“Until Lukács showed up, classical Marxist theory was based solely on the economic changes needed to overthrow class conflict. Weil was enthused by Lukács’ cultural angle on Marxism.
“Weil’s interest led him to fund a new Marxist think tank—the Institute for Social Research. It would later come to be known as simply The Frankfurt School.”
“As fate would have it, the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933. It was a bad time and place to be a Jewish Marxist, as most of the school’s faculty was. So, the school moved to New York City, the bastion of Western culture at the time.”
“In 1934, the school was reborn at Columbia University.”
“The school published a lot of popular material. The first of these was Critical Theory.”
“The theory was simple: criticize every pillar of Western culture—family, democracy, common law, freedom of speech, and others. The hope was that these pillars would crumble under the pressure.”
“Next was a book Theodor Adorno co-authored, The Authoritarian Personality. It redefined traditional American views on gender roles and sexual mores as “prejudice.”
“Adorno and Horkheimer returned to Germany when WWII ended. Herbert Marcuse, another member of the school, stayed in America. In 1955, he published Eros and Civilization.”
“The book called for “polymorphous perversity,” a concept crafted by Freud. It posed the idea of sexual pleasure outside the traditional norms.”
“Marcuse would be the one to answer Horkheimer’s question from the 1930s: Who would replace the working class as the new vanguards of the Marxist revolution?
“Marcuse believed that it would be a victim coalition of minorities—blacks, women, and homosexuals.
“The social movements of the 1960s—black power, feminism, gay rights, sexual liberation—gave Marcuse a unique vehicle to release cultural Marxist ideas into the mainstream.”
“The Frankfurt School’s work has had a deep impact on American culture. It has recast the homogenous America of the 1950s into today’s divided, animosity-filled nation.
“In turn, this has contributed to the undeniable breakdown of the family unit, as well as identity politics, radical feminism, and racial polarization in America.”
https://christianobserver.net/how-the-frankfurt-school-changed-america/
It is interesting that Adorno and Horkheimer returned to Germany and played an influential role in inventing a new culture (heavily influenced by Critical Theory).
They were Marxists who hated authoritarian rule (in the USSR for example) but went about destroying representative government and unwittingly assisting Deep State authoritarianism in post-WWII Germany and the U.S.
They both blindly failed to recognize that Marxism, in any form, leads to authoritarianism.