness to this that I get tired of.
So to finally get back to my point, not only is there modernism on the right; there's anti-modernism, and even (barely-concealed) ethnic nationalism, on the left.
And then I worry about these centrifugal forces.
Or -- another example, because I don't want to pick on India. "We" now tend to view China as a Han-supremacist ethnostate (I think?), despite the Communist trappings. Nevertheless, at a point not long in the past, French students were carrying Mao's "Little Red Book".
North Korean "communism" is supposedly like this too -- very ethno-nationalist in character -- if you believe the analysis in The Impossible State.
Somewhat likewise, Soviet Internationalism turned into Soviet Imperialism and Russian Nationalism. Somehow now it's Putinism and the Orthodox Church is involved.
So then you move to other "leftist" and "indigenous" movements in South America, and, sure, there might be some red stars, but it seems to me that the force actually binding people together is ethnic nationalism. This is especially true for "indigenous" tribal identities. It's hard to get more "blood and soil" than their rhetoric. Hell, "#LandBack" is literal revanchism.
And every country that "fought (Ottoman) imperialism" in the Balkans, under the banner of "self-determination" (pop-quiz: What is the collective "self"?) did so using nationalism, which, half the time, quickly turned on local minorities.
So I am deeply skeptical of claims, by anyone, to be "on the left", or, even more than that, an "anti-imperialist". I think it's just a temporary and contingent thing, representing instantaneous balances of power, not fundamental principles. I am much more comfortable with liberal universalism.
Even the Nazis themselves marketed themselves as anti-imperialists to the left. Lots of people fell for it. People as smart as the ones in Robert Oppenheimer's social circles. "Yeah, we don't like the Nazis, but we'll use them to break the back of the British!"
So when, say, well-meaning white people go "Yeah! Africa for Africans!" I go: "Wait a minute. I mean, I get it. But have you really thought about this principle?" I think they cheer because, subliminally, they think the place isn't worth going to; they don't feel they're losing anything. They are also unaware that this means "expropriation without compensation" from a large class of South-Asians.
So I'm saying that a lot of this ethnic, "blood and soil" stuff seems to exist quite happily on what Westerners currently consider "the left". And then it grows, and then it gets powerful, and then later, retroactively, they go, "oh, I guess that was bad (== right)".
There's a blindness to this that I get tired of.
So to finally get back to my point, not only is there modernism on the right; there's anti-modernism, and even (barely-concealed) ethnic nationalism, on the left.
And then I worry about these centrifugal forces.
> So, "we" might currently view the BJP that way.
I'm not talking about "our" views. I'm talking about the BJP's conscious formulation. It's not an accusation, it's how they self described.
Just stay there instead of doing a grievance rodeo. I find the jazz playing in this comment far more confusing than Adorno. You seem to think what you're saying applies to everything, so it shouldn't be too difficult to apply it to one thing. I'm personally interested in why your first example would be a religious-nationalist party, intentionally patterned on European fascism, speaking a language constructed intentionally to remove "Persian" influence, which seems on the verge of doing ethnic cleansing.
I'm not talking about "our" views. I'm talking about the BJP's conscious formulation. It's not an accusation, it's how they self described.
Just stay there instead of doing a grievance rodeo. I find the jazz playing in this comment far more confusing than Adorno. You seem to think what you're saying applies to everything, so it shouldn't be too difficult to apply it to one thing. I'm personally interested in why your first example would be a religious-nationalist party, intentionally patterned on European fascism, speaking a language constructed intentionally to remove "Persian" influence, which seems on the verge of doing ethnic cleansing.
I used the BJP as an example because it would not be too hard for readers to accept that they are "Right", yet an "anticolonialist" element is clear in their rhetoric. Also, while, say, China and the "century of humiliation" is another example of nationalist "anticolonialist" grievance, they don't identify with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and such (the CCP leadership is modernist and materialist), whereas the Hindu Right is more into cow-urine tinctures and the like. So it's a better example of the theme of the great-grandparent post.
