Understanding What You're Seeing Today

Picaro

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Oct 31, 2010
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Familiarize yourself with what the left and its street criminals are doing, including the tactic of making 'Heroes' out of the likes of a George Floyd, substituting euphemisms for sexual fetishes, etc. Learn to quit falling for rubbish propaganda and beleiving these 'protestors' are 'separate from the rioters', and all the other 'Culture war' lies.


Gramsci believed that if Communism achieved "mastery of human consciousness," then labor camps and mass murder would be unnecessary. How does an ideology gain such mastery over patterns of thought inculcated by cultures for hundreds of years? Mastery over the consciousness of the great mass of people would be attained, Gramsci contended, if Communists or their sympathizers gained control of the organs of culture — churches, education, newspapers, magazines, the electronic media, serious literature, music, the visual arts, and so on. By winning "cultural hegemony," to use Gramsci's own term, Communism would control the deepest wellsprings of human thought and imagination. One need not even control all of the information itself if one can gain control over the minds that assimilate that information. Under such conditions, serious opposition disappears since men are no longer capable of grasping the arguments of Marxism's opponents. Men will indeed "love their servitude," and will not even realize that it is servitude.


Steps in the Process


The first phase in achieving "cultural hegemony" over a nation is the undermining of all elements of traditional culture. Churches are thus transformed into ideology-driven political clubs, with the stress on "social justice" and egalitarianism, with worship reduced to trivialized entertainment, and with age-old doctrinal and moral teachings "modernized" or diminished to the point of irrelevancy. Genuine education is replaced by "dumbed-down" and "politically correct" curricula, and standards are reduced dramatically. The mass media are fashioned into instruments for mass manipulation and for harassing and discrediting traditional institutions and their spokesmen. Morality, decency, and old virtues are ridiculed without respite. Tradition-minded clergymen are portrayed as hypocrites and virtuous men and women as prudish, stuffy, and unenlightened.


Culture is no longer a buttress supporting the integrity of the national heritage and a vehicle for imparting that heritage to future generations, but becomes a means for "destroying ideals and ... presenting the young not with heroic examples but with deliberately and aggressively degenerate ones," as theologian Harold O.J. Brown writes. We see this in contemporary American life, in which the great historical symbols of our nation's past, including great presidents, soldiers, explorers, and thinkers, are shown to have been unforgivably flawed with "racism" and "sexism" and therefore basically evil. Their place has been taken by pro-Marxist charlatans, pseudo-intellectuals, rock stars, leftist movie celebrities, and the like. At another level, traditional Christian culture is condemned as repressive, "Eurocentric," and "racist" and, thus, unworthy of our continued devotion. In its place, unalloyed primitivism in the guise of "multiculturalism" is held as the new model.

Marriage and family, the very building blocks of our society, are perpetually attacked and subverted. Marriage is portrayed as a plot by men to perpetuate an evil system of domination over women and children. The family is depicted as a dangerous institution epitomized by violence and exploitation. Patriarchally oriented families are, according to the Gramscians, the precursors of fascism, Nazism, and every organized form of racial persecution.

....

Through such unmitigated balderdash as one finds in the writings of Horkheimer, Adorno, and the other luminaries of the Frankfurt School, the structures of the traditional family and traditional virtue have been called seriously into question and confidence in them blunted. Elected government officials and bureaucrats have contributed to this problem through government taxation policies, which mulct the traditional family while subsidizing anti-traditional modes of life.


Additionally, these officials are inclined more and more towards the elevation of abominations such as homosexual and illicit heterosexual unions to the same level as marriage. Already, in many localities throughout the country and in numerous private corporations, benefits previously reserved to married couples are now granted to unmarried sexual "partners." Even the word "family" is slowly being superseded by the vague euphemism "household."


A Lawless Land


Americans have long boasted that their nation is a government of law, not of men. American law is derived directly from English common law and from the biblical and Christian principles that are at the root of English common law. One would therefore expect law to constitute one of the chief barriers against the subversion of our society. Instead, in the field of law, revolutionary change has become the order of the day, change so astounding that it could not have been imagined by Americans of 50 years ago. None would have dreamed of the outlawing of prayer and any expression of religious conviction on public property, the legalization of abortion as a constitutionally guaranteed "right," and the legalization of pornography, to mention but three.


