Banned Thoughts: Critical Theory

Why are would-be government censors (pretending to be) so interested in "the Frankfurt School"?

Just as people know or feel that advertisements and political platforms must not be necessarily true or right, and yet hear and read them and even let themselves be guided by them, so they accept the traditional values and make them part of their mental equipment.

-Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (1964)

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”

- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (quoted by Adam Morgan on Twitter)

Today, Adam Morgan is the chair of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus, a small group of relatively inexperienced lawmakers who have managed to draw outsized attention to themselves using the same tactics as the national Freedom Caucus. Morgan is also running to unseat fellow Republican William Timmons for US House, at least in part on the platform that Timmons was wrong not to support the US