In 50 years, history books will say that Elon Musk won a war that no one even knew we were losing. A war that began 100 years ago, in an Italian prison cell.

X.com ^ | October 6, 2026 | Brivael Le Pogam @brivael

[ransomnote]

Brivael Le Pogam

@brivael

·
5h

Translated from French

In 50 years, history books will say that Elon Musk won a war that no one even knew we were losing.

A war that began 100 years ago, in an Italian prison cell.

In 1926, Mussolini had a 35-year-old Sardinian intellectual arrested. At the trial, the prosecutor reportedly said: "We must stop this brain from working for twenty years."

His name was Antonio Gramsci.

His brain never stopped working. In prison, he filled thousands of pages that became one of the most influential political texts of the 20th century. I think we're living through the moment when his theory is collapsing.

Let me explain.

Gramsci asked a simple question. Why did the communist revolution succeed in Russia but fail everywhere in the West?

His answer: In the West, power isn't held just by the state, the police, and the army. It's held by culture. By what people find normal, obvious, "common sense." He called it cultural hegemony.

So, to seize power, you don't first take the palace. You first take the minds. The schools. The universities. The newspapers. The theater. Publishing. The courts. That's the "war of position": a slow conquest, institution by institution. When the culture has flipped, the politics follows on its own.

Forty years later, the German activist Rudi Dutschke would turn it into a slogan: the long march through the institutions.

For decades, we've lived with a puzzle that no one could really explain.

Why are almost all artists on the left? The actors, the singers, the teachers, the journalists, a good chunk of the judiciary. Why could a country vote right election after election and still see its culture speaking with one voice?

We were told: "It's because educated people are on the left."

I think the answer is simpler. Gramsci had written the recipe, and it was applied. When you control who gets the grant, the job, the good review, the prize, the invitation on the set, you control what becomes "the culture."

The same puzzle existed on a global scale.

Why did so many developing countries, especially in Latin America, keep voting again and again for socialist or radical left governments? Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, the Argentina of the Kirchners, Petro's Colombia. The economy was collapsing, the cartels were thriving, chaos was setting in. And yet the same vote kept coming back.

My conviction: Poverty wasn't an accident of the system. It was an electorate. And around it, there was a whole ecosystem of NGOs, "independent" media, and "civil society" programs, funded largely by Western money.

Then, in early 2025, something happened that no one had ever dared to do.

Elon and DOGE opened up USAID's books. An agency that's been virtually untouchable since 1961, tens of billions of dollars a year. The vast majority of programs were cut, and the agency was absorbed into the State Department.

The faucet was turned off.

And look at what's happened since.

Bolivia: MAS loses power after nearly twenty years. Ecuador: Noboa reelected. Honduras: The right takes back the country. Chile: Kast elected. Argentina: Milei wins the midterm elections by a landslide.

And two days ago, Brazil.

Jair Bolsonaro is ineligible, sentenced to 27 years in prison. The left thought they'd closed the chapter. Lula, 80 years old, was running for a fourth term against a country that was said to be in the bag.

On Sunday, his son Flávio came in first in the first round. Over 47% against nearly 45% for Lula. Lula himself acknowledged an "unexpected" result.

The largest country in Latin America is one runoff away from flipping.

The biggest rightward turn on the continent in decades.

Coincidence? I don't think so. When the funding dries up, the narrative loses its megaphones.

There's one last real stronghold left. Europe.

Brussels funds its own networks of NGOs, with an opacity that even the European Court of Auditors has pointed out. The big foundations like Soros's Open Society. The supranational entities that produce norms without ever facing a voter.

It's the last fortress of cultural hegemony. And it's starting to crack.

I'm convinced all of this is going to collapse, and faster than we think.

Gramsci was right on one essential point: Culture precedes politics. But he forgot that it works both ways. When an artificial culture loses its IV drip, what's real underneath rises to the surface.

What comes next, I believe, is a renaissance. A culture that starts loving beauty, ambition, science, the civilization that gave it birth again.

And in the history books, we'll remember that it all started when one man decided to look at the accounts.

It took someone rich enough not to depend on anyone, crazy enough to take it on, and free enough to weather the hate that would follow.

Thanks, Elon.

October 6, 2026

C3

@C_3C_3

USAID sounds nice.

US AID.

As in the US is aiding the poor in need.

That’s not what USAID was.

It was the US Agency for International Development.

Which funded regime changes and far Left causes.

It spread Communism.

It wasn’t about feeding the poor.

It created the poor.

Oct 5, 2026

 

---

TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: elonmusk

[for-q-clinton]

Great article. Thanks for posting.

[BenLurkin]

Somebody please go back in time and smother the infant Karl Marx in his crib.

[PGalt]

HOORAY Elon! Big Balls too.

