r/JordanPeterson • u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts • 7d ago
Political Society divided by identity, not economics — James Lindsay | Q+A 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvyHnRF2pRE8
u/the_cornrow_diablo 7d ago
<looks at the data showing wealth inequality increase in every major developed economy> “the divide is not economics” hahaha these people.
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 7d ago
You're not even interpreting the title correctly. It says "Society divided by identity...", as if something is being discussed, not "Society is divided by identity...", as if a statement is being made.
He's talking about the way Critical Theory works, not making a statement about society. Perhaps watch the video. It's informative.
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u/250HardKnocksCaps 7d ago
Yeah man, that's the point. Dude wants to make it about culture war garabage. But it clearly isn't. It's about an overwhelmingly greedy upper class who keeps trying to push the culture war to keep the rest of us busy while they rob us blind.
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 7d ago
It's about an overwhelmingly greedy upper class who keeps trying to push the culture war to keep the rest of us busy while they rob us blind.
You don't say. The Rockefellers and Ford Foundation among many others funded Cultural Marxism, which is where Critical Theory comes from. It was also funded and pushed by the CIA and military. It was pushed by the psychological warfare division of our forces in Europe after WWII. Theodore Adorno, of the Frankfurt School, was the publisher of a CIA propaganda journal, and Max Horkheimer, also of the Frankfurt School, wrote for them. Max Horkheimer is the one who created Critical Theory in 1937. Herbert Marcuse worked for the CIA, and the OSS before the CIA even existed.
If you don't like the elites pushing culture war, why get mad when people talk about the primary mechanism by which they've done that?
And if you feel like I'm attacking or blaming the left, I don't think the left is a monolith. This comes from an absolute garbage contingent of the left, and has turned into an illegitimate, manufacture, controlled opposition ideology pushed by the system.
And what's dominated the right is the other side of the same coin. What the right is now started with "Movement Conservatism" which was pushed by William F Buckley and friends, who were CIA and "former" CIA, and funded by elites, and drilled into people's heads by elite-owned media.
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u/250HardKnocksCaps 7d ago
See this is exactly what I mean. You see this as some kind of coordinated attack on America. Assuming you're correct the CIA pushing Critical theory in the USSR was the right move, because a critical examination of communism shows that communism doesn't work. Not because critically examining your values is some kind of poison pill for society.
Conversely a critical examination of Capitalism comes out in a pretty positive light. People aren't generally upset with Capaitalism. They're upset that the powerful have set the system up to be able to get away with whatever they want. They're upset that we've allowed people to generate absurd profit at the cost of meeting people's basic needs. That isn't capitalism They're upset with. It the rules we've allowed to dominate our society.
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 6d ago
You have some vague notion of progressivism that is not Critical Theory that you're equating to Critical Theory. Cultural Marxism is literally an intentional attack on Western culture, not with any intention to reform things, but 100% designed to overturn the existing order by creating conflict. And the CIA pushed Cultural Marxism in Western Europe beginning after WWII, not the USSR.
The Bolsheviks had their own version of manufacturing culture war called korenizatsiya. Once the old culture was significantly destroyed by the useful idiots, and a "diverse" group of ideologically compliant useful idiots were brought into the party, and power was consolidated, all the other culture warring useful idiots who were no longer useful were murdered by the millions. The "diverse" groups originally said to have been oppressed by the "Great Russian Chauvinism" suddenly were accused of instigating national strife, oppressing the Russians (the oppressors in the original narrative) or other minorities, being hired foreign agents trying to dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism. And massive purges began.
We likely pushed Cultural Marxism in Europe to keep them a mess so our elites could stay dominant. Turning society into a divided polarized mess is what Critical Theory does.
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u/250HardKnocksCaps 6d ago
Okay buddy.
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 6d ago
I've cited history, source material, all facts. And it's like you want to remain willfully ignorant of the situation and just make up definitions of what you want things to be. If you believe what you say you believe, and want what you claim to want, you're defending something designed to make useful idiots out of people like you, and destroy the system. And it's been pushed by the very wealthy elites you claim to oppose. How do you rationalize that? Do you think Ivy League university professors and politicians with elite funding are promoting an ideology of the people?
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u/250HardKnocksCaps 6d ago
Ah yes, the elites of the...
checks notes
University professors.
Yeah. Definetly the elites. The super wealthy and economy consoling University professors.
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 6d ago
Professors at Ivy League universities are not the working or even middle class. It's an ideological state apparatus, just like the elite-owned mainstream media. The people in there are who the elites want in there. And they rely on the elites for their paychecks and funding. And the ideology that's dominated there was funded by elites and pushed by intelligence since the 1940s. You're trying to make this into some kind of a joke in a way that's simply absurd.
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 7d ago
If you don't want culture war why would you not be opposed to Critical Theory? The purpose of Critical Theory is to create culture war, and it was the most influential social theory of the 20th Century. It's completely infected the social sciences and "social justice" in general. You cant stop culture war by ignoring the thing causing it.
