Cultural Marxism is just how some conservatives have fairly recently started to refer to Critical Theory, which has been around for many decades. It was developed by disaffected Marxists, mainly in Germany and the United States, in response to the horrors of Stalinism. Critical Theory is most simply a critical look at capitalism from a cultural perspective. Eric Fromm is probably the best known and most influential writer from the movement and he died about forty years ago without ever exactly shattering the foundations of capitalism and threatening our way of life. Anyway, Cultural Marxism sounds much more scary than Critical Theory, so I imagine that’s why Peterson and others have taken to using the term.
Cultural Marxism is just how some conservatives have fairly recently started to refer to Critical Theory, which has been around for many decades. It was developed by disaffected Marxists, mainly in Germany and the United States, in response to the horrors of Stalinism. Critical Theory is most simply a critical look at capitalism from a cultural perspective. Eric Fromm is probably the best known and most influential writer from the movement and he died about forty years ago without ever exactly shattering the foundations of capitalism and threatening our way of life. Anyway, Cultural Marxism sounds much more scary than Critical Theory, so I imagine that’s why Peterson and others have taken to using the term.
Looks like they are taking it a little farther than just renaming something. They are ascribing nefarious motives etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory