Gramsci's long march through the institutions ends at the water's edge

The naked truth: The conservative Swiss People's Party "has produced a provocative anti-immigration campaign in which a photograph of naked young models wading into Lake Zurich is contrasted with an image of headscarf-wearing Muslim women bathing in filthy water." Arresting imagery meant to warn what will happen to the country if immigration is left unchecked. In our view they could have skipped the secondary image of the covey of covered crones and let the lake-wading lovelies stand alone as an in-your-face message to those who would impose Sharia law on a free society.

Oh, the irony. Antonio Gramsci turns out to have been right all along, but not in the way he envisioned. The slow statist creep of the Marxist philosopher's "long march through the institutions" that was to have empowered the great unwashed at the expense of the powers that be seemed to be going so well, as we wrote five years back in "The Tocquevillians strike back":

While America slept — or rather, while it was going about its business — Gramscian thinking, like sewage leaking out of a cracked drainpipe into the surrounding soil, has seeped into major sectors of our civil society — the law, foundations, universities and corporations among others. Fonte provides horrifying examples of how "major American social policy has come to be based not on Judeo-Christian precepts nor on Kantian-Enlightenment ethics, but on Gramscian and Hegelian-Marxist concepts of group power."

The grievance industry and its handmaiden political correctness, enabled by big-government initiatives from both sides of the aisle, had zombified great swathes of the electorate to enable the forces of darkness to enter the temple:

The theory claims that the ideas of the ruling class come to be seen as the norm; they are seen as universal ideologies, perceived to benefit everyone whilst only really benefiting the ruling class.

Then came Angelo Codevilla's palate-cleansing revelation that neither statist democrats nor nominally limited-government republicans gave a darn about the electorate. It was the Ruling Class vs the Country Class. Enter stage right the Tea Party and Barbara Bush's unmasking when she revealed her contempt for you and me. And now the cascade of outrageous intrusions on our Bill of Rights.

Update: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds.

Update II: Rand Simberg links in an update to "No Quarter To The Left":

Fix bayonets.

Update III: Maggie's links.

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

Comments

[goomp]

It is a sad state of affairs but with the help of the principles on which this country was founded combined with the true spirit exhibited by those who rally to the Tea Party ideals, we may yet survive as the freest and greatest nation that mankind has yet produced.

[ajacksonian]

This is the Great Divide in America opening up yet again.... it was there before the Founding, brought our first government to task so that the Framing could be made, and then has fought back against the encroachment of politics over liberty ever since. When the people see the institutions as the problem, then it is the institutions that must change or go... not the people who must change to the institutions. Now this hard truth that governments are created amongst men who are free to change or abolish them comes forth yet again as fresh as the day it was conceived.

[multitude]

Gramscian hegemony, along with much of the Marxist and post-Marxist school of thought, is crumbling given its hopelessly unadaptable structuralist orientation which has been shown meaningless in real world experience.

Of course, the same naive structural idealism has likewise been at work within classical systems of capitalism, showing everything from Adam Smith's invisible hand to the highly refined models of finance, micro and macroeconomics to be a structuralist illusion.

Instead, decentered, non-hierarchical models already resonant within both the tea party and radical left organizations (as spoken to in The Coming Insurrection) are finding scientific, theoretical and real-world legitimacy. Assemblage theory, multitude and other post-structural models of thought are being validated by movements of individuals with resonant like interests who are arising against the collusion of big government, big union and big business.

[Hucbald]

Mmmmmm. Pretty bottoms. Let me help get that sand off. lol.

[M. Simon]

The conservatives are pretty stupid too

How the Drug War Spawned the TSA:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2010/11/for-children.html

They are both looking for contraband and you looked the other way when they did it to dopers. Well friends and neighbors. We are all dopers now.

Precedent on how to deal with contraband has been set. It is now going to be applied to everyone.