The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 16
If you want to understand the present moment, especially how similar Wokeness seems to Mao’s Cultural Revolution, you have to understand the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci wrote a series of essays and books while imprisoned by the Italian fascists in the 1920s and 1930s that are referred to as his Prison Notebooks. These are the birthplace of Cultural Marxism, which James Lindsay argues has evolved into “Identity Marxism” since. Once you understand Gramsci, you can easily understand what is going on with our society at present and understand more clearly than ever why it must be resisted.
Though he didn’t coin the term, the idea fellow communist Rudi Dutschke would name “the long march through the institutions” in 1967 is ultimately Gramsci’s roadmap to getting communism to take hold in the West. Gramsci identifies that the “cultural hegemony” of Western cultures prevented communism from having any chance of taking root, so he recommended a strategy that seeks to tear apart and capture major cultural institutions, including religion, family, education, media, and law. Mao understood this clearly and used it to devastating effect. The same thing is happening throughout the West today. Join James Lindsay as he explains the thought and relevance of Antonio Gramsci in today’s Woke movement, which he aptly brands “Leninism 4.0.”
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25 comments
Absolutely. However, he didn’t survive WWII, whereas the group that pilfered his ideas and brought them to America- they did, interestingly enough. Adorno and company. Furthermore, it is this group that injected the virulent anti-White and Anti-European venom into his basic idea.
That every thought, word, and deed, is political is fundamental Marxism/Socialism. The opposite of our concept of limited government, and therefore a limit as to what is “political” or the duty of the state to regulate. Gramsci understood that politics is downstream of culture. What he did not understand is that culture is downstream of religion. Ideologies are incapable of generating culture. But they can destroy- at least temporarily and with great devastation as we’ve seen happen within every single Socialist society. Unless they go Nationalist/Fascist and adopt a State religion. China has adopted several, that’s why culturally it is at least limping along.
Great, informative analysis. I’d also add that some years ago when I read a lot about the Vietnam War, I learnt that the same process had been carried out in North Vietnam by Ho Chi Minh after the defeat of the French at Dien Ben Phu. Nationalists, Catholics, Buddhists, all other political groupings were gradually eliminated, leaving only the hardest-core Communists. For Western PR purposes, of course, they assumed the mantle of nationalists. I wish I had a dollar for every Westerner who’s said they were ‘just nationalists.’
One thing that needs doing to oppose Gramsci is to stop using the romantic ‘young’ photo of him, and instead use the one of him as a fat, cantankerous and ugly older man. Optics!!
The Gramscian termites cannot hollow out the house’s supports if the supports are solid. They never quite are so the termites always have something to chew on. You say that the weakness begins with good faith, open-mindedness. But the good faith people (let’s say, me) have to be persuaded out of our axioms. Therefore I hold those axioms weakly. I’m much more interested in what’s wrong than what’s right with them. So were my parents generation that might have set me up to marvel and celebrate instead of nitpick. I’m both egotistical and eager to be persuaded, eager for novelty. In other words, social classes are in flux, social mobility is on offer and I’m looking for the way up. But class structure and culture are tied together – break one and you break the other.
If you are right that the same undermining happened in 1930s China, it can’t have been ultra luxury consumerism and long term domestic peace that caused the weakening. Will one explanation do for both cases? Something about people being extremely persuadable and constantly wandering off the straight and narrow. Straight and narrow being a cliché of the easily persuadable.. Something about despondency being hard to shift once it sets in. Dynamism! Crowds are hard to warm up, easy to lose.
Totally OT, but notable. The NYC Board of Ed Director of Education Equity, Anti-Bias and Diversity, Paul Forbes age 47 is resigning. He wouldn’t say why. Leslie Chislett a former NYC Doe administrator, Leslie Chislett is suing the Board Chancellor, Richard Carranza, for creating a hostile work environment for white people. Forbes’ name was in the complaint.
Just read the article in the NY Post. NY Post, even though it has some tabloid-like news, it still has some decent journalism. The opinions writers, I think write decently too.
I used to read the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and others, but they became infected with wokeism. I still read local papers though, but not nearly as many as I used to.
Check out the NY Post article entitled, City publicc Schools “implicit bias” trainer is out.
Hoisted on his own petard then? Another casualty in the politics of righteousness.
I listened to the podcast but I have to be honest, although I consider myself to be reasonably well-read and educated – in that big void between intellectual and lumpenproletariat – I found myself getting continually bogged down by the use of the academic lexicon.
I understand this the world Mr. Lindsay inhabits but I for one would appreciate a bit more plain English.
“Dialectic”?
What’s that when it’s at home?
I’ve also listened to quite a bit of Jordan Peterson and a dictionary seems requisite for him as well.
Conversely, Douglas Murray is much easier to listen to and makes many of the same points.
Walter-
Agree it would be helpful for Lindsay to use more technical writing/speaking. I have previously suggested that. Technical papers/speakers are more concise, but they aren’t necessarily pretty and profound sounding.
