OPINION:
Italian communist philosopher Antonio Gramsci would be proud.
Almost 90 years after Gramsci died as one of Benito Mussolini’s prisoners, his revisionist Marxist ideology is finally taking root in, of all places, the United States.
Unknown outside academic and political circles, Gramsci posited a unique concept for communist takeover. He asserted that doctrinaire communists relied too much on economic arguments to achieve victory. Demanding control over the means of production was not a winning argument in the modern West.
Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony noted that societal dominance is exercised by a ruling class that shapes culture. Gaining political power depended first on reshaping society’s cultural assumptions, language and institutions.
Enter cultural Marxism.
Gramsci argued for debilitating capitalist societies through their cultural institutions. Gramscian Marxists and their allies work to infiltrate and control institutions and organizations that form and inform public opinion. The American variant includes a strong dose of antisemitism.
Universities that train future journalists, military officers, lawyers, union activists, teachers, government bureaucrats and nonprofit leaders became prime targets and subsequent allies.
Media organizations, another key target, normalize the preferred use of a new political language and moral frameworks in their reporting. So too do corporate human resources departments, philanthropic foundations, libraries, museums and advocacy groups that, once dominated, reinforce the new culture.
Gramsci’s acolytes are all about embedding their members and shaping language and culture. We see it playing out in real time. It began with the Obama administration and continued under the Biden administration.
These socialists conquered the Democratic Party. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is now the socialist kingmaker in the Big Apple and nationally. His backing of socialist candidates for federal and state office should worry the Democratic Party, but it has not.
Cultural Marxists created policies that erased our borders and invited the entire world to enter the U.S. illegally.
Our military was weakened with an overemphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion and transgender rights. Woke over warfighting, feelings over firepower.
Foreign policy became an extension of cultural Marxism. Ambassadors were named mostly on DEI standards. Far-left domestic social policies became foreign policy imperatives.
Our education system has come under assault by radical national teachers unions, with educators and school administrators eager to promote anti-family policies supported by accommodating school boards. A self-described Marxist easily became president of the American Library Association.
These socialists refuse to support a single religious symbol or faith-based policy. Catholic nuns, private schools and universities have faced multiple lawsuits. The socialists prefer that vulnerable citizens go uncared for and neglected children go unadopted if it means keeping religious groups from doing the caring or the adopting.
Our elections remain under attack. Election Day is now election week or election month. The opacity of mail-in ballots causes suspect results and weakens confidence in elections. Marxists love opacity.
Democratic-controlled state legislatures push to allow illegal aliens to vote. Calls for the abolition of the Electoral College join peculiar and probably unconstitutional ideas on how to award a state’s electoral votes.
Cultural Marxists also call for expanding the Supreme Court and adding friendly states, such as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, to the union. Judges have been appointed for anything other than their judicial acumen.
Sadly, cultural Marxists are more adept at capturing institutions than persuading the public through argument or debate. Now they are engaging in direct electoral politics against the very Democratic Party that birthed them.
They will not stop, and neither should we. This is a culture war, and they have told us what they want. We should believe them.
So it comes down to a binary choice: the United States Constitution or “The Communist Manifesto.” They cannot coexist.
The Senate debacle in Maine of Nazi-sympathizing socialist and accused rapist Graham Platner should be a wake-up call for Democrats, but their hatred for all things Trump still motivates them to try to regain the Senate majority at any cost. They gambled on Gramsci.
Power over principle.
Democratic Party leaders saw the danger but caved anyway. Former Vice President Kamala Harris fawns over Mr. Mamdani, and Democrats now speak of a “big tent” that includes socialists. As Winston Churchill once commented, “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last.”
Republicans, what is left of moderate Democrats, and independents must push back against cultural Marxism, and push back hard. Gramsci’s crocodiles are still there, as hungry as ever.
• Emilio T. Gonzalez is a retired U.S. intelligence officer who has served in senior positions in the U.S. Army, on the National Security Council and in the Department of Homeland Security.
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