Sid Lukkassen – Cultural Marxism: A Field Report

The paradox of our time can be summed up as follows: Wi-Fi everywhere, connection nowhere. Because yes, we communicate constantly, but we understand each other less and less. This is because the same concepts evoke different associations depending on the group. Concepts such as feminism, sustainability, Islam and LGBTQ are now part of almost every conversation, but they are politically charged and have different meanings for different groups.

This divide did not come out of nowhere, but was deliberately created by what I refer to here – with all the nuance that this concept deserves – as Cultural Marxism. Not the old-fashioned hammer-and-sickle variety, but a fusion of ideas that is tearing Western civilisation apart along moral fault lines.

Let me start at the beginning. When Karl Marx elevated the worker to revolutionary subject, he counted on economic misery to fuel the fire. But look around you: metropolitan hipsters sip their oatmeal cappuccinos while their smartwatches pulse with dopamine notifications. The worker sits in synthetic sportswear waiting for his home delivery service. A heroic slave revolt à la Spartacus is unthinkable against this backdrop. To keep the torch of revolution burning, the intellectuals of the Frankfurt School – Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer – shifted the battlefield from the factory to the cultural sector. Marxism was no longer spread by seizing power over the means of production, but by monopolising the meaning of things.

That is why the front line today lies in the framing of language. Highly elastic concepts such as “safe spaces”, “inclusion”, “diversity” and “sustainability” are used everywhere to push through policy, and whoever defines these concepts has power over our culture. This language struggle is therefore the instrument of the hegemony of the virtue signallers.

Words are given new meanings so that people who use them join the moral bandwagon. Take a term like “people of colour”, which is used under the guise of “inclusivity”, even though this group includes everyone except white people, and is therefore anything but inclusive. The term suggests that people of European descent have colourless souls. And in exactly the same way, ‘women’ are redefined as ‘persons with a uterus,’ ‘Black Pete’ is repainted, and the Rijksmuseum ‘decolonises’ its signs. Each language change seems small, but when you take them all together, you see a Rubik's cube whose colours will never return to their original order.

Critics ask: “Sid, aren't you exaggerating? Isn't Cultural Marxism a right-wing bogeyman?” But I heard the same thing when I warned about big tech censorship in 2019: people laughed. Now everyone knows that a single screenshot can destroy a career. Cancel culture is not a myth but an instrument of power. As soon as an idea falls outside the approved window, the digital scaffold comes down and suffocation begins. What the the hegemony of the virtue signallers calls ‘socially responsible’ is in reality mental gagging.

Unlike the dissidents behind the Iron Curtain who were subjected to censorship, I can still let my fingers dance across the keyboard. Nevertheless, I feel the same underlying pressure that Václav Havel described. You write a paragraph, reread the text and immediately know that HR algorithms and search engines will label certain statements as “offensive”. This is Cultural Marxism in practice: it is not the gun to the temple, but the moral noose that tightens around the throat until no dissenting voice escapes.

The seriousness of the situation is clearly reflected in the source of cultural legitimacy: education. Universities – once antagonistic arenas where clashing ideas improved each other – have been redesigned as “safe spaces”. Debates have been replaced by consensus panels and analyses have given way to impressions of atmosphere. Students receive “trigger warnings” for Ovid; teachers speak of “problematic whiteness” in Shakespeare. A civilisation that hides its classics in shame severs its ties with the cultural source that makes “authenticity” conceivable in the first place. Anyone who compares canonical thinkers such as Plato, Machiavelli and Nietzsche will conclude that truth is a mosaic, a spectrum within which the individual positions himself, and not an “imperialist” monolith.

The equality of Cultural Marxism is the equality of Procrustes' bed: everyone must fit into the same ideological mould, even if it means cutting off limbs. When you engage in democratic debate, the idea is that the public interest is served by incorporating the criticism of opponents into visions for the future. But that model has now been completely destroyed, eroded and burned out: opposition – and by that I mean opposition that resolutely rejects the Cultural Marxist worldview – is only tolerated in order to channel social anger into forms that are harmless to the hegemony of virtue. Casting your vote is like pressing a light switch with no wiring behind it.

Those who follow my work know that I advocate for ‘standing tall.’ Abolishing positions such as ‘diversity officers’ is no longer feasible through democratic means. This is because the media and education are creating a mass psychosis that is being further deepened at the institutional and bureaucratic levels. So you really just have to harass them until they quit their job of their own accord. The same applies to all committees that push this propaganda. However, as soon as we seriously try to unite or organise, we are destroyed by the forces we pay taxes to. This leaves us with clowns who are tolerated by the system: they want us to sell meal boxes instead of rewarding our intellectual work with a position that actually offers future prospects.

Instead of ‘diversity officers,’ we actually need ‘freedom commissioners’: people who devote their careers to bringing extremes into dialogue with each other. Fresh air is a sensible response to dogmatism. But let's not fool ourselves: we know in advance that these ‘freedom commissioners’ will be stripped down to a kind of Jort Kelders and Lale Guls (both supposed ‘right-wing liberals’) who will gatekeep to prevent deeper systemic criticism from being tapped into.

There is little you can do against such overwhelming power. If you resist, your bank account will be closed, and that is only the beginning of all the misery that will befall you. If you do not resist, it will be the straw that breaks the camel's back: all the absurdity and totalitarian coercive measures will start to feel “normal”. In that situation, resistance becomes unthinkable. In fact, we have nothing more than a credo to bring against this inhumane system: freedom of conscience, press, association. These values are not “white” but universal. They have been tested with blood, sweat and brainpower – they have proven their worth and made modernity possible in Europe and America.

At the end of this month, I will turn 38: exactly halfway through my life. And in the second half, we will see how Western Europe definitively plunges itself into the abyss. The abyss from which there is no way back. What is lost now is irretrievably lost.

That is why I conclude with Gramsci's famous words: ‘Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.’ With my mind, I understand how free thinking has been crushed under bureaucracy. My heart cries because of all the emotional blackmail and cognitive dissonance that have become normalised in society. Yet my will is optimistic: every time a citizen stands up, straightens their back and says, ‘No, I think for myself!’, light breaks through the cloud cover of suffocating virtue signalling. Cultural Marxism may have taken over the institutions – as long as there are readers who follow this essay this far, there is a spark. Hope is too big a word for this spark: at least there is hatred of the hegemony of the virtue signallers.

I would prefer to appeal to freedom and reason – that suits me best – but we all know that such a plea will be ridiculed and ignored by the media machine. Substantive debate on the subject will be disrupted by state-controlled trolls. There are simply too few intelligent people left who can do anything meaningful with this. The few sensible people who do get the message are encapsulated by bureaucrats and have no room for manoeuvre within their jobs.

So: make room in your soul for hatred. Because hatred is what they deserve – and it's all we've got.

We hate the inhumane system that forces us to bend our thinking to present the absurd as normal.

And hatred gives life.

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