[sopo]

Seems more like Spinoza, Rousseau and the great decoupling of culture from Christian world view, of God’s sovereignty and His personal care for each soul

[Antoninus]

This is correct. For decades, we have been fulfilling Lenin's observation that, "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."

When we stop funding the commies, they lack the ability or drive to self-fund. They are looters, as Ayn Rand described them.

Limit their ability to loot and they are practically powerless.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Bookmark

[Red Badger]

Communism spreads on the false promise of free stuff from someone elses’s stuff.

When that free stuff runs out then the communists lose for a generation.............

[Islander7]

“… So, to seize power, you don’t first take the palace. You first take the minds. The schools. The universities. The newspapers. The theater. Publishing. The courts. That’s the “war of position”: a slow conquest, institution by institution. When the culture has flipped, the politics follows on its own...”

And today those supporters of the ideology call themselves ‘Progressives’. Progressing to total control one step at a time.

[chickenlips]

That war hasn’t been won, but at least someone went on the offensive.

Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law” should be required study in every American school starting in 3rd grade.

[spintreebob]

The article describes S America and Europe.
How does it apply to the US?

I see 3 basic factions in the US.
The socialist ideologues
The capitalist & traditionalist ideologues

The SWAMP that plays the ideologues for personal gain.

[Flaming Conservative]

Thank You Lord!

[rhinohunter]

ping

[Major Matt Mason]

Without Trump in the WH you don't get Elon's work, so thanks to both of them. Let's hope the collapse mentioned actually happens, but I am still skeptical due to the weakness of the GOP.

[Tell It Right]

Imagine if the left didn’t convince Elon’s son to go trans. If I understand it correctly, that was the tipping point for Elon to go right (or at least center right) and be against the “woke mind virus”.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Nobody will say this.

History has been abdicated and handed to progressives, with pretty much everybody saying “here progressives you can have this. Have fun!”

What the history books will actually say 50 years from now is that Elon Musk was hitler 2.0 and was responsible for genocides.

I don’t make the rules.

[muir_redwoods]

One can trap the penniless with a tiny stream of pennies. This does two things; it keeps the poor dependent and it extends the reach of every dollar.

If, instead, you cut off the funds people are forced to make their own way and in time, one hopes, become heirs to the gift of income diversity. This allows the richer to employ the less rich, a phenomenon that developed into economic mobility.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Ransom;

Thanks! a very good post!

There is a good book by R. R. Reno that discusses the efforts by 20th century Intellectuals--not all of who were Marxists--to reshape Western Civilization into a new Open Society that deemphasized the traditional roots of Western thought. (Yes, G. Soros and his highly destructive "Open Society" initiatives.)

From: Goodreads: Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West

"With compelling insight, R. R. Reno argues that we are witnessing the return of the “strong gods”—the powerful loyalties that bind men to their homeland and to one another. Reacting to the calamitous first half of the twentieth century, our political, cultural, and financial elites promoted open borders, open markets, and open minds. But this never-ending project of openness has hardened into a set of anti-dogmatic dogmas which destroy the social solidarity rooted in family, faith, and nation. While they worry about the return of fascism, our societies are dissolving."

"But man will not tolerate social dissolution indefinitely. He longs to be part of a “we”—the fruit of shared loves—which gives his life meaning. The strong gods will return, Reno warns, in one form or another. Our task is to attend to those that, appealing to our reason as well as our hearts, inspire the best of our traditions. Otherwise, we shall invite the darker gods whose return our open society was intended to forestall."

[Fungi]

Beyond the USAID, there is the income tax. There would be no USAID if the government did not have the power to destroy you through taxation. When first proposed, we were promised the income tax would never be above 3%. Look where we are now. We have a $ 40 TRILLION debt yet we are still going deeper, throwing away money the feds have no right to redistribute. Stop the waste, stop the fraud and balance the budget—the uniparty refuses to do so.

[Joe 6-pack]

"This is correct. For decades, we have been fulfilling Lenin's observation that, "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."

That observation really says far more about, "the Capitalists," than it does the communist. Many prescient thinkers on our side (Adam Smith, John Adams, Ben Franklin to name just a few) all emphasized the need for political and economic freedoms to be coupled with the moral restraint of the individuals who enjoy them. Only a craven, "capitalist," with a "profit above all," mentality would sell rope to a communist. A capitalist with an altruistic worldview would be willing to forego the profit of selling a rope to a communist in order to serve a greater, altruistic good.

The porn industry is a perfect example of this. There is a demand, no doubt. The amoral "capitalist," sees no problem with satisfying the demand even though it debases and undermines the culture. Certainly they are within their 1st amendment rights to produce and sell it, but in doing so are eroding the moral fiber of the society that enshrines and protects that very right.

Gramsci was a shrewd thinker. An evil one, but in relative terms, not a stupid one.