The Peter Pan establishment (exposing the 60's)

Melanie Phillips's Articles ^ | June 14, 2004 | Melanie Phillips

[robowombat]

A programme on BBC Four challenges that particular piece of received wisdom. Called ‘I Hate the Sixties’, it claims that the decade’s moral permissiveness, collapse of respect for institutions and failed experiments in 'progressive' education led directly to the difficulties we face today.

[2banana]

This could have been easily written about the USA.

And liberals wonder why the nation wept when RWR was buried...

[Alia]

Thanks for posting this superb article. Obviously, the 60's die-hards have reached.... their... PETER PRINCIPLE. lol.

[wingnutx]

I hope that is available on DVD.

[Alia]

Thanks for posting this superb article. Obviously, the 60's die-hards have reached.... their... PETER PRINCIPLE. lol.

[livius]

Good article! I hate the Sixties, too, more every day when I consider their impact.

[Tolik]

Melanie Phillips: (brilliant article, defies excerption, just this small one describing the work of a virus)

Gramsci’s revolutionary aims have been accomplished to the letter. The intellectual class was overwhelmingly captured. The moral codes of society were profoundly subverted and weakened as all the barriers fell. Previously marginalised groups, such as never-married mothers or gay people, now became the arbiters of morality which was defined in their ‘non-judgmental’ image in order to spare their feelings.

...And what started out as an eminently decent impulse for tolerance turned into something quite different. Because there was now an absolute taboo against hurting people’s feelings, the very idea of normal behaviour had to be abolished so that no-one would feel abnormal.

Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author 100% to feel the need to share the article.) I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of good stuff that needs attention. I keep separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson, Lee Harris, David Warren, Orson Scott Card. You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).

[dennisw]

Melanie Phillips is a former leftist so she know their sales rap and modus operandi.

[vanmorrison]

As the author of this thought provoking article reminds us, there were many people during the "Swingin' Sixties" who warned about the dangers of the destructive social trends, but who were roundly ignored. St. Augustine, in "The City of God", outlines in great detail how a similar social order, the decadent, degenerate, and cruel Roman Empire, collapsed into the dark night of anarchy and dissolution. Augustine's observations could readily be applied to our own "civilization" today.

...And JohnEffinKerry is ahead in the polls!

[Agnes Heep]

If plumbers worked like leftists we'd have water coming out of the light fixtures. And what's more, they'd think it was normal.

[spodefly]

BTTT

[gobucks]

THE HUNCHBACK - Some possible factors behind his impact

Some Gramsci excerpts for your enjoyment and perusal. Google is wonderful.... wonder how long it will be uncensored like this...

1891 – (January 22nd.) Born at Ales in Cagliary, Italy. Antonio was the fourth son of Francesco Gramsci, a clerk (not another one!!) in the local registrar's office. (So, he's neglected by Dad at the outset - and his letters of anger at his father's inadequacies survive .... being a near last born is a bummer - the question is, did he paint, too?).

1897-1898 – His father is sentenced to serve five years in prison on charges of maladministration. On his release he has no job, so his seven children grow up in difficult circumstances and deep financial insecurity. Antonio G. suffered ill health throughout his life, and from a deformity which left him a hunchback.

(Sometime during these years of trial and near poverty, he fell from the arms of a servant (oh, he was dropped ...now that explains it), to which his family attributed his hunched back and stunted growth: he was an inch or two short of five feet in height. (ALERT - J. P. Sartre was also an extremely short man ... connections, connections ... does being short lead to Marxism? Hmmmmm.... )

1916 – Starts working as a journalist for the Socialist Party paper. (Shock, gasp, surprise!!)

1922 – (from May to November 1923) Gramsci goes to Moscow as a member of the Communist International and spends more than a year in this country. In a local clinic (an insane asylum, actually) he meets his future wife, Giulia Schucht, and later he returns to his country as a leader of the Communist Party.

Julija ("Giulia") Schucht was the fifth of five daughters (beside a son, Vittorio) of a Russian family of revolutionaries, forced to flee Tzarism and to wander through Europe. They were to arrive in Rome, in the summer of 1908, and were to remain for several years, before returning to their homeland, where in September 1922 Gramsci—on a trip there to participate in the work of the Communist International--met the woman who would become his companion and who would give him two sons, Giuliano and Delio. (Another kid way down in the birth order ... I bet she was neglected too by Dad .... wait a sec, look further and note it just wasn't dad who neglected her!)

