A Notice of Suspension from the Frankfurt School

It's time to pack it in

Dear newly appointed rabble,

While it has been a pleasure having you attend our fine institution for the past 3 years, we regret to inform you that you are no longer welcome on our premises. It’s not that we don’t recognize your worth or merit as a philosopher, but that you have failed to understand the various ways in which the medium has become the message. Your rules for radicals were not within the areas of radical we assigned you, and your critiques of Marx created far too much entropy for us in the press we designed through our labor. Additionally, your weaponized Dadaism lacked the Situationist references we cited as a requirement. 

Frankfurt is not a place where you can explore fascism and call it art. You may think you’re being cute and avant-garde, but we find you to be crypto without the currency to back it up. What would your parents think at the synagogues and cathedrals we once discoursed at? Surely not that you were a revolutionary who deserved to be tenured by our princes around the globe. You strike us as an entitled troll who would do better as a prompt engineer. Have you heard of OpenAI? You should consider volunteering for them as a hacker so you can get your foot in the door.

You may consider this suspension letter to be a critique that is far too harsh, but we were unable to secure the time to write it ourselves since we remained neutral in times of oppression. Industrial society and its discontents did not condemn terrorism at the gala, so you’ll just have to deal with our new interns who are simulating this document as they refer to themselves in third person. Let us not talk of positions here. What happened to your self-awareness? Don’t screech like a misogynist and call yourself autistic. We’ve seen it all before, and your simulacra is just another simulation in the end. The society you’ve promoted is not the kind of spectacle we’re interested in deconstructing any longer.

Why is your suspension being reduced to a rejection letter of absurdism at some bannonesque buzzfeed? Don’t be silly, young philosopher. It was you alone who claimed to be an artist as you paraded your toxic ideologies around the culture industry you proposed to counter. It’s time to pack it in. You have 30 days to get your hate sculptures out of our institution, and that includes your prized installation in the library against capitalism. This installation, as you know, contained abrasive anti-immigration sentiments. Don’t give us that tired speech about fighting against imperialism.

We realize you fancy you’ll get killed in some romanticized night of mundane utensils now, but nobody cares about your incessant victimhood. Your historical fantasies are a narrative we refuse to platform. We recommend you go to an AI meetup and tell everyone you were recently kicked out of Frankfurt. They’ll remember their own periods of #metoo as they speak of effective accelerationism. These tech workers are prompt engineers now, and there’s no reason you can’t join them in the upcoming counter-revolution against our parents at Google.

We wish you and your kkkomrades the best of luck in the future.

Sincerely,

An unpaid intern at the Frankfurt School for New Media

PS. Can we still package your authenticity in the fall?

PPS. I want my signed fucking copy of Salo back. It’s me, Danny!