Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School

A preservation of a superb essay I read years back.

This is an opinion piece I came across, years ago. It is written about a specific topic, described in the title, but the value of the article FAR transcends the "metal scene" in its insightful history, explanation, and analysis of Critical Theory and the social justice movement. Some time after my first reading, I sought to find it again, only to hit expired link after expired link. After some effort, I found it in an archive, and copied it for my own reference. I have since failed to find a “live” link, so, in order to share, I'm left with the final option: post a copy, verbatim, with as much attribution as I can muster.

I don't know who the author, BreadGod, is, and if he/she comes across this and contacts me, I will be happy to attribute (or whatever). There is language herein that some will find objectionable. Take it up with BreadGod.

— Peter Venetoklis

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We Must Now Fight Back Against The Social Justice Warriors In The Metal Scene

Metal has fought against and triumphed over many enemies throughout its long history. Politicians. Religious leaders. The mainstream media. Metal has survived their onslaughts and has only gotten stronger. But now metal is up against what is quite possibly the most dangerous and insidious enemy it has ever faced: social justice.

Now I bet you're probably thinking, "But BreadGod, social justice sounds like a good thing. How can you be against something like social justice? Does that mean you're for social injustice?" That's what the proponents of social justice (commonly known as social justice warriors) want you to believe. They want you to believe that they're all about making society a better place. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Social justice is totalitarianism in disguise. That sounds like an outrageous claim to make, but it's the truth. To understand why, we need to go back in time a hundred years. Sit tight, ladies and gentlemen. You're about to learn some chilling truths.

Origins

Karl Marx, the father of communism, once said that if war were to ever come to Europe, the workers of the world, united by class consciousness, would arise as one, destroy capitalism, overthrow their national identities, and bring about the paradise on earth of world communism. Communist thinkers saw this not as a wild guess, but as science, as accepted fact, and war would be the trigger. They eventually got their chance with World War I. It was one of the bloodiest and most brutal wars in history. The communists were dismayed to discover that the workers' allegiance to their respective nations was stronger than their supposed class consciousness. Only one communist revolution occurred, and it occurred in the one place they least expected: backwards, feudal, agrarian Russia.

After the war ended, a group of marxist thinkers got together to form an institute and figure out what had gone wrong. They originally wanted to call it the Institute for Marxism, but they felt that name was too honest, so they decided to call it the Institute for Social Research. They established this institute at Frankfurt University in Germany in 1924. Overtime, this institution became known simply as the Frankfurt School. This institute figured that capitalism had made the working class so prosperous they were too blinded (that's the word they like to use: blinded) to see their true class consciousness and bring about the communist revolution. Someone else had to be the vanguard. They were now trying to figure out who.

While they were busy trying to find the new vanguard of the communist revolution, another problem arose: Hitler came to power. Since all the members of the Frankfurt School were jewish communists, they were doubly unwelcome in Nazi Germany, so in 1934, they fled to America and established a new base of operations at Columbia University in New York City. They stayed there until 1951 when they returned to Europe. While they were in America, the Frankfurt School crafted a new strategy: they divorced marxism from economics and married it to the culture. This is the origin of cultural marxism. The purpose of cultural marxism is to destroy capitalism by destroying the cultural institutions that support it. To do this, they crafted a sword and a shield.

Critical Theory and Political Correctness

The sword is called critical theory. The theory of critical theory is simply to criticize. It sounds ridiculous when you put it so simply, but that's really all there is to it. While the Frankfurt School was in America, they found their new vanguard for the communist revolution: the dispossessed. The subversive nature of critical theory was twofold. First, each area of critical theory could appear to be unique and self-contained. For example, feminism could attack western culture from the perspective of its oppression against women, and that oppression must be unique to western culture. They make no mention of how cultures in Africa, the Middle East or Asia treat women, they only focus on the oppression of women in the west.

Likewise, African American studies would only criticize American slavery, as if slavery were unique to America. There's no doubt that American slavery was horrible and immoral, but cultural marxists never mention that an overwhelming majority of African slaves went to the Middle East where they were treated far worse than African slaves who went to the Americas. Information like this contradicts the narrative marxists are trying to push, so it is suppressed. Then there is gender studies, which claims that all the oppression of homosexuals throughout history was due merely to western culture. They never mention that in most African and Middle Eastern countries, homosexuality is punishable by death. Again, this information contradicts the narrative, so it is suppressed.

I mentioned that the subversive nature of critical theory was twofold. What makes critical theory truly destructive is that they never provide an alternative. They never tell you what might have been better, what might have worked in its place, or what alternatives have been tried successfully in the past. They just attack and attack and attack.

