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Gramsci's Grand Plan
The New American ^ | July 5, 1999 | Fr. James Thornton

Posted on 01/15/2003 3:04:47 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe

One of the most interesting aspects of the study of history is that very often men born in the most humble of circumstances nevertheless rise up to affect the course of human history dramatically. They may be men of action or men of thought, yet in either case their activities can father tremendous changes across the years. Antonio Gramsci was both a man of action and thought and, whatever the outcome of the events of the next several decades, he will almost certainly be reckoned by future historians to have been a remarkable figure.

Born in obscurity on the island of Sardinia in 1891, Gramsci would not have been considered a prime candidate to impact significantly the 20th century. Gramsci studied philosophy and history at the University of Turin, and soon became a dedicated Marxist, joining the Italian Socialist Party. Immediately after the First World War, he established his own radical newspaper, The New Order, and shortly afterwards helped in the founding of the Italian Communist Party.

Disillusioned Marxist

The fascist "March on Rome," and the appointment of Benito Mussolini to the prime ministry, impelled the young Marxist theorist to depart Italy. Casting about for a new home, he chose the most logical place for a Communist, Lenin's newly fashioned USSR. However, Soviet Russia was not what he had expected. His powers of observation wakened immediately to the distance that so often separates theory from reality. A fanatical Marxist insofar as political, economic, and historical theories were concerned, Gramsci was profoundly disturbed that life in Communist Russia exhibited little evidence of any deeply felt love on the part of the workers for the "paradise" that Lenin had constructed for them. Even less was there any deep attachment to such concepts as the "proletarian revolution" or "dictatorship of the proletariat," apart from the obligatory rhetoric.

On the contrary, it was obvious to Gramsci that the "paradise" of the working class maintained its hold over workers and peasants only by sheer terror, by mass murder on a gargantuan scale, and by the ubiquitous, gnawing fear of midnight knocks on the door and of forced-labor camps in the Siberian wilderness. Also crucial to Lenin's state was a continuous drumbeat of propaganda, slogans, and outright lies. It was all very disillusioning for Gramsci. While other men might have reassessed their entire ideological outlook after such experiences, Gramsci's subtle, analytical mind worked on the seeming paradox differently.

The death of Lenin and the seizure of power by Stalin caused Gramsci immediately to reconsider his choice of residence. Building upon Lenin's achievements in terror and tyranny, Stalin began to transform agrarian Russia into an industrial giant that would then turn all of its energies to military conquest. It was Stalin's design to build the greatest military machine in history, crush the "forces of reaction," and impose Communism on Europe and Asia — and later on the whole world — by brute force.

In the meantime, however, to consolidate and assure his power, Stalin systematically commenced the extermination of potential foes within his own camp. That, as it turned out, became an ongoing process, one that lasted until his own demise. In particular, men suspected of even the slightest ideological heresy in relation to Stalin's own interpretation of Marxism-Leninism were sent straight to torture chambers or death camps, or were hurried before firing squads.

Prison "Prophet"

His days obviously numbered in Stalinist Russia, Gramsci decided to return home and take up the struggle against Mussolini. Seen as both a serious threat to the safety of the fascist regime and a likely agent of a hostile foreign power, after a relatively short time Gramsci was arrested and sentenced to a lengthy term of imprisonment, and there, in his prison cell, he devoted the nine years that were left to him to writing. Before his death from tuberculosis in 1937, Gramsci produced nine volumes of observations on history, sociology, Marxist theory, and, most importantly, Marxist strategy. Those volumes, known as the Prison Notebooks, have since been published in many languages and distributed throughout the world. Their significance comes from the fact that they form the foundation for a dramatic new Marxist strategy, one that makes the "spontaneous revolution" of Lenin as obsolete as hoop skirts and high button shoes, one that promises to win the world voluntarily to Marxism, and one based on a realistic appraisal of historical fact and human psychology, rather than on empty wishes and illusions.

As we shall see, Gramsci's shrewd assessment of the true essence of Marxism and of mankind makes his writings among the most powerful in this century. While Gramsci himself would die an ignominious and lonely death in a fascist prison, his thoughts would attain a life of their own and rise up to menace the world. What are these ideas?

Essence of the Red Revolution

Gramsci's signal contribution was to liberate the Marxist project from the prison of economic dogma, thereby dramatically enhancing its ability to subvert Christian society.

If we were to take the ideological pronouncements of Marx and Lenin at face value, we would believe — as have millions of their deluded disciples — that the uprising of the workers was inevitable, and that all that was to be done was to mobilize the underclass through propaganda, thereby sparking universal revolution. Of course, this premise is invalid, yet it remained inflexible doctrine among Communists — at least, for public consumption.

