Know Your Gramsci If You Want To Understand The Modern Left

You probably don’t know who Antonio Gramsci is, but you should.

Gramsci was an Italian communist intellectual who died in one of Mussolini’s prisons in 1937. Before he got pinched and buried under the jail, he wrote a whole lot of stuff explaining why the great communist proletarian revolution that all of the Marxist crowd thought was going to happen during World War I didn’t happen.

Gramsci’s explanation should have been that Marxism is bullshit, and that those are crappy ideas that normal people who live in the real world want no part of. But that wasn’t his idea.

Instead, what he said (among other things; for the purpose of this post we’re boiling Gramsci down quite a bit) was that it was the culture of the Western democratic countries which was holding us back from embracing communism. And he said that specifically there were three things which stood as a wall against the revolution.

Christianity. And charity. And nationalism.

Gramsci said those three pillars of Western civilization had to be torn down before the revolution would come. And his suggestion was that Marxists infiltrate and take over all of the key institutions of society in order to make that happen.

You’ve heard of The March Through The Institutions? That was Gramsci.

His work inspired generations of leftists over the last 100 years.

So much so that what’s the big bugaboo the current Obama mob talks about nonstop? Who are they demonizing more than anybody?
“Christian nationalists.”

Because they hit two out of Gramsci’s three. And of course what’s implicit in “Christian nationalism” is that people would focus on charity rather than welfare. Which means it’s really three for three where Gramsci is concerned.

You should understand your Gramsci. It’s important that you do. Especially if you want to understand why we’re in the mess we’re in.