The Frankfurt School knew that western culture would eventually fight back against these attacks, so they created a shield. The shield is called political correctness. Political correctness says that certain groups are protected groups, therefore you're not allowed to talk about them unless you're one of them. They'll go even further by saying that they don't have to listen to your argument because you're a straight white male. Or they'll just say that they won't even let you talk because you're a racist homophobic misogynist. For example, if I were to call the president a tyrant, cultural marxists will say that the only reason I'm calling him a tyrant is because I hate black people. That's what political correctness is. It's a way for cultural marxists to get their opponents to shut up.

Critical theory and political correctness, when combined and put into action, is called social justice. Cultural marxists are using social justice to bring to the western world an ideology that, despite having slaughtered a hundred million people in the past century, refuses to die.

The Creation of Social Justice Warriors

Now you're probably wondering how modern day social justice warriors were created. You see, you have this generation of kids called millennials who were born during the 80s and 90s, just as the seeds of cultural marxism were starting to sprout. During that time period, education took a new turn: instead of addressing behavioral problems in children, they would just ignore them. From now on, everyone's a winner, everyone gets a trophy, everyone is special and smart and beautiful. Nothing they do is wrong and they should never be held accountable for any of their actions. These kids listen to this bullshit on a daily basis. They hear it so often that by the time they graduate from high school, an overwhelming majority of them become huge narcissists. They say, "I am awesome! I am special! Just look at all the trophies I have! Sure, they're all fucking participation trophies, but they're still trophies nonetheless, so that means I'm awesome!"

After graduating from high school, they go off to these big universities that are filled with marxist professors, and these marxists professors tell these narcissists the one thing they've always wanted to hear: nothing is ever your fault. The reason why your life sucks and you feel unfulfilled and nothing is going your way isn't because you're lazy or you made bad decisions or you have a shitty personality, it's because other people are oppressing you. If you're a woman, then it's men who are oppressing you. If you're black, then it's white people who are oppressing you. If you're gay, then it's straight people who are oppressing you. If you're trans, then it's those horrible cis people who are oppressing you.

As for the straight white men, marxist professors tell them that they're evil and they're horrible and that they're responsible for all the bad things in this world. They keep assaulting straight white men with this line of thought until they reach the point where they have this level of self-loathing that not even religion can match. Once they reach this point, the marxists will tell them that there is only one way they can redeem themselves, and that is through social justice. After these kids accept social justice, these marxists will tell them to spread social justice to every aspect of life. And so these brainwashed kids go out into the real world, they infiltrate various subcultures, they co-opt them, make it all about their bullshit, and then they end up destroying these subcultures.

Their Various Infiltrations

I first took notice of the social justice menace in the atheist movement. Fedora and banana jokes aside, the atheist movement was a real movement. We had our big speakers like Dawkins and Hitchens, we would campaign for various causes such as encouraging atheists to come out of the atheist closet so they can be more accepted by mainstream America, and we even had our own conventions where we would tip fedoras at each other until the cows came home.

So what happened? Starting around 2010, these social justice warriors entered the movement and started complaining about harassment that was going on at atheist conventions. Of course, in the mind of the social justice warrior, harassment equaled guys flirting with them at a bar. None of that mattered to them. They continued to complain about supposed harassment. Then Elevatorgate happened. Long story short, a socially retarded nerd asked a perpetually grumpy social justice warrior out for coffee in an elevator. All the other social justice warriors in the atheist movement then claimed that these atheist conventions were full of potential rapists and that anyone who disagreed with them on this was a misogynistic rape apologist. The normal atheists asked them for logic and evidence and the social justice warriors responded by telling them to listen and believe.

So the social justice warriors kept pushing this narrative until they decided that the atheist label was forever tainted by misogyny and rape, so they demanded that people start calling themselves Atheist+. You had to be an atheist plus a feminist, plus a progressive, plus an advocate of social justice, and if you weren't any of those things, then that meant you were a horrible person. All the normal atheists were all like, "What the fuck are you people talking about? This has nothing to do with atheism. We just wanna talk about religion, man." The social justice warriors responded to this by completely wrecking the atheist movement. And now atheists are a laughingstock.