However, the hard core of the Communist movement consisted of ruthless criminals, clear-eyed in their understanding of the intellectual errors of Marxism, who were willing to employ any necessary means to obtain the power they sought. For such hardened, hate-intoxicated conspirators, ideology is a tactic, a means of mobilizing supporters and rationalizing criminal actions.

Those who accept uncritically the idea that "Communism is dead" fail to understand the true nature of the enemy. Communism is not an ideology in which one believes. Rather, it is a criminal conspiracy in which one enlists. Although Lenin professed to revere Marx's scribblings as sacred writ, once his Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia, Lenin freely modified Marxism to suit his needs. The same was true of Stalin. The Bolsheviks did not come to power in Russia by any uprising of the workers and peasants, but by a coup d'etat, orchestrated by a tightly disciplined Marxist cadre and ultimately consolidated by civil war. They also received — lest it be forgotten — critical help from Western political and banking elites.

In similar fashion, Communism did not come to power in Eastern Europe by revolution, but rather through the imposition of that system by a conquering Red Army — and, once again, through the corrupt connivance of conspirators in the West. In China, Communism came to power through civil war, aided by the Soviets and by traitorous elements in the West.

In no single instance has Communism ever achieved power by means of any popular revolutionary upheaval, but always by force or subterfuge. The only popular revolutionary upheavals recorded in the 20th century have been anti-Marxist "counter-revolutions," such as the revolt in Berlin in 1954 and the Hungarian uprising of 1956.

Looking back on the 20th century, it is clear that Marx was wrong in his assumption that most workers and peasants were dissatisfied with their places in, and alienated from, their societies, that they were seething with resentment against the middle and upper classes, or that they in any way were predisposed to revolution. Moreover, wherever Communism achieved power, its use of unprecedented levels of violence, coercion, and repression have generated underground opposition at home and militant opposition abroad, making endless killing and repression endemic to Marxism and essential for Communist survival. All of these undeniable facts, when examined honestly, posed insurmountable difficulties insofar as further extensions of Communist power were concerned, and assured some kind of ultimate crisis for Marxism.

While the foregoing is obvious to perceptive observers now, looking back from the vantage point of our time and after more than eight decades of experience with the reality of Communism in power, we begin to understand something of the insightfulness of Antonio Gramsci when we realize that what is evident now, at the close of the millennium, was evident to him when the Soviet regime was in its infancy and Communism still largely untried conjecture.

Gramsci was a brilliant student of philosophy, history, and languages. This education imparted to him an excellent grasp of the character of his fellow men and of the character of the societies that made up the civilized community of nations in the early decades of this century. As we have already seen, one of the foundational insights given him by this education was that Communist hopes for a spontaneous revolution, brought about by some process of historical inevitability, were illusory. Marxist ideologues were, he asserted, beguiling themselves. In the Gramscian view workers and peasants were not, by and large, revolutionary-minded and they harbored no desire for the destruction of the existing order. Most had loyalties beyond, and far more powerful than, class considerations, even in those instances where their lives were less than ideal. More meaningful to ordinary people than class solidarity and class warfare were such things as faith in God and love of family and country. These were foremost among their overriding allegiances.

Such attractiveness as Communist promises might possess among the working classes was, moreover, diminished by Communist brutalities and by heavy-handed totalitarian methods. Stirring the aristocratic and bourgeois classes to action, these negative attributes were so terrifying and sobering that militant anti-Marxist organizations and movements sprang up everywhere, effectively putting a halt to plans for Communist expansion. With all of this easily apparent to him, and, blessed in a way with the seemingly endless leisure afforded by prison life, Gramsci turned his excellent mind to saving Marxism by analyzing and solving these questions.

Subverting Christian Faith

The civilized world, Gramsci deduced, had been thoroughly saturated with Christianity for 2,000 years and Christianity remains the dominant philosophical and moral system in Europe and North America. Practically speaking, civilization and Christianity were inextricably bound together. Christianity had become so thoroughly integrated into the daily lives of nearly everyone, including non-Christians living in Christian lands, it was so pervasive, that it formed an almost impenetrable barrier to the new, revolutionary civilization Marxists wish to create. Attempting to batter down that barrier proved unproductive, since it only generated powerful counter-revolutionary forces, consolidating them and making them potentially deadly. Therefore, in place of the frontal attack, how much more advantageous and less hazardous it would be to attack the enemy's society subtly, with the aim of transforming the society's collective mind gradually, over a period of a few generations, from its former Christian worldview into one more harmonious to Marxism. And there was more.

