Free Speech Versus Frankfurt-School Speech

A flyer with an image of Karl Marx can be seen on the wall below the sign of the Free Speech Movement Cafe in Berkeley, Calif., on July 30, 2023. Courtesy of Loretta Breuning

Commentary

Leftists often claim to support free speech, and their honey-coated words may fool you. So here’s a simple guide to avoid getting sucked into the totalitarian brand of “free speech.”

Don’t Idolize Berkeley’s ‘Free Speech Movement’ of the 1960s

It was never about free speech. It was led by Marxists to give free rein to Marxism. It was never meant to support free expression for non-Marxists.

Here are the facts that few people are aware of. The University of California historically prohibited political recruiting on its campuses. This policy was challenged in 1964 by “red diaper babies.” That term was new to me until I read David Horowitz’s autobiography, “Radical Son.”

He explained that communist party members, such as his parents, were required to leave their children in party-led activities while attending their daily party meetings. Thus, a new generation was trained in the methods that brought Vladimir Lenin to power.

The leaders of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement didn’t change the rules by using speech. They prevailed by motivating huge numbers of students to break the law.

They effectively shut down the campus by taking over the administration building and physically obstructing law enforcement. This had been the standard “progressive” strategy since Karl Marx first proclaimed that violence is justified by the evilness of “the system.”

Red diaper babies led most of the campus activism of the 1960s in both the United States and Europe. Berkeley’s Bettina Aptheker is a striking example. Her father was the top ideologue of the U.S. Communist Party who sparked its strategic shift to race conflict from labor conflict.

Like so many other “radicals” of the era, she went from campus to campus preaching Marxist doctrine at student demonstrations. Suddenly, campuses were no longer free for non-Marxist speech.

The Free Speech Movement Cafe in Berkeley, Calif., on July 30, 2023. Courtesy of Loretta Breuning

Don’t Say ‘Even Nazis Deserve Free Speech’

This disguises the fact that millions of people disagree with leftist doctrine, not just a sprinkling of alleged Nazis. If you justify free speech in the name of Nazis, you reinforce the progressive claim that you must be a Nazi if you disagree with their views.

Progressives insist that the greater good is harmed by nonleft opinions, so they’re serving the greater good by silencing those Nazis. What do you call a person who thinks all views but their own must be silenced?

A totalitarian.

Why do we have so many totalitarians all of a sudden?

In 1965, Herbert Marcuse said tolerance is bad when it allows oppressors to speak. In his essay on “Repressive Tolerance,” he ridiculed the democratic culture of tolerance that had taken centuries to build.

I remember my professors’ god-like reverence for Marcuse.

But this begs the question of how one essay could undo the Western tradition of civil discourse. And why our society would spend colossal sums on education only to nurture anti-democratic bullying. And why our youth are so easily convinced that they’re living in a hellhole of oppression that requires violent redress.

The answer lies in another overlooked bit of history.

A century ago, Marxists expected to control the world by sparking worker uprisings. But they noticed that workers weren’t rising up as expected, so they decided that people needed to be “educated” into awareness of their enslavement. So they shifted their focus to education and culture from labor unions.

This “cultural Marxism” was brought to the United States when the “Frankfurt School” of scholars fled the Nazis. They planted their seeds at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Education and moved on to California. Marcuse was the youngest in the group, so he was the professor who joined the student radicals in the 1960s.

A century later, it isn’t surprising that teachers speak the language of cultural Marxism so fluently. As a retired college professor myself, I’ve seen how students learn to speak that language because it buys them good grades without doing the coursework.

Don’t Use Words Created by Totalitarian Ideologues

For example, don’t use the word “unrest.”

The words “campus unrest,” “urban unrest,” and “labor unrest” imply that violence is a spontaneous response to unbearable conditions. This distracts you from the fact that the violence was organized and led by people schooled in organizing and leading violence.

Totalitarians keep introducing new words and attack you as a Nazi if you don’t use their words.

But even if you submit, you’re only temporarily safe because they quickly introduce more new words. It’s a naked power grab disguised as a public service.

When you debate the vocabulary that totalitarians impose, you perpetuate the illusion that substantive matters are at stake when it’s really just a power grab. Don’t debate with totalitarians.

The Real Question

Does anyone really believe that there are so many Nazis in our midst that we need to give up our freedom of speech to protect ourselves from them?

Unlikely.

So it’s odd that such a flimsy premise would be enough to destroy our precious freedom of speech.

It shows that bullying works. People submit to bullies to protect themselves from being the next target.

And it shows that the bullies have been trained on the platitudes of people who fled from Nazis a century ago.

Don’t empower totalitarians by hoping they'll leave you alone if you say the right things.

Free speech is good, but define it for yourself so that totalitarians don’t define it for you.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.