Has the Gramscian “Long March” Reached Its Limits?

Everywhere you look the Left appears to have won the culture wars and owns the Establishment. The universities are full-on bastions of Marxism and Critical Studies. Even Science and Math are being “de-colonized.” The NFL and NASCAR piously preach the Black Lives Matter Party Line. Corporate America is on totally board, too. Amazon bans books questioning the Transgender Movement. Big consumer brands have purged Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, and the Land of Lakes Indian maiden. The Social Media giants routinely enforce Politically Correct Speech, “fact checking” and even banning dissenters. Even the US Military is adding indoctrination against “extremism” to its basic training.

But Joel Kotkin notes that the Progressives’ triumph remains limited to the Institutions, and their conversion is visibly costing them in terms of prestige and credibility.

Over the past several decades, the progressive Left has successfully fulfilled Antonio Gramsci’s famed admonition of a “long march through the institutions”. In almost every Western country, its adherents now dominate the education system, media, cultural institutions, and financial behemoths.

But what do they have to show for it? Not as much as they might have expected. Rather than a Bolshevik-style assumption of power, there’s every chance this institutional triumph will not produce an enduring political victory, let alone substantially change public opinion.

RTWT