The apostle Paul wrote...
"Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them" (Ephesians 5:11).
"Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil" (Ephesians 5:15–16).
After writing Biblical perspectives on Black Lives Matter, Defund The Police, Systemic Racism, Social Justice, and White Privilege in previous posts, it is unquestionably clear the United States has spiraled downward at breakneck speed in 2020 at the hands of the liberal mob igniting rebellion. Protests, riots, looting and unprovoked violence have stained our streets, leaving many questioning what our response should be as Christians to the immense chaos and confusion surrounding. However, as the dust settles it is increasingly clear the silent killer hidden in the shadows and permeating the moral fabric of our country (like cancer) is an ideology most people do not understand but indirectly endorse without realizing it. Cultural Marxism is a term often identified in socioeconomic academia which liberal pundits reject as a far-right conspiracy theory. The left-wing is quick to dismiss it as an intellectual debate which should remain in higher education and devoid of political forums, deeming it inapplicable to the working-class man or woman. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Cultural Marxism encompasses dangerous ideologies such as critical race theory, radical social justice, black liberation theology, cultural hegemony, socialism, intersectionality, and white privilege, among others, which are nothing more than propaganda tools used by leftist, liberal media to desensitize the minds of every American citizen and create division among people groups. Scripture states, "What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?" (James 4:1). In other words, would we ever recognize a silent threat if it was not brought to our attention? Common sense says, "No!" Therefore, it is imperative we identify cultural ideologies which wage war against the truth of God's Word to ensure all people, especially Christians, are properly educated on the impending dangers associated with such divisive and hateful rhetoric. Make no mistake, Cultural Marxism should be at the forefront of our consciousness, for we have succumbed to its tangled web of destruction far more than we realize, and have indoctrinated Marxist principles into the fabric of our educational system and the church of Jesus Christ to which we may never fully recover.
What many fail to realize is that "Cultural" Marxism seeks to answer and fix what "Classical" Marxism could not, as evidenced by Dr. Voddie Baucham, Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Zambia, in his January 3, 2019, lecture entitled, Cultural Marxism.
"Classical Marxism, as presented in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, is fundamentally an economic system created as a response to capitalism. Marx believed that the dialectical changes to the functioning of a society’s economy would determine its culture and politics. Capitalism is exploitation of the masses, according to Marx, and history is a series of struggles that lead to the inevitable fall of capitalism. Economic recessions and practical contradictions of a capitalist economy give rise to struggles that will eventually provoke a revolution among the working class. Capitalism will be overthrown, social institutions will be restructured, and the people will be freed from oppression.
Among the people’s oppressors stands religion. According to Karl Marx, religion serves as the opiate (drug) of the masses, allowing them to remain oppressed by the exploitation of capitalism. So, the oppressed masses must find it within themselves to overthrow religious systems as a prerequisite to overthrowing the political and economic systems.
Many Christians recognize classical Marxism as being antithetical to our beliefs. It is an ideology that is rooted in rabid atheism and principles that flatly contradict the clear teaching of Scripture. However, these same Christians are less clear in their understanding that cultural Marxism is also anti-Christian.
Cultural Marxism was birthed in an effort to explain why the inevitable revolution against capitalism envisioned by Karl Marx only occurred in limited instances. Followers of Marx determined that it is not the economy that will mobilize the masses to change a country’s social superstructures but the culture. As such, new theories and methods were created to accomplish Karl Marx’s revolution and the defeat of capitalism. Cultural Marxism seeks the same outcome as classical Marxism, but it relies upon different methods to accomplish these goals.
An Italian Marxist named Antonio Gramsci advocated an intellectual and cultural struggle wherein Marxists would increase class consciousness, teach their theories, critique history, and generally foster an anti-capitalist value system that counters the cultural hegemony. It was Gramsci who developed the theory of “cultural hegemony.” According to one sociologist, “Cultural hegemony refers to domination or rule maintained through ideological or cultural means. It is usually achieved through social institutions which allow those in power to strongly influence the values, norms, ideas, expectations, worldview, and behavior of the rest of society.”
In America, our cultural hegemony is defined as being white, male, heterosexual, cisgender (a person whose gender identity corresponds with that person’s biological sex), able-bodied, native-born Americans. Everybody who does not match these traits is classified as a minority and is a victim of the cultural hegemony established by white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied Americans. Consequently, everybody who does not match these traits is necessarily at war with those who do because they are the ones in power—the privileged ones—who are oppressing everyone else by their very existence.
Gramsci’s cultural Marxism called not for an armed revolution, but a cultural revolution focused on overturning the cultural hegemony. He determined that this is best accomplished by controlling the “robes of society.” These are cultural influencers with power, such as judges, politicians, professors, and pastors. Gramsci believed that by empowering cultural Marxists in the institutions of the judiciary, government, schools, and churches, the masses could be mobilized to fight against the cultural hegemony—“the system.” This would be accomplished by cultural influencers promising to advocate for various groups of people who are oppressed by the hegemony.