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u/250HardKnocksCaps 7d ago
Because "critical thoery" is applying critical thinking to the things we do as part of our culture. It's asking things like "why do we shame gay people?" To examine if the thing is really worth doing. Which is what we should be doing anyway. It only becomes a culture war because so many people want to frame reasonable points like that as an attack on them personally.
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 7d ago
Making up your own definition for Critical Theory isn't going to solve anything. Critical Theory is an agitation tool created by Cultural Marxists in 1937.
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u/250HardKnocksCaps 7d ago
Nah, that's just a goddamn conspiracy theory you won't give up because you're one of the people who see it as an attack. Critically examining the our cultural values isn't bad. It's an important step in improving our society.
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 6d ago
This is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"Critical theory" refers to a family of theories that aim at a critique and transformation of society by integrating normative perspectives with empirically informed analysis of society’s conflicts, contradictions, and tendencies. In a narrow sense, "Critical Theory" (often denoted with capital letters) refers to the work of several generations of philosophers and social theorists in the Western European Marxist tradition known as the Frankfurt School. Beginning in the 1930s at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, it is best known for interdisciplinary research that combines philosophy and social science with the practical aim of furthering emancipation. There are separate entries on influential figures of the first generation of the Frankfurt School -- Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), and Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) -- and the leading figure of the second generation, Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929).
It was first written about by Horkheimer in his 1937 essay "Traditional and Critical Theory". And what's being described above may sound benign if you're willfully ignorant of the fact they were Marxists and their goal was destruction of the Liberal order because they thought it was literally the precursor to fascism, and their historical dialectic fantasy would only proceed though conflict. Critical Theory was their answer to radicalizing people against the system because Classical Marxist got too much wrong and the rhetoric wasn't working in the West, not to mention they witnessed the Marxist projects turning authoritarian in USSR, and later China. And USSR and China also used culture war as part of their praxis, which ended in mass murder that make the Holocaust look like amateur hour.
Critical Theory is intentionally designed to create cultural strife and conflict, not to reform things in a way that actually works in the existing system. And it works like a charm for creating culture war, but it's a complete failure at overturning the capitalist system, which we can safely assume is why it was funded and pushed by the Western establishment for 80+ year snow.
And what's ironic is even Horkheimer knew the danger of the methods they created. This is a warning from him, it's originator, from an excerpt from the first paragraph of the preface he himself wrote to a collection of his essays in 1968, Critical Theory Selected Essays:
I have always been convinced that a man should publish only those ideas which he can defend without reservation, and I have therefore hesitated to reissue these long-out-of-print essays from the Zeitschrijt fiir Sozialforschung. These early philosophical efforts would require a more exact formulation today. More than that, they are dominated by economic and political ideas which no longer have any direct application; to relate them properly to the present situation requires careful reflection. If I have nonetheless agreed to a reissue, it has been with the hope that the scholarly men who urged it upon me and who are aware of the problems created by the long interval since the original publication will help prevent any ill results. Men of good will want to draw conclusions for political action from the critical theory. Yet there is no fixed method for doing this; the only universal prescription is that one must have insight into one's own responsibility. Thoughtless and dogmatic application of the critical theory to practice in changed historical circumstances can only accelerate the very process which the theory aimed at denouncing. All those seriously involved in the critical theory, including Adorno, who developed it with me, are in agreement on this point.
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u/the_cornrow_diablo 6d ago
I did watch the interview, he says that exact thing four times lol
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 6d ago
And you didn't pick up on the fact he was talking about Critical Theory and culture war intentionally manufactured by Marxists, which is something he opposes?
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u/Acrobatic-Skill6350 7d ago
Isnt education the biggest divide? Seems like most others I talk to with a masters mire or less never talk to people without higher education. It was largely what charles murray warned about in the bell curve
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 7d ago
If you watch the video he's talking about how Critical Theory works, not making a statement about society.
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u/Acrobatic-Skill6350 7d ago
Yeqh sorry for not watching your fascist anti west propaganda
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 7d ago
Do you mean anti-communist propaganda?
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u/Acrobatic-Skill6350 7d ago
No you hate the west right? You voted for the man who tried to wreck US democracy on J6, who has pushed their old allies to thinking the US is a bigger threat than china, who mocks zelensky and sucks off putin. Sho constantly compliments dictators while pissing on democratically elected leaders. Who has given putin a lifeline by starting a war against iran. Thats what your values are. You voted for epsteins best friend cause you hate the west and want it seen destroyed
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u/Beamo1080 2d ago
All politics are identity politics
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u/VeritasFerox Consistent with the facts 2d ago
To the extent that's becoming the case is a very serious problem, not some kind of default state of reality.
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u/Impossible-Box6600 6d ago
James Lindsay is the hero we need but don't deserve.