[currymj]

I mean at the end of the day the story about “Marxist intellectuals” making an enemy out of “straight, cis white males” after “class warfare” failed to overthrow society sounds almost exactly like the Frankfurt School/“cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory. (Its a specific conspiracy theory btw, not just the general and true observation that the left is more concerned with race and gender than it used to be.)

Maybe it’s not deliberate but given the context it raised a major eyebrow for me.

[smsm42]

> sounds almost exactly like the Frankfurt School/“cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory

Nope, it does not. The only common things are that both talk about Marxists (as do many other conversations, including ours) and about gender politics (as do many other conversations, including guess what). Not everybody who opposes Marxists is a Nazi who thinks Jews from Frankfurt School want to take over the world. And not everybody who thinks class-warfare (or identity-warfare) approach to society is wrong is a conspirologist Nazi.

> Its a specific conspiracy theory btw

Right. And that's why using it as a generic club to bash over the head everybody who ever mentions Marxists and their participation in gender politics in negative light is wrong.

> Maybe it’s not deliberate but given the context it raised a major eyebrow for me.

Only because your major eyebrow was on hair trigger to be raised. You need to adjust your eyebrow so it won't raise over every mention of mundane political arguments and not call a Nazi everybody who says something about Marxists. Having such eyebrow makes you look bad.

[currymj]

In my experience, especially the US south, that specific narrative ("did you know that Marxist intellectuals started promoting gender and racial theory after their attempts at class warfare failed to overthrow the US?") has usually indicated that somebody's about to start going on at the very least about Alex Jones nonsense, perhaps about how George Soros controls the world. Online people tend to take off the mask and you get actual Holocaust denial.

If someone says "the left, including Marxists, is concerned with gender and race in a way it wasn't previously" then I agree totally. Likewise if someone mentions that various Marxist intellectuals have contributed to political theory around gender, race, etc., that's just a fact. If someone says "I'm a conservative, the politics around race and gender are harmful", I'll disagree strongly, but that's it.

It's this specific story or narrative that Marxist intellectuals were trying to use class warfare to gain power, and when it failed they shifted to promoting race and gender based politics to gain power, that is very troubling for me due to repeated experience. Citing it offhand as a commonplace makes me wonder whether he shares the same intellectual influences as the other people I've heard say it.

[smsm42]

> especially the US south, that specific narrative /.../ has usually indicated that somebody's about to

Stereotyping is ok, as long as we are doing it for the right reasons. For us, there's no need to consider the personality and the content of the message, as long as we can label him a Nazi because couple of words matched.

> Online people tend to take off the mask and you get actual Holocaust denial.

Wow, it's Holocaust denial now. Gowdin, save me!

> It's this specific story or narrative that Marxist intellectuals were trying to use class warfare to gain power, and when it failed they shifted to promoting race and gender based politics to gain power, that is very troubling for me due to repeated experience

Let's see. Do Marxist intellectuals participate in race and gender based politics? Yes they do. Do they want to have power? Of course they do, what's the point of getting into politics if not getting power and getting policies you like enacted? So what exactly makes you a conspirologist Nazi when you mention these obvious - and entirely unsurprising for anybody who knows what "Marxist" and "politics" means - facts?

> Citing it offhand as a commonplace makes me wonder whether he shares the same intellectual influences

Nope, nope. You didn't just "wonder whether he shared influences" (if you go far enough, everybody shared influences, otherwise we couldn't even communicate), you said his claims were literally Nazi talking points and connected to antisemitic conspiracy. Which is not true at the least, the only common thing is the basic facts which no sane person would deny. After recognizing those facts, the actual Nazis go way off course of the facts into the looney bin territory, and invent crazy conspiracies like Jews being behind all this to take over the world. The author does nothing of the sort. Yes, they both start with the same facts. That's because facts are facts, they are independent of who recognizes them. It's where you take it from there is important. The Nazis take it into craziness, as is their way, the manifesto author does not.