Cancel Culture, Cultural Hegemony, Universities

Cancel culture’s grip on higher education ‒ From Gramsci to Marcuse: The intellectual roots of cancel culture and cultural Marxism

Tokyo, 3^rd November 2025 – Published as an article in the Japanese newspaper Sekai Nippo. Republished with permission. Translated from Japanese. Original article.

[Series] Trump vs. America’s Elite Universities – part 5  

A “Cancel Culture” That Tolerates Violence

The Battle Against “Cultural Marxism”

by Toshiyuki Hayakawa (早川 俊行)

See also part 1: Ideological War: Trump Targets Cultural Marxism

See also part 2: Defector: US Campus Culture Reminds Me of NKorea

See also part 3: How Marxism Shifted from Revolution to Culture

See also part 4: The Marxist Transformation of Higher Education

See also part 6: Far-Left Activism in American Higher Education

See also part 7: Exclusive Left-Wing DEI Ideology on Campus

See also part 8: Growing Antisemitism Based on Leftist Ideology

In the United States, a “cancel culture” has been raging that socially annihilates individuals for speech or behavior that runs counter to liberal values. Nowhere is this more pronounced than at universities. A symbolic example is the controversy surrounding Professor Amy Wax of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

In 2017, Professor Wax coauthored an opinion piece with another university professor and contributed it to The Philadelphia Inquirer. The article argued that to resolve the many problems afflicting modern society ‒ such as deteriorating public safety, drug abuse, and the breakdown of the family ‒ it is necessary for citizens to restore a traditional culture that values marriage, family, diligence, and patriotism.

By the standards of ordinary citizens, this was an eminently common-sense argument. However, because the piece included language suggesting that “not all cultures are equal,” which was interpreted as implying the superiority of white culture, nearly half of Wax’s colleagues at Penn Law ‒ 33 professors ‒ issued an open letter condemning her. A petition calling for her dismissal reportedly gathered around 4,000 signatures.

There was a reason the op-ed provoked such a hysterical reaction from left-wing forces. Although it avoided direct reference, it contained content that squarely rejected “cultural Marxism”.

Wax and her coauthor referred to the traditional cultural framework that should be revived as “bourgeois cultural hegemony”. In fact, this is precisely what adherents of cultural Marxism have long sought to dismantle.

“Cultural hegemony” is a concept proposed by Antonio Gramsci, who is regarded as the founder of cultural Marxism. While “hegemony” originally means domination or supremacy, Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony refers to a framework in which the ruling class maintains its dominance not through physical force such as military or economic power, but by permeating society with its own values.

Overthrowing the cultural hegemony of the ruling class and establishing a “counter-hegemony” by the ruled classes ‒ this is the revolution Gramsci advocated.

Wax and her coauthor argue that the problems of modern society have been brought about by a decadent counterculture that denies traditional culture, implicitly asserting that cultural Marxism is the root of all these evils.

Even after that episode, Wax’s remarks related to race were repeatedly deemed problematic. In September of last year, the university administration imposed disciplinary measures on her, including a one-year suspension and a 50 percent pay cut. Wax challenged these sanctions and filed a lawsuit seeking their reversal, but a federal district court dismissed her case. The quagmire continues even now, eight years after the original op-ed was published.

The individual who provided the theoretical foundation for today’s cancel culture was Herbert Marcuse, a central figure of the Frankfurt School and a man known in the 1960s as the “father of the New Left”.

According to The True Face of Communism Corroding America by conservative American commentator Mark Levin (published by Tokuma Shoten), Marcuse argued in his 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance” that in order to realize the goal of tolerance, society should be “intolerant toward prevailing policies, attitudes, and opinions”. He called for the thorough exclusion of speech that runs counter to left-wing ideology in order to create a society tolerant of leftist thought.

Marcuse went even further, advancing the view that “even if violence is adopted, it is not to initiate a new chain of violence, but to break the established violence.”

Thereby, he justified the use of violence. With conservatives increasingly targeted in violent incidents ‒ such as the shooting of President Trump and attacks directed at conservative activist Charlie Kirk ‒ it is difficult to deny the influence of an extreme form of cancel culture that goes so far as to tolerate violence as a factor behind these developments.

See also part 1: Ideological War: Trump Targets Cultural Marxism

See also part 2: Defector: US Campus Culture Reminds Me of NKorea

See also part 3: How Marxism Shifted from Revolution to Culture

See also part 4: The Marxist Transformation of Higher Education

See also part 6: Far-Left Activism in American Higher Education

See also part 7: Exclusive Left-Wing DEI Ideology on Campus

See also part 8: Growing Antisemitism Based on Leftist Ideology

Featured image above: Amy Wax in New York City in 2024. Photo: Werner Zagrebbi / Wikimedia Commons. License: CC ASA 4.0 Int. Cropped

Related to the rise of cancel culture: Japan Following the Way of China

Also related to the rise of cancel culture: Warning of Threat from CCP Fearing Korean Unity

And also related to the rise of cancel culture: Japan’s Dissolution Case Echoes China’s Playbook

Also related to the rise of cancel culture: Communists of China Exploiting Assassination

And also related to the rise of cancel culture: “Lawyers Lying and Shaming Japan” for 50 Years

More, related to the rise of cancel culture: Lawfare: State Uses Legal System in War on Faith

Also related to the rise of cancel culture: Media/Legal Expert: Communism Behind Persecution

And more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Militant Lawyers Dictate Government Policy

And more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Media Helping Terrorist Reach His Goal

Related to the rise of cancel culture: Kishida Administration Giving in to Terrorism

And more, related to the rise of cancel culture: 12 Religious Freedom NGOs Denouncing Japan

Yet more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Japanese Communists’ Final War

Still more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Political and Social Activism behind Oppression

And yet more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Opposition Inciting Regime to Excessive Steps

And still more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Journalist Reveals Ugly Leftwing Conspiracy

And even more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Gingrich: Kishida Joining Communist Campaign

Yet more, related to the rise of cancel culture: The 3 Enemies of Religious Liberty

Still more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Lawyer Exposes Dirty Leftwing Plot

And yet more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Inhuman Government-Supported Mass Deprogramming

Yet more, related to the rise of cancel culture: State and Media Creating “Today’s Non-Citizens”

Still more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Japan Criticized for Glaring Rights Violations

And still more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Bias: No Right to Respond for Religious Minority

And even more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Collusion to Rob Minority of Its Rights

And still more, related to the rise of cancel culture: New Admission by Top Japanese Communist

And yet more, related to the rise of cancel culture: Two European Scholars Warning Japan