Those are indeed some intriguing references. The Frankfurt School is interesting, but I find much of its neo-Marxist rhetoric obscure. Their writing style falls squarely in the “Continental” philosophy camp. It’s just unnecessarily pretentious and literary. Their work often reads like prose poetry, which is fine for rants but not for book-length arguments and explanations.

Adam Curtis’s take on Bernays in “The Century of the Self” is interesting. There’s also the role of Jews in running Hollywood.

So indeed, Leo Strauss is part of a larger pattern. That pattern has led to anti-Semitic fears of an evil Jewish cabal, as in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” hoax.