Gramsci’s Influence on Today’s Academia and Media by Gary Morella

Church - State Relations

Gramsci’s Influence on the Academia and Media

Gary L. Morella

I recently attended a freshman orientation at Penn State University and was reminded of this piece that I wrote on Gramsci sometime ago, which I offer to TIA to post on its website. The basic message of the orientation, beneath the surface, was that Penn State expects their students to accept anything and everything in the moral order evidently with no regard for its immorality. To not do so would be showing prejudice, that is, to justly discriminative between right and wrong behavior, and we can't have that in this amoral, relativist, multicultural, diverse world in which we live. It is a world where perversity defines diversity, as evidenced by so many examples we find daily at universities, e.g. the student automatons representing the Commission on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equity at Penn State whose only god is pluralism and who freely preach this false gospel of equity.

In short, the logical consequence of this brainwashing is the complete loss of morality since the absence of necessary moral absolutes leads only to anarchy. The term Fourth Power refers to the press, both in its explicit capacity of advocacy and in its implicit ability to frame political issues.

Lenin and Stalin: the brutal style of Communist tyranny

Aristotle in his Politics (book V, c. 11) describes two ways of preserving tyrannies. One way is the traditional tyrant’s policy of repression, which is analogous with the policy of extreme democracy. Its three main goals are to break the spirit of subjects, to sow distrust among them, and to make them incapable of action.

The other way, more subtle, is to assimilate tyranny into a monarchical form of government – a kingship – by a good administration and the exercise of personal restraint. The wise tyrant must take care to “adorn his city, pay heed to public worship, honor the good, keep his own passions in check, and enlist in his favor as large a measure of social support as he possibly can.” Aristotle says that by doing this, the clever tyrant may prolong his days, and attain a state of “half-goodness.”

We will take a closer look at the goals of tyrannical repression and the actions of contemporary “wise tyrants” by looking at the tools that they use to enslave those entrusted to their care in the name of a specious freedom confused with license.

Two kinds of tyranny

Regarding tyrannical repression, breaking the spirits of subjects is accomplished through fear and terror, humiliation and the forced dependence of subjects on tyrannical authority to the point of complete submission. Distrust is sown among the subjects by destroying friendships, first and foremost. This is accomplished by isolating individuals, making them strangers and, ultimately, enemies of the various associations undermined in the process.

Finally, the tyrant must make the subjects incapable of action, i.e., they must have no power to initiate action, being reduced in effect to nothing more than slaves. The tyrant in this case is properly called a despot. Inactivity results when the subjects are ignorant, passive and lack the means, e.g., private property, to have any hope of influence politically. These three goals are indicative of a policy that rules by silence, coercion and violence.

Hippy tendencies form communist ideas

What is the relationship among the three goals of tyrannical repression? Simply put, the natural consequences of sowing distrust among subjects makes the subjects incapable of grouping together to make an effective action, which leads to a total breakdown of spirit. What better example to see this than Marxist Socialism, which today employs the methods of Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci to achieve their goals.

Gramsci (1891-1937) realized the way to conquer the West was through a cultural change of ideas, a cultural revolution, not violence. The institutions, society, even religions must be taken over gradually with the socialist system of values, beliefs and morality. Local leaders, school administrators, civil rights groups would spread the revolutionary ferment, raising the “consciousness” of minorities and other “victims” of bourgeoisie Capitalist society and break the hegemony of a sound society. The Gramsci school aimed to conquer by dividing, creating agitation and dissatisfaction.

Today, the disciples Gramsci (1) are making it their top priority to isolate individuals, spreading wonderful-sounding buzzwords such as multiculturalism, whereby our national motto “out of many, one” is replaced with “out of one, many.” America’s melting pot has become a witch’s brew. Instead of bringing together various cultures for the benefit of a single whole, we are see the forced isolation of individual ethnic cultures in the name of their supposed glorification.

Political correctness: the fruit of Gramsci's thinking

Check out the student affairs directories at most colleges today and you will see some type of reference to this multicultural isolation as a part of official policy, a policy that by osmosis filters down into our secondary and elementary school systems. Instead of making incoming students feel that they are a part of a unified consensus working toward the common good of society by seeking the truth in an uncompromising fashion, thereby learning in the process to become good citizens, they are marginalized via created multicultural factions that emphasize a disparity that would not exist without this “celebration of a diversity,” which encompasses the most unnatural behaviors imaginable.

