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            pdftitle={The Extreme Right (still) Lacks the Education for Using Critical Theory},
            pdfauthor={Florian Cramer, for Sandberg Institute, 4-2019},
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\title{The Extreme Right (still) Lacks the Education for Using Critical Theory}
\author{Florian Cramer, for Sandberg Institute, 4-2019}
\date{}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

We are here in a Masters program called Critical Studies, which is in an
obvious lineage of Critical Theory. The word ``critical theory'' was
coined by Max Horkheimer in 1937 during the Frankfurt School's American
exile as a code word for Marxism - but at the same time, as a new form
of Marxism that broke with dogmatic historical materialism. In other
words: a ``cultural marxism'', in the sense of a revision of classical
notions of base and superstructure.

\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
  Horkheimer's analysis from 1937 seems surprisingly up-to-date, btw.:
\end{itemize}

\begin{quote}
Der Begriff der Abhängigkeit des Kulturellen vom Ökonomischen hat sich
daher verändert. Er ist mit der Vernichtung des typischen Individuums
gleichsam vulgärmaterialistischer zu verstehen als früher. Die
Erklärungen sozialer Phänomene werden einfacher und zugleich
komplizierter. Einfacher, weil das Ökonomische unmittelbarer und
bewusster die Menschen bestimmt und die relative Widerstandskraft und
Substantialität der Kultursphären im Schwinden begriffen ist,
komplizierter, weil die entfesselte ökonomische Dynamik, zu deren bloßen
Medien die meisten Individuen erniedrigt sind, in raschem Tempo immer
neue Gestalten und Verhängnisse zeitigt. Selbst fortgeschrittene Teile
der Gesellschaft werden entmutigt, von der allgemeinen Ratlosigkeit
ergriffen.
\end{quote}

And so we are in the center of contemporary extreme right discourse and
the war against ``cultural marxism'' or ``postmodern neo-marxism'' waged
by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Thierry Baudet.

The Frankfurt School and Adorno are the particular target of Baudet. He
sees them as part of a modernist conspiracy against classical European
heritage, including classical music, figurative painting and pre-modern
architecture.

Jordan Peterson, however, mainly targets Foucault and Derrida in his
polemics against `post-modern neomarxism' (never mind the fact that
neither of them ever used the term postmodern for their theory, nor can
be easily aligned with Marxism.) Vice versa, in his supposed debate with
Slavoj Zizek, one could see that Peterson's and Zizek's positions were
much less different from each other than many had expected, since both
of them argued against a culturalist left and saw themselves as victims
of political correctness.

To complicate things further: Cultural Marxism \emph{does} exist, but
not where Peterson, Baudet and Cliteur spot it - for example, in British
cultural materialism and Marxist cultural studies: Raymond Williams,
Stuart Hall, and in the American counterparts of cultural materialism,
such as the New Historicism of Steven Greenblatt, the Marxism of Fredric
Jameson that happens to argue (like Habermas and the late Frankfurt
School) \emph{against} postmodernism as a phenomenon of late capitalism,
or postcolonial theorists like Gayatri Spivak whose thinking combines
Marxism and deconstruction. (So Peterson should rather target Spivak
than Derrida, and Baudet should rather target Stuart Hall than Adorno. I
also think that both of them actually refer to the discourse of Hall,
Spivak and other more clearly politically positioned thinkers when they
complain about political correctness and campus anti-discrimination
policies, but wrongly attribute that to Adorno, Foucault and Derrida.
Let me come back to this in a few minutes.)

The extreme right, in other words, has not done its research very well,
with the exception of a few thinkers: Richard Spencer, the neofascist
and inventor of the term ``Alt-Right'', who studied in the humanities
departments of University of Virginia, University of Chicago and Duke
University on both undergraduate and graduate level. Although Spencer is
a crude fascist, he's rather clever in appropriating campus-left
concepts such as ``safe spaces'' for his own cause.

But more significantly, the whole concept of the New Right (or, in
French: Nouvelle Droite), is based on cultural marxism, namely the
appropriation of Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony for the
cause of a renewed extreme right. This appropriation was pioneered in
the early 1970s by the French Nouvelle Droite, particularly Alain de
Benoist, and subsequently adopted by the extreme right in other
countries (such as Germany). From here, it is not a far stretch to
imagine that extreme-right thinkers could adopt the more contemporary
concepts of political hegemony and radical democracy of Ernesto Laclau
and Chantal Mouffe for their own causes, last not least because Mouffe
herself partly adopted them from the preeminent fascist thinker Carl
Schmitt.