Whereas conventional Marxist-Leninists were hostile towards the non-Communist left, Gramsci argued that alliances with a broad spectrum of leftist groups would prove essential to Communist victory. In Gramsci's time these included, among others, various "anti-fascist" organizations, trade unions, and socialist political groups. In our time, alliances with the left would include radical feminists, extremist environmentalists, "civil rights" movements, anti-police associations, internationalists, ultra-liberal church groups, and so forth. These organizations, along with open Communists, together create a united front working for the transformation of the old Christian culture.

What Gramsci proposed, in short, was a renovation of Communist methodology and a streamlining and updating of Marx's antiquated strategies. Let there be no doubt that Gramsci's vision of the future was entirely Marxist and that he accepted the validity of Marxism's overall worldview. Where he differed was in the process for achieving the victory of that worldview. Gramsci wrote that "there can and must be a 'political hegemony' even before assuming government power, and in order to exercise political leadership or hegemony one must not count solely on the power and material force that are given by government." What he meant is that it is incumbent upon Marxists to win the hearts and minds of the people, and not to rest hopes for the future solely on force or power.

Furthermore, Communists were enjoined to put aside some of their class prejudice in the struggle for power, seeking to win even elements within the bourgeois classes, a process which Gramsci described as "the absorption of the elites of the enemy classes." Not only would this strengthen Marxism with new blood, but it would deprive the enemy of this lost talent. Winning the bright young sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie to the red banner, wrote Gramsci, "results in [the anti-Marxist forces'] decapitation and renders them impotent." In short, violence and force will not by themselves genuinely transform the world. Rather it is through winning hegemony over the minds of the people and in robbing enemy classes of their most gifted men that Marxism will triumph over all.

Free-Will Slaves

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, a classic study of modern totalitarianism, contains a line that epitomizes the concept that Gramsci tried to convey to his party comrades: "A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude." While it is improbable that Huxley was familiar with Gramsci's theories, the idea he conveys of free persons marching willingly into bondage is nevertheless precisely what Gramsci had in mind.

Gramsci believed that if Communism achieved "mastery of human consciousness," then labor camps and mass murder would be unnecessary. How does an ideology gain such mastery over patterns of thought inculcated by cultures for hundreds of years? Mastery over the consciousness of the great mass of people would be attained, Gramsci contended, if Communists or their sympathizers gained control of the organs of culture — churches, education, newspapers, magazines, the electronic media, serious literature, music, the visual arts, and so on. By winning "cultural hegemony," to use Gramsci's own term, Communism would control the deepest wellsprings of human thought and imagination. One need not even control all of the information itself if one can gain control over the minds that assimilate that information. Under such conditions, serious opposition disappears since men are no longer capable of grasping the arguments of Marxism's opponents. Men will indeed "love their servitude," and will not even realize that it is servitude.

Steps in the Process

The first phase in achieving "cultural hegemony" over a nation is the undermining of all elements of traditional culture. Churches are thus transformed into ideology-driven political clubs, with the stress on "social justice" and egalitarianism, with worship reduced to trivialized entertainment, and with age-old doctrinal and moral teachings "modernized" or diminished to the point of irrelevancy. Genuine education is replaced by "dumbed down" and "politically correct" curricula, and standards are reduced dramatically. The mass media are fashioned into instruments for mass manipulation and for harassing and discrediting traditional institutions and their spokesmen. Morality, decency, and old virtues are ridiculed without respite. Tradition-minded clergymen are portrayed as hypocrites and virtuous men and women as prudish, stuffy, and unenlightened.

Culture is no longer a buttress supporting the integrity of the national heritage and a vehicle for imparting that heritage to future generations, but becomes a means for "destroying ideals and ... presenting the young not with heroic examples but with deliberately and aggressively degenerate ones," as theologian Harold O.J. Brown writes. We see this in contemporary American life, in which the great historical symbols of our nation's past, including great presidents, soldiers, explorers, and thinkers, are shown to have been unforgivably flawed with "racism" and "sexism" and therefore basically evil. Their place has been taken by pro-Marxist charlatans, pseudo-intellectuals, rock stars, leftist movie celebrities, and the like. At another level, traditional Christian culture is condemned as repressive, "Eurocentric," and "racist" and, thus, unworthy of our continued devotion. In its place, unalloyed primitivism in the guise of "multiculturalism" is held as the new model.

Marriage and family, the very building blocks of our society, are perpetually attacked and subverted. Marriage is portrayed as a plot by men to perpetuate an evil system of domination over women and children. The family is depicted as a dangerous institution epitomized by violence and exploitation. Patriarchally oriented families are, according to the Gramscians, the precursors of fascism, Nazism, and every organized form of racial persecution.

