Matt Taibbi rants against Herbert Marcuse

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:

The authoritarian Ghost of Presidency Past

John Dean authored a book published in 2006 titled Conservative Without Conscience. He drew on the work of Robert Altemeyer on authoritarianism and the authoritarian personality, such as The Auzthoritarian Specter (1996).

Dean's book was published 12 years ago. More than a decade. Two Presidencies ago. His primary focus in that book was on authoritarian aspects of the Cheney-Bush Administration. He remarked on that Administration's contempt for law in many ways, "The president and vice president, it appears, believe the lesson of Watergate was not to stay within the law, but rather not to get caught."

It was that Administration, not Trump's, that he was writing about when it said this:

What has driven this book is the realization that our government has become largely authoritarian. It is run by an array of authoritarian personalities, leaders who display all those traits I have listed dominating, opposed to equality, desirous of personal power, amoral, intimidating, and bullying; some are hedonistic, most are vengeful, pitiless, exploitive, manipulative, dishonest, cheaters, prejudiced, mean-spirited, militant, nationalistic, and two-faced. Because of our system of government, these dominators are still confronted with any number of obstacles, fortunately. Yet authoritarians seek to remove those complications whenever they can. They are able to do so because the growth of contemporary conservatism has generated countless millions of authoritarian followers, people who will not question such actions. How, then, can authoritarianism be checked?  [my emphasis]

I saw Dean on a panel at the 2008 Netroots Nation convention in 2008. He and the other participants stressed the need to change policies on issues like torture and government secrecy. But when a questioner from the audience asked about whether officials from the Cheney-Bush Administration should be prosecuted for crimes, he seemed taken aback. And he responded that he didn't think that would be the right approach.

It seemed to me then and still does now that Dean wasn't quite ready to follow the practical conclusion to the persuasive case he made against that Administration in this book and in Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (2004).

Because it really is insufficient when the Republicans are willing to pursue political prosecutions and try to block even investigating real crimes by high officials, if Democrats are also unwilling to investigate and prosecute real crimes by government officials, even Republican ones. Government officials should not be above the law.

(Do I even need to add that the Trumpist Administration is far worse in its authoritarianism and contempt for law and democratic traditions than the Cheneyite one was? I didn't think so.)

This means that if and when the Democrats get more power to act, including winning a majority in the House, they will need to move to reverse authoritarian and criminal tendencies, including the staggering level of old-fashioned corruption we're seeing. Ignoring official crimes won't do it. Using the Mueller investigation as an excuse to duck and cover from their responsibilities won't do it. Demanding a "PayGo" approach to budgeting won't do it.

If they really do make a big deal of PayGo, that will be a strong indication that they are still too beaten down and/or bought off to take the Trump Administration's radicalism for what it is and act accordingly.

The authoritarian trend during the Cheney-Bush Administration

The main thing that concerns me about the liberal enthusiasm over NeverTrumper conservatives criticizing Trump is that it tends to obscure the extent that the whole Republican Party has been pushing an authoritarian style of politics for a long time. It's been a habit of liberals for decades to point to conservatives from 10 or 20 years before and use their words or positions as criticisms of conservatives in the present moment. It's a standard political ploy for conservatives to do the same with liberals of earlier decades. It's noarmally more stock polemics than real analysis.

There's a market for authoritarian ideas and has been for a long time. The "Studies in Prejudice "directed by Max Horkheimer highlighted that trend in The Authoritarian Personality (1950). That set of studies built on the Studies on Authority and the Family (1936) from the Frankfurt School Horkheimer directed.

Historian Richard Hofstadter - who still seems to be the only expert on authoritarian movements in America that many TV pundits have heard of - wrote in his famous essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (Harper's, Nov 1964):

This glimpse across a long span of time emboldens me to make the conjecture - it is no more than that - that a mentality disposed to see the world in this way may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less constantly affecting a modest minority of the population. But certain religious traditions, certain social structures and national inheritances, certain historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such psychic energies, and to situations in which they can more readily be built into mass movements or political parties.

Joe Conason did a book published in 2007 titled It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush. Here an excerpt from the review I did of it (Contradiciones (Original) 02/24/2007), with minor spelling corrections:

Conason skillfully describes how the toxic combination of lazy and compliant reporters, the extreme governmental secrecy that is a hallmark of Cheney's style of rule, corporate media dominance, and actual government-sponsored propaganda have combined to cripple the functioning of an independent press that is a critical element of democracy. He calls atttention to a trend in the Republican Party toward advocating overt censorship, still alarmed as they are about the amount of genuine journalism still being practiced in the US. He calls special attention to an article by Gabriel Schoenfeld, Has the New York Times Violated the Espionage Act? Commentary March 2006, which lays out much of the ideological justification for this next level of authoritarian media regulation.