By the way, each academic discipline has its own unique vocabulary. The reasons are several.
For example, A dedicated vocab defines ideas and separates one discipline from another; it makes the ideas somehow seem more valuable; and it keeps the common person from immediately understanding (it can be pretentious). Also, certain words/phrases serve as a form of shorthand for the intradiscipline academics.
I remain a firm believer in speak/write for your audience. Don’t assume everyone else knows what you do.
“Speak/write for your audience” Spot on Cal.
IMO, Lindsay, Peterson, Pluckrose and friends have interesting and thought-provoking things to say about the Woke revolution.
However I don’t think these ideas/warnings will gain more traction in the public sphere if they look like and sound like hardcore academic theory being presented strictly for the benefit of their co-denizens in academia who aren’t really hearing anything new anyway.
Why would “regular folks” care about some theoretical college catfight?
That’s a shame because IMO today’s campus communism is of a far more virulent strain than when I was at uni 100 years ago.
Walter-
Thanks for your comment. I sometimes find myself having to dredge up information learned long ago and mostly forgotten. Dialectics was one of those words. Dialogue is another word with a similar (but not exact) meaning.
Agree with your points. Here’s a great, but long, Mark Twain quote on the value of plain speaking:
“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”
Excellent podcast. I would very much welcome your analysis as to why the Corporate global conglomerates are validating Wokeness. Does it have its roots in Leninism and the leadership of the elites?
I hope I’m not being cynical when I say that business will generally always follow the line of least political resistance so long as it can keep making money.
For example, I used to work for a large corporation that frames itself situationally. In the West, it was all inclusivity and minority/female empowerment this and that, but in Africa, it would advertise its commitment to local economic nationalism. Nobody seemed bothered by the contradiction.
To see the truth of what I say, one only has to look today at the businesses furiously ‘woke-washing’ their brand in the West but more than happy to do business in China and with other illiberal regimes.
“On that note, the intellectual response to Marxism, especially Marxist-Leninism, specifically to what extent ‘counter-knowledge or counter-theory’ had any efficacy in the early 20th to mid 20th century, would be an interesting research project that may prove instructive in this war against CSJ.”
Indeed, it would. Mind, this kind of study can be structured in any way that leads to the desired conclusion, but it still could make for entertaining reading.
But for the work of Old Right public intellectuals, would communist propaganda in the USA have been more successful in the first half of the 20th Century that it was, or would it have been about the same?
In other words, did Albert Jay Nock, Frank Chodorov, et al. have any significant impact, or might they have spent their time better growing roses, learning to sail, or collecting baseball cards?
I suppose the question is really, do ideas matter? One may have to qualify that with questions about what ideas and in what dominant medium? Does anyone even read print media now, for example? In some hands, in the past, the book itself was just a prop and the content irrelevant (the medium is the message, etc., I’m thinking of Gadaffi waving his silly green book around, for example).
I think I’d have to say that ideas matter – in some capacity – or what are we even doing here? No doubt the answer isn’t straight fwd though.
“I suppose the question is really, do ideas matter?”
They do. Otherwise, Judeo-Christian writings, Enlightenment philosophy, the Declaration of Independence, Marxist rants, Postmodernist blither-blathering, et al. would have been as meaningful as limericks about cats.
The question now is whether classical liberal, libertarian, or Objectivist ideas matter ENOUGH to reverse the nihilistic schizophrenia that has saturated ‘news’ media, ‘education’, ‘art’, and culture in the broadest sense. If common sense realist ideas have a hope of reversing the anti-reason tide, then it is worthwhile to stand tall and join James’s fight. However, if fighting the mindrot is as pointless as fighting the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, then maybe the prudent strategy for each individual is to find a quiet place to lie low out of sight of the soul zombies.
My expectation is the latter, as unhappy as that thought is. To those who feel that fighting is worth the effort, I wish them—in all sincerity—great good luck. In the meantime, I’ll see as many females as possible to safety; we’ll sing ballads in your memory. I hope that I am mistaken, and that heroes like James prevail, and that persons like me are remembered as a cowards.
“…meantime, I’ll see as many females as possible to safety…”
Well, you just touched another cultural aspect to Wokeness, that it’s largely female-dominated, or females have been used to greater extent to spread the nihilism, like ZOMBIES. As the cancelled lesbian journalist Katie Herzog admitted, women particularly young women are more susceptible to “social contagion.” The zombies hold the key. Careful who you save.
The Renaissance and the Enlightenment and 500 years of intellectual progress have to matter, if not humanity will descend into a Woke New Dark Ages where CSJ Truths are revealed by woke princesses and priests, the only ones that can know the magic of woke
I say we’ve been far too reasonable while the medievalist priesthood took over Western University. We’ve got to put a stop to it
Ideological sophistry fabricated with Critical Theory is not scholarship. Neither is interpretivist Social “Science”. This suggests a possible solution
Defund any university Departments that try to pass this sophistry off as scholarship. Like Gender studies, etc etc.