Clearly expressed principles embraced by the Founding Fathers and set forth in our Constitution are now routinely reinterpreted and distorted. Those that cannot be reinterpreted and distorted, such as the Tenth Amendment, are simply ignored. Worse yet, the ideological agenda underpinning the radicalization of American law is blithely accepted by millions of Americans, who have themselves been radicalized without ever realizing it.


Crucial to the Gramscians' success is the disappearance of all memory of the old civilization and way of life. The older America of unregulated lives, honest government, clean cities, crime-free streets, morally edifying entertainment, and a family-oriented way of life is no longer vivid in the minds of many Americans. Once it is gone completely, nothing will stand in the way of the new Marxist civilization, which demonstrates as nothing else that through the Gramscian method it is indeed possible to "Marxize the inner man," as Malachi Martin wrote in The Keys of This Blood. Then and only then, writes Fr. Martin, "could you successfully dangle the utopia of the 'Workers' Paradise' before his eyes, to be accepted in a peaceful and humanely agreeable manner, without revolution or violence or bloodshed."

....
It must be evident to all but the most simple souls that after the passage of a generation or two, such ceaseless social conditioning is bound to alter the consciousness and inner-substance of a society, and it is bound to produce significant structural crises within that society, crises that manifest themselves in numberless ways in virtually every community throughout the country.


It is well worth studying Gramsci, and not just the above synopses; it removes a lot of the confusion and contradictions the media is foisting on the public, disguised as 'news' while promoting cop killing, for instance, which they began fabricating and focusing on the last couple of weeks, as soon as the virus thing was boring the public and more and more were getting out of the house anyway. And, you will find a a lot of his tactics being hidden under 'right wing' propaganda as well, false flags and gullible dufuses there as well.
 
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Normalization of the abnormal...or the Un-normal, or even the immoral.... is always done in steps.
 
There is a rough similarity between what is happening today and what happened in the twenties and thirties; there is the appearance of a contest between "right" (fascist) and "left" (communist) with only one or the other for everyone to side with. "Democracy" is made to look impotent, ineffective, even cowardly.
Of course, this is all just a show, staged to bring to prominence those whom the powerful can either control or eliminate. Hitler got away from them, though. There are lessons from history we would do well not to have to repeat.
 
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There is a rough similarity to what is happening today and what happened in the twenties and thirties; there is the appearance of a contest between "right" (fascist) and "left" (communist) with only one or the other for everyone to side with. "Democracy" is made to look impotent, ineffective, even cowardly.
Of course, this is all just a show, staged to bring to prominence those whom the powerful can either control or eliminate. Hitler got away from them, though. There are lessons from history we would do well not to have to repeat.
So true. In the fight between each of the two most popular sides, to impose their own brand of authoritarianism; personal liberty is an acceptable casualty of war.
 
Picaro, thanks for the thread. I hadn't heard of Antonio Gramsci and I find his thought on hegemony quite interesting and indeed useful to put into words what is happening which I don't see as all bad. Sometimes the pot needs stirring. Good explanation how common sense is negotiable, such as how in past time segregation was acceptable and then common sense is challenge and it becomes not. I can see how both political parties attempt to use it to their own advantage.


 
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This communist vs fascism scenario is the extreme ends of the political spectrum....Both seek total authoritarian control and in that respect they are identical....A democracy in the form of a representative republic turns both models upside down....It is and has always been under attack by the elitist.Every generation is systematically being moved further from the original concept through our education system...Unless there is a great awakening we will be just another great society that tried and failed.
 
It seems so "manly" to be boldly one or the other, "right" or "left", that the easily seduced rapidly are so. Voices of reason are judged effeminate, weak, contemptible. Education and reason are time consuming. Rushing to conclusions and combat looks so easy. The aftermath, however, is always destruction, death and eternal regrets.
Eternal, that is, for the memories of the survivors. Their children don't seem to get the message.
What's that cliché again, "rinse and repeat"?
 
Quit taking society personally. If anything history teaches us that attempts at social conditioning fail spectacularly. Free societies choose what they value in an organic and unpredictable way and resist changes that are imposed or don't really make sense.
 
