SOLO Christmas Op-Ed: The Ghost of Comrades Past

Lindsay Perigo

December 20, 2007

In my recent response to the "pomowankers"* associated with Victoria University's Salient magazine who have been clamouring to have me and any other anti-Political Correctness agitator boiled in oil, I said:

It has long been my contention, reiterated during my stint in Salient that the "child-molesters of the mind" did a great number on rendering the young incapable of thought. All I need say at the end of this episode is, "I rest my case." They, the young pseudo-intellectuals, are our modern-day Hitler Youth. Their Fuehrers are Che, Chavez, Chomsky ... and Ahmadinejad.

To that list should be added another, more seminal one with which I doubt our modern-day Hitler Youth are familiar: Antonio Gramsci.

Gramsci (1891-1936) was co-founder of the Italian Communist Party, a talented theoretician who put a distinctively modern, relativist stamp on traditional, dogmatist Marxism. He is Marx laced with Machiavelli (a Gramsci pin-up). Marx had implied the existence of truths independent of human perception; Gramsci cleansed Marx of any taint of objectivity and proclaimed that truth was entirely "pragmatic," "praxis"-driven, determined by the interests of the revolution. Marx had preached the historical inevitability of the triumph of socialism, independent of man's will; Gramsci taught that only the wilful, conscious but clandestine subversion of capitalist culture at every level—a "long march through the culture" as he put it—could effect revolution. He was frustrated that the proletariat had not only failed to rise up against capitalism but had seemingly grown enamoured of it! This infernal reactionary ourage he attributed to the bourgeoisie's "cultural hegemony," their domination of churches, schools, the media, the unions, the arts, etc. The bourgeoisie therefore had to be beaten at their own game, their institutions infiltrated by intellectual moles ... and, by a long, silent, subtle process, brought down.

The moles' agenda was not to be "revolution" explicitly, but something unexceptionable on its face, couched in weasel words with which we're all too familiar: "consensus," "mandate," "justice," "pluralism," "community," "democracy," "global [insert marshmallow noun here]," and so on. (Note the names of two of the groups associated with New Zealand's recent "terrorist camp" raids: "Global Peace and Justice Auckland," spearheaded by communist John Minto, and "Peace Action Wellington"!)

Ever wondered why the church is riddled with atheist priests? Think Gramsci! Where "Liberation Theology" (Marxism set to Catholicism) came from? Think Gramsci! Why our schools and universities place social consensus above genuine learning and deal in the currency of Marxism disguised as mush? Think Gramsci! Why our newspapers and TV networks, now full of graduates from the schools and universities, do the same? Think Gramsci! Why "corporates" are universally despised as evil, even by the corporates? Think Gramsci! Why the United States, the last semi-repository of bourgeois values, is "The Great Satan" to Muslim and non-Muslim alike all over the globe? Think Gramsci! Where the editor of Salient gets this sort of stuff from, "rebutting" my column on Global Warming:

"Go about your business now, keep consuming. The mindless corporations are protecting your interests— believe it—only lefty politicians subvert real science. Rest assured, greed is a good thing."

Think Gramsci! Via Chomsky in this instance—but remember where Chomsky got it from!

Other contemporary luminaries influenced by Gramsci include the pomowanker Foucault, unsurprisingly, and, chillingly, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who just couldn't wait to bring his troops home from Iraq Brown the weasel-worder, who has forbidden public servants to use the words "Muslim" and "terrorist" next to each other!

There's no question that the Left has taken its "long march through the culture" with devastating success. We are assailed by their bromides at every turn, and the Right has been mortally corrupted by them (as well as its own contradictions). Their "long march," with Gramsci at the helm, has dragged the world to the abyss of totalitarian Hell.

It's going to be a long haul back.

And via a different path.

We lovers of reason and freedom have to do a Gramsci of our own.

*"Pomowankery": postmodern nihilism set to masturbation

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