Since the election of Donald Trump, a growing body of research has examined the role of digital technologies in new right wing movements (Lewis 2018; Hawley 2017; Neiwert 2017; Nagle 2017). This article will explore a distinct, but related, subject: new right wing tendencies within the tech industry itself. Our point of entry will be an improbable document: a German language dissertation submitted by an American to the faculty of social sciences at J. W. Goethe University of Frankfurt in 2002. Entitled Aggression in the Life-World, the dissertation aims to describe the role that aggression plays in social integration, or the set of processes that lead individuals in a given society to feel bound to one another. To that end, it offers a “systematic” reinterpretation of Theodor Adorno’s Jargon of Authenticity (1973). It is of interest primarily because of its author: Alexander C. Karp.
Related:
Goethe University Frankfurt – Wikipedia:
The university has been best known historically for its Institute for Social Research (founded 1924), the institutional home of the Frankfurt School, a preeminent 20th-century school of philosophy and social thought. Some of the well-known scholars associated with this school include Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Jürgen Habermas, as well as Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Walter Benjamin.
Herbert Marcuse: The Ideologue as Paid Agent of U.S. Imperialism
The Function of the Compatible Left Seen in Its Attacks on the Venezuelan Revolution (archived)
The CIA funded “Western Marxism,” a non-communist left and helped it grow in stature. Herbert Marcuse, who worked with the Office of Strategic Services, and later the State Department, may be the most renowned of this group. The Frankfurt School was another, also CIA supported.
“Marcuse’s writings on Marx, including his 1958 book Soviet Marxism which was commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation as part of US intelligence and foundation efforts to project non-communist but radical images and ideas. I will extend this analysis to think about how Marcuse used Marx in his analysis of American culture, especially in One-Dimensional Man and also in his 1972 reflections on Nixon’s America, Counterrevolution and Revolt. There is an irony here that Mark Greif has noticed in his recent book, The Age of the Crisis of Man. That is, Marcuse was commissioned to study Marx in order to prove that Marx was the progenitor of totalitarianism, but in the end those who commissioned Marcuse got more than they bargained for when he turned his analysis of totalitarianism on his adopted country.”
Fulbright Scholar: Karola Brede
Fulbright Program – Wikipedia:
Sponsored by Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (State Department)
Don’t Blame Karl Marx for ‘Cultural Marxism’
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 