“Cultural Marxism” is a term favoured by those on the right who argue the humanities are hopelessly out of touch with ordinary Australia.
The criticism is that radical voices have captured the humanities, stifling free speech on campuses.
The term has been used widely over the past decade. Most infamously, in former senator Fraser Anning’s 2018 “final solution” speech to parliament he denounced cultural Marxism as “not a throwaway line, but a literal truth”.
But is cultural Marxism actually taking over our universities and academic thinking? Using a leading academic database, I crunched some numbers to find out.
The back-story
The term “cultural Marxism” moved into the media mainstream around 2016, when psychologist Jordan Peterson was protesting a Canadian bill prohibiting discrimination based on gender. Peterson blamed cultural Marxism for phenomena like the…