The Frankfurt School

With respect to the subject of the undermining of the American family, and to many other aspects of the Gramscian technique, let us explore briefly the story of the Frankfurt School. This organization of leftist intellectuals, also known as the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, was founded in the 1920s in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. There it flourished amidst the decadence of the Weimar period, both compounding and feeding off the decadence, and extending its influence throughout the country.

With Hitler's acquisition of the chancellorship in 1933, the leftist stalwarts of the Frankfurt School fled Germany for the United States, where they soon established a new institute at Columbia University. As is characteristic of such men, they repaid their debt to the U.S. for sheltering them from Nazi brutality by turning their attention to what they regarded as the injustices and social deficiencies inherent to our system and society. Immediately they set about devising a program of revolutionary reform for America.

Max Horkheimer, one of the notables of the Frankfurt School, determined that America's profound allegiance to the traditional family was a mark of our national inclination towards the same fascist system from which he had fled. Explaining this connection between fascism and the American family, he declared: "When the child respects in his father's strength a moral relationship and thus learns to love what his reason recognizes to be a fact, he is experiencing his first training for the bourgeois authority relationship."

Commenting critically on Horkheimer's theory, Arthur Herman writes in The Idea of Decline in Western History: "The typical modern family, then, involves 'sado-masochistic resolution of the Oedipus complex,' producing a psychological cripple, the 'authoritarian personality.' The individual's hatred of the father is suspended and remains unresolved, becoming instead an attraction for strong authority figures whom he obeys unquestioningly." The traditional patriarchal family is thus a breeding ground for fascism, according to Horkheimer, and charismatic authority figures — men like Hitler and Mussolini — are the ultimate beneficiaries of the "authoritarian personality" instilled by the traditional family and culture.

Theodor W. Adorno, another notable of the Frankfurt School, underscored Horkheimer's theory with his own study, published in book form as The Authoritarian Personality, which he authored together with Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford. Upon closer examination, it became apparent to critics that the research on which The Authoritarian Personality was based was pseudo-sociological, flawed in its methodology and skewed in its conclusions. But, the critics were ignored.

America, Adorno and his research team pronounced, was ripe for its own, home-grown fascist takeover. Not only was the American population hopelessly racist and anti-Semitic, but it had far too acquiescent an attitude towards authority figures such as fathers, policemen, clergy, military leaders, and so forth. It was also far too obsessed with such "fascist" notions as efficiency, cleanliness, and success, for these qualities revealed an inward "pessimistic and contemptuous view of humanity," a view that leads, Adorno held, to fascism.

Through such unmitigated balderdash as one finds in the writings of Horkheimer, Adorno, and the other luminaries of the Frankfurt School, the structures of the traditional family and traditional virtue have been called seriously into question and confidence in them blunted. Elected government officials and bureaucrats have contributed to this problem through government taxation policies, which mulct the traditional family while subsidizing anti-traditional modes of life.

Additionally, these officials are inclined more and more towards the elevation of abominations such as homosexual and illicit heterosexual unions to the same level as marriage. Already, in many localities throughout the country and in numerous private corporations, benefits previously reserved to married couples are now granted to unmarried sexual "partners." Even the word "family" is slowly being superseded by the vague euphemism "household."

A Lawless Land

Americans have long boasted that their nation is a government of law, not of men. American law is derived directly from English common law and from the biblical and Christian principles that are at the root of English common law. One would therefore expect law to constitute one of the chief barriers against the subversion of our society. Instead, in the field of law, revolutionary change has become the order of the day, change so astounding that it could not have been imagined by Americans of 50 years ago. None would have dreamed of the outlawing of prayer and any expression of religious conviction on public property, the legalization of abortion as a constitutionally guaranteed "right," and the legalization of pornography, to mention but three.

Clearly expressed principles embraced by the Founding Fathers and set forth in our Constitution are now routinely reinterpreted and distorted. Those that cannot be reinterpreted and distorted, such as the Tenth Amendment, are simply ignored. Worse yet, the ideological agenda underpinning the radicalization of American law is blithely accepted by millions of Americans, who have themselves been radicalized without ever realizing it.

Crucial to the Gramscians' success is the disappearance of all memory of the old civilization and way of life. The older America of unregulated lives, honest government, clean cities, crime-free streets, morally edifying entertainment, and a family-oriented way of life is no longer vivid in the minds of many Americans. Once it is gone completely, nothing will stand in the way of the new Marxist civilization, which demonstrates as nothing else that through the Gramscian method it is indeed possible to "Marxize the inner man," as Malachi Martin wrote in The Keys of This Blood. Then and only then, writes Fr. Martin, "could you successfully dangle the utopia of the 'Workers' Paradise' before his eyes, to be accepted in a peaceful and humanely agreeable manner, without revolution or violence or bloodshed."

