Yes, I think people don’t associate these old ideas with modernity, but they never actually went away. Both Hilter and Stalin threw the Frankfurt School lot out, but there was a short revival in the hedonistic 60s. That fizzled out and during the 70s the old revolutionary Marxist terrorist groups in Europe had a last try, but people weren’t interested. You then have Thatcher and Regan in the 80s that stopped it and flooding the economy with money in the 90’s, giving the illusion of prosperity, also stemmed cultural Marxism.
With the economic collapse in 2008 it gave a perfect opportunity to introduce it. These sort of ideas don’t succeed in strong social and economic societies and it’s no coincidence they originated in a collapsed Weimar Republic, or only succeed in a liberal democracy.
A Marxist/Leninist type revolution could never occur in a modern welfare society, but using an analogy of a child in a candy store, you can make a society so sick and dysfunctional, that eventually the public themselves demand someone steps in to restore order. That ‘someone’ is the State, which is what communism and progressivism both have in common.
Captain Obvious (07-29-2015)
There are 2 "classes" Those who have money, and those who don't.
And we had our Revolution during Lincoln's regime.
Just because there is a semblance of "private property" doesn't mean we are not a Communist society.
All the property of Americans is taxed one way or another. And, those taxes are like rent, which means you don't own anything. We are tenants pretending to own something.
All those "rights" enumerated, above, are strategic moves & circus acts to distract, confuse and break down all remaining resistance to what is planned for us.
Lincoln stuck America with "rule by the elite, which is what communism always was." And, that is what we have had ever since, more and more, year by year.
If only it was so ‘class’ simple.
You can’t be communist if you have private property. I can see your point, but socialism is the funding through private wealth, the ownership of that wealth is still privately owned and it’s that which distinguishes it from communism.
In the link I argue that this is the ‘dumbing down’ period leading to progressivism, which is what communism has always been. So in that context yes, we have cultural Marxism to prepare for what is to come and it’s no longer class based, but cultural.