Antonio Gramsci Is Alive And Well In The Academy And The Fourth Estate In America by Gary L. Morella

In Book V, chapter 11 of the Politics Aristotle describes two ways of preserving tyrannies. One way is the traditional tyrant’s policy of repression, which is analogous with the policy of extreme democracy. Its three main goals are to break the spirit of subjects, to sow distrust among them, and to make them incapable of action. The other way is assimilating tyranny to a monarchical form of government – a kingship, by a good administration and the exercise of personal restraint. The wise tyrant must take care to “adorn his city, pay heed to public worship, honor the good, keep his own passions in check, and enlist in his favor as large a measure of social support as he possibly can.” Aristotle says that by doing this, the clever tyrant may prolong his days, and attain a state of “half-goodness.” We will take a closer look at the goals of tyrannical repression and the actions of contemporary “wise tyrants” by examining in detail the tools that they use to enslave those entrusted to their care in the name of specious reasons of freedom confused with license.

Looking at tyrannical repression, breaking the spirits of subjects is accomplished through fear and terror, humiliation, and the forced dependence of subjects on tyrannical authority to the point of complete submission. Distrust is sowed among the subjects by destroying friendships first and foremost. This is accomplished by isolating them, making them strangers, and ultimately enemies with associations undermined in the process. Finally, the tyrant must make the subjects incapable of action, i.e., they must have no power to initiate action being nothing more than slaves. The tyrant in this case is properly called a despot. Inactivity results when the subjects are ignorant, passive, and lack the means, e.g., private property, to have any hope of influence politically. These three goals are indicative of a policy that rules by silence, coercion, and violence.

What is the relationship among the three goals of tyrannical repression? Simply put, sowing distrust among the subjects has as its natural consequences making the subjects incapable of action, which leads to the total breakdown of their spirit. What better example to see this than Marxist socialism with the disciples of Gramsci today making it their top priority to isolate individuals via wonderfully sounding buzzwords such as multiculturalism where our national motto “out of many, one” is replaced with “out of one, many.” America’s melting pot has become a witch’s brew with the forced isolation of individual ethnic cultures in the name of their supposed glorification. Check out most colleges today and you will see some type of reference to this multicultural isolation as a part of official policy, a policy that by osmosis filters down into our secondary and elementary school systems. Instead of making incoming students feel that they are a part of a unified consensus working toward the common good for society by seeking the truth in an uncompromising fashion, thereby learning in the process to become good citizens, they are marginalized via created multicultural factions that emphasize a disparity that would not exist otherwise via the “celebration of a diversity” that encompasses the most unnatural behavior imaginable. What is happening is the extreme in Aristotle’s Politics that is to be avoided at all costs. Class warfare and chaos is the inevitable result in the name of “enlightened” Gramscian thinkers that populate the academy and the Fourth Estate with totalitarianism the panacea. Not the Stalinist version to be sure, but rather a subtler Americanized version whose modern gulags are the public demonization of any who would dare criticize the “political correctness” that is necessary to subvert entire cultures for the greater socialist scheme – let us call it a “new world order.”

What is the consequence of these American gulags? The subjects are made incapable of action, i.e., they are left with no power to initiate action because they have been reduced to being nothing more than slaves as a direct result of the ridicule that they receive when they attempt to articulate an opposing point of view. They are branded as ignorant and, as a direct result of intimidation, they become passive “sheople”, afraid to do anything that might bring bad publicity to them or their families. Their political influence as a result of conceding the field to the Gramscian intimidators is rendered null and void.

What we’re left with is a total breakdown of spirit, the final phase of tyrannical repression where the subjects are paralyzed through a fear, terror, and humiliation induced apathy into complete submission to the will of tyrannical authority.

We now concentrate on the survival of “wise” tyrants by their giving the impression that they are something very different than they really are. Aristotle in his discussion of this second way of preserving tyrannies used tyranny tending to a kingship for his example with the tyrant giving the impression that he was a benevolent protector through the appearances of a good administration and the exercise of personal restraint. Aristotle’s requirements for this public perception of a “good tyrant” was that the tyrant must, at least on occasion, go through the motions of honoring the good, keeping his passions in check, and gaining as much social support as possible for his agenda.

How is this portrayal of the “good tyrant” achieved today? It is achieved through a unique class of individuals who are the products of indoctrination masking as education from kindergarten to post-doctoral fellowships – “the spindoctors,” who have carried lying to extremes not thought possible. These individuals predominate in “politically correct”, pseudo-democratic Gramscian societies; moreover, they are an absolute requirement in order to mollify the masses into believing that by participating in their own destruction, they are gaining a political nirvana. They are found not only in the secular establishment but more importantly in the clergy for it is religion that must be suppressed above everything else if the god of materialism is to be enthroned by the new world order. What do these spindoctors tell us regarding life and death issues? They tell us that killing innocents in what should be their safest place of refuge, their mothers’ wombs, is justified because women have something called “reproductive rights,” rights that conveniently ignore the right of their babies to existence. Which begs the question of where would the minions of Planned Parenthood be if their mothers felt that they were nothing but a “choice” to be discarded at will? They tell us that being inclined to unnatural sexually perverse acts is a cause for affirmative action in a civil rights sense, celebrating homosexuality as a cause celebre with demanded special rights masked as civil rights that are already enjoyed by those suffering from developmental disorders. They tell us that hate crime legislation is needed to give special punishment to the thought and not only the crime in total ignorance of a founding tenet of America, equal justice under the law. They would have us believe that if our son or daughter wasn’t in one of the approved protected hate crime categories, the perpetrators of their deaths somehow deserve lesser punishment than those committed against the protected group. They perpetuate multiculturalism and diversity on a political level by insuring that class conflicts will be given all the oxygen necessary to keep the anarchical flames burning with the totalitarian state being the only fire extinguisher available as a result of society’s fatigue with living in constant chaos. And last but not least, in the religious realm to include mainstream Protestantism, liberal Judaism and Catholicism, the clerical spindoctors sadly reinforce all of the above through inter-faith alliances that con the public into believing that they are adhering to the tenets of their faith while concurrently doing everything within their power to subvert the teachings of their faith through its progressive reinvention to be in tune with the times.

In short, what we are seeing in America today is the democratized version of a totalitarian state where Gramsci promoters have learned their lessons well. We no longer have to wait for the barbarians to knock down the gate; they have been in the city for a long time at our invitation because of our apathy to do anything to prevent the confusion of authentic freedom with license. It is this apathy that tyrants depend on, more than anything else, for existence. It is the final consequence of Aristotle’s three goals of tyrannical repression.

Tyranny marks the real limit or destruction of the polis and a decent human life. The irony is that modern tyrants give the impression that they abhor slavery in all its forms while concurrently making their subjects slaves to their own passions for specious reasons of unlimited free speech for the autonomous unencumbered self, which has never existed. What we now see, however, is that that the modern tyrants have become so brazen that there is no longer the perceived need for recourse to attempt to give the impression that they are honorable men. Their subjects have been dumbed down through generations of indoctrination masked as education that they can no longer distinguish fantasy from reality. Recall that ignorance is an important condition for the preservation of tyrants. How else can one explain the popularity of demagogues like the Clintons who make no pretext about being honorable?