Fox News host Mark Levin's bestseller "American Marxism": A work of staggering ignorance

[Nevilledog]

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Zachary Petrizzo
@ZTPetrizzo
Mark Levin claims to be the expert on "American Marxism," the title of his new NYTimes best-seller, but he can't even get basic facts correct about what he is talking about and has corrections to issue.

Fox News host Mark Levin's bestseller "American Marxism": A work of staggering ignorance
Hothead Fox News host keeps calling the Frankfurt School the "Franklin School." Does he mean the Franklin Mint?
salon.com
6:33 AM · Aug 20, 2021

https://www.salon.com/2021/08/20/fox-news-host-mark-levins-bestseller-american-marxism-is-built-on-amazing-ignorance/

Fox News host Mark Levin's new book, "American Marxism," has reached the No. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction. But there appears to be a problem. Levin, best known as a right-wing radio host able to fly into a rage at any moment, has made repeated substantial errors when speaking and writing about the supposed topic of his book.

"American Marxism" largely concerns the supposed influence of post-Marxist European intellectuals in shaping the American left. Levin isn't the first right-wing commentator to identify German émigrés like Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse as the source of a nefarious tendency in American life they often call "cultural Marxism." Those figures are collectively described as belonging to the "Frankfurt School" (although the term is somewhat ambiguous).

But it's not clear whether Levin has actually read his own book, let alone the sources he claims to identify. He has repeatedly described the Frankfurt School as the "Franklin School" — perhaps confusing it with the Franklin Mint, a venerable purveyor of "gifts and collectibles" — and has said it originated in Berlin. (As you might have surmised, the Frankfurt School actually began in the German city of Frankfurt.)

A quick consultation with the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a peer-reviewed resource, reveals this information:

The Frankfurt School, known more appropriately as Critical Theory, is a philosophical and sociological movement spread across many universities around the world. It was originally located at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), an attached institute at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The Institute was founded in 1923 thanks to a donation by Felix Weil with the aim of developing Marxist studies in Germany. After 1933, the Nazis forced its closure, and the Institute was moved to the United States where it found hospitality at Columbia University in New York City.

*snip*

[Lovie777]

1. He probably bought tons of his own book . .

that's what they do.

[Crunchy Frog]

12. Yup. The sort of people who read those kinds of books don't actually read books.

[greenjar_01]

2. The great irony is that (a perversion of) Frankfurt school ideas drive a good deal of conservative

thought today.

There's a case to be made that Adorno and Horkheimer's "The Culture Industry as Mass Deception" is actually a model for conservative thinking about the media and Hollywood. There's also a good case to be made that Adorno's understanding of political totalization is at the root of conservative conspiracy theorizing (or, rather, that conservative conspiracy theorizing is a particular response to an underlying theory of totalization).

Modern-day Qanon is playing out a (much perverted) legacy of Frankfurt School thought far more than is, say, the BLM movement.

Oh, and it's blazingly obvious that "American Marxism" was put together by ideologues in a right wing think tank and that Levin doesn't know the first thing about any of this. Does anybody really think that Mark Levin has read Negative Dialectics or even fucking One-Dimensional Man? It is to laugh!

[underpants]

3. Interesting. Will look this up.

Thanks.

[ScratchCat]

4. Most radio hosts and blowhards

Don't write their own books, so I have no doubt this garbage was written by others and signed-off by Levin so people would read it.

[struggle4progress]

5. Eeek! Refugees from Hitler! The original antifa! Let's blame them!

Of course, we can also blame asians, blacks, and hispanics!

[GoodRaisin]

6. LOL I wonder if Levin's "book" would even be on a best seller list if not for the

gigantic copy of it’s cover being shown as a background prop on his weekly Fox News propaganda shows. The massive book cover is placed in front of the viewers while he drones out lies. It seems like Fox News has put Levin in charge of the “socialism” department to make room for more wedge issue lies during it’s regular hourly “news” shows.

[kimbutgar]

7. Probably another bulk purchase to drive up The NY Times bookseller list.

Really you imagine magas reading books with big words?

A few years ago I worked a job packing up a right wingers home. He had this large bookcase in his basement of right wing books from Rump, hannity etc. As I packed these books I noticed not one of the spines of the book indicated it had been read. There must have been about 100 books I packed in the same unread condition. The guy was a leacherous creep and said creepy stuff to me and my other female coworkers. We all made a pac to never leave each one alone with him. A week after the move the wife told us she was divorcing him. She owned the home they lived in and gave him money to go away. He ended up in Reno where he said were more smart lived not like the stupid people in San Francisco. This was in 2014 before TFG came on the scene so I suspect he is a full blown maga now.

[Poiuyt]

8. The biggest statement of ignorance is in the title

No mainstream politician in America is advocating Marxism. For that matter, no mainstream politician in America is advocating socialism.

[Initech]

9. I'm convinced most of these dolts don't know what real Marxism actually is.

Or would even care.

[tanyev]

10. I wonder who actually did write that book?

[UTUSN]

11. Well well well, so Mr-No-It-All ought to puff himself up on an internet discussion board!1