Elsewhere, a group of German scholars known as the Frankfurt School developed another explanation for why Karl Marx’s envisioned revolution never occurred on a global scale. They determined that people were receiving so much information through mass media that they were being transformed from activists into passive recipients of information and ideology. They theorized that mass media had made people intellectually inactive and politically passive as they allowed mass-produced ideology and values to wash over them and to infiltrate their consciousnesses.
The Frankfurt School believed in leveraging the tools of mass media to mobilize the masses against the hegemonic system. One way of accomplishing this was to reduce everything to discussions of race, class, gender, and sex. People should be encouraged to view themselves as members of subgroups rather than part of a collective whole.
After World War I, the Frankfurt School left Germany and migrated to Switzerland in 1933. Two years later, they migrated to the United States. They entered New York in 1935 and became affiliated with Columbia University.
Today’s discussions about critical theory, political correctness, and multiculturalism are a result of the Frankfurt School. The tendency of the news media to subdivide America into groups and to reduce everything to discussions focused on race, class, gender, and sex is evidence of the Frankfurt School’s success in leveraging America’s mass media. Likewise, the acceptance of concepts like cultural hegemony, systemic racism, and white privilege are evidence of the success that followers of Gramsci’s ideology have had in America."
Dr. Baucham's explanation of what Cultural Marxism is, who pioneered it, and how it works, is critical to understanding why it is gaining traction and momentum in the United States, despite liberal intellectuals who are quick to dismiss it. "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths" (2 Timothy 4:3–4). Per Gramsci, the "robes of society" are the means by which Cultural Marxism flourishes, because the power to educate future generations, influence personal doctrine, and change legislative/judicial policy rests primarily in the hands of professors, judges, politicians, teachers and pastors. Therefore, simplifying oppression through the lens of race, class, gender and sex by blaming cultural hegemony is the ultimate goal of Cultural Marxism in order to desensitize personal theology and indoctrinate the masses with Marxist ideological constructs. It encourages people to identify themselves and one another demographically, first and foremost, based on predetermined privilege and oppression in order to overthrow the preconceived cultural hegemony in favor of equal outcomes. In other words, the robes of society are the linchpins which allow Cultural Marxism to take root beneath the surface of society and flourish, as noted by Dr. Paul Krengor in his insightful article entitled, Marx at 200: Classical Marxism vs. Cultural Marxism.
"Both classical Marxists and cultural Marxists see history as a series of struggles that divide the world into hostile/antagonistic groups of oppressors and the oppressed. Both seek out victim groups as the anointed group that will serve as the redeemer group. The victim group becomes the agent for emancipation in ushering in the new and better world. The Marxist must always, then, be on the search for the victim class which, in turn, must always be made aware of its victimization. Its “consciousness” must be raised.
In classical Marxism, this was simple: the victim group was identified by class/economics. It was the Proletariat (i.e. working class). It was the factory worker. In cultural Marxism, this hasn’t been so simple, because the culture is always changing: the victim group is constantly being searched for anew by the cultural Marxist. The group one year might be women, the next year a new ethnic minority, the next year another group. Today, there’s a hard push by cultural Marxists to tap the “LGBTQIA-plus” movement as the championed victim group... This is where today’s Marxists in America are toiling hard. They are working diligently on the cultural front. That’s where they are confident they can finally take down Western civilization and its Judeo-Christian bedrock.
Thus, the new recruiting ground is the classroom floor, the campus, the university, the schools. That’s where the cultural workers who can usher in the fundamental transformation are being found. These modern cultural revolutionaries are succeeding magnificently in redefining everything from marriage and family to sexuality and gender. And most stunning of all, it’s the parents—many of them conservative Christians—who are paying for the grand indoctrination with their lifesavings. And 200 years henceforth, Karl Marx would be chuckling heartily at that irony."
Krengor offers a sobering analysis which should strike a cord in the heart of every conservative Christian in America, because WE ARE FUNDING cultural rhetoric which does nothing more than undermine the Biblical doctrine we profess. As born-again, Bible-believing, followers of Jesus Christ, we hold to the absolute truth and inerrancy of Scripture, yet we knowingly allow educational institutions the privilege of saturating the minds of our children with relative truth and post modernistic thinking. Why? Is public/private education more important and of greater priority, value and authority than God's Word? Keep in mind, Cultural Marxism is like a jigsaw puzzle. Individually, the puzzle pieces are seemingly insignificant and rarely offer a glimpse of the overall product. But once we begin putting the puzzle together and locking each component into another, we recognize how critical each uniquely-shaped piece is to the overall picture and what the sum of its parts truly reveals. Therefore, we must connect the dots and recognize how incredibly complex Cultural Marxism truly is, because it has morphed over time into a monstrous problem across primary schools, secondary education, colleges/universities, courtrooms, legislative/executive branches of government, companies, corporations, and even the church itself. "But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:3). As ridiculous as it seems, even when Cultural Marxism is publicly exposed, as is the case with the Black Lives Matter organization founders, millions upon millions of people (including self-proclaimed Christians) continue to support, fund and endorse this radical ideology which is 100% UNBIBLICAL, strategically deceptive to elicit universal support, and seeks to destroy Judeo-Christian values altogether. Why?
