Took a minute to read the comments: Everyone has it's own agenda. Period.

“Cultural Marxism” is just another in a long line of terms like “Islamofascism” and “National Socialism” that exist solely to allow capitalists and fascists to propagandize to the most ignorant kind of authoritarian.

These terms are made by those who want to weaponize the political right (AKA, the political wrong) against the political right’s own collective self-interest, specifically to keep them from growing up and actually understanding (rather than simply reflexively reacting to) the ideas of the political center and the political left. The political right is the only audience for this propaganda, it’s only purpose for the political center and the political left is to distract and divide them in frivolous debate.

The mindset (really more of an inbuilt cognitive bias) you’re looking for is authoritarianism.

I think you may be overly generalizing. Without doubt certain governments, especially in the Islamic parts of the world, are fascist. It's a paradox that anti fascists in the West support governments that oppress women, and gays, and hang dissenters.

Is your point that this shouldn't be called Islamofascism? I've never heard that term before, but I'm doubtlessly not ignorant to the fact that these governments gained their foothold through literal implementations of Islam coupled with Western weaponry. That combination does seem to define a parallel between Islam and fascism for those specific cases so I don't think that term is necessarily misplaced. Again only in those cases.

I could make similar points about the other terms you've listed. That the terms exist may simply be a manifestation of the fact that there are clear examples of them. Whether you choose to apply them more broadly to the extent they are misplaced, I think, is left to interpretation, especially your own.

“Islamofascism” is a neologism popularized by George Bush Jr (aka Little Bush) and Co, and it was never aimed at Islamic states, but explicitly for non-state actors like Al Quaeda. IIRC Bush (and at the same time Cheney) started running with it while also being extremely cozy with those Islamic states you might be inaccurately associating with a very loose definition of fascism (it’s accurate to describe those states as authoritarian theocracies, but fascism is a specific authoritarian political program in which the state is the religion, not one in which the religion is the state).

Loosening the meaning of the word fascist to move it away from racialist and nationalist corporatist authoritarianism (see America under Little Bush and Big Trump, and definitely the America sought by the religious wrong) was a large part of why that term was popularized, they wanted everyone distracted from their use of Mussolini’s playbook.

>fascism is a specific authoritarian political program in which the state is the religion, not one in which the religion is the state

In that case then neither can the American left call the right fascist. By definition, you just said, the moment they are church affiliated they cease to be fascists. Isn't that right?

And if that's true then we can say the left's agenda in calling the right fascists looks strikingly similar to the one you attributed solely to the right. It's just a bunch of confusing terms misattributed to a political group, just like "Islamofascism" isn't it?

Or maybe, and this is what I think, the definitions are all just messy tools bent to fit whatever blunt use justifies whichever party you so happen to identify with. Sort of like choosing the Bulls or the Clippers.

And the center is when you realize that.

> In that case then neither can the American left call the right fascist.

Both sides call each other fascist, usually by misapplying the term. That said, the political program of today’s American right is much closer in alignment to historical fascism (and includes some self-avowed fascists) than the American left. Which makes sense, historical fascism was always a right-wing and conservative political program.

> By definition, you just said, the moment they are church affiliated they cease to be fascists. Isn't that right?

Well no, religiosity doesn’t make you fascist, and fascism doesn’t make you areligious… there’s a big leap between church-affiliated and totalitarian theocracy. Though, again, the American right is a lot closer to wanting to establish a totalitarian theocracy than the American left.

> And if that's true then we can say the left's agenda in calling the right fascists looks strikingly similar to the one you attributed solely to the right.

Well, no… if the American left were calling the American right something like “Christofascists”, then maybe. And I didn’t say that crafting propagandistic neologisms was exclusively a tool of the right, it’s just one the right is really prone to using precisely because those neologisms appeal to the more authoritarian elements of their base. And, yet again, the American right is way more aligned with authoritarianism than the American left, which is what makes the left’s own ignorant base more prone to discord than all joining in a chant of worship to their orange god-king. Precisely the point of this kind of propaganda, really.

The real center is when you realize what direction the Overton Window is from you. If it’s too your right, then the odds are you’re yesterday’s centrist and today’s communist. In today’s America the Overton Window is extremely far to the right.

Let me blur the identity politics a bit.

>historical fascism was always a right-wing and conservative political program

Like when the right conquered the left in the civil war and freed the slaves? I suppose that could still be fascism, but you'll have to abandon the idea that fascism is wrong if you want to die on that hill. The real point is that to identify it as wrong or right, you need simply bend the meaning of the term.

The left has been silencing scientists that disagree with their agenda. That seems pretty authoritarian.

Isn't the left working towards censorship through cancel culture? That seems pretty conservative. (Fascist even?)

All these sum up to ambiguity and that's the same point we're both making. The subjectivity of the terminology is exactly why it's used so rampantly. You can paint anyone to be anything you want so long as you are using words that have no definition.

That's why you said this:

>Both sides call each other fascist, usually by misapplying the term.

