Has the Frankfurt School destroyed society?

Not yet but in the absence of a push back it will. It has contributed to a significant decline already.

Cultural Marxism itself has its origins in the Frankfurt School (place of birth Frankfurt, Germany 1929) whose idealism incorporated a synthesis of Freudian, Marxist and Hegelian reasoning. It views history as march to an inevitability that can be directed by the control of institutions to facilitate necessary social change. In this way it deviates from Orthodox Marxism whose focus is largely on the economic.

Key thinkers here include Marcuse, Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas and Fromm. Social Emancipation and critiques of capitalism dominate the discourse and its impact across Academia (in particular the social sciences and humanities) cannot be understated. From here it has spread influencing both the biological and physical sciences, the professions and education. All of the disciplines (indeed all facets of life) are viewed as a platform that can be used to advance the necessary social change favored by the ideologues.

In the United States and other parts of the Anglosphere , this fusion of cultural Marxism and post-modernism has worked its way from the university into the mainstream. The intent is to bring in trans formative change consistent with a re-calibration will to power and by all accounts it appears to be gaining the upper hand. Push back began during the Trump era but the failure of conservative elements to seize the initiative earlier on means that the necessary resistance is playing catch up. The power dynamic has shifted to favor these authoritarian leftist ideologues and all strata of society will be the worse off for it.

Cultural Marxism envisions a restructure society in a way that opposes the capitalist infrastructure in support of a top down rearrangement that will advance outcomes that are believed to be more equitable. Critical Race Theory, the dichotomy of the oppressed and the oppressor and a general hostility to the Judeo-Christian core of Western Civilization are vital aspects of its praxis. The mode of thinking is a definite outgrowth of a metastasized leftism but unlike the radicalism of the Bolsheviks, and various State socialisms it has settled for a patience that was willing to bide its time with a slower walk through the institutions.

This walk though has picked up having fueled a ride on the globalist bandwagon that has oxygenated its outreach. It has found a necessary ally in post-Modernism deconstructionist thought, which also abhors legacy structures and tradition.

As it stands today I have very little doubt whatsoever that the West is in decline. The institutions are showing all the rot of ideological take over with identity politics dominating over merit based philosophies. The corporate, governmental, academic and educational worlds have all been infected by the mind virus of guilt ridden wokeism with the subsequent fall in standards making its presence felt ubiquitously.

But like all tunnel-visioned marches that eschew self-criticism it will forge a landscape of collateral damage. Truth will be its first victim followed only slightly by its inability to entertain contrarian initiated free speech. In this it echoes a Maoist zeal that will torch history to rewrite a narrative. Nothing is sacred, definitions are fleeting and victimhood serves as a weapon to justify what is needed. At its core it knows no constraints and if not checked will furnish a body count of lost lives and torched careers that for expedience of power will leave the gains of the enlightenment burning in a smoldering heap