The CIA, the universities, and anti-communist Marxism: part 1 w/ Gabriel Rockhill

“On the Barricades” s05e13

On this week’s release of “On the Barricades,” host Maria Cernat speaks to the French-American writer, cultural critic, and activist, Gabriel Rockhill. Gabriel completed his graduate studies under the direction of Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray and Alain Badiou, and is now a professor of philosophy at Villanova University. Gabriel’s work in academia led him to a very close understanding of the bourgeois cultural and intellectual apparatus for its fundamental, historical role of bringing leftist thinking in line with the interests of the corporate elites and capitalist order. He wrote an article called “The CIA and the Frankfurt school’s anti-communism,” the content of which is the starting point inspiration for today’s discussion.

In this episode Maria and Gabriel piece together a view of this bourgeois cultural apparatus and how it operates, touching on the historical role of the CIA in relation to the major arts and cultural institutions, as well as the main theoretical foundations for contemporary academic discourses– the Frankfurt school in Germany and the French school. These were funded by, under direct collaboration with, the US government. Gabriel outlines how this system of knowledge production serves to divide and conquer the left, rendering a “critical school” that’s devoid of systemic critique of imperialism. It promotes “anything but socialism”, that is, it refuses to promote an alternative to the problems of the capitalist system. The careers of the Frankfurt school philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, in particular Horkheimer’s pro-Vietnam war position (which is comparable to Slavoj Žižek’s pro-Ukraine war leaning), illustrate this propagandistic function.