All of the main figures in The Frankfurt School had Jewish Heritage, that's the very reason they were fleeing to America from Hitler.

What's more, when William S. Lind came up with "Cultural Marxism" as a conspiracy theory narrative about The Frankfurt School, he [was paid in 2002 by the conservative think tank The Free Congress Foundation to give a lecture about his theory](https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2003/cultural-marxism-catching) at a **Holocaust Denial conference.** The Free Congress Foundation claims this was a form of outreach to many different groups on an issue by issue basis. In the lecture Lind made sure to mention that The Frankfurt School "were all Jewish" ...and part of the lecture was about them working for Hollywood (which is untrue), and being the source of America's supposed degeneration.

Subsequently by 2010 The Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory was a common topic on the White Nationalist forum StormFront.org, and by 2014 had spread to 4chan's neo-Nazi threads. Which is how it became part of alt-right doctrine. This is how it became part of mainstream right wing and conservative ideology. Indeed, you can still find plenty of antisemitic imagery about the conspiracy theory at it's [know your meme page.](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultural-marxism/photos)

Hitler had a similar idea he called [Cultural Bolshevism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism). The Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory is about a small group of foreign Jews coming to America with a plan to destroy western civilization (and in some versions, Christianity) by taking over the media, academia and politics. The Frankfurt School had no such plan, and in fact, were warning against mass media, which they considered to be a type of commercial propaganda, they called it [The Culture Industry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry) (today known as mainstream media). They were also Jewish refugees, fleeing from Hitler. Frankfurt theorist Theodor W. Adorno writes more about their views [in his essay here.](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm)

What's more identity politics wasn't created by The Frankfurt School, it was created by two black American women, Barbara Smith, and Kimberle Crenshaw. It is fundamentally an American theory. Smith coming up with the idea of Identity Politics, Crenshaw coming up with the idea of "intersectionality" or the idea that no one person is part of a single demographic alone, but that all identities stand at an intersection of many different demographics (for instance, a poor white mother with a disability, fits into 4 or 5 groups at once, the poor, women, white people, pregnant people, and disabled people). Because it's a theory initated by Black American theorists, the term 'woke' may be more apt and have less White Nationalist baggage.

Oh, there's also a bunch of antisemitic conspiracy theories related to it:

**Here's how "Cultural Marxism" is a conspiracy theory:**

The rightwing makes obviously false statements regarding The Frankfurt School, they variously claim The Frankfurt School were [Sabbatean Satanists practicing black Jewish Kabbalah magic](https://archive.md/LGQu1), that [Adorno was trained by The Tavistock Institute in order to write the songs of The Beatles with the aim of producing 'environmental social turbulences'](https://archive.org/details/coleman-john-the-tavistock-institute-of-human-relations-1/page/n5/mode/2up), or as right wing website Breitbart puts it, that Adorno and Horkhiemer ["promoted degenerate atonal music to induce mental illness, including necrophilia, on a large scale"](https://archive.md/wip/dKv3h). In the American National Review (America's premiere conservative magazine) Michael Walsh claims The Frankfurt School Cultural marxists were [doing 'the work' of Satanists](https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/09/michael-walsh-devils-pleasure-palace/) and of course Lind has the false claims that they [spent the war years in Hollywood, and are the reason gays are on TV](https://archive.md/lKWnm#selection-79.458-79.467) - so yes, when Jewish refugees and media theorists are tarnished as a crack group of demonic cadres out to use their sociology magic to cause necrophilia, you can accurately say there's a conspiracy theory about them - under the title of Cultural Marxism.

They were literally just trying to flee Hitler and point out Capitalism, and Capitalist media propaganda, could be some what fascist - and the far right are still demonizing them. So yeah, there's definately a conspiracy theory about them enacting a plan to destroy western society and christendom. It is a theory of degeneration in the style of Hitler's idea of [Degenerate Art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art) (which was also posed as a [Jewish/Bolshevik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Bolshevism) attack.

Specifically it's a [Global/Systemic type of Conspiracy Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Barkun's_three_types) about an outside, foreign, or alien take over of society.