Image by Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Guest post by James Atticus Bowden

Cultural Marxism

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Critical Race Theory (CRT), Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), Intersectionality, Post-Modernism, Being Woke, Transgenderism, and organizations such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa are different points in the spider web of Cultural Marxism. Advocates of all the above dispute or hate being called Cultural Marxists, but their connections to Cultural Marxism are indisputable.

Cultural Marxism mutated sharply from Classical Marxism after ideological Communism collapsed with the 1989 Fall of the Wall and the end of the Soviet Empire. Moreover, the worldview of Cultural Marxism is one more metastasized version of the French Revolution's fundamental worldview– Human Secularist Totalitarianism. Human Secularist Totalitarianism is the ideological basis for Marxism, Socialism, National Socialism, Fascism, Communism, Green Environmentalism, Radical Feminism, and global agendas such as those from the World Economic Forum.

Consequently, any college course that credits “the Frankfurt School”, Antonio Gramsci, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Lacan, Jurgen Habermas, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, or Herbert Marcuse for their ideas is teaching a version of Cultural Marxism.

For example, when West Point teaches SS 392: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality using Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, which has CRT in its title and explicitly credits Gramsci, Foucault, and Derrida, then West Point is teaching Critical Race Theory – and Cultural Marxism.

Cultural Marxism replaces class struggle with race and other groups from identity politics. Cultural Marxism is a worldview that sees all things through the prism of race, privilege, and gender(s). This is as fundamentally flawed and false as Karl Marx’s theories on anthropology, society, economics, and history.

Worldview Matters

Since the 1960s, Cultural Marxism has grown across U.S. colleges and universities. By 1987, when Jesse Jackson led protesters at Stanford with the chant, “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Western Civ has got to go!” the frontal assault on the worldview and consensus culture of American Civilization was apparent. Worldview matters because it is taught in every aspect of education.

USMA used to teach the “Engineering Method” in every natural science and engineering course. The social sciences were based on “Rational Empiricism.” That basis of instruction, as the combination of rational deduction from Greek Civilization and an unseen, sovereign, creator deity from Jewish mysticism - evolved through Roman Civilization, Christianity, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment - is fundamental to Western Civilization and, obviously, to America.

Cultural Marxism refutes rational empiricism. It imposes a cookie-cutter of immutable group identities and denies the role of individuals and ideas. It creates a permanent hierarchy of evil, like the patriarchy, nuclear family, Biblical Christianity, etc., and permanent victimhood of “marginalized” groups.

Furthermore, Cultural Marxism uses the outdated and rejected 19th Century Social Science construct of “race.” Many ethnicities exist, but “race” is a false construct for humanity with horrific consequences. Perpetuating the importance of race is promoting identity politics rather than scholarship.

The immediate consequences of teaching Cultural Marxism are self-evident in the insubordinate “Policy Proposal: An Anti-Racist West Point” (June 25, 2020) signed by nine USMA graduates from the Classes of 2018 and 2019. The long-term damage from the insidious infiltration of Cultural Marxism into the Officer Corps of the U.S. Army may be incalculably awful. The promotion of Cultural Marxism puts the mission and very existence of USMA in jeopardy.

West Point Teaches Cultural Marxism

USMA offers a Diversity and Inclusion Minor. This is prima facie evidence.

It requires 2 of the following three courses:
PL377: Social Inequality
EN352: Power and Difference
SS392:  The Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality

And 1 of the following four courses:
HI391: World Religions
HI461: Sex and Civilizations
HI463: Race, Ethnicity, Nation
HI398: Society & Culture in American History

Plus, two more "Diversity and Inclusion Studies (DISM) designated courses.

Furthermore, USMA has two threads that weave through the entire academic program. From the USMA website:

“The Human Condition Thread in the Academic Program. The Human Condition Thread (HCT) is a multi-disciplinary effort embedded within the core Academic Program.
A program that fosters the development of cross-cultural competence, i.e., the ability to shift perspective, empathize with others, value difference in others, and navigate that difference to build cohesive, inclusive teams.”

The four student learning outcomes were developed “in collaboration with the AY21 Dean’s Fellow for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity, MAJ Jessica Dawson.”

These outcomes focus on social groups and identities, with the first outcome being “various ways in which different types of social groups have experienced diversity, inclusion/exclusion, and access to power (or the lack thereof) throughout history”, and “Be able to explain and critically analyze the causes of these social groups’ successes, struggles, transformations, and failures.”

Outcome 2. “Develop insights into sociocultural elements of
identity construction (e.g., ethnicity, linguistic group, race, gender,
Sexual orientation, religion, national, political). With a Supporting Objective: Be able to describe how sociocultural elements lead to the specific identity categories (i.e., sex/gender, race/ethnicity/nation, socio-economic class, religious affiliation, age, (dis)ability, sexual orientation).”

Outcome 3. “Understand, evaluate, and make cross-disciplinary connections between concepts related to gender, sexuality, and respect.”

The Human Condition Thread is explicitly woven through HI105/HI155 History of the United States, HI108/HI158 Regional Studies in World History, EV203 Physical Geography, LX203-204 Standard Language, PL300/PL350 Military Leadership and Advanced Military Leadership, SS307/SS357 International Relations, LW403 Constitutional and Military Law, and MX400 Officership   

Finally, Cadets may be evaluated on how well they learned their equivalent of the “little red book” of Mao’s Red Guards as The Redbook “proposes to implement the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), or similar survey, as a before and after snapshot of West Point graduates. We propose the IDI be administered to cadets early in their West Point experience as a baseline, perhaps before they report as plebes (like the Everfi survey) or, if that is not feasible, in PL100, HI101, or similar and then again closer to graduation.”

Presently, USMA course material details aren’t available online. However, in 2021, the Redbook showed some course content, like HI 463: "The third theoretical assumption is that race, ethnicity, and nation are all independent, but interrelated concepts. Sometimes, they function concurrently, other times in opposition. These are not, however, the only potential identities for human beings, and we will consider alternative groupings to race, ethnicity, and nation, such as gender, intersectionality, statelessness, and indifference.”

Conclusion

The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, teaches Cultural Marxism. The ideas underlying and embedded in DEI and CRT are the spawn of Cultural Marxism and fit under the ideological umbrella of Human Secularist Totalitarianism.

Brushing off West Point graduates’ criticisms of Cultural Marxism as “politics” is as disingenuous as falsely accusing officials of a globalist conspiracy theory.

While, currently, Cultural Marxism may be accepted by institutions with the most outstanding reputations in Higher Education, it should be noted that was also the case as Social Darwinism evolved into Eugenics. Eugenics in the hands of the National Socialist branch of Human Secular Totalitarianism resulted in the Holocaust. Marxist theories in the hands of the Communist department of Human Secular Totalitarianism resulted in about 100 million deaths in the 20th Century. Cultural Marxism feeds identity politics, which leads to tribalism. Tribalism is barbarism.

Cultural Marxism de-constructs and destroys Western Civilization. Cultural Marxism will end meritocracy, destroy cohesion, and defeat the U.S. Army from within.

Contact: James Atticus Bowden, USMA Class of 1972; P: 757 810 8955

Email: [email protected]

Assistant Professor, USMA, Department of Social Sciences (1981-1984)