Cultural Marxism and intersectionality

• Published in: Sexualities 2018-12, Vol.21 (8), p.1300-1303
• Main Author: Duyvendak, Jan Willem
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Gender identity; Homicide; Intersectionality; LGBTQ rights; Marxism; National identity; Neoliberalism; Oppression; Race; Racial identity; Sexuality; Western civilization
• ISSN: 1363-4607; 1461-7382
• DOI: 10.1177/1363460718792419

The evening following the massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, I attended a commemoration event in Paris organized at the Place de la République by Nuit Debout (the French version of the Occupy Movement). I often think back to this evening when I encounter right-wing attacks on cultural Marxism, so popular among the Alt-right these days. These radical right-wingers often claim – as if unearthing a conspiracy – that a small left-wing elite is undermining the core values of western societies, imposing their ideas on gender, sexuality, national identity, race, Islam, and other issues. Some perceive a coherent left-wing agenda that should be stopped before it destroys ‘western civilization’ (their analyses come close to Oswald Spengler’s Die Untergang des Abendlandes (1918). They are wrong, of course; the left in most western countries is in crisis, far from influential, let alone dominant. In hindsight, I was relieved that they were not at Place de la République that evening, when it seemed that these themes were indeed all connected – so strongly connected that one could not speak about gay rights without mentioning multiple other forms of oppression.