Long march through the institutions
Long march through the institutions is a Marxist concept formulated in 1967 by the West German student movement leader Rudi Dutschke. Dutschke reformulated Antonio Gramsci's philosophy of cultural Marxism with the phrase the long march through the institutions (German: Marsch durch die Institutionen) to identify the political war of position or incrementalism, an allusion to the Long March (1934–35) of the Communist Chinese People's Liberation Army, by means of which, the working class or "oppressed" would produce their own intellectuals, civil servants, and culture (dominant ideology) to replace those imposed by the bourgeoisie or "oppressor class."[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Karl Marx spoke of a sudden revolution, where everything changes in a moment. Gramsci, the head of the Italian Communist party, was thrown in prison by Benito Mussolini, where he speculated on the failure of Marxist revolution in his Prison Notebooks, and attributed the failure to the cultural hegemony of the bourgeois oppressor class. Dutschke built on Gramsci's writings by proposing a long march through the cultural institutions of society - the church, entertainment, civil service, educational faculties, family institutions and marriage - to replace the dominant culture and replace it with revolutionary godless cultural Marxism.
Dutschke said,
"Revolution is not a short act when something happens once and then everything is different. Revolution is a long, complicated process, where one [der Mensch] must become different...the process goes along this way, which I have once named ‘The Long March through the Established Institutions’, in which [institutions], through clarification [Aufklärung], systematic clarification and direct actions, awareness is brought [Bewusstwerdung] to further minorities in and outside the university, in schools, in trade schools, in engineer schools, also technical universities and finally in factories, where workers are currently worrying about their jobs. The process has begun, and that is a long story, which right now has been set on its course by us."[7][8] |
Gramsci theorized that if Communism achieved "mastery of human consciousness," then concentration camps and mass murder would be unnecessary. Mastery over the consciousness of the great mass of people could be attained if Communists or their sympathizers gained control of the organs of culture — churches, education, newspapers, magazines, the electronic media, literature, music, the visual arts, and so on. By winning "cultural hegemony," Communism would control the deepest wellsprings of human thought and imagination. One need not control all information itself if one can gain control over the minds that assimilate that information. Under such conditions, opposition would disappear since men are no longer capable of grasping the arguments of Marxism's opponents.[9]
Former KGB officer Yuri Bezemov described the process of ideological subversion by the long march through the institutions:
the main emphasis of the KGB is NOT in the area of intelligence at all....only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare. What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.
It's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages. The first one being "demoralization". It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy exposed to the ideology of [their] enemy. In other words, Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generation of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism; American patriotism.... The result? The result you can see ... the people who graduated in the 60's, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, and educational systems. You are stuck with them. You can't get through to them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. In other words [for] these people the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To rid society of these people you need another 15 or 20 years to educate a new generation of patriotically minded and common sense people who would be acting in favor and in the interests of United States society.[10] |
A similar concept was also promoted by Voltaire, Diderot, D'Alembert, and King Frederick II to dismantle Christianity in France and throughout Europe, according to Timothy Dwight in 1799 as well as in Barruel Memoirs: Illustrating the History of Jacobinism.[11]
Further reading
- Chapter Seven: Destruction of the Family (Part I), The Epoch Times (from How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World).
- Chapter Seven: Destruction of the Family (Part II), The Epoch Times (from How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World).
See also
References
- ↑ Gramsci, Buttigieg, Joseph A, ed., Prison Notebooks (English critical ed.), p 50 footnote 21, archived from the original on 2010-06-16, https://web.archive.org/web/20100616163619/http://english.nd.edu/faculty/profiles/joseph-a-buttigieg/, "Long March Through the Institutions21"
- ↑ Buttigieg, Joseph A. (2005). "The Contemporary Discourse on Civil Society: A Gramscian Critique". Boundary 2 32 (1): 33–52. doi:10.1215/01903659-32-1-33.
- ↑ Davidson, Carl (6 April 2006) (web log), Strategy, Hegemony & 'The Long March': Gramsci's Lessons for the Antiwar Movement, http://carldavidson.blogspot.com/2006/04/strategy-hegemony-long-march.html.
- ↑ See also Carl Davidson
- ↑ Marsch durch die Institutionen|Marsch durch die Institutionen at German Wikipedia.
- ↑ Antonio Gramsci: Misattributed at English Wikiquote for the origin of “The Long March Through the Institutions” quotation.
- ↑ http://crisiscritique.org/nov2018/boris.pdf
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_r_XahzELY
- ↑ https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/15545-gramscis-grand-plan
- ↑ https://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/brainwashing/2007/bezmenov.htm
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/BarruelMemoirsIllustratingTheHistoryOfJacobinism/