The Red Trojan Horse: A Concise Analysis of Cultural Marxism

by Alasdair Elder

Since the 1960s, a war has been raging. It is not a war between armies or nations; it is a war of ideas. It is being fought between the values of the Enlightenment, which have built Western civilization into the greatest civilization in human history, and the values of Marxism. Although traditional Marxism, or Classical Marxism, has been effectively extinct since the 1990s, Cultural Marxism has spread like a disease through every aspect of Western society, threatening to bring that society crashing down. Today, Western politics, education, and even popular entertainment are saturated with Marxist values. An atmosphere of authoritarian intolerance for honest discourse and freedom of speech is now rife. The purpose of this book is to provide the reader with a compact, yet comprehensive, source of reference for understanding the phenomenon of Cultural Marxism, both in the context of history and in terms of the present day. Topics covered by this book include; * A history of the philosophical evolution of Cultural Marxism, from the philosophies of Kant and Hegel to Classical Marxism, to the counter-culture of the 1960s. * How the Frankfurt School developed Cultural Marxism, by combining Classical Marxism with the pseudointellectual schools of Freudian psychoanalysis and Boasian anthropology. *The similarities and differences between Classical and Cultural Marxism.* How Cultural Marxism gained a foothold in Western academia by hijacking identity politics. * The formula of Critical Theory, which allows Cultural Marxists to manipulate and control discourse, through the intellectually dishonest redefining of words. * How Cultural Marxism can perpetuate itself by establishing self-reinforcing cultural and economic feedback loops. * How Cultural Marxism has created an authoritarian intolerance for debate through the creation of political correctness. * The ideological alliance that Cultural Marxism has engineered between the political Left and radical Islam. * The creation of the modern-day Marxist foot soldier; the Social Justice Warrior, or SJW. * How SJW's behave, and why.

Genres: Politics

174 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 1, 2017

Reviews

[Julio M. Shiling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seminal book and theme

Excellent! Cultural Marxism is the 21 st Century mutation of communism. It's methodology and substance must be understood and challenged. This book exposes this very well.

[Noah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid summary, but did not cite sources well and was often pettily ad hominem.
The author also clearly doesn't understand Christianity well, saying that there is a connection
between how Marxists and Christians both believe in the inherent goodness of humanity, seeing
humans as "fallen angels".

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise, excellent, revealing. A must read! I learned a great deal, and I plan to read again soon. This book answered many of my deliberations about how we've arrived at the point we are at as a country.

[Gee · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars. Front half of the book is a decent summary of the ideological roots of modern leftism. Back half reads like an angry blog post.

[Mark O'mara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The books main strength is providing a, better than a number of similar books I've read, an excellent, logical account of the basis and roots of cultural Marxsism and its ongoing, relentless, pervasiveness - from Hegel through to Alinsky & the current swarm of SJWs (so mind numbingly tedious). The intellectual shallowness and complete lack of moral core at the heart of cultural Marxism is laid bare.

[جمال ابراهيم · Rating 3 out of 5]

Concise

The book is concise and explained the origin and mechanism of cultural marxism succinctly . The book is extremely relevant on these times .

[Cary B · Rating 5 out of 5]

A succinct and eye-opening read
Alasdair Elder strikes a nice balance in this book between clear and accessible writing and an academic exposition of the ideas he's exploring, along with a polemical element. It's very easy to read and understand.
After an excellent introduction on how cultural marxism seeks to undermine and change our society, Elder gives us a brief introduction to Kantian and Hegelian philosophy which sets CM into its historical context. We then explore Hegel's "master/slave dialectic"
I don't claim to be an expert on the history of philosophy, but his overview seems thorough and concise. He then sets Karl Marx into the context of this and defines capitalism and representative government and has a clear discussion on the difference between a republic and a democracy. Something which I had never quite got my head around before.

He then does a thorough deconstruction of classical Marxism,
ruthlessly exposing its flaws as he sees them.
"The first and most obvious flaw is that Marxism is based on equality of results rather than equality of opportunity"

This flaw is contrary to human nature as it seeks to make us all the same, we aren't. No vibrant, successful society can thrive out of oppression

"The ultimate irony of this is that it is Marxism itself that can only be maintained through oppression."

You have nothing to lose but your chains I think Marxists say - what it seems to mean in practice is, just file along here and collect a heavier and more restrictive set from us!

This is an opinionated book and in the section on Sigmund Freud, Elder makes his contempt for him very clear. In fact he excoriates him and at one point describes him as a con-man and charlatan.

Freud offends Elder's wish for a sound basis in science and his deep regard for the scientific method. This is the basis of much of his criticism of the woke agenda and its protagonists. They don't have any sound basis for their academic work.

Elder contends that because Freud's theories lacked scientific grounding, this gave Cultural. Marxists an easy way in to undermine traditional Western scientific and cultural values. Freud's inversion of traditional sexual morals gave even more opportunities to plant the seeds of destruction within our institutions and hollow them out.

The idea of social norms and values being oppressive and power based would prove to be a fertile source, one from which political correctness would one day germinate.

Boas's anthropological ideas caused historical particularism, multiculturalism and cultural relativism to spring forth. The section on Margaret Mead's flawed research is particularly enlightening and illustrative.

the "..fundamental problem with cultural relativism; it denies that there are any objective standards by which one can assess cultural norms and standards."

Elder exposes how Mead was sent to Samoa to specifically prove a particular thesis and thus this distorted her research right from the beginning.

It's stunning to read about Adorno's thesis in his book The Authoritarian Personality when relatively normal people are viewed in a distorted manner. Everything is turned on its head. (A method now used by the advocates of Critical Race Theory) It seems to be Adorno who has a sick, abnormal view of the world. It's disturbing to see how these people shaped the crazy ideas which have been passed on to us in our institutions and universities which are now doing so much harm. It seems that is what they were intended to do from the beginning. They were designed to harm and destabilise our society. It's chilling. Until I read this book, I hadn't realised how long this has been going on.

The second section "Cultural Marxism Today" gets hard to read at times, not because it's badly written, it isn't, but because it is so accurate. It's painful to see laid bare how the Marxists have succeeded in manipulating and distorting so much of our social fabric by surrepticiously inserting their ideology. Elder ruthlessly exposes what has been done. Many would display this as right-wing paranoia, but that is all part of the plan as Elder points out! When seen laid out in its full array, it's chilling. Although I've been aware of what's been going on in pockets for years, in recent years (2018-2022) the pace and sinister nature of what's happening has been stepped up and many have begun to open their eyes. Alinsky's 'long march through the institutions' seems almost complete, especially in the UK. Marxist ideology is now broadcast by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he's sincere!

One criticism, I do wish that Elder wouldn't use the pointless term cis gender. It's meaningless and to use it is to give in to woke Marxist artificial definitions. There are men and there are women, that's all.

This is a fairly short book and it's remarkable how Elder succinctly describes a breadth of ideas and concepts and successfully handles them all without being obscure He ends with a good summary of how we must work to save society.

[Peter Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually wanted to give 3.5 stars for this review as while the first 2/3s of it are very good and interesting the last part of it is a bit ranty in places.

Elder starts off by looking at the historical side of what is driving many of those on the left wing of politics today by looking at people like Marx and instiutions like the Frankfurt school to see where the ideas and tactics originated and were adapted over time. This part of the book is really very interesting but when it comes to what to do about it in a more modern setting, Elder seems to lose his cool in his writing - though given the craziness of some of the positions I can understand why.

Worth a read and I'll read it again at some point especially the first part.