"At the heart of Marxism in the twentieth century, we encounter the work of social-engineers who insist that in order to destroy capitalism, it is necessary to influence the masses through their culture. This includes religious belief and family life. This also means that music, art, philosophy, sex, sports, agriculture, technology, health – education at every level – and the way that people communicate must become the target of Marxism. In other words, no aspect of human existence can be left out of the grasp of Marxism’s all-engulfing program. Spontaneity must be obliterated. All aspects of human existence must be made political. In this fashion, metaphysical and existential aspects of man are made to be filtered through a social-political prism. Marxism hopes to organize society by creating a priestly caste of elite intellectuals who rule over their subjects with bureaucratic planning. This is one reason why Marxism must castrate man’s appeal to God on a moral and spiritual basis. God is an obstacle in the creation of the new Marxist man.
The lasting impact of the Marxist mind-set and worldview, what is in effect a brilliant intellectual application in doing the devil’s work, did not become consolidated in Western intellectual/academic circles until after World War II. This is the case because by World War I, communist techniques of terror had become effective tools of misinformation to discredit traditional Western thought, and the pining of everything evil to capitalist societies. Marxism’s hedge on cultural Marxism has gained traction through universities, education systems, weakening of Christianity and cultural institutions. This is ironic, especially when we consider that for people outside of Western universities, Marxism is thought of as an economic theory that has seen its influence squashed by the fall of communist regimes and their criminal legacy.
Antonio Gramsci is a seminal intellectual figure of international communism for several reasons. The one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party, Gramsci concentrated his energy not solely on theoretical and critical class warfare, but on culture. Gramsci was a tactical intellectual who presented Marxist theory with a broad and new venue to exploit its social-political ideology of power.
Gramsci’s intellectual craftiness emphasized a theory, whereby Western popular culture, religion and values were to be attacked through the creation of what he, and Georges Sorel before him, called “historic blocs.” These historical blocs are in essence the weakening, and therefore the discrediting of traditional values. One particularly important target of Gramsci’s wrath was the Catholic Church. Gramsci studied the Catholic Church and was impressed with its impermeability as a traditional source of moral and spiritual guidance. He realized that to destabilize the dogma of the church from the inside would prove to be a major step forward in spreading Marxist ideology, where hitherto it could make no inroads from the outside. Gramsci’s call to re-educate people, whereby they become the “organic,” not-so-spontaneous grass roots movements that will do battle with bourgeois (middle-class) culture, has proven an effective way to foment envy and resentment in Western culture and institutions.
According to Gramsci, belief in God reinforces the bourgeois notion of the separation of classes. The latter sly of hand, he contends, is a powerful tool utilized by the ruling class. Gramsci’s thought and that of other communists cannot afford a free-thinking, that is, spontaneous conception of God that serves as the logos of the universe. According to Gramsci and his ideological cadre, belief in God is a dangerous delusion that works in the service of capitalism. With this understanding in hand, we are able to make better sense of one of the most fervent motivations today to discredit Christianity. Remaining true to the rhetorical premises of Marxism, Marxists contend that man’s notion of God, is just that, an idea. If belief in God is at best naïve, or a sinister mechanism devised by capitalism to oppress the masses, then it is necessary to discredit belief in order to re-focus man’s social-political energy on the here-and-now.
Whatever predicates man can conceive about God, crafty dialectical materialism negates by asserting man’s alleged alienation under capitalism. For instance, because Jesus was a man of love, Marxism capitalizes on this and uses it as a valuable tool in forging a new secular man. Marxism does not view Jesus as a person, but as a means for social-political gain. Why would the Marxist inspired death of God theology movement squander a golden opportunity to attack the existence of God and its manifestation in the historical Jesus?
Jesus, the God/man, is useful for cultural Marxism because it opens up the field of timely and fashionable inspirational figures ad nauseam. These can be political figures, intellectuals or popular culture icons. In effect, Marxism will tap into the utility-value of anyone who has a forum at their disposition.
Karl Marx gave the world Marxism, an ideology that evokes sensualism. As a pseudo-philosophy that venerates the-here-and-now, Marxism has currently a vociferous following of loyal zealots, mostly in universities. Today its cancerous sinews stretch to all aspects of life in Western democracies. Marxism brings out great fanaticism in those who value Marx as a supreme leader of the oppressed. Drawing adherents from the ranks of the hopelessly naive, rabid egomaniacs, social-political manipulators and agitators, as well as angry malcontents – in addition to irrational intellectuals – Marxism’s legacy is a form of base sensualism that exploits appearance at the expense of reality. Marxism’s systematic collapse of truth and human reality into appearance has played a vital role in damaging the psyche of Western man.
Marxism requires a militant and corrosive form of atheism in order to erode man’s existential inquietude. No longer are people allowed to dwell on their own bitterness, misfortunes and personal tragedies. According to Marxism, human suffering can no longer remain a private affair. Suffering and misery must be exploited for Marxism’s power grab. Marxism catapults human suffering into the realm of angry social-political opportunism. Atheism is today a potent worldview that enjoys intoxicating power over people."
"But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh" (Jude 17–23).
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