As for their links to the Nazis and Fascists, thank you for enlightening me. I had assumed that it was simply the Nazis who had borrowed symbols from India, but no, it does seem that the relationship went both ways:
https://www.ibtimes.com/hindu-nationalists-historical-links-...
I do see, however, that after these facts, my argument that they can pass as "left" becomes weaker. Yet I still do think they can pass as such in many circles, because this history is not so widely popularized, among other reasons.
I wonder about your reference to Hindi as a "constructed language" however. I didn't think it was. What are you referring to?
As for their links to the Nazis and Fascists, thank you for enlightening me. I had assumed that it was simply the Nazis who had borrowed symbols from India, but no, it does seem that the relationship went both ways:
https://www.ibtimes.com/hindu-nationalists-historical-links-...
I do see, however, that after these facts, my argument that they can pass as "left" becomes weaker. Yet I still do think they can pass as such in many circles, because this history is not so widely popularized, among other reasons.
I wonder about your reference to Hindi as a "constructed language" however. I didn't think it was. What are you referring to?
Expanding on my last question. You had written,
> [The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] were speaking a language constructed intentionally to remove "Persian" influence, which seems on the verge of doing ethnic cleansing
and I was confused, writing
> I wonder about your reference to Hindi as a "constructed language" however. I didn't think it was. What are you referring to?
not just because I think of Hindi as an organic language, but because what you're saying seems exactly backwards.
If anything, I'd have thought (if you had BJP sympathies) that you might levy that sort of charge against the Tamil/Dravidian parties who resisted the imposition of Hindi education and official language by the Hindu nationalists: "Oh you Tamils with your exclusionary ethnostate!" It'd be a bit much, but somebody could say it.
Because, let's strip euphemisms: "Persian" here means "Iranian", which is another spelling of "Aryan", i.e., the barely-prehistorical conquerors of the northern part of the subcontinent, who, very indirectly and with some strain, we might call the predecessors of today's Delhi-centered BJP. (For anyone else reading.)
(If you really wanted to troll you could call them "foreign imperialists" and talk about kicking them out of India. That'd be absurd -- a bit like saying blonde Russians are really Swedes, going back to the Kievian Rus, and pointing to (blonde) Soviet Man as remaining chauvinism -- but if you wanted to turn "indigenous" politics and "decolonization" against them, you could do it. It'd be one way to make a point.)
If there were a nationalist movement that would want an "Aryan-free ethnostate", it would be something like extreme Tamil nationalists, intent on bringing back Kumari Kandam from the depths, like some Nazis wanted Thule.
Or are you talking not about the BJP's efforts to push Hindi, but their (more marginal) efforts to resurrect Sanskrit within the "Bharat", e.g.,
https://www.siasat.com/sanskrit-unifies-bharat-promote-it-rs...
? That would be more like other nationalistic language projects, like Gaelic and Hebrew. But even that is firmly within the Proto-Indo-European language family, so "Aryan". And their main goal remained "Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan" anyway, not Sanskrit.
Thus, I remain confused. Maybe that was your true intention. If so, you've succeeded.
> [The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] were speaking a language constructed intentionally to remove "Persian" influence, which seems on the verge of doing ethnic cleansing
and I was confused, writing
> I wonder about your reference to Hindi as a "constructed language" however. I didn't think it was. What are you referring to?
not just because I think of Hindi as an organic language, but because what you're saying seems exactly backwards.
If anything, I'd have thought (if you had BJP sympathies) that you might levy that sort of charge against the Tamil/Dravidian parties who resisted the imposition of Hindi education and official language by the Hindu nationalists: "Oh you Tamils with your exclusionary ethnostate!" It'd be a bit much, but somebody could say it.
Because, let's strip euphemisms: "Persian" here means "Iranian", which is another spelling of "Aryan", i.e., the barely-prehistorical conquerors of the northern part of the subcontinent, who, very indirectly and with some strain, we might call the predecessors of today's Delhi-centered BJP. (For anyone else reading.)
