Ideas Matter: ‘Critique or conspiracy: what was the Frankfurt School?’

From the series ‘The use and abuse of history’, theme of the boi
charity’s event The Academy, held online in April 2021.


The term ‘cultural Marxism’ has long proved controversial. Some
insist that it helps explain a shift in left-wing thought from a
materialist focus on economic transformation to a concern for
cultural issues and identity politics. Others dismiss it as an
anti-Semitic conspiracy theory with its origins in Nazi attacks
on ‘cultural Bolshevism’.  Nevertheless, many accept that
the Frankfurt School – the term given to the group of mainly
German émigré intellectuals including the likes of Theodor Adorno
and Herbert Marcuse – did indeed launch a distinctive critique of
post-war capitalism that put cultural issues front and
centre.  This talk assesses the emergence and the legacy of
those critiques. 


Lecture by Dr Tim Black, books and essays
editor at Spiked


THE ACADEMY ONLINE II: THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY A half day
online event via zoom that took place in April 2021. 


To view the full programme and some suggested background reading
to the talks, please visit 
https://theboi.co.uk/academyonline3  


ASSOCIATED READING


For this lecture you may wish to read:-


Dialectic of Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer, 1947 https://amzn.to/3vDk3qL  

‘Who’s afraid of Cultural Marxism?’, Tim Black, spiked, 1
April 2019 https://bit.ly/3q4QnBU



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university as a place of free enquiry dedicated to the pursuit of
truth.


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most important issues of our times and explores the ideas and
intellectual trends that have shaped where we are today.


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