Carl Trueman (click here for a bio) has recently written an article for the blog site First Things blaming the questioning of freedom of speech by some influential people on Herbert Marcuse from the Frankfort School. He uses Marcuse's work Regressive Tolerance as the basis for his claim (click here for Trueman's article and there for Marcuse's writing on Regressive Tolerance). In addition, toward the end of his article, Trueman claims that a number of groups seem to be interested in tearing down our civilization and what we have built. All of this seems to be attributable to Marcuse in some way, shape, or form.
Trueman sees free speech being attacked everywhere in American society by the left aided by corporations. That the current attack on free speech in our society is much more a problem on the left than on the right. He adds that such is attributable to the left having added its focus on oppression, an emphasis on psychology. Such makes oppression 'murkier' and makes freedom of speech part of the problem. It seems to me that Trueman here has more in his crosshairs than Marcuse; he seems to be including the current emphasis on microaggressions as our social problems. And he adds on to that that those who say unacceptable things, according to the left, are evil people. Thus, violence from the left is sometimes deemed to be an acceptable response to the free speech practiced by the wrong people.
He then goes into other ways in which Marcuse may have contributed to the current state of affairs. That Marcuse was a utopian who didn't provide any practical advice on how to reach the his promised land. This has led his followers to destroy traditional values while providing no actual substitutes. Trueman mentions Black Lives Matter beliefs as a result of Marcuse's influence on the left.
And that is how Trueman arrived at his closing statements on how the left, along with some corporations, are trying to destroy our civilization.
My problems with Trueman's approach is that what Marcuse writes about tolerance is far more complex and complicated than to describe it the way Trueman does. For in his work Regressive Tolerance, Marcuse talks favorably about freedom of speech. At the same time, Marcuse speaks against tolerance of oppression and that which supports it. For tolerance is a goal for Marcuse, not that he has any utopian expectations of fully reaching that goal. But that should introduce a general idea of what should guide us in determining what, including free speech, and what shouldn't.
Furthermore, as far as I can tell, the Frankfurt School has, as one of its focuses, how to prevent what was experienced in Nazi Germany. Its works on the authoritarian personality is a case in point. That we should look at what traits of the German people which moved them to remain loyal to Hitler to the end so that we might avoid doing the same. So when people from the Frankfurt School, like Herbert Marcuse, are talking about what is acceptable tolerance and what isn't, it is out of a real concern to reduce oppression and the suffering it brings.
Perhaps there is a better explanation for the intolerance we see on the left of free speech when exercised by those on the right. Warning, the explanation is psychological. That explanation is that when there are attempts to undo long-term injustices, such as racism and the oppression of the LGBT community, these attempts are not just concerned with canceling out the current injustices, they are just concerned with preventing a return of these injustices. And thus, anything from the past that is associated with injustices must be eliminated regardless of whether those associations are accidental or not.
Thus what we are seeing are phobic like reactions to long-term injustices in that there is a fear of being able to distinguish between those things that actually contributed to past oppression from those things that are merely associated with the past oppression but did not contribute to it. So we see that if conservatism is just associated with past racism or other forms of oppression, then the expression of conservative ideology can't be permitted lest oppression is either continued or resurrected. Thus, the key enabler of the current lack of tolerance of conservatism by some on the left is not Marcuse or Marx or anyone else, but it is a form of all-or-thinking that is driven by fear. So here we need to exonerate Marcuse from Trueman's charges. Why? It is because Marcuse's writings are too complex and complicated to have employed all-or-nothing thinking.
So we need to look at what moves people to employ all-or-nothing thinking as being the real culprits of much of the intolerance that Trueman is rightfully complaining about. Certainly fear, when it is great enough such as having become a phobia, can drive all-or-nothing thinking. But the Frankfurt School could also provide help here. For one of the subjects researched by that school is the authoritarian personality. And not surprising, authoritarianism employs all-or-nothing thinking. So what we are seeing in the intolerance of some on the left is that they, like many of their counterparts on the right, are embracing their own kind of authoritarian approach.
Finally, though Trueman has some legitimate gripes against the left for its intolerance of those on the right, he not only wrongly blames Marcuse for the problems he sees, he mentions no legitimacy in the left's criticism of our civilization. So one has to wonder how he sees our civilization. One has to wonder whether he sees at least some of the same problems that the left sees.
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