When I studied in Germany in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
poststructuralist thinkers like Derrida and Foucault were under
suspicion from the Frankfurt School (Habermas even called them
``neoconservatives'') last not least because of their reuse of ideas
from right-wing thinkers like Nietzsche, Heidegger and Schmitt. In
Germany, a number of former left-wing and postmodern intellectuals
indeed have recently turned to the populist right, such as the media
theorist Norbert Bolz (a former close collaborator of Friedrich Kittler)
and the former Situationist and postmodern sociologist Frank Böckelmann.
It wouldn't be hard to imagine an intellectual extreme right that,
instead of waging a knee-jerk war against postmodern neomarxism, would
try to establish its own readings of critical theory, poststructuralism
and even Post-Marxism that would bring those theories back to Nietzsche,
Heidegger and Schmitt.

Let's try to do this as a thought experiment.

Foucault's theory of power, and his analysis of disciplinary
institutions and systems of punishment could be rather easily
appropriated for right-wing authoritarian politics (since Foucault
himself complicates the issue of authoritarianism and
anti-authoritarianism). After all, Foucault himself had a weak spot for
authoritarian regimes when he sided with Khomeini and the Iranian
revolution.

If we turn to the Alt-Right meme wars and the Alt-Right tactics of
irony, transgression and use of the grotesque (Pepe the Frog): Can be
perfectly analyzed with Bakhtin's theory of carnival. Conversely,
Bakhtin's theory lends itself to being interpreted as a theory - and
even apology - of populism (since in carnival, the good people rebel
against the corrupt elite). Antisemitism as a token of medieval European
carnival culture is a blind spot of Bakhtin's theory anyway.

Secondly, George Bataille's theories of transgression and excess,
particularly in his late work \emph{Tears of Eros} and the link between
sexuality and death. It fits btw., that Bataille's essay \emph{The
Psychological Structure of Fascism} is now being shared on Alt-Right
blogs. It could be argued that his analysis that identifies fascism with
the homogenous versus the heterogeneous (non-aligned groups/culture) is
precisely subverted by the ``Alt-Right''.

Thirdly, if the new Right had properly read the Frankfurt School, it
would discover that Adorno and Horkheimer, in particular, combine
Marxist and conservative elements in their critique of culture and
society. Adorno was a enthusiastic reader of Spengler's ``Decline of the
West'' just as the contemporary Right, and the cultural pessimism in the
``Dialectics of Enlightenment'' has Spenglerian undertones. Adorno's
infamous papers on jazz music (with, among others, their critique of
jazz as ``emasculation'' music and his endorsement of the jazz bann on
German radio in 1934 could be adopted 1:1 into contemporary Alt-Right
discourse. In fact, Baudet grotesquely misreads Adorno if he sees in him
a conspirator against classical music and the classical European
cultural canon. The critique of the ``culture industry'' in the
\emph{Dialectics of Enlightenment} is certainly a point in which both
the left and the right agreed, and which also explains why so many of
Germany's 1960s left-wing student movement activists (who saw Adorno as
their teacher) later turned to the populist and extreme right.
(Böckelmann, Rabehl, Mahler, Roehl, Maschke, Oberlercher.)

This history repeated itself when postmodern media theory (of
Baudrillard, Virilio - the latter being a conservative catholic btw.)
got appropriated, with Heidegger and Bataille in the mix, in Nick Land's
`hyperstition' and Land's later transformation in to a
``neo-reactionary'' theorist within the larger network of the Alt-Right.

Land currently is the only cultural studies/critical theory intellectual
that the extreme right has, much in contrast to the early 20th century
when fascism had intellectuals like Marinetti, Pound, Schmitt,
Heidegger, Blanchot, de Man.

Even the term ``Critical Theory'' and ``Critical Studies'' could be
appropriated, just as the term ``alternative'' got appropriated, since
it is unspecific to what is being criticized and how.

The extreme right is quite likely to further educate itself, smarten up
and eventually develop its own version of critical theory. Aside from
intervening into existing disciplines and institutions, it could develop
its own partisan and activist institutions, such as identity studies
departments that would function as antitheses to gender and postcolonial
studies.

\end{document}