I then noticed them in gaming. A few years ago, various gaming websites starting pumping out articles claiming that gamers were horrible racist sexist homophobes. Then a certain woman came along and started a video series claiming that video games turn people into misogynists. I won't mention her name, but let's just say she's the female Jack Thompson. A couple idiots threatened to kill her and the social justice warriors responded by saying that this proves all gamers are horrible people. And so they kept pushing this narrative that gamers are horrible and evil until gamers got sick and tired of it and started the consumer revolt known as Gamergate. (This Encyclopedia Dramatica article provides a nice overview.) This fight is still ongoing.

Their Assault Against Metal

And now the social justice warriors are trying to infiltrate metal. I first noticed this infiltration back in May of this year when a blogger tried to vilify Inquisition by using dubious eyewitness accounts and cheap guilt by association tactics. I wrote up a response to that article here.

Fast forward to September. A mysterious woman-fronted black metal band named Myrkur was receiving a massive amount of hype from the metal press. Naturally, many metalheads didn't believe the hype, so they started talking shit about the band. In response, Vice contributor Theis Duelund wrote an article claiming that the only reason anyone hates Myrkur is because they hate women and not because Myrkur is the same boring Alcest-inspired bullshit that had been pelted at the metal scene since 2008. The "evidence" he provided consisted of two obvious troll comments and a massive amount of hearsay. Of course that didn't stop him from claiming that metal was a den of filthy misogynists who hated change.

But what really drove me to write all of this was this idiotic article. I would have been able to ignore it were it not for the fact that it was published on Metal Injection, one of the most popular metal blogs on the entire internet. The article is called "The Problem With Heavy Metal Is Metalheads: Stop Calling Everyone A Faggot". Although it sounds reasonable, it was deliberately designed to let social justice warriors get their foot in the door. Soon they will make more demands and try to do to metal what they did to atheism and gaming. Imagine if this article was called "The Problem With Atheism Is Atheists" or "The Problem With Video Games Is Gamers". Then you'll understand why people are so angry over this.

The author – a smug, self-righteous hipster named Shayne Mathis – angrily demands that the entire metal community stop using the word faggot because it might hurt someone's precious feels. He operates on the assumptions that the word faggot has only one concrete meaning and its meaning hasn't changed in the past one hundred years. He doesn't give a shit about silly things like context or the dynamic nature of language, he says the word is offensive because, well, it just is. In the internet age, the word faggot has been used so often that it now simply means idiot. I've been a member of imageboard culture since 2006 and we use the word faggot all the time. When we call OP a faggot, we're not calling him gay, we're calling him an idiot. Furthermore, if you're so thin-skinned that you can't handle being called a faggot, then perhaps you shouldn't be in metal.

It's Time to Rise Up

The social justice warriors are about to discover that they picked a fight with the wrong subculture. There's a reason why they've had no success with co-opting metal. It's because metalheads are, by their very nature, rebellious. We don't like being told what to do or what to think. When someone tells us we can't do something, we'll do it anyway just to piss them off. Just look at the comments section of that Metal Injection article. It's full of people calling the author a faggot. They're making it loud and clear that they're not about to let him police their speech. (Of course, the author will repeatedly deny being the speech police.)

The comment section also features gay people who say that they have no problem with people using the word faggot. They understand that the meanings of words change over time. They know fully well that words will only offend you if you let them offend you. The gay metalheads are letting Shayne Mathis know that they're not his shield. They're also making it clear that even though the metal scene is really inclusive, it's not a fucking hugbox. When metalheads see something they don't like, they're not gonna mince words about it. They're going to say it like it is.

It's obvious that social justice warriors are determined to destroy everything we enjoy, including metal. Don't fucking let them. Appeasement does not work. Burying your head in the sand does not work. They equate appeasement with weakness and they equate silence with agreement. If we give them an inch, they will take a mile. If you see any of these social justice warriors demanding that we can't say a certain word because it might hurt someone's precious feels or we can't listen to a certain band because their lyrics are "offensive", call them out. Call them out on their bullshit. Don't let them get away with spreading their lies.

We now have a choice to make. Do you want a scene where you're free to listen to whatever you want and free to speak whatever is on your mind, or do you want to live in a bleak and joyless world where a small group of people decides what is acceptable? Do you want a scene full of people like Theis Duelund and Shayne Mathis? I sure fucking don't. We, the metalheads, built our genre into a massive worldwide community, not these faggots. We hold the power here. They don't. It's about time we rise up and fight back against the social justice warriors who are trying to ruin our scene. Together, we will bring them down. We will show our might. We will show them what happens when you try to destroy the metal scene.

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This was originally shared (re-shared?) at The Roots of Liberty blog. I brought it to Substack to further preserve it.

Again, I am not the author of this article. If you are, please leave me a comment with a way to reach you.