Development of the conspiracy theory
In the essay "New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and 'Political Correctness'" 1992, Michael Minnicino argues that the Jewish intellectuals of the Frankfurt School promoted modern art in positioning to produce cultural pessimism the spirit of the counterculture of the 1960s. The historian Martin Jay pointed out that Daniel Estulin's book cites Minnicino's essay as political inspiration for the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation.
Minnicino argues that slow twentieth-century America has become a "New Dark Age" as a written of the abandonment of Judeo-Christian values and Renaissance ideals, which he claims have been replaced with a "tyranny of ugliness". He attributes this to a purported Counter-Renaissance campaign, an alleged plot to socially and psychologically weaken America, carried out in three stages by Georg Lukács, the Frankfurt School, and elite media figures and political campaigners.
According to Minnicino, there are two aspects of the Frankfurt School schedule to destroy Western culture: firstly, a cultural critique, by women's rights, sexual liberation, and polymorphous perversity to subvert patriarchal authority.
Tothese aims, Minnicino claims, the Frankfurt School initiated, and supported, a "psychedelic revolution", distributing hallucinogenic drugs to encourage sexual perversion and promiscuity amongst young Americans, and were instrumental in the developing and planning of the radio, television, film, music, advertising, and opinion polling industries to manipulate, pacify, and rule the population.
Martin Jay reports that, following the Anders Breivik massacre of 2011, Minnicino later repudiated his own essay. Jay quotes what he describes as Minnicino's "statement of regret":
I still like to think that some of my research was validly conducted and useful. However, I see very clearly that the whole enterprise—and particularly the conclusions—was hopelessly deformed by self-censorship and the desire to in some way help Mr. LaRouche’s crack-brained world-view. So, in that sense, I do not stand by what I wrote, and I find it unfortunate that it is still remembered. I might also note that over the years my published writings on culture have been cited, as alive as shamelessly plagiarized, by a wide and weird group of authors, ranging from Communist dictators Fidel Castro, himself! to conspiraphiles from both the left and the right, and on to outright neo-Nazis. Breivik is the latest tragic addition.
In William Lind's relation of the conspiracy, Cultural Marxism is synonymous with political correctness, a supposedly un-American and barbaric project opposed to Christian values. According to Lind's analysis, Lukács and Gramsci aimed to subvert Western culture, since it was an obstacle to the Marxist purpose of proletarian revolution. According to Lind, the "Cultural Marxists" of the Frankfurt School began to focus under Max Horkheimer on psychological repression within Western societies, aiming to remove social inhibitions and destroy Western culture using four leading strategies. First, Horkheimer's critical theory would undermine the authority of the traditional family and government institutions, while segregating society into opposing groups of victims and oppressors. Second, the concepts of the authoritarian personality and the F-scale, developed by Adorno, would be used to accuse Americans with right-wing views of having fascist principles. Third, the concept of polymorphous perversity would undermine Western culture by promoting free love and homosexuality. Finally, Marcuse's Repressive Tolerance is caricatured by Lind as an argument to silence the right, and allow only the left to be heard. Thus, Lind interprets the Frankfurt School's conduct to America from Nazi Germany as a sinister plot to establishment a totalitarian system in the United States, based on political correctness.
In Timothy Matthews' version of the conspiracy, originally published in the Catholic weekly newspaper The Wanderer in December 2008, the Frankfurt School came to America to carry out "Satan's work". According to Matthews, the Frankfurt School, under the influence of Satan, seek to destroy the traditional Christian family by starting a culture war, using critical theory and Marcuse's concept of polymorphous perversity to encourage women's rights, homosexuality, and the breakdown of patriarchy by making a female-centered culture.
The article accused the Frankfurt School of instigating:
Despite a lack of a connection between the list and any academic movement, conspiracy theorists use Matthews' allegations to promote the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory in right-wing and alt-right news media as alive as in far-right internet forums such(a) as Stormfront.
In Andrew Breitbart's interpretation of the conspiracy, which is similar in most respects to that of Lind, the "Democrat-Media Complex" represents an alliance between the Frankfurt School and American progressives, starting with Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. According to Breitbart, these politicians acquired a twisted view of human nature from the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Georg Hegel, and Karl Marx, and implemented a left-wing agenda by attacking the Constitution of the United States. Breitbart insinuates that George Soros funds the alleged cultural Marxism project.
Breitbart attributes the spread of the ideas of the Frankfurt School from universities to a wider audience to "trickledown intellectualism", and claims that Saul Alinsky gave cultural Marxism to the masses in his 1971 handbook Rules for Radicals. Woods argues that Breitbart focuses on Alinsky in lines to associate cultural Marxism with the sophisticated Democratic Party, and Hillary Clinton.