"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Friday, December 01, 2006

THE GRAMSCI EFFECT

On November 21st, Astute Blogger Punditarian wrote:
Remember, as I suggested last week in a discussion of why the theme of "global warming" is so important to the statist left, that Antonio Gramsci asserted that the survival of a free market society was based on "cultural hegemony," and that the communist vanguard had first of all to subvert that cultural hegemony in order to seize power. [...] The hard left understands that it must undermine, subvert, and liquidate traditional culture in order to replace all of the multitudinous relationships which form the dense network of family and community life with a univocal culture in which every nexus of human contact is mediated by the state.
Nine days later, on November 30th, Selwyn Duke wrote an excellent piece in the American Thinker (linked to by PJM) about how many on the Left use the phrase: "This is not free speech, this is hate speech!" in order to convince the public over time that hate speech is in a different catagory and not protected speech. He writes:
Oh, you think it won't work? To a great degree it's already a fait accompli. After decades of positioning (this refers to Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci's idea about the placement of leftist ideologues in positions of influence for the purposes of altering the culture), with social engineers in academia, the media, entertainment and various organizations and activist groups, it isn't uncommon to find Americans possessed of this lie. I myself have met them, and even pundit Bill O'Reilly uttered this misconception on his cable television show. Remember, as eighteenth century philosopher William James said, "There is nothing so absurd but if you repeat it often enough people will believe it."

POPINJAY: As usual, we're ahead of the curve at The Astute Bloggers.

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