Boston's "Gay/Lesbian Youth Pride March"

What is happening is the extreme in Aristotle’s Politics that he warns should be avoided at all costs. Class warfare and chaos is the inevitable fruit of the “enlightened” Gramscian thinkers who dominate academia and the Fourth Power, the Press, and are implanting a new totalitarianism. Not the Stalinist version to be sure, but rather a subtler Americanized version, whose modern gulags are the public demonization of anyone who would dare to criticize the “political correctness” imposed to subvert entire cultures for the greater socialist scheme – let us call it a “new world order.”

What is the consequence of these American gulags? The subjects are rendered incapable of action, i.e., they powerless to initiate action because of fear of the ridicule they receive should they attempt to articulate an opposing point of view. They have been reduced to being nothing more than slaves. Should they make any action outside the politically correct, they are branded as ignorant and, as a direct result of intimidation; they become passive “sheople”, afraid to do anything that might bring bad publicity to them or their families. Their political influence is rendered null and void as a result of conceding the field to the Gramscian intimidators.

What we’re left with is a total breakdown of spirit, the final phase of tyrannical repression where the subjects are paralyzed through fear, terror and humiliation; their fear-induced apathy withers into complete submission to the will of the tyrannical authority.

The modern spin-doctor as the “good” tyrant

We now concentrate on the survival of “wise” tyrants by their giving the impression that they are something very different than they really are. In his discussion on this second way of preserving tyrannies, Aristotle used the example of a tyranny tending toward a kingship for his example, with the tyrant giving the impression that he was a benevolent protector through the appearances of a good administration and the exercise of personal restraint. Aristotle’s requirements for this public perception of a “good tyrant” was that the tyrant must, at least on occasion, go through the motions of honoring the good, keeping his passions in check, and gaining as much social support as possible for his agenda.

A pro-abortion march led by feminist celebrities

How is this portrayal of the “good tyrant” achieved today? It is achieved through a unique class of individuals who are the product of an indoctrination masking as education, from kindergarten to post-doctoral fellowships – “the spin-doctors” who have taken lying to unthinkable extremes. These individuals are convinced of the goodness of and need for pseudo-democratic Gramscian societies. They are an absolute requirement in order to mollify the masses into believing they are entering a political nirvana as they participate in their own destruction. They are found not only in the secular establishment but, more importantly, in the clergy, for it is religion that must be suppressed above everything else if the god of materialism is to be enthroned by the New World Order.

What do these spin-doctors tell us regarding life and death issues? They tell us that killing innocents in what should be their safest place of refuge, the mother’s womb, is justified because women have something called “reproductive rights,” rights that conveniently ignore their babies’ right to existence. Which begs the question of where would the minions of Planned Parenthood be if their mothers felt that they were nothing but a “choice” to be discarded at will?

They tell us that being inclined to unnatural sexually perverse acts is a cause for affirmative action, celebrating homosexuality as a cause célèbre and demanding special rights masked as civil rights that are already enjoyed by those suffering from developmental disorders. They tell us that hate crime legislation is needed to mete out special punishment for “wrong thinking” and ignorantly pretend it is based on of a founding tenet of America, equal justice under the law. They would offer greater protection to those in the approved, protected hate crime categories, punishing those who offend against them but not vice-versa.

Progressivists want doctrine to follow their lifestyles

They perpetuate multiculturalism and diversity politically by feeding the fires of class conflicts to keep the anarchical flames burning. The totalitarian state is the only fire extinguisher available, the final recourse when society is fatigued with living in constant chaos. And last but not least, in the religious realm - including mainstream Protestantism, liberal Judaism and progressive Catholicism, the clerical spin doctors sadly reinforce all of the above through inter-faith alliances and preaching tolerance. Thus they con the public into believing that they are adhering to the tenets of their faith as those very teachings are being subverted through the progressive reinvention to be in tune with the times.

In short, what we are seeing in America today is the democratized version of a totalitarian state. Gramsci promoters have learned their lessons well. We no longer have to wait for the barbarians to knock down the gate; they have been in the city for a long time at our invitation because of our apathy. We have failed to do anything to prevent the confusion of authentic freedom with license. It is this apathy that tyrants depend on, more than anything else, for existence. We see concretely the final consequence of Aristotle’s three goals of tyrannical repression.

Tyranny marks the real limit or destruction of the polis and a decent human life. The irony is that modern tyrants give the impression that they abhor slavery in all its forms while concurrently making their subjects slaves to their own passions for specious reasons of unlimited free speech for the autonomous unencumbered self, which has never existed. Now, however, the modern tyrants have become so brazen that there is no longer need to even pretend to give the impression that they are honorable men. Their subjects have been dumbed-down through the generations of indoctrination masked as education that they can no longer distinguish fantasy from reality. Recall that ignorance is an important condition for the preservation of tyrants. How else can one explain the popularity of demagogues like the Clintons who make no pretext about being honorable?

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Posted August 8, 2008

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