The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 218

The school of thought known as Critical Theory was born, as we understand it today, in an essay written in 1937 by Max Horkheimer, who was director of the infamous Frankfurt School. This definitive essay of Western Marxism makes it clear that what we think of as "theory" is only one side of the story, and it's the side that keeps reproducing our present society. Horkheimer calls this "traditional theory," and we call it "knowing what you're talking about and applying it to make the world a better place." He contrasts it against his  own approach to Western Marxist thinking, which he calls "critical theory," which questions the very foundations of the society we inhabit in favor of an alternative we can't even articulate. In this important episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay brings you through some of the text of the first half of this historical essay so you can understand the Critical Theory from its birth, in the words of its own founder. Join him to hear the truth: Critical Theory has always been like this, from the very beginning.

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 215
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The Nazis had an ideological mission for their own Volk in addition to those we're all more familiar with from the dark stories of history: to transform a widely Christian Germany into a fully Nazi Germany, not just in practice and politics but in belief and commitment. That is, in the language of the Nazis, German Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, had to be transformed into people who accepted the racialist worldview and Fascist organizational principles of National Socialism. In practice, that would mean devastating the real foundations for their faiths, providing them an ersatz intermediate faith called "Positive Christianity," and using it to lead them to full-blown Nazism. The key man tasked with this endeavor was Alfred Rosenberg, the Chief Ideologist of the Third Reich, who wrote the book on it in 1930. The Myth of the Twentieth Century was arguably the Third Reich's second most important book after Mein Kampf, and it presents the "myth of the blood" that all Nazis were eventually to come to believe as an article of unshakeable faith like their leaders. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay returns to the second chapter of The Myth of the Twentieth Century to outline Rosenberg's very New-Atheist-ish effort to undermine the foundations of German Christianity while retaining a mythological Aryan Jesus so that he could complete this task. Join him to see how Nazis really regarded Christianity, especially Catholicism.

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 217
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A very relatable feeling today is that of having something incredibly important to say while nobody listens. We go on screaming about the nearly existential horror of the situation we are in while everyday life goes on beside us, ignoring us, denying us. It's incredibly frustrating. This now far-too-familiar circumstance was written about eloquently at a time when it mattered as much as it may ever have mattered, in January 1944. In that month, Arthur Koestler, writing in the New York Times, published a monumental essay titled, "The Nightmare that Is Reality," describing the madness of screaming the truth about the unfolding Holocaust in Germany. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay shares Koestler's landmark essay with you in full and then explores the unsettling question it raises: with so many "screamers," which ones, like Koestler, are crucially right, and which ones are cranks and fools, if not worse? How can we tell them apart? Join him for an important exploration.

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 216
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In the late 1970s, a Palestinian-American postcolonial theorist and Columbia University literature professor named Edward Said wrote a book that changed the Left forever. That book was called Orientalism. In this book, he brought the postmodernist deconstructive tools of Michel Foucault to a variety of Marxist and Critical Theory analyses to criticize and transform the way scholars study "other" cultures. His basic thesis is that there is no way for a scholar embedded in an imperialist context to study another culture without bringing his imperialism (and preference for its benefits) into the analysis. Exploring his treatment offers us much today in terms of understanding Woke, including how it could be that so many of our central institutions caved in to the ideology. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay reads a section from Said's own introduction to Orientalism to explain. The Postmodernist, Critical Marxist, and broadly establishment-liberal mondialist projects share so much foundational overlap that they serve as not just parallel projects but an intellectual-cultural symbiosis that opened the door to the Woke takeover. Join him for yet another groundbreaking episode and insight into what happened to the West over the last century of Western Marxist incursion.

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 214
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The Democratic Party is in trouble. Many of us have known that for a long time, but only a few Democrats have. This is the moment where that needs to change. Through internal declarations of their own, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which is for all intents and purposes a Marxist-Leninist Communist organization, isn't just winning primary elections on the Democratic ticket; they are also intending to take over the Democratic Party (and teachers unions) writ large. This is in every respect an emergency situation for Democrats and for America herself. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay reads through the entire DSA platform and its introduction so that people can see it is exactly what so many fear it is: a Communist party with a Marxist-Leninist agenda. Join him for this important episode and share it with Democrats who might be willing to listen.

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 213
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In the 1960s, a radical Islamic Salafist named Sayyid Qutb wrote a short little radical book called Milestones in which he laid out a new vision for what the world usually calls "Islamism" today. That model wasn't just rooted in a backwards-looking radical fundamentalist vision of Islam called Jihadist Salafism as taken up by the Muslim Brotherhood; it was also based directly on Vladimir Lenin's radical model for creating and installing Communism through Bolshevism, particularly Lenin's 1902 booklet called What Is To Be Done? The prescription is for an ideologically pure radical vanguard to take control and pull the ideology into global dominance, even against its own moderates. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay continues his reading of Milestones in a fourth volume, outlining the nature of this vanguard approach as Qutb explains it in his third chapter and tying it definitively to other radical ideological movements, especially Lenin's Communism. Join him for a very enlightening reading.