Picaro, thanks for the thread. I hadn't heard of Antonio Gramsci and I find his thought on hegemony quite interesting and indeed useful to put into words what is happening which I don't see as all bad. Sometimes the pot needs stirring. Good explanation how common sense is negotiable, such as how in past time segregation was acceptable and then common sense is challenge and it becomes not. I can see how both political parties attempt to use it to their own advantage.

Keep in mind that Gramsci was a 'True Believer' in Marxist theories, despite their universally poor record of getting anywhere near to what they claimed to be aiming for, hence his positive opinions on how it can take over and dominate.

Whether many like it or not, Christianity has come much closer to bettering society and man overall, and F.A. Hayek, an atheist himself, has stated how and why that is in his book, The Fatal Conceit, re its 'traditions' and orthodox approaches to culture, law, and government. The first people in America to attack the Christian religion wholesale, and mostly by lies and fictions, was not the Marxists, but the right wing 'Social Darwinists' backed by the J.P.Morgans and Wall Street elites; it's the same American elites promoting Red China and doing everything they can to make it a hegemon state in Asia, and guess which demographic in the U.S. has to go for that to continue?
 
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It seems so "manly" to be boldly one or the other, "right" or "left", that the easily seduced rapidly are so. Voices of reason are judged effeminate, weak, contemptible. Education and reason are time consuming. Rushing to conclusions and combat looks so easy. The aftermath, however, is always destruction, death and eternal regrets.
Eternal, that is, for the memories of the survivors. Their children don't seem to get the message.
What's that cliché again, "rinse and repeat"?

Studying the Wiemar Republic would be appropriate as a mirror. The street gangs left little choice between 'Right' and 'Left' by the time the Depression rolled around, even though most of the Nazi intellectuals were pro-Marxism and pro-Soviet early on; only Hitler was anti-Russian. By 1932 he had the largest street army and then tossed the die hard Soviet fans under the bus, either shot or shut up.
 
I really like the guy's concept of hegemony in that it explains both left and right's mindset and means both sides play in their power struggle. While Gramsci utilization of the concept was the economic struggle between capitalism and Marxism, the basis of the concept can be applied elsewhere, as seen historically in the social change movement. Generally I see it as means to induce what is referred to as a paradigm shift.
 
Familiarize yourself with what the left and its street criminals are doing, including the tactic of making 'Heroes' out of the likes of a George Floyd, substituting euphemisms for sexual fetishes, etc. Learn to quit falling for rubbish propaganda and beleiving these 'protestors' are 'separate from the rioters', and all the other 'Culture war' lies.


Gramsci believed that if Communism achieved "mastery of human consciousness," then labor camps and mass murder would be unnecessary. How does an ideology gain such mastery over patterns of thought inculcated by cultures for hundreds of years? Mastery over the consciousness of the great mass of people would be attained, Gramsci contended, if Communists or their sympathizers gained control of the organs of culture — churches, education, newspapers, magazines, the electronic media, serious literature, music, the visual arts, and so on. By winning "cultural hegemony," to use Gramsci's own term, Communism would control the deepest wellsprings of human thought and imagination. One need not even control all of the information itself if one can gain control over the minds that assimilate that information. Under such conditions, serious opposition disappears since men are no longer capable of grasping the arguments of Marxism's opponents. Men will indeed "love their servitude," and will not even realize that it is servitude.


Steps in the Process


The first phase in achieving "cultural hegemony" over a nation is the undermining of all elements of traditional culture. Churches are thus transformed into ideology-driven political clubs, with the stress on "social justice" and egalitarianism, with worship reduced to trivialized entertainment, and with age-old doctrinal and moral teachings "modernized" or diminished to the point of irrelevancy. Genuine education is replaced by "dumbed-down" and "politically correct" curricula, and standards are reduced dramatically. The mass media are fashioned into instruments for mass manipulation and for harassing and discrediting traditional institutions and their spokesmen. Morality, decency, and old virtues are ridiculed without respite. Tradition-minded clergymen are portrayed as hypocrites and virtuous men and women as prudish, stuffy, and unenlightened.