It must be evident to all but the most simple souls that after the passage of a generation or two, such ceaseless social conditioning is bound to alter the consciousness and inner-substance of a society, and it is bound to produce significant structural crises within that society, crises that manifest themselves in numberless ways in virtually every community throughout the country.

The Good Fight

It may seem to some that the situation in our nation is hopeless and that no force or agency can possibly put a halt to the insidious strategies working to destroy us. Despite the grim chronicle of the past 60 or 70 years, however, there is still much that may be done and much reason for hope. Families and individual men and women still possess, to a large extent, the freedom to avoid and escape the mind-altering social conditioning of the Gramscians. They have the power to shield themselves from these influences and especially to shield their young. There are alternatives to public schools, television, trashy movies, and strident "rock" music, and those alternatives must be embraced. The propaganda and cultural strychnine must be excluded from our lives.

Those in charge of young people have an especially weighty responsibility. Despite all of the efforts of the radical left and of their sympathizers in the schools and media to transmute young Americans into savages, they must not be allowed to succeed, because disorganized minds — mental vortices of anarchism and nihilism — have no powers of resistance. Savages soon become slaves. Children and youths should be introduced to such bedrock concepts as honesty, decency, virtue, duty, and love of God and country through the lives of authentic national heroes — men like George Washington, Nathan Hale, John Paul Jones, and Robert E. Lee.

Similarly, they will better be able to retain civilized values and maintain healthy minds if they are encouraged to learn to love their cultural inheritance through great literature, poetry, music, and art. Parents must demand from their children the upholding of the morals, manners, and standards of their ancestors.

In school, the young must be required to adhere to high standards of scholarship. Most importantly, traditional religion must be an integral part of daily living.

We as citizens must also exercise our persuasive powers over our elected representatives. In doing this our mindset must be one of demanding absolute non-compromise from politicians. Likewise, in choosing elected representatives at every level, we must look to men and women who refuse to compromise.

Just as importantly, the honorable, uncompromising men and women we elect to represent us must be made aware of the Gramscian strategy of cultural subversion; they must be able to recognize the tactics and strategies being used to undermine the institutions upon which our liberties depend. Building that understanding will, in turn, require the creation of an educated and principled electorate that will impart this wisdom to our representatives — and hold them accountable once they have been entrusted with elective office.

We should never allow ourselves to be stampeded, herd like, into forming opinions and judgments stimulated and orchestrated by the sensationalism of the press and the other media masters. Instead, we must calmly resist their mind-control techniques. We must strive to be independent thinkers. Realizing that we are not alone, we should turn to tradition-minded churches, schools, and political and educational organizations, and there lend our voices and support to the creation of bastions of resistance to the Gramscian onslaught.

Finally, we must never give up our faith in the future and our hope for a better America and world. God, with His infinite power and boundless love for us, will never forsake us but will answer our prayers and reward our efforts, as long as we do not lose our faith. Marxism and whatever other flags the total state parades under these days — are not inevitable and are not the wave of the future. As long as we think and act in the indomitable spirit of our forefathers, we cannot fail.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: antoniogramsci; communism; frjamesthornton; gramsci; gramscianonslaught; socialism; tna
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Bump.

This should be posted annually on FR.


41 posted on 02/10/2008 8:40:57 AM PST by WhistlingPastTheGraveyard
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To: WhistlingPastTheGraveyard

bttt


42 posted on 10/23/2010 5:29:43 AM PDT by SWAMPSNIPER (The Second Amendment, A Matter Of Fact, Not A Matter Of Opinion)
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To: SWAMPSNIPER

What You Should Know About Progressives

Once upon a time there lived a noted Italian communist named Antonio Gramsci who had major problems with how Karl Marx hoped to achieve his communist goals. Gramsci believed that using violent revolution to achieve their goal was the wrong way to go about it in literate western societies like the U.S. because they would not support violence to the degree necessary to take over the control of the government. Instead he came up with a new scheme to achieve the goal. His ideas were so contrary to the fascist government of Italy that he spent most of his adult life as a political prisoner where he and his philosophy became a cult figure to the European communists and many U.S. politicians and the so-called intelligentsia of our colleges and universities.

So how come we haven’t heard much about him? Well it is just not politically expedient to mention the name of a noted communist but many of his ideas have become a major goal of the Democratic Party insiders who have discussed and adopted many of these ideas in closed door sessions among the party elite and have become in vogue among the leftist. Balderdash, you say? Ok, let’s look at some of those ideas that Gramsci had and how they have become successful in the U.S. today.
Gramsci understood what Marx did not understand, that economic crises by themselves would not subvert capitalism, because capitalism always managed to overcome the crises and emerge stronger. Gramsci realized the importance of culture and ideology among the masses of western society. By using methods such as the mass media which were subtle and persuasive you could gain the minds of the people and if you had the minds you would also have the bodies.

