Monday 27 June 2016

The Frankfurt School

Theodor W Adorno and Max Horkheimer

Brandon Martinez – Red Ice Creations Interview, 2 March 2016

‘Brandon Martinez – NeoCon Globalism and Kalergi’s Plan to genocide Europeans.’

“Their activism is aimed at exploiting divisions and exacerbating those divisions, and creating new divisions through promotion of identity politics. Things like feminism, transgenderism, these new phenomenon that have sprung out of the new left, through what can be traced back to cultural Marxism which is a byproduct of the Frankfurt School, which originated in Germany. In 1923. It was established by a guy named Carl Grϋnberg, a Jewish Marxist professor, and it was financed by a Jewish millionaire named Felix Weil. And essentially, what the Frankfurt School was all about was sort of deconstructing the authoritarian personality of Western civilisation, or Western men specifically. And it doesn’t entirely originate as like a post-WW2 movement because it was established before World War Two, prior to Hitler coming to power. And they’d already been, you know, formulating these adoptions prior to this. So it’s not something that sprang up as a reaction to Hitler. It was actually pre-Hitler. And then they just used Hitler as their model bad guy to deconstruct.

So almost all of the intellectual forbears of cultural Marxism and the Frankfurt School are Jewish...Go down the list. All of them are Jewish. All of them are very strongly identifying Jews and Zionists so their agenda is quite obvious. It is to break down the cultural fabric of Western societies so that they do not lead into something that could resemble ‘fascism’ which is just a euphemism at this point for kind of gentile nationalism. So, their afraid of nationalism for all other peoples, right. They’re the ones who stamped out nationalism for Palestinians. They stifle the self-determination of Palestinians. They carpet bomb them and drone bomb them and use white phosphorous and then demonise them in the media. So they’re against nationalism for all gentiles, white or non-white, it doesn’t matter. Whoever they view as a competitor. But then they’re all for nationalism for themselves because that makes them strong. That builds up their ‘in-group loyalty.’ But they’re all about breaking that down for other groups because that’s part of their group evolutionary strategy, or whatever, to advance themselves, advance their power, their interests.

And not all Jews are involved in the Frankfurt School. Obviously not, right. These are a select group of very active and extremely paranoid schizophrenic I would say, Jewish elites that have committed themselves to this moment which infiltrated a lot of the universities in the United States, post World War Two. Hitler actually kicked them out of Germany. They burrowed their way into Columbia University and other places in the US. That became the hub, the centre of Marxist activity in the US. And then all these other movements started to spring up after that. Like the new Left and that whole sexual revolution and everything involves with that.” 


'Adorno and Horkheimer - 'Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception'

A summary by Shahar Fisher, 19 December 2013

"Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is a chapter in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's book "Dialectic of Enlightenment" which discusses their famous notion of the "culture industry". In this chapter Adorno and Horkheimer view capitalist society's culture industry as an aspect of the enlightenment has betrayed itself by allowing instrumental logic to take over human social life (a notion developed throughout "DialecticofEnlightenment").

According to Adorno and Horkheimer, culture industry is a main phenomenon of late capitalism, one which encompasses all products and form of light entertainment – from Hollywood films to elevator music. All these forms of popular culture are designed to satisfy the growing needs of mass capitalistic consumers for entertainment. Adorno specifically notes that the term "culture industry" was chosen over "mass culture" in order to make sure that it is not understood as something which spontaneously stems from the masses themselves.

Products of the culture economy take the appearance of artwork but are in fact dependant on industry and economy, meaning they are subjected to the interests of money and power. All products of the culture industry are designed for profit. According to Adorno and Horkheimer this means that every work of art is turned into a consumer product and is shaped by the logic of capitalist rationality (i.e. whatever sells best). Art is no longer autonomous, but is rather a commodified product of the economic relations of production. 


The main argument of "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is that the commodification of culture is the commodification of human conciseness. Adorno and Horkheimer assert that culture industry eradicates autonomous thinking and criticism, serving to preserve the reigning order. It provides easy entertainment which distracts massed from the wrongs and sickness of the ruling order. They argue that culture industry has taken over reality as the prism through which people experience reality, thus completely shaping and conditioning their experience of life. In addition culture industry serves to keep workers busy, as expressed by the famous quote from "Dialectic of Enlightenment": "Amusement has become an extension of labor under late capitalism". Popular culture appears to be offering a refuge and distraction for work, but in fact it causes the worker to further dwell into a world of products and consumerism. The only freedom culture industry has to really offer a freedom from thinking.

Adorno and Horkheimer claim that culture industry positions the masses ad objects of manipulation (instead of just satisfying their wants and needs). This turns people into passive and subordinated subjects, unable to fully take critical responsibility for their own action, a thing which is crucial for a functioning democracy. People therefore gladly give in a help maintain the system by taking part in it.

in "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" Adorno and Horkheimer stress the fact that culture industry uses a production-line mentality in producing cultural products. Seemingly all films and TV shows we watch are different, but in fact they follow the same recycled formulas as in other types of consumer goods. Like consumers goods, it feels like "there is something for everyone" here but in fact it's all variations of the same thing. This is a main feature of the culture industry, for the fact that all products are produced under the same scheme allows them to be "readable" and effortlessly digested. This is how culture industry imposes conformity – with things that only seem to be different but are in fact all (slight) variations of the same thing. The final argument posed by Adorno and Horkheimer is that people under capitalism suffer the same fate of art under the culture industry – they are reduced to the exchange value with no intrinsic or unique traits as the Enlightenment dreamed.

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