(If you really wanted to troll you could call them "foreign imperialists" and talk about kicking them out of India. That'd be absurd -- a bit like saying blonde Russians are really Swedes, going back to the Kievian Rus, and pointing to (blonde) Soviet Man as remaining chauvinism -- but if you wanted to turn "indigenous" politics and "decolonization" against them, you could do it. It'd be one way to make a point.)
If there were a nationalist movement that would want an "Aryan-free ethnostate", it would be something like extreme Tamil nationalists, intent on bringing back Kumari Kandam from the depths, like some Nazis wanted Thule.
Or are you talking not about the BJP's efforts to push Hindi, but their (more marginal) efforts to resurrect Sanskrit within the "Bharat", e.g.,
https://www.siasat.com/sanskrit-unifies-bharat-promote-it-rs...
? That would be more like other nationalistic language projects, like Gaelic and Hebrew. But even that is firmly within the Proto-Indo-European language family, so "Aryan". And their main goal remained "Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan" anyway, not Sanskrit.
Thus, I remain confused. Maybe that was your true intention. If so, you've succeeded.
[deleted]
> So I'm saying that a lot of this ethnic, "blood and soil" stuff seems to exist quite happily on what Westerners currently consider "the left". And then it grows, and then it gets powerful, and then later, retroactively, they go, "oh, I guess that was bad (== right)".
That's because it's non-Western ethnic blood-and-soil stuff. Marxism was a critique of economic capitalism; the Frankfurt School pivoted that to a critique of Western civilization as a whole, as a social complex based on domination which secured capitalism against revolutionary overthrow by means of a form of psychic domination -- domination of consciousness. This is the puzzle that Gramsci considered and started to solve: why hasn't Western civilization gotten with the program and chosen communism over the chains of capitalism? And if your entire civilization is standing in the way of that revolution, then hey hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.
See, the intelligentsia have already chosen Marxian socialism as the successor to the liberal democratic system. It's like X11 vs. Wayland. Whether what exists works for your use case doesn't matter: the people who Really Know A Lot About This Sort Of Thing have chosen the clearly superior option, and you should too. Gramsci, Adorno, Marcuse, and Horkheimer were all addressing the problem of: why hasn't everybody chosen the clearly superior option? And the answer they arrived at is that Western civilization is fundamentally, thoroughly oppressive, and it brainwashes people and keeps then from realizing that there's a path to freedom through socialism and that's where nationalism in a Western context comes from, giving rise to fascism.
But the Africans and indigenous South Americans, all those peoples that Western Civ oppresses because it's in its nature to oppress, those are fine. There is no need to worry about tribalism, nationalism, or hostility to outsiders from those groups because they don't have the domination and rationalization impulse that Westerners do. Which is why the "stolen land" myth persists. It's partially true, but it's not the whole story. Native Americans were not peaceniks, and the land occupied by a tribe was, likely as not, conquered by that tribe's ancestors from a displaced or now-unknown other tribe.
But in the mythos of the new left, Westerners are uniquely prone to want to conquer and colonize, so that pre-Western-contact history needs to be, and often is, elided.
That's because it's non-Western ethnic blood-and-soil stuff. Marxism was a critique of economic capitalism; the Frankfurt School pivoted that to a critique of Western civilization as a whole, as a social complex based on domination which secured capitalism against revolutionary overthrow by means of a form of psychic domination -- domination of consciousness. This is the puzzle that Gramsci considered and started to solve: why hasn't Western civilization gotten with the program and chosen communism over the chains of capitalism? And if your entire civilization is standing in the way of that revolution, then hey hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.
See, the intelligentsia have already chosen Marxian socialism as the successor to the liberal democratic system. It's like X11 vs. Wayland. Whether what exists works for your use case doesn't matter: the people who Really Know A Lot About This Sort Of Thing have chosen the clearly superior option, and you should too. Gramsci, Adorno, Marcuse, and Horkheimer were all addressing the problem of: why hasn't everybody chosen the clearly superior option? And the answer they arrived at is that Western civilization is fundamentally, thoroughly oppressive, and it brainwashes people and keeps then from realizing that there's a path to freedom through socialism and that's where nationalism in a Western context comes from, giving rise to fascism.