Conason creates a useful framework in which to view the authoritarian tilt of the Republican Party under the Cheney-Bush administration, from ideological organizations like the Federalist Society (which promotes corporatist legal doctrine) to the effect of having an atmosphere of permanent war. The latter is essential for Dick Cheney's program of authoritarian rule, because only with such a climate of fear and threat can the Cheney policies of preventive war, torture, massive spying and an Executive not bound by any laws completely supplant the legal and Constitutional practices of the old Republic.

The Cold War provided such a framework, too. And in his concluding chapter, Conason fills in the dots leading from the Nixon administration's police-state measures known collectively as "Watergate" and the Reagan administration's secret war program which is best known through the Iran-Contra scandal to the Cheney methods of authoritarian governance which permeate the current administration.

Understanding the roots of the current situation in the darkest side of the Nixon administration is important because, as he writes, "[m]ost Americans, even those who lived through the Nixon era, have forgotten the context - let alone the details - of the Watergate scandal." He also observes, "The parallels are striking, but the difference is that Bush, Cheney, and Rove, and the forces they represent, are far more developed and powerful than the Nixon gang ever was." (my emphasis)

Though he doesn't mention it in the book, this illustrates the need for something like a Truth Commission process after Cheney and Bush are out of power. Not only do we need prosecution of crimes committed - and there have been many - but we also need a process by which the abuses of this administration can be publicly aired and understood. We need to make it far harder for people like Cheney and Rumsfeld, who learned their governing principles and style from the worst aspects of the Nixon administration, to come to power 10, 20, 30 years down the line determined to succeed where Cheney, Rummy, Karl Rove and the rest will hopefully have failed. The criminal and antidemocratic practices of the Cheney-Bush Administration need to be thoroughly discredited.

That perspective is the basis of my main criticism of the Obama Administration, which is they did not thoroughly investigate those crimes. I'm not talking about the "Lock Her Up!" type of criminalizing political opponents. Whether through the Justice Department, a Special Prosecutor, or some sort of Truth Commission, a real professional investigation should have taken place and appropriate prosecutions under the law should have been carried out as a result.

Conason mentions the Gabriel Schoenfeld article that, as I put it then, "lays out much of the ideological justification for this next level of authoritarian media regulation." The main target in his article was James Risen, then a reporter for the New York Times and now with The Intercept. The article made the case that Risen should be prosecuted for revelations in his book State of Siege and in the New York Times. As his Intercept bio explains:

Risen was himself a target of the U.S. government’s crackdown on journalists and whistleblowers. He waged a seven-year battle, risking jail, after the Bush administration and later the Obama administration sought to force him to testify and reveal his confidential sources in a leak investigation. Risen never gave in, and the government finally backed down. (my emphasis)

Risen described his legal ordeal early this year in The Biggest Secret The Intercept 01/03/2018:

My case was part of a broader crackdown on reporters and whistleblowers that had begun during the presidency of George W. Bush and continued far more aggressively under the Obama administration, which had already prosecuted more leak cases than all previous administrations combined. Obama officials seemed determined to use criminal leak investigations to limit reporting on national security. But the crackdown on leaks only applied to low-level dissenters; top officials caught up in leak investigations, like former CIA Director David Petraeus, were still treated with kid gloves. (my emphasis)

In other words, the Obama Administration's policy was not just to "look forward as opposed to looking backwards" on those crimes. In the kind of legal actions against the press and whistleblowers that Conason rightly warned about during the Cheney-Bush Administration, it was the Obama Administration that applied that next level of authoritarian media regulation. (See also: James Risen, All the News Unfit to Print Intercepted 01/03/2018; Pete Vernon, James Risen’s press freedom battles with Bush, Obama, and The New York Times Columbia Journalism Review 01/03/2018)

But, of course, the drivers of the authoritarian trend in US politics for decades have been the Republican Party, Christian Right fundamentalists, far right groups, woman-hating "men's rights activists," militarists, hate radio, and assorted racists, white supremacists, "Patriot" Militia types, and conspiracy theorists.

On the other hand, Obama proved dramatically that look-forward-not-backwards policies by Democratic Admimistrations will not reverse the authoritarian trends.