Gramsci knew that the bond between the rulers and the ruled was what keeps western society together and this bond created the “hegemony.” The problem, he saw, was how to break this “hegemony” and change the minds or the popular consensus, and to change the way institutions work. In short, to make the people question the right of their leader to rule in the accepted way.

To accomplish this requires a whole new system of values, beliefs, and morality. A system where the individuals conformed because the media tells them that is really the only acceptable way to believe because it was fair to all. If one believed differently, then they would be ostracized as “extreme” and uncaring. To accomplish this goal of creating “guilt” he suggested using the traditional intellectuals as “organic intellectuals” that grow with society and becomes its thinking and organizing element. Their role is to act as informal educators in local communities and become one of “us,” not some distant intellectual who is above the rest of us. Of course he included the “idols” of the entertainment world to bolster the effect of the intellectuals.

Once these “organic organizers” which today we call “community organizers” have gained the trust of society they can move on to their second goal of using the schools to perpetuate their ideals. By controlling the schools they can control the curriculum and gain the trust of the children and young adults and mold them into their beliefs.

Finally, once fully organized they could use these people (educators, students, and recent graduates) to engage in incessant political activity and use massive methods of communication. No violent takeover, just unrelenting propaganda to produce a constant clash for supremacy of ideas and a patient but persistent subversion of the building blocks of the old established society. They use “guilt” as the major reason on why you should change your mind

If you look around and listen to the dialog in the media and even small groups you hear things like, “You shouldn’t be so judgmental.”, “You are acting intolerant.”, “That’s stereotyping.”, or the worst, “That’s racist”. What it means in Gramsci terms is, “You must accept our values and not argue. If you don’t then you are not in the mainstream and not using common sense.” Now you know where political correctness comes from!

One might ask why we have schools that push a particular curriculum and seem to ignore parents, why some school budget items make available funds for incredible courses, and why the teacher unions don’t seem to represent the teachers’ true interests. Why have churches become political discourse centers instead of their main purpose? Why do we have a lot of different civil associations that have goals that are destructive and divisive to society as a whole? Why does the media operate as propaganda machines for a certain candidate or ideology rather than just reporting the events?

Gramsci knew the importance of using perceived minorities to create guilt in the masses. The media constantly reminds us of the plight of women, ethnic minorities, gays, and other victims of cultural hegemony. Schools even spend considerable time indoctrinating students in proper speech and thought control and in some cases give college credits for discussion groups on these subjects. They want the students to use this indoctrinated “guilt” against the old school adults so they come around to this newthink. In other words make us feel like we so far out of the mainstream that we are the extremists not them. They even take these things into the courtrooms of our nation. The federal “Violence Against Women Act” produced a Supreme Court case in which a 10-year-old boy was charged with harassing a fifth-grade female classmate.

The modern Gramscians in the U.S. have taken over a once great political party using the guilt of slavery and the apartheid that evolved from it until the 1960’s to corrupt your mind, body, and soul. Through their newspeak and newthink they have slowly tried to discard traditional beliefs that made this country the greatest and most powerful country of all time...A country where the individual freedom and standard of living is so high that millions of immigrants from most of the countries in the world risk their lives and fortunes to live here.

There is hope however. We must keep a balance of power in our government. The leftists hate our true strength which is the division of power, congressional, executive, and judicial, including the local and state governments, and especially the Electoral College. The Electoral College give all states a more equal footing in the executive branch of government. It helps to protect our individual rights from the collective rights of the major minorities. In a country where over 40% of the adults pay no income taxes at all and a large percentage of people work for the government one might ask who is the majority.

For the Gramsci leftists to win they will wage a war of attrition to wear us down. For us to win we must understand their tactics and stop them in their tracks. Of course voting for the anti-leftists is important but between elections we must get involved and take back the organizations and functions of government that they have infiltrated. Go read about what they are really up to in alternate media. The Internet is a Godsend for researching topics. Find out things like what a past major candidate wrote her college thesis about (Hint: The praise of a noted socialist union organizer in Chicago), find out what organizations the young politicians belonged to in their college days, stop the guilt feeling today for supposed activities of the distant past that that you had nothing to do with, and stand up for the conventional values that your parents should have instilled in you.

Don’t get me wrong, we still must have compassion for the have-nots and disabled people but let’s give them a hand up and not just hand-outs. We can win them over to our side by doing the right thing and helping them to become a have-some instead of them harboring envy because they are have-nots. Change can be good but to change as the result of newspeak and newthink propaganda is bad.

We must always remember what made this country, what it is, and what Jefferson and our fore fathers meant when they wrote the “Declaration of Independence”:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...”