But the Africans and indigenous South Americans, all those peoples that Western Civ oppresses because it's in its nature to oppress, those are fine. There is no need to worry about tribalism, nationalism, or hostility to outsiders from those groups because they don't have the domination and rationalization impulse that Westerners do. Which is why the "stolen land" myth persists. It's partially true, but it's not the whole story. Native Americans were not peaceniks, and the land occupied by a tribe was, likely as not, conquered by that tribe's ancestors from a displaced or now-unknown other tribe.
But in the mythos of the new left, Westerners are uniquely prone to want to conquer and colonize, so that pre-Western-contact history needs to be, and often is, elided.
It might be worth pointing out that when the New Left arrived on the scene in the late 60s people like Marcuse (who wrote in the 50s early 60s mainly) were seen as overtly pessimistic and not terribly useful theoretically. Adorno and the Frankfurt School was never a darling of actual activists, just academics.
Marcuse was booed at the Free University of Berlin in 1968.
Marcuse was booed at the Free University of Berlin in 1968.
> See, the intelligentsia have already chosen Marxian socialism as the successor to the liberal democratic system.
From the article
> Although he sustained a seldom-stated bond with Marxism he was not primarily interested in political economy, nor did he have any real talent for the topic. Instead he was drawn to the inspection of lived experience in all of its exquisite detail.
I'm not sure what "intelligentsia" means in your phrasing but your assertion does not apply to Adorno. His writing is generally skeptical of anything that is systematizing or totalizing. Reality has depth and is complex. Systems elide much of that depth and complexity, replacing it with shallowness and false simplicity. What I wrote is a limited summary, for sure, but more accurate than implying endorsement of a particular ideology.
From the article
> Although he sustained a seldom-stated bond with Marxism he was not primarily interested in political economy, nor did he have any real talent for the topic. Instead he was drawn to the inspection of lived experience in all of its exquisite detail.
I'm not sure what "intelligentsia" means in your phrasing but your assertion does not apply to Adorno. His writing is generally skeptical of anything that is systematizing or totalizing. Reality has depth and is complex. Systems elide much of that depth and complexity, replacing it with shallowness and false simplicity. What I wrote is a limited summary, for sure, but more accurate than implying endorsement of a particular ideology.
You always have to make yourself aware about the time members of the Frankfurt School lived through and how it influenced their views on western civilization. But it is a cynicism that may not be adequate. Embracing that for a second can still be helpful to become aware of many problems though.
Marxism did not supply people with more freedom than capitalism. Capitalism is an expression of human greed and a method how we can deal with it constructively. Marxism just denies negative but human traits. There still is room for criticism on capitalism, plenty of it, there are excesses that are not excusable. But people that prefer the totalitarian model of society to liberal democracies should never be called intellectuals. Maybe intellectuals with a death wish, but I guess those are an exception.
Marxism did not supply people with more freedom than capitalism. Capitalism is an expression of human greed and a method how we can deal with it constructively. Marxism just denies negative but human traits. There still is room for criticism on capitalism, plenty of it, there are excesses that are not excusable. But people that prefer the totalitarian model of society to liberal democracies should never be called intellectuals. Maybe intellectuals with a death wish, but I guess those are an exception.
[deleted]
An important piece of context is that many of the New Left thinkers you mentioned are responding directly to the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust. While yes, tribalism, brutality, and oppression are all present in non-Western cultures, I don't think it's an absurd claim that it is only Western rationality that can produce mass suffering at the scale of the Holocaust.
The Khmer Rouge in the 70s, and the Japanese in the early 20th century would like a word with you.
