Students embraced Horkheimer’s early texts even as he rejected them.

Evidence

Horkheimer tended to identify the student movement with anti-Americanism and pro-totalitarianism, and rejected it along with the Vietnamese liberation struggle. But, ironically, respect for him grew as the student movement became progressively radicalized, since some of his early writings turned out to be a goldmine for quotations that suited the current mood. Of course, this gave him no satisfaction at all. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 658

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why did Horkheimer’s early conceptual vocabulary so easily suit radical opposition despite his own repudiation of it?