Theodor W. Adorno

There's something to it when people talk about cultural Marxism.

They're talking about Gramsci and Adorno, like, contra Marx and Engels.

But they don't understand that, like, a lot of this doesn't have to do with orthodox Marxism or Frankfurt School stuff at all.

A lot of it's, like, New Dealer bullshit.

I honestly, I didn't want to spend 45 minutes discussing 9-11, but I will conclude with just a couple of other details that I think are more important before transitioning to what I think is fascinating.

And that is basically an intro to theodore adorno we've been discussing the tavistock institute and really what was i believe described as um if i remember correctly it's the imperial brainwashing project and so we had discussed that in the previous episode but really i found an interesting thread that that goes a little bit further as far as the origin of musical mind control and just you know It's not only musical mind control, it's tonal frequency, right? It's this interesting...

It's culture creation and musical mind control through tonal frequency and mind manipulation.

I think this is very sophisticated in the methods that they utilize, but I found a list of alleged frequencies that are relied upon.

It's interesting.

And I'm almost finished with at least the crucial parts of this list that I thought were worth mentioning before I transition to the final point, which is really... you know, a little bit more in the vein of the Tavistock Institute.

And as I mentioned before, Theodore Adorno, the origin of musical mind control and tonal frequency as a tool for just derailing the middle process, the subconscious mind as well.

And And so, you know, beyond the notion that through this tonal manipulation, this tonal frequency manipulation, you can effectively create the mechanisms of mind control in a real sense.

There's something to it when people talk about, quote, cultural Marxism.

They're talking about Gramsci and Adorno, like, contra Marx and Engels.

But they don't understand that, like, a lot of this doesn't have to do with orthodox Marxism or Frankfurt School stuff at all.

A lot of it's, like, New Dealer bullshit.

And the Frankfurt School and the student movement and the Situationist International were greatly influenced by this work.

although Adorno criticized him harshly, particularly on his later aesthetic writings.

So what does he do in Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein? Based on the analysis of the commodity fetish and the alienation in the first volume of the Capital, he develops a theory, a critique of reification, of Verdinglichung in German, And it describes the protest by which, as we know, as we do our homework, but which social relations between people are mistakenly perceived as object properties of inanimate objects.

So commodity money markets.

I recommend reading it.

But in in engaging with his thoughts and his aesthetics was so once again i have to stress this out he's so because by reading it you you sometimes you you think what is he defending about uh what is this this uh why is he defending like like for it like this despotic Stalinist bullshit because you have to keep in mind he was under protection and under surveillance during a period of war and fascism and in the midst of an aggressive imperialist expansion.

It must be said because it is part of a greater anti-communist narrative that communismism inevitably becomes monstrously despotic from within and produces like poverty and hardship and gulag and so if it's essential to it to simply to denounce that there's something else and I And even the left criticism of his approach towards literature and art and like as conveyed from Adorno basically tends to focus on on the claim that he's too dogmatically loyal to the party.

And Adorno wrote these texts or one central text against misunderstood realism.

But what he recognizes is that we've become obsessed with memes.

Talk about the 1930s, it was a very fruitful period of reflection on this sort of stuff because you've got also Adorno and Horkheimer, two philosophers in Germany eventually moved to America.

That was known as the Frankfurt School and became what's called critical theory theory.

And already they were recognizing the problems with what they refer to as instrumental reason.

So, John's sort of bringing together some Greek thought there.

So, there was a sense that there's the mind of God in all things, and thinking with the mind of God is really what reason is all about, right? It's about understanding the ultimate purpose.

Reason was about understanding ultimate ends, But what Adorno and Horkheimer say in their book, in fact, The Critique of Instrumental Reason, is they critique this approach to this new kind of way of thinking where everything is about calculation and quantification, you know, whereas value is lost.

Value is something transcendent.

Still less is it to deny the disgusting pseudo-Nietzschean aestheticization of mastery and destruction through which Nazism represented itself.

But that aestheticization cannot be answered merely by rival aestheticization no poetry after auschwitz as adorno said the cigar remains a cigar and the ornament remains an ornament You'll have to excuse me.

I'm having medical treatment.

I'm taking steroids and my eyes are not good.