The bizarre, conspiracy-theory-laden memo that apparently got former National Security Council staffer Rich Higgins fired by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was published yesterday by Foreign Policy. As people try to make sense out of Higgins’s view of the world, which was apparently shared by others in the Trump White House, I thought it would be helpful to link to a couple USIH posts of mine from the summer of 2011 that throw some intellectual historical light on the apocalyptic account of “cultural Marxism” and “political correctness” that can be found in Higgins’s memo:
The Frankfurt School, Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories, and American Conservatism
Fun With Primary Sources: the Free Congress Foundation’s “History of Political Correctness”
3 Thoughts on this Post
S-USIH Comment Policy
We ask that those who participate in the discussions generated in the Comments section do so with the same decorum as they would in any other academic setting or context. Since the USIH bloggers write under our real names, we would prefer that our commenters also identify themselves by their real name. As our primary goal is to stimulate and engage in fruitful and productive discussion, ad hominem attacks (personal or professional), unnecessary insults, and/or mean-spiritedness have no place in the USIH Blog’s Comments section. Therefore, we reserve the right to remove any comments that contain any of the above and/or are not intended to further the discussion of the topic of the post. We welcome suggestions for corrections to any of our posts. As the official blog of the Society of US Intellectual History, we hope to foster a diverse community of scholars and readers who engage with one another in discussions of US intellectual history, broadly understood.
Sounds like a parody to me
Oh, I think it was quite real, Andrew. And, you read through all of it, a lot of that is stereotypical anti-Semitic tropes. “Cultural Marxism,” “globalism,” hints at new world orderism, etc.
On the basis of a quickish look, the substance of the memo is somewhat strange, at least to someone not very familiar with these particular right-wing “theories,” and in terms of grammar and style the memo’s relation to English is rather tenuous (and that may be putting it generously).