Culture is no longer a buttress supporting the integrity of the national heritage and a vehicle for imparting that heritage to future generations, but becomes a means for "destroying ideals and ... presenting the young not with heroic examples but with deliberately and aggressively degenerate ones," as theologian Harold O.J. Brown writes. We see this in contemporary American life, in which the great historical symbols of our nation's past, including great presidents, soldiers, explorers, and thinkers, are shown to have been unforgivably flawed with "racism" and "sexism" and therefore basically evil. Their place has been taken by pro-Marxist charlatans, pseudo-intellectuals, rock stars, leftist movie celebrities, and the like. At another level, traditional Christian culture is condemned as repressive, "Eurocentric," and "racist" and, thus, unworthy of our continued devotion. In its place, unalloyed primitivism in the guise of "multiculturalism" is held as the new model.

Marriage and family, the very building blocks of our society, are perpetually attacked and subverted. Marriage is portrayed as a plot by men to perpetuate an evil system of domination over women and children. The family is depicted as a dangerous institution epitomized by violence and exploitation. Patriarchally oriented families are, according to the Gramscians, the precursors of fascism, Nazism, and every organized form of racial persecution.

....

Through such unmitigated balderdash as one finds in the writings of Horkheimer, Adorno, and the other luminaries of the Frankfurt School, the structures of the traditional family and traditional virtue have been called seriously into question and confidence in them blunted. Elected government officials and bureaucrats have contributed to this problem through government taxation policies, which mulct the traditional family while subsidizing anti-traditional modes of life.


Additionally, these officials are inclined more and more towards the elevation of abominations such as homosexual and illicit heterosexual unions to the same level as marriage. Already, in many localities throughout the country and in numerous private corporations, benefits previously reserved to married couples are now granted to unmarried sexual "partners." Even the word "family" is slowly being superseded by the vague euphemism "household."


A Lawless Land


Americans have long boasted that their nation is a government of law, not of men. American law is derived directly from English common law and from the biblical and Christian principles that are at the root of English common law. One would therefore expect law to constitute one of the chief barriers against the subversion of our society. Instead, in the field of law, revolutionary change has become the order of the day, change so astounding that it could not have been imagined by Americans of 50 years ago. None would have dreamed of the outlawing of prayer and any expression of religious conviction on public property, the legalization of abortion as a constitutionally guaranteed "right," and the legalization of pornography, to mention but three.


Clearly expressed principles embraced by the Founding Fathers and set forth in our Constitution are now routinely reinterpreted and distorted. Those that cannot be reinterpreted and distorted, such as the Tenth Amendment, are simply ignored. Worse yet, the ideological agenda underpinning the radicalization of American law is blithely accepted by millions of Americans, who have themselves been radicalized without ever realizing it.


Crucial to the Gramscians' success is the disappearance of all memory of the old civilization and way of life. The older America of unregulated lives, honest government, clean cities, crime-free streets, morally edifying entertainment, and a family-oriented way of life is no longer vivid in the minds of many Americans. Once it is gone completely, nothing will stand in the way of the new Marxist civilization, which demonstrates as nothing else that through the Gramscian method it is indeed possible to "Marxize the inner man," as Malachi Martin wrote in The Keys of This Blood. Then and only then, writes Fr. Martin, "could you successfully dangle the utopia of the 'Workers' Paradise' before his eyes, to be accepted in a peaceful and humanely agreeable manner, without revolution or violence or bloodshed."

....
It must be evident to all but the most simple souls that after the passage of a generation or two, such ceaseless social conditioning is bound to alter the consciousness and inner-substance of a society, and it is bound to produce significant structural crises within that society, crises that manifest themselves in numberless ways in virtually every community throughout the country.


It is well worth studying Gramsci, and not just the above synopses; it removes a lot of the confusion and contradictions the media is foisting on the public, disguised as 'news' while promoting cop killing, for instance, which they began fabricating and focusing on the last couple of weeks, as soon as the virus thing was boring the public and more and more were getting out of the house anyway. And, you will find a a lot of his tactics being hidden under 'right wing' propaganda as well, false flags and gullible dufuses there as well.
Tl;Dr

Cliff notes?
 

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