Gramsci: The communist inspiration behind right-wing media

[Radical Activist]

I was recently talking to another DUer about Antonio Gramsci. He had a theory called Cultural Hegemony to explain why the working class were siding with the economic elites in their country. He also had some ideas about creating an alternative media and educational system to counteract the conventional wisdom and thought police set up by the elites. Wikipedia has a good overview of the guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramsci

Anyway, there's a line in The Republican Noise Machine (great book) that mentions the fact that Grover Norquist and some other Neocons took inspiration from Gramsci's writing when they set up the system of right-wing propaganda from the "think" tanks like the Heritage Foundation, to talk radio, to fox News. Gramsci's writings describe exactly what the conservatives have done to take over the media. The irony is that it was the left that was supposed to do this if we ever got our acts together.

The phenomenon in the media that Noam Chomsky writes about in Manufacturing Consent is a detailed account of Gramsci's cultural hegemony theory carried out in the American corporate media. Certain ideas and views are simply not discussed or are ridiculed out of consideration because they are not part of they dominant conventional wisdom that the corporate elites have defined for us.

Another part of Gramsci's cultural hegemony theory is described in What's the Matter With Kansas? by Thomas Frank, which is one of the most exciting political books I've read. That book expounded on so many of the complaints I have about the Democratic party and many of the things I've been saying about the direction the Democrats need to go. It explains how the Republicans have gotten working class voters to identify with the interests of the corporate elites running the Republican Party. Its exactly what Gramsci was writing about.

Gramsci is a very interesting character and his ideas should be discussed more within the Democratic Party. It worked for Norquist.

[leveymg]

1. The Revolution Will Come When Someone Pays For It

That's why Norquist and the other neocons managed to invert Trotsky. They understand that even the most radical politics can not grow in a mass media-driven society without money, a lot of money.

Television networks are a lot more expensive than printing presses. The InterNet is a potential leveler, but we haven't learned how to use it effectively yet.

[Radical Activist]

2. Very true

Norquist had the backing of millionaires that can provide far more funds than the left has access to. That made the difference.

[AP]

3. There are left wing millionaires who believe FDR was right, however, there

is not apparatus or infrastructure on the left to help them use their money sensibly and effectively.

John Kerry, Edwards, Dean, Clinton, Gore are all millionaires. Then you have the businessmen millionaires.

There's not shortage of money to pay for a left-wing apparatus.

[leveymg]

4. Yes, but those who pay would want control. Any millionaire DUers?

What about you, EarlG or Skinner? I know you guys got at least a million or two that you're not doing anything with but wild living.

Otherwise, kinda hard to imagine that there might be any budding media magnates willing and able to pay for "a left-wing apparatus"

Seriously, has anyone even approached Soros? Does anyone even know what he looks like?

[AP]

5. If "control" meant getting everyone on the same page with a winning...

...strategy, then control would probably be the thing that undoes the last thirty years of RW message domination.

[leveymg]

6. That would have to be a really big page. Look at the bloodletting going

on right now over control of the Dem Party. The American Left is even broader than that. Any consolidated media would necessarily reflect those schisms.

That's not necessarily a absolute barrier to closer coordination, of course. What's needed at the center of this are well-founded "think tanks" where progressive opinion-makers can work to develop messages. Mellon-Scaiffe, Coors got together and founded the Heritage Foundation and AEI. Murdoch's Fox media network later came along to complement that axis of money and messages. The Left also needs money-messages-media, in that order.

[Radical Activist]

7. kick