Misapplying is subjective. Both sides can call each other whatever they need to in order to win the ability to collect lobbying dollars from the corporations whose interests they represent.

If one of them has succeeded in making you believe that they are the more agreeable, it can only mean that you find their marketing to be particularly effective.

Or, if you like, the opposite can be true and we can say that "Islamofascism" is a real term that applies in certain cases. We can take our pick. Both are true depending on the scope of the discussion. And you'll feel justified arguing one way or the other so long as the marketing has created a solid identity and sense of righteousness with which you can carry your argument.

Here are a couple more blurry points you can spend time on:

1. Republican Justice Kennedy wrote the ruling that made gay sex legal. [1]

2. A Republican majority congressional vote has been responsible for nearly every Civil Rights Act in the history of the US. [2]

Are these examples of conservative fascist religious idealism? As I just explained... sure they are! If you need them to be. But then so must be the Democratic party when they claim to champion civil rights and poverty solutions while enjoying the majority lobbying from Google, Meta, and Netflix.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Kennedy

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

> Like when the right conquered the left in the civil war and freed the slaves?

LOL, whut? You do know that, at the time of the Civil War, the Republican Party was the left-of-the-then-center progressive party and the Democratic Party was the right-of-the-then-center, yeah?

> I suppose that could still be fascism, but you'll have to abandon the idea that fascism is wrong if you want to die on that hill.

Fascism, as a political program, didn’t exist during the First American Civil War. By 1945 we should all have been pretty clear that the only good fascist is a dead one.

> The real point is that to identify it as wrong or right, you need simply bend the meaning of the term.

Precisely why I don’t like bending the meaning of the term in an attempt to make fascism apply to periods before anyone had called themselves a fascist.

> The left has been silencing scientists that disagree with their agenda.

I’m not sure those facts are in evidence. Silencing “scientists” who speak outside their area of expertise does happen a lot though, when those folks are going against well-established facts.

> That seems pretty authoritarian.

Please go look up the definition of authoritarian.

> Isn't the left working towards censorship through cancel culture?

“Cancel culture” is an invention of the right, coined for exactly the same purposes as “cultural Marxism”. Marx had nothing to say on culture, and the fact that social opprobrium attends on those saying unpopular or simply stupid things isn’t some radical new invention, and certainly not a new kind of culture.

> That seems pretty conservative. (Fascist even?)

Once more, go find a dictionary.

> […] You can paint anyone to be anything you want so long as you are using words that have no definition.

That’s why we use dictionaries, and why I use the term fascism to mean the historical political movement that defined itself fascism.

> If one of them has succeeded in making you believe that they are the more agreeable, it can only mean that you find their marketing to be particularly effective.

I find neither side agreeable. My metric is simple, if you have a choice between two evils, choose the lesser of two evils. The easiest way to determine the greater of two evils is “does their rhetoric demonize those without power”… since the middle of the last century the American right has claimed the title of greater evil, and keeps on doubling down on claiming it harder.

> Or, if you like, the opposite can be true and we can say that "Islamofascism" is a real term that applies in certain cases. We can take our pick.

No, we can’t, not unless you can find an Islamic state that is also a Fascist one. There actually was a time when there were some Islamic Fascists, but then Mussolini got himself hung and Hitler did the word a favor and shot Adolf Hitler and people realized that there was one reliable universal truth… the only good Fascist is a dead one.

> Are these examples of conservative fascist religious idealism?

No, they’re examples of the Overton Window shifting further and further right over time. See also why Republican majorities since Reagan have done absolutely nothing but hamper the expansion of the notion of civil rights, and why the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Clean Air Act, both championed by Republican presidents, are now excoriated and undermined at every turn by today’s mutation of their own party. It won’t be long before today’s Republican Party tries to undo the Emancipation Proclamation as well, considering their captive Supreme Court just sold their souls and blew away the other two.

>left-of-the-then-center progressive party

No it wasn't.

Because "economic Marxism" is Marxism, and "cultural Marxism" is not Marxism

Cultural Marxism is conspiracy theory. It gets attention because crazies won't shut up about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...

Economic Marxism does not get attention for two reasons:

(1) because it's an economic theory for late 1800 era society.

(2) It does not advance or develop. Something that revolves around interpreting "what Marx said" is not living economics. Most socialists don't think Marxism is good economic theory for working class anymore.

I think it's reasonable to say that Marxism continues to evolve as people continue to apply and evolve its principles to modern conditions. Just as capitalism has continued to evolve after the death of Adam Smith (although, to be fair, Marxism is more directly associated with its namesake).

As one example, Kohei Saito has recently published popular works of Marxist perspectives on climate change and modern capitalism. I'm no expert, there are likely other, better examples.

Capitalism hasn't evolved but rather "devolved" into Cronyism from a benign "invisible hand of the free market" phenomenon of Adam Smith and David Ricardo into a fully fledged corporate machine with tentacles into layers of political and media control.

But given the long-term trajectory of "free markets" and "invisible hand", I guess this was bound to happen at some point. I wonder what Smith and Ricardo would have said if they knew *this* was where their economic vision is going to end up!