The essay cited above goes on to advocate censorship, and makes the same error I keep seeing in such discussions; conflating Gramsci with whatever the pet peeves of the author happen to be -- in this case Howard Stern:

***QUOTE***

Much of contemporary American culture has as its aim the trampling of moral and aesthetic standards that were once all but universally acknowledged, even when they were being violated. With few exceptions, contemporary movies, television shows, and popular music portray Judeo-Christian morality as laughable at best and tyrannical at worst. To hear them tell it, America is in danger of becoming a theocracy governed by the "Religious Right." This despite the fact that the reigning culture is pagan through and through. It therefore assumes casual or impersonal sex to be the norm; feeds the public's increasing appetite for sexual perversion; depicts all fictional tyrannies as "right wing"; and pollutes the public square with scatological language. Only in rare cases are the purveyors of this "culture" challenged; and then, like the egregious Howard Stern, they pose as persecuted defenders of free speech and command even more money. Almost no one-Judge Robert Bork is an honorable exception-has had the courage to make the case for censorship, in part because of the widespread, but utterly mistaken, belief that there exists a "right of free expression" that is absolute.
***END QUOTE***

He forgets that the human love for freedom operates independently of Gramsci and existed long before him. That Gramsci advocated tapping into it for political purposes neither makes freedom lovers Gramscians, nor even victims of Gramsci.

What I find especially loathsome about this sort of thinking is that it is used in the most condescending manner to dismiss what people think as being something other than their own.

Another reason I am not a conservative, I guess.

So true.

And that is why I only quoted the part I agreed with.

But the long march through the institutions to obtain cultural hegemony is real.

To few Americans is Antonio Gramsci a familiar name. That is to be regretted because the work of the late Italian Marxist sheds much light on our time. It was he who first alerted fellow revolutionaries to the possibility that they would be able to complete the seizure of political power only after having achieved "cultural hegemony," or control of society's intellectual life by cultural means alone.

You and I see this very differently.

You apparently see this a brilliantly devious, and also practical, scheme to advance Marxism.

I, however, see the typical ramblings of a frustrated die-hard who can't let himself understand the popular rejection of his belief system and is forced to find more and more far-fetched and impractical reasons for this rejection (since he must axiomatically rule out the possibility that it could be informed or rational) as well as equally far-fetched and impractical desperate measures to reverse it's decline.

But the long march through the institutions to obtain cultural hegemony is real.

Do you seriously believe there really is a deliberate long-term plan, consciously being carried out by thousands incredibly disciplined individuals, to infiltrate the "institutions" for the specific reason of using them to spread Marxism? Are you really saying that thousands of Marxists deliberately decided to dedicate their lives to serving as foot-soldiers in this plan and to spend their lives in academia, journalism, etc. in order to serve the movement?

Or do you mean something more subtle?

Do you seriously believe there really is a deliberate long-term plan, consciously being carried out by thousands incredibly disciplined individuals, to infiltrate the "institutions" for the specific reason of using them to spread Marxism?

Yes. And no. It is a plan. It is being carried out. But it is not centrally controlled.

Bill Ayers going into education with a bunch of his Marxist buddies is not an accident. Look up the history of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html

libarbarian says:

Do you seriously believe there really is a deliberate long-term plan, consciously being carried out by thousands incredibly disciplined individuals, to infiltrate the "institutions" for the specific reason of using them to spread Marxism? Are you really saying that thousands of Marxists deliberately decided to dedicate their lives to serving as foot-soldiers in this plan and to spend their lives in academia, journalism, etc. in order to serve the movement?

Let me fix this for you libarbarian.

Do you seriously believe there really is a deliberate long-term plan, consciously being carried out by thousands incredibly disciplined individuals, to infiltrate the "institutions" for the specific reason of using them to spread the power and influence of the Medieval Church? Are you really saying that thousands of devout Medieval Catholics deliberately decided to dedicate their lives to serving as foot-soldiers in this plan and to spend their lives in monasteries, seminaries, parishies, etc. in order to serve the Medieval Church?

Methinks you need to read up on Mencius Moldbug's posts on the "Cathedral".

Mencius Moldbug

Notice that our definition of church has not invoked any of the typical attributes of religion. In particular, we have avoided any requirement that (a) the doctrines of the church be either partially or entirely supernatural in nature (think of Buddhism or Scientology - or, for that matter, Nazism or Bolshevism), or (b) the structure of the church be in any way centrally organized (a Quaker theocracy is just as excluded as a Catholic theocracy - and once your church is united with the state, there is no shortage of structure).

We have just said: a church is an organization or movement which tells people how to think. A broad definition, but it turns out to be perfectly adequate to validate our case for separation of church and state. And it contains all our test cases.

There's just one problem. The definition is slightly too broad. It captures some cases which we obviously don't want to include. You see, under this definition, Harvard is a church.

And we surely can't mean that there should be separation of Harvard and state. Yet somehow - this is the result the computer keeps giving us. Perhaps there is some mistake?

We have stumbled, of course, into Professor Staloff's definition. Unlike the Harvard of 1639, the Harvard of 2009 bases its authority not on the interpretation of scripture, but on some other intellectually legitimating principle like reason or rationality. Everything else is the same.

It could be, of course, that Harvard of 2009's application of reason or rationality is inherently accurate, ie, endowed with an automatic efficacy that need simply be applied to any problem to generate a univocal solution. Whether or not this is the case, many behave as if it were.

But even if it is, all we are looking at is a condition we rejected earlier as unsatisfactory: a state church which teaches only the truth. Perhaps Harvard of 2009 teaches only the truth. And Harvard of 2010? 2020? We resign the answer to the tempests of academic power politics. If this is transparent and accountable, so is mud.

The basic security hole is this word, education. Education is defined as the inculcation of correct facts and good morals. Thus an institution which is educational and secular, such as Harvard, simply becomes a "Church, which shall Teach only the Truth." Like the Puritans of old New England, in seeking to disestablish one state church, we have established another.

It is also hard to argue that we enjoy separation of Harvard and state. Harvard is conventionally described as a "private" university. This term is strictly nominal. Vast streams of cash flow from the taxpayer's pocket into Harvard's - as they do not flow to, say, the Vatican.