Like any movement, Nazism in Germany was a coalition, not a single thing. Hence it could absorb former-communists with a nationalist bent, monarchists, anti-modernists, reactionaries of various stripes along with radical futurists, etc. I never lumped them all together, just pointed out that a particular strain of thinking in pre-war Germany (including Heidegger, Steiner-types, etc.) laid over and let Nazism roll over them and in fact many became either ardent Nazis or quiet sympathizers.
It obviously also wasn't a stable coalition, as it included outright internal murderous purges and later after military defeat an almost total disintegration.
Similar things can be said about fascism in Italy, or Francoism in Spain. What united them was virulent anti-communism and nationalism.
It obviously also wasn't a stable coalition, as it included outright internal murderous purges and later after military defeat an almost total disintegration.
Similar things can be said about fascism in Italy, or Francoism in Spain. What united them was virulent anti-communism and nationalism.
> In Germany in the the 20s and 30s right wing authoritarianism freely absorbed adherents of the equivalent of today's "wellness" and "natural health" movements
Those movements are not the source of fascism and I don't think existentialism and romanticism leaves one particularly open to it. Modernism was established when WW2 broke out which probably ended it. I doubt that any philosophy is vulnerable to it because then it would not resurface. Fascism and communism as well judged capitalism. Maybe that is easier to admit than being responsible for it ourselves.
I do believe however that there are fascist tendencies in those that quickly diagnose it in others just because it is something abhorrent. That Adorno suspected it everywhere would be understandable, except that he did no such thing even with the pessimism he often espoused.
Those movements are not the source of fascism and I don't think existentialism and romanticism leaves one particularly open to it. Modernism was established when WW2 broke out which probably ended it. I doubt that any philosophy is vulnerable to it because then it would not resurface. Fascism and communism as well judged capitalism. Maybe that is easier to admit than being responsible for it ourselves.
I do believe however that there are fascist tendencies in those that quickly diagnose it in others just because it is something abhorrent. That Adorno suspected it everywhere would be understandable, except that he did no such thing even with the pessimism he often espoused.
Nowhere in my comment did I say those things were "the source" nor did I say that Adorno claimed they were; I said they are/were susceptible which is something else entirely.
Find another strawman, maybe.
Find another strawman, maybe.
Alright, alright, it was not an accusation...
I'm a little sensitive given what's going on on the streets of Ottawa and other Canadian cities up here right now.
Far-right ideology is ripping through those groups again today as well.
It makes sense to me. Natural health is enticing because it simplifies the problem of solving your health issues to adjust understanding how certain herbs, mushrooms, etc. affect the balance of your health. Real biology is incredibly complicated and full of unsatisfying answers. Natural health is full of sure answers (with dubious effects)
Facism is exactly the same except instead of the health of the body it is about the health of the state.
Facism is exactly the same except instead of the health of the body it is about the health of the state.
If I recall, Adorno diagnoses it as the willful ignorance of seeing actual real world internal contradictions that is inherent in various "holistic" philosophies. Papering over conflict and disagreement with hand waving about oneness which actually masks an authoritarian imposition of unitary identity or aesthetic vision -- an ideology of "natural balance", which sees certain groups (Jews, socialist radicals, intellectuals, scientists, doctors, whatever) as disrupting this equilibrium.
Obviously vaccine opposition is one of the penultimate forms of this.
Obviously vaccine opposition is one of the penultimate forms of this.
I've seen natural health, antivax, and related woo gain currency among both the left and the right. If you're so radicalized as to distrust anything mainstream because it's mainstream, you are more likely to reject the medical establishment regardless of your ideological particulars.
Don’t forget bitcoin!
Adorno and his cohort are the ones who created Critical Theory and adapted Marxism for the post-war western intellectual taste. Much of what is now called "wokeness" is a direct result of their work, by way of the New Left.
Not so. In fact I took a critical theory class in college (fell under religious studies, rather than political economy, interestingly). The professor started off the class with two things:
1. critical theory is about the study of what makes suffering persist in modern life
2. much of the critical theory works of the twentieth century are about the rise of fascism as well as the reality of the failure of Marxism.
