Horkheimer and Adorno publicly stayed silent about colleagues’ fascist pasts.

Evidence

Those who were aware of many of their colleagues’ fascist past or the close relation between their thinking and fascism, or who understood the connection in terms of the critique of ideology, remained silent. Horkheimer and Adorno, too, remained silent in public, only attempting to block the influence of such people in the academic fieldfor example, by giving their advice in 1958 at the request of a professor at Heidelberg who wanted to prevent Gehlen from being appointed to a professorship at that prestigious university or by involving themselves in the elections for the executive committee of the German Sociological Association, in which Schelsky was playing an increasingly important part. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 571

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The thinkers who invented ideology critique chose public silence about ex-Nazi colleagues, acting only behind the scenes — a structural self-implication of Critical Theory that resists easy summary.