In a related sense we bring you Eleison Comments, Bishop Williamson's blog which goes into the subject of the Frankfuhrt School which migrated to the United States and enjoyed a tremendous amount of sway and influence over Catholic education, eventually spilling over into things Catholic as well. We believe it's especially noticeable in the Scotish Conference's website.
By Bishop Richard Williamson
Valuable lessons for all friends or lovers of "Western civilisation" are to be culled from an analysis of the USA's leftwards lurch in the 1960's by a Californian Professor of Psychology, accessible at their website. Professor Kevin MacDonald is there reviewing the critique of mass culture in a book on "The Frankfurt School in Exile".
The Frankfurt School needs to be much better known. It was a small but highly influential group of non-Christian intellectuals who, when Hitler came to power, fled from Germany to the USA, where in conjunction with a like-minded group of New York Trotskyists they continued to exert an influence out of all proportion to their numbers. Feeling a profound alienation from the "traditional Anglo-American culture", says MacDonald, they made war on it by promoting the individual against the family, multi-culture against White leadership, and modernism against tradition in all domains, especially the arts. "Theodor Adorno's desire for a socialist revolution led him to favour Modernist music that left the listener feeling unsatisfied and dislocated - music that consciously avoided harmony and predictability". The Frankfurt School wanted "the end of the order that bore the sonata".
The Frankfurt School scorned the American people's lack of desire for Revolution, and they blamed it on the people's "passivity, escapism and conformism", says the Professor, and on "late capitalist" control of the mass culture by, for instance, conservative organisations imposing moral standards on Hollywood. Yet when in the 1960's they themselves gained control of the media, universities and politics, they exploited to the full the mass culture and Hollywood and the people's on-going sleep-like condition to swing them to the left. The Professor laments the resulting vicious attack upon "White interests", "White identity" and the "traditional people and culture of the West".
The Professor is right on several counts. For instance, the war is not mainly between capitalism and communism, as the leftists originally thought, and as many Americans still think. Material comfort has lulled the American people to sleep, after the 1960's as before them. Also, on or off the leash, Hollywood and culture play a huge part in moulding minds and masses (which is why "Eleison Comments" often treat of cultural topics). Also, there does exist a small group, conscious and resolute, of highly influential enemies of "traditional Western culture".
However, to defend "White interests" the Professor needs to go well beyond White interests as such. The real problem is religious. Why did White Europeans ever have so much to give ? Because for centuries and centuries they co-operated with God's grace to profit best by the Catholic Faith. Why does this small group of leftists so hate "Western culture" ? Because it is the lingering remains of that Faith. And why did the small group become so powerful from the 1960's onwards ? Because at Vatican II the same "Whites" were mainly responsible for the Catholic officials' betrayal of the Faith which took place at that Council. Today's triumph of the leftists is no more nor less than a just punishment from God.
Professor, you are not asleep. Now pick up a Rosary !
Kyrie eleison.
London, England