You'd do well to pinpoint the origins of your opinion -- someone fleeced you.
1. critical theory is about the study of what makes suffering persist in modern life
2. much of the critical theory works of the twentieth century are about the rise of fascism as well as the reality of the failure of Marxism.
You'd do well to pinpoint the origins of your opinion -- someone fleeced you.
Critical theory already has an answer for what makes suffering persist in modern life: unjust power structures baked into society at all levels: political, social, economic, epistemological, and psychic. Critical theory is a framework/toolkit for uncovering and exposing those unjust power structures.
Furthermore, the failure of Marxism and the rise of fascism are considered to be the same phenomenon. That is why, per Marcuse, only leftists deserved to speak freely: allowing other opinions to the table would only hasten the rise of the next Hitler.
Furthermore, the failure of Marxism and the rise of fascism are considered to be the same phenomenon. That is why, per Marcuse, only leftists deserved to speak freely: allowing other opinions to the table would only hasten the rise of the next Hitler.
There's no excuse for silencing voices, even Nazis ones as every inconvenient voice would be labeled a Nazi one easily! I'd rather know who has Nazis views and who has Marxist ones than live among people like in Iran where truths and genuine opinions are only shared at home. It was the same back in Communist Bulgaria up to 1989, so, please, ask people who've been through such a silencing-for-their-own-good regime - there are plenty of them around the globe!
In Germany shortly after the Nazi problem we had another dictatorship that was against freedom of expression and severely restricted opinions. They were sure they were the good guys this time...
It was very reactionary to nationalism. Adorno and consorts writings are often reactionary too, but they were real victims of fascism. They tried very hard to find an explanation for the reasons of the prosecution and sometimes got carried away. In this context most works are well worth a read.
It might even be beneficial to know the works to not conflate their position with those of people that call for more content and opinion control. These people are not innocent, they happily condemn others and have a totalitarian world view. It is just much more difficult to oppose them because they can point to Nazi and declare themselves as opposition.
It was very reactionary to nationalism. Adorno and consorts writings are often reactionary too, but they were real victims of fascism. They tried very hard to find an explanation for the reasons of the prosecution and sometimes got carried away. In this context most works are well worth a read.
It might even be beneficial to know the works to not conflate their position with those of people that call for more content and opinion control. These people are not innocent, they happily condemn others and have a totalitarian world view. It is just much more difficult to oppose them because they can point to Nazi and declare themselves as opposition.
Well, I know many victims of Communism in Bulgaria, who were silenced and now support silencing! And I don't get this!
It is not a good framework for analysis. It can be a tool, but using such an inductive lens can lead to you seeing power structures everywhere where none exist.
Marcuse was a victim of fascism and sadly his wounds remained and influenced his texts.
Marcuse was a victim of fascism and sadly his wounds remained and influenced his texts.
Hey dang--
HN should implement per-sentence votes. The first sentence here is just a reference to Adorno's influence as part of the Frankfurt School.
The second sentence is low-effort speculation.
I need to be able to highlight the 2nd sentence and click the downvote button for it.
HN should implement per-sentence votes. The first sentence here is just a reference to Adorno's influence as part of the Frankfurt School.
The second sentence is low-effort speculation.
I need to be able to highlight the 2nd sentence and click the downvote button for it.
Or maybe do something like Genius or Medium and allow highlighting and selective comments?
This is an incredible distortion of Adorno and the Frankfurt School, which in itself makes it clear you did not even read the article. Why comment at all? It's amazing people are still standing their ground about "wokeness," I assure you they were worried about bigger things than that. They didn't even have the language of individual morality that "wokeness" implies, like we do now. They survived the holocaust! You think they were worried about what any given person should think about queer people or minorities? Like Adorno's music, I just hear dissonance here.
I don't even like the Frankfurt School that much, but Marcuse had a much bigger impact on what we see today.
Subheading: 'Seventy years after its publication, Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia is a warning against resurgent fascism'