I dp hate the idea of manipulation of ideas with the purse strings but it may be the only way at this point. Literally everything is at stake
Oh and the university administrators that allowed this breach of the gates of western civilization? I suppose we should let them live, though that’s debatable lol 🤣 but throw them out on the streets in disgrace
Jim
Communists are excellent propagandists, they have to be they’re selling snake oil in order to control the masses and enrich themselves, the elites.
Speaking only for myself, cultural Marxism has succeeded because later in the 80s & 90s somewhat intelligent folks like myself discounted right wing authors describing cultural Marxism as just conspiracy theorists. I deeply regret that now of course, but in retrospect those ideas about cultural Marxism being a conspiracy theory had to come from somewhere, and we see the same thing today, huge amounts of valid info are easily discounted simply by calling it right wing conspiracy theory. This is Civilization ending type of thinking, a tribal mentality where tribal identification is more important than truth.
My question is: how did Western Civilization let this happen?
Sadly I don’t have an answer to your hypothetical lol 🤣
Jim
While this kind of presentation is useful and well worth the time to listen to it all the way through, it is crying shame to see someone as talented as James Lindsay devoting so much time and effort to the detailed study of horsecrap. Granted, if one wants to resist one’s enemy effectively, then one must understand him. However, given that—as Hayek and Mises established almost a century ago—socialism is as grounded on reality as alchemy, phrenology, and Keynesian economics, every minute debunking the convoluted and self-contradictory minutiae point-by-point is a minute not spent on creating innovations.
Keep fighting the good fight, James, but what a shameful waste that civilization has sunk to such depths of depravity that this is a valuable use of your brilliant mind.
On that note, the intellectual response to Marxism, especially Marxist-Leninism, specifically to what extent ‘counter-knowledge or counter-theory’ had any efficacy in the early 20th to mid 20th century, would be an interesting research project that may prove instructive in this war against CSJ.
Hayek and Mises may have put the lie to socialism’s utopia, unfortunately most Americans don’t know who they are—and probably never heard of Gramsci.
This is why it is not a waste of time to write about and fill in the blanks of political and economic history. Especially in light of the revision of history infused in our institutions, by way of the very cultural Marxism, of which Gramsci is the father.
Hayek and Mises may have put the lie to socialism’s utopia, unfortunately most Americans don’t know who they are—and probably never heard of Gramsci.
This is why it is not a waste of time to write about and fill in the blanks of political and economic history. Especially when written by someone as articulate and knowledgeable as James Lindsay.
I’d be interested to see if the genealogy of post-structuralism finds a trace in Gramsci. Foucault’s biopower, for example, seems to be a hegemonic concept albeit rooted in psychology rather than a world-historical dialectic. Although this, perhaps, exemplifies the different focuses or preoccupations of the French and German intellectual traditions?
Of course Foucault was well aware of Gramsci’s work which was considered a prominent reference for marxist political philosofers in post-war Europe. The links between Gramsci and Foucault are quite clear to me. See here.
Thanks for the Gramsci society link between him and Foucault the Paedophile, but the International Gramsci Society itself shoulld be mentioned… Joseph Buttigieg was the FOUNDER of it. Not *a* founder… *THE* founder. And he remained President of it until his death a year or so ago.
Now “Mayor Pete” is the Transportation Secretary. At least he’s not in the short line for the Presidency but I’d like SOMEONE to challenge him about his clear family ties to cultural Marxism.
Interesting insight about mayor Pete’s Marxist ties. Of course this fits into the bigger picture, which is
There’s been an insurrection against the US Constitutional Gov,
But it didn’t occur on Jan 6
This is a Woke Communist insurgency that began with “a long march through our institutions” just like the old “right wing conspiracy theorists” warned us decades ago. They called it ” Cultural Marxism” I’m sad to admit that I discounted their message then bc I didn’t like the messenger, how I regret that now.
You see I was foolish enough to believe that nobody could be so malevolent that they’d resurrect the deadliest political ideology of modern history, from the ashes of a long Cold War and demise of the totalitarian communist Soviet Union .
Silly me
The USA is in big trouble.
A Woke Communist Regime has usurped control of the executive branch of the US Gov. This regime parades an Avuncular career Politician named Joe who pretends to be POTUS while the regime does whatever is necessary to destroy the power and reputation of the USA for the benefit of a Globalist order.
But muh white Supremacy
Perhaps you can understand why the Jan 6 narrative about the threat of white supremacist extremists etc etc are so important to the Leftists who’ve used race and the inequality largely remedied half a century ago to foment conflict to justify violent Marxist revolution on the streets of the USA 2020. And now they control the executive branch. Did they cheat in the election? I’d bet on it but I can’t prove it
So now what do we do?
Jim