I'm not sure what Matt Taibbi's current schtick is. But this column about Herbert Marcuse (Marcuse-Anon: Cult of the Pseudo-Intellectual Substack 02/16/2021) reads to me - I've seen only the non-subscriber portion - like a backdoor version of the far-right "Cultural Marxism" nonsense, the conspiracy theory spawned by William Lind that "political correctness" (now known as "cancel culture") was created by a group of German Marxist Jews.
Herbert Marcuse is responsible for the 1619 Project? This is beyond silly.
Here is the real world, Marcuse (1898–1979) actually was an important philosopher, part of the "first generation" of the Frankfurt School that is the villain of Lind's "Cultural Marxism" fairy tale. Marcuse became a media "icon" representing the New Left in the 1960s. But his political and philosophical influence, like that of other Frankfurt School figure like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, came mostly through conventional academic channels. He was not a leader of a political group. And except for the occasional op-ed, he mostly stuck to fairly technical academic framing even in his public speeches.
The Frankfurt School's work on the "authoritarian personality" has received increasing attention in recent years because of the increase in immediate authoritarian pressures in democratic governments from Hungary and Poland to the US and beyond. The Institute for Social Research - the original institutional form of the "Frankfurt School" - did a major, groundbreaking survey in Germany to study the effects of family environment and child-rearing practices on citizens' attitude toward authority. The results were published in 1936 as Studien über Autorität und Familie (Studies on Authority and Family). The full volume has never been published in English, although some of the essays have, including the introductory pieces by Marcuse, Horkheimer, and Erich Fromm.
Another project headed by Horkheimer that is very much representative of the Frankfurt School's work included the Studies in Prejudice, that produced a series of five volumes that still hold up well today, most notably The Authoritarian Personality (1950). The Prophets of Deceit (1949) volume by Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman is a valuable reminder that what we now know as Trumpism didn't begin in 2015!
There has been a great deal of research on authoritarianism since then, including the recent book by John Dean and Robert Altemeyer, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers (2020). Neither politics nor scholarship stand still. But much of that early work is still valuable. Erich Fromm's 1941 Escape From Freedom (British title: The Fear of Freedom) is still in print, for instance.
Advocates for a left third party in the American system and anyone who tries to maintain a posture of fundamental criticism from the left of US society and the political system face the dilemma of differentiating between "the enemy of my enemy sometimes agrees with me on particular issues" and "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." A criticism of Democratic Party liberals or the Biden-Harris Administration that uncritically adopts the framing of far-right ideologues is not a project for which I have any enthusiasm.
Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" essay, which Taibbi mocks, is a provocative but perceptive look at how the class structure of capitalist societies and the hegemonic narratives of ruling elites, with particular reference to the US, place some very real limits of freedom of speech and expression. In it, Marcuse describes how the ideology of tolerance can disguise a reality of unfreedom. "The antagonistic structure of society rigs the rules of the game," as he put it there.
I wrote my own evaluation of the essay in 2006, Herbert Marcuse on repressive tolerance 07/13/2006. And preceded it by a broader detailed description of Marcuse's outlook, Tolerance, social analysis and radical democracy 07/12/2006.
This passage of Taibbi's column is probably more telling than he intended: "German communism flopped, Heidegger [an important intellectual mentor of Marcuse's] became a Nazi University Rector, and a stunned Marcuse soon exiled himself to Switzerland and eventually America." He "exiled himself" - because Adolf Hitler had taken over as Chancellor and imposed a Nazi dictatorship on Germany.
One might think anyone familiar with progressive criticism of corporate media today would recognize the valid insights "Repressive Tolerance" includes. Marcuse drew part of his argument from the post-Second World War anti-Nazi laws that the Allies imposed on the defeated Axis countries in Europe. But apparently that point just flew right by Taibbi. Even in the French, British, and American occupation zones, the reconstruction of democratic governments did not proceed by immediate, unrestricted freedom of expression and organized political activity by former Nazis. Nor, for that matter, did the reincorporation of the former Confederate states into the American Union take place without restricting secessionist political rights, at least for some period of time. (And there was a good argument for having them be longer and more restrictive.)
Taibbi rejects Marcuse as nothing but a "quack". He sneers at sneers at "Repressive Tolerance" as "the famed Bible of post-liberal thinking," whatever the heck that means. Then he sneers at a Marcuse book from a few years later (An Essay on Liberation) as having "anticipated 21st-century liberal attitudes."
Are today's liberals "post-liberal" liberals?
And outside of his most polemical works, Marcuse's 1941 book on Hegel, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, for instance, is still regarded as an important scholarly work.
Another scholar associated with the Frankfurt School, Rainer Forst, did an excellent book, "Tolerance in Conflict," that in part builds on Marcuse, about the development of the Western liberal notion of political tolerance. In particular, he provides descriptions of the historical events which Marcuse summarized in the "Repressive Tolerance" essay this way: "The tolerance which enlarged the range and content of freedom was always partisan - intolerant toward the protagonists of the repressive status quo."
But if his Marcuse column is any measure, Taibbi wouldn't grasp Forster's book, either. Admittedly, "Repressive Tolerance" was pointed in the way it poses the classic Platonic dilemma of who educates the educators?
This is a discussion between Taibbi and RJ Eskow about the column, The Zero Hour Taibbi & Eskow: The Marcuse Match 02/19/2021:
Eskow is more polite than I would be. But it confirms what a superficial view Taibbi takes on something that in this case he obviously barely understands.
In the video, Taibbi says that Jaime Dimon and Nancy Pelosi are currently following Marcuse's prescription (?!?), which Taibbi dislikes. Proving that Taibbi barely has any clue what Marcuse was writing about.
After hearing the exchange with Eskow, I'm even more inclined to think this is Taibbi's version of the "Cultural Marxism" scam. And that one is real gutter far-right stuff.
This is another discussion by Douglas Lain and Pascal Robert about Taibbi and Marcuse. Lain begins by mentioning that he often agrees with Taibbi, though not on that column: What Taibbi Got Wrong (and Right) about Herbert Marcuse Zero Books 02/23/2021:
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