Adorno’s pseudo-conservatism label masked a European left critique of American civilization

Evidence

The conservatism of the interviewees was a defence of a genuine kind of conservatism found more often in Europe than in the United States, and Adorno therefore classified it more or less consistently as pseudo-conservatism. Since conservatives in the United States were seen as democrats and good Americans just as much as liberals were, and after 1945 even more so than liberals, Adorno’s distinction concealed a very European left-wing critique of the American way of life, of American civilization. As a critic of monopoly capitalism and the culture industry, he was in fact forced to expect American civilization to produce a fresh rebellion against failed civilizationthat is, a fresh form of fascism. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1806

Categorization

• XREF: Demonstrates the Frankfurt School’s projection of European class analysis onto American political categories, echoing assumptions visible throughout the F-scale debates. — connects to: Adorno adapted Fromm’s rebel-revolutionary split into a pseudo-conservative versus conservative split — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1588; Adorno ranked conservative anti-modernists as worse enemies than fascist modernists like Benn — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2235
• DEEPTHINKING: Wiggershaus quietly deconstructs Adorno’s scientific categories as vehicles for an unacknowledged ideological critique — a nuanced unmasking of the unmasker.