Épater le bourgeois (shock the middle classes) has been the revolutionary rallying cry of the left in the cultural war against Judeo-Christian morality and the nuclear family for well over a hundred years. It lies at the epicenter of Modernism, Marxism, Fascism, National Socialism, Progressivism, Feminism, Environmentalism, and Homosexualism.
For fascinating, in-depth explorations of bourgeois (middle class) culture, see Schnitzler’s Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture 1815-1914, by Peter Gay; The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud Volume 1: Education of the Senses, Volume 1, by Peter Gay; The Tender Passion: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Volume 2, by Peter Gay; The Cultivation of Hatred: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Volume 3, by Peter Gay; The Naked Heart: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Volume 4, by Peter Gay; Pleasure Wars: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Volume 5, by Peter Gay; Victorian Minds: A Study of Intellectuals in Crisis and Ideologies in Transition, by Gertrude Himmelfarb; The De-moralization Of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values, by Gertrude Himmelfarb; and One Nation, Two Cultures: A Searching Examination of American Society in the Aftermath of Our Cultural Revolution, by Gertrude Himmelfarb.
The classic and definitive statement of elitist contempt for bourgeois culture is Eminent Victorians, by the scathing, bitchy biographer Lytton Strachey. Strachey, who along with his homosexual lover and fellow Cambridge Apostles initiate, economist John Maynard Keynes, were unabashed advocates of “the higher sodomy,” setting forth the destructive agenda for generations of anti-bourgeois subversion. Later the Apostles served as the breeding nest for treason by spawning Soviet espionage agents Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and Michael Straight.
See also Modernism: The Lure of Heresy, by Peter Gay; Degenerate Moderns: Modernity as Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior, by E. Michael Jones; Dionysos Rising: The Birth of Cultural Revolution Out of the Spirit of Music, by E. Michael Jones; Putting Modernism Together: Literature, Music, and Painting, 1872-1927, by Daniel Albright; France: Fin de Siècle, by Eugen Weber; Fin-De-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture, by Carl E. Schorske; Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, by Modris Eksteins; Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider, by Peter Gay; Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, by Mel Gordon; Modern Times: The Word from the Twenties to the Nineties, by Paul Johnson; The Shock of the New, (DVD) by Robert Hughes; Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story Behind America’s Favorite Movies, by Paul Buhle and David Wagner; Left of Hollywood: Cinema, Modernism, and the Emergence of U.S. Radical Film Culture, by Chris Robe’; Enemies of Society, by Paul Johnson; The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America, by Robert Nisbet; and Culture Wars: The Struggle To Control The Family, Art, Education, Law, And Politics In America.
5:30 pm on July 5, 2015