When Jefferson stated, “all men are created equal” he didn’t mean guaranteed equality for life with no effort, he meant to begin as an equal—to have an equal opportunity under the law. To fix the contest so everyone finishes equal is to deny human nature. To deny nature is to insure our doom.

I am posting my too long blog entry here because we need to keep this thread alive and let the uninformed understand where “Obamagov” has its roots.


43 posted on 11/14/2010 10:15:19 PM PST by jerryel
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To: jerryel

Knowledge of Gramsci and and his schemes should be common, it isn’t. The left has been far more effective at public education than we have, simply by branding us as radicals or comspiracy nuts when we speak out.


44 posted on 11/15/2010 2:49:02 AM PST by SWAMPSNIPER (The Second Amendment, A Matter Of Fact, Not A Matter Of Opinion)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

*bump for later*


45 posted on 11/15/2010 2:55:07 AM PST by Yardstick
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To: SWAMPSNIPER

Unfortunately 99% of the press is our enemy. I have tried sending the above to “letters to the editor” in newspapers and the only one that even replied said it was too “in your face” and “antagonistic”. Yet, they daily print the drivel of the “progressives” attacking the Tea Party with sexual slurs or anyone who disagrees with them.

It’s discouraging but I see a ray of hope since the recent elections. Maybe, just maybe, the American citizens are starting to wise up.


46 posted on 11/15/2010 1:30:01 PM PST by jerryel
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To: jerryel
That this discussion is still going since 1999 is a testament to its vitality. Gramsci certainly seems to be the inspiration for Rules for Radicals. However, we should not overstate his role. E.g., Malthus and Sanger were out there there propagandizing to the beat the band long before Gramsci came along. His theories, however, do put their roles as "organic intellectuals" in perspective.

Moreover, the values in conflict today are more nuanced than appears on the surface: Marxist, bourgeois, radical Christian, capitalist, traditional American, and various admixtures of these and probably more (e.g., bourgeois Christianity, Liberation theology).

What does seem to be emerging is a deeper appreciation for the role of the "organic intellectual" in working toward a new synthesis of traditional values for our time -- when some of our most important institutions have become thoroughly corrupt. The explosion of popular dialogue via the internet holds both the risk of a new Tower of Babel and the promise of renewal -- unless Mark Steyn's Armageddon gets here first.

But first we have to deal with the immediate crisis and the likelihood that Obama isn't as dumb as he seems, and that the collapse of our society into economic chaos is, in fact, the pre-determined goal of the left. It certainly fits Marxist theory.

Our most serious enemy, however, is not them, but "us" -- as Pogo once so wisely warned. If America goes down for the count, it will be primarily because of our own apathy and unwillingness to risk "our lives, our honor, and our sacred fortunes" -- as the founding fathers did -- to save it.

As a researcher, I predicted the current crisis as early as 1995 through 1998, and even got the dates right -- starting in 2000 through 2010 and very likely 2020 -- all based on demographics, and not the ups and downs of the stock market. But relatively few listened.

I keep asking: How can we possibly have prosperity with a 43% decline in the birth rate since 1960 and 54.5 million abortions since Colorado legalized it in 1967? Cutting taxes and reducing spending can only moderate the noise we make when we hit bottom. It will take massive renewal of personal responsibility to prevent it.

Basically, we've eliminated at least 30% of our under-45 generation,and yet most people don't want to read the suicidal message on the wall. And now we want to kick the can down the road and send the bill to the under-45'ers. When they wake up to that, there will be hell to pay.

Obama didn't start this one, yet Planned Parenthood still has the active support of Congress and a whole bunch of bourgeois Republicans as well as all of those pandering Democrats. No thanks to Gramsci, we're headed off the cliff with our foot on the gas pedal, and few seem to care.

For more info ck out: http://tinyurl.com/dc8skx
47 posted on 09/07/2011 10:49:07 AM PDT by MBA4Life ("The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke)
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To: Tailgunner Joe; netmilsmom; thefrankbaum; Tax-chick; GregB; saradippity; Berlin_Freeper; Litany; ...
The first phase in achieving "cultural hegemony" over a nation is the undermining of all elements of traditional culture. Churches are thus transformed into ideology-driven political clubs, with the stress on "social justice" and egalitarianism, with worship reduced to trivialized entertainment, and with age-old doctrinal and moral teachings "modernized" or diminished to the point of irrelevancy. Genuine education is replaced by "dumbed down" and "politically correct" curricula, and standards are reduced dramatically. The mass media are fashioned into instruments for mass manipulation and for harassing and discrediting traditional institutions and their spokesmen. Morality, decency, and old virtues are ridiculed without respite. Tradition-minded clergymen are portrayed as hypocrites and virtuous men and women as prudish, stuffy, and unenlightened.

It has been nearly 10 years since Tailgunner Joe posted this thread. Read the above and compare those statements to what we are witnessing today in the US.

48 posted on 01/31/2013 6:01:01 AM PST by NYer ("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." --Jeremiah 1:5)
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To: bob808
I first heard of him back in the seventies in a European History course while we were focused on WWI.

It's been many a year, but as I recall he was mentioned due to the influence he had in Italian anti-War circles that were working to undermine the war effort. I'm not sure, but I think he wrote or was quoted in some of the leaflets they passed out encouraging troops to desert or go on strike the way some French units did.

I'm positive he used to be mentioned in several European History courses and someone I knew had to read all about him for one of their courses, but what they call History has changed so much since the seventies that I doubt they bother with the amount of detail that used to be the norm. Now, apparently, they go over various "psychological factors" and sociology while ignoring individuals who made a difference as much as possible.

49 posted on 01/31/2013 7:08:52 AM PST by Rashputin (Jesus Christ doesn't evacuate His troops, He leads them to victory.)
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To: MBA4Life
"When they wake up to that, there will be hell to pay."

Most of the folks I know in that age group are already well aware of where things are headed.

Even the idiot leftists know it, they just have had it drummed into their little skulls that the only way to deal it is to be more like Europeans socialists. Now that the EU is going to fall apart over being so Socialist, maybe maybe some of them will wake up. They just can't grasp that just like there isn't always a handy suburban community for a city full of spenders to take over to shore up their tax base, there aren't always economically robust countries to make a "union" with in order to rescue a nation full of reckless spenders.

The thing that amazes me is that there were people talking about the consequences of reducing population growth way back in the seventies and no one cared. I forget the name of the guy, but Buckley had someone on his Sunday show that was saying SS had to be means tested with the income used for the test indexed to inflation way back when Carter was "saving SS" for us. People laughed at the guy because, "oh, population growth will never slow down that much".

50 posted on 01/31/2013 7:24:22 AM PST by Rashputin (Jesus Christ doesn't evacuate His troops, He leads them to victory.)
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To: NYer

And once again, the John Birch Society and their magazine “The New American” are way ahead of the curve. Hmmm, did someone recently hear about ol’ Antonio on the “Woman of Grace” show on EWTN?


51 posted on 01/31/2013 9:10:00 AM PST by Coleus
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To: NYer

thanks for looking this up, for the ping and for the reminder of what the communists are still doing behind the scenes in our government, church and schools.


52 posted on 01/31/2013 9:15:44 AM PST by Coleus
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To: Coleus
Hmmm, did someone recently hear about ol’ Antonio on the “Woman of Grace” show on EWTN?

When Time Warner Cable dropped EWTN, I switched to Direct TV. You don't realize what you have until it's taken away.

53 posted on 01/31/2013 9:56:02 AM PST by NYer ("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." --Jeremiah 1:5)
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To: RightOnTheLeftCoast; Tailgunner Joe

Gramsci’s plan - “the long march through the institutions” has been a spectacular success.

Marx’s workers’ uprising and revolution never took place, his idea was a complete failure. Whereas the left has been successful beyond even their own wildest dreams in taking over the institutions, and in so doing controlling our culture and the population.

Are there any of them remaining that the left isn’t in control of?

Long go they took over the media, education, the foundations, entertainment, the agencies... But up until a few years ago one could still say that Sports, the major corporations, the Military and Religion were still bastions of the right. No longer - now they even have a Marxist pope.


54 posted on 12/11/2016 10:36:02 PM PST by aquila48
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To: bob808

I first heard of him in college in the 1970s. But then again, it was Columbia University.


55 posted on 12/11/2016 10:39:46 PM PST by Piranha (Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have - Saul Alinsky)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

BTTT


56 posted on 09/09/2018 4:28:41 PM PDT by narses (Censeo praedatorium gregem esse delendum.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

None of these links worked... got an “error” on each of them.


57 posted on 12/10/2019 2:20:11 AM PST by LaMudBug
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To: Support Free Republic

yup.


58 posted on 03/08/2024 5:21:01 PM PST by cuz1961 (USCGR Vet, John Adams Descendant , deal with it.)
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To: cuz1961
the march has come to the end of the road

obamas fundamental transformation is almost complete.

amazing that a demented pervert senile fool is the last step in the destruction of a once great republic into the Rrr-Democracy Pirate Party that sells the world into global slavery at the hands of the UN.

59 posted on 03/08/2024 5:25:01 PM PST by cuz1961 (USCGR Vet, John Adams Descendant , deal with it.)
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