"I have always waited for you, and you have always been one of the essential elements of my life, even when I have had no precise news or received rare letters without vital substance" one reads in one of the last letters, of December 1935, when Gramsci had been in prison for a decade. He was confined in Rome, in the "Quisisana" clinic, getting steadily worse (he was to die in April of '37), and even though Giulia's sister, Tatiana, continued to be close with a mixture of assistance and tenderness, the thought of his distant "Iulca" did not abandon his long dramatic days made up of isolation and suffering.

The relationship, human, emotional and psychological, between Gramsci and Giulia must have been complex, and until now there were insufficient documents to gather in its entirety the context in which the weight of Giulia's early nervous illness was not indifferent to the torment of the Communist leader, forced into silence in his cell.

They lived together for a very short time, because already in the summer of '26, Giulia was to leave for Moscow, taking with her their first son and expecting the second. If for Gramsci, as he wrote to her perhaps with an exclamation, "life is always a cold steppe, a dead stump," even for Giulia the years of forced separation from her "man," in and out of Soviet clinics for nervous illnesses, must have contributed to "mark" a hyper-sensitive temperament, like that of the young musician.

On the evening of November 8, 1926, Gramsci was arrested in Rome and, in accordance with a series of "Exceptional Laws" enacted by the fascist-dominated Italian legislature, committed to solitary confinement at the Regina Coeli prison. This began a ten-year odyssey, marked by almost constant physical and psychic pain as a result of a prison experience that culminated, on April 27, 1937, in his death from a cerebral hemorrhage. No doubt the stroke that killed him was but the final outcome of years and years of illnesses that were never properly treated in prison.

Yet as everyone familiar with the trajectory of Gramsci's life knows, these prison years were also rich with intellectual achievement, as recorded in the Notebooks he kept in his various cells that eventually saw the light after World War II, and as recorded also in the extraordinary letters he wrote from prison to friends and especially to family members, the most important of whom was not his wife Julka but rather a sister-in-law, Tania Schucht. She was the person most intimately and unceasingly involved in his prison life, since she had resided in Rome for many years and was in a position to provide him not only with a regular exchange of thoughts and feelings in letter form but with articles of clothing and with numerous foods and medicines he sorely needed to survive the grinding daily routine of prison life. (Ahhh ... like Hitler, Gramsci's ideas are percolated in a prison cell ... hmmmm).

... every important letter that Gramsci wrote (especially those telling about his feelings and political ideas) was addressed to Tatiana, the sister of his wife Giulia. Finally, she was the person who recovered his papers to posterity. You have to draw your own conclusions.

And, oh yes bonus material!!, what the a leftist at a university will write about Freepers who attribute cultural rot to Gramsci. Its illuminating!

Now, everyone, repeat slowly "Gramsicans are not cultists" "Gramscians are not cultists".....

All this should be laughable ... too bad it isn't.

[baseballmom]

BTTT

[baseballmom]

BTTT

[gobucks]

well the link doesn't work directly to the university ... surprise ... here's what the good Gramscian Leftist has to say:

"Steve Myers, of the Christian Patriot web site Exegesis, reports that followers of Antonio Gramsci -- the Italian political theorist and communist activist who died after a decade of imprisonment in Mussolini's jails -- have stealthily succeeded in taking control of the culture, economy, and political system of the United States.

According to Steve:

both research and empirical evidence suggest that the undermining of America's national culture is no accident. Indeed, this effort seems to have been strategically planned, primarily by the demonic disciples of Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), whose communist teachings are at the core of much that has been taking place in America over the past forty years or so.

Put simply, Gramsci believed in what he called a "long march through the culture." He suggested that a relatively small number of people could achieve the Marxist goal of national and world domination if they infiltrated, undermined and hijacked cultural institutions like high schools, universities, churches and the media, while simultaneously anesthetizing the people. Of course, the process operates much more smoothly if it is done so covertly that average citizens will barely notice the changes. To that end, the Gramscian Marxists ensure that citizens remain preoccupied with entertainment, sport, battles fought in false dialectics, and other distractions.

This goal has been achieved with ease in America, given the geniality of her people. The Gramscians have actually managed to brainwash large numbers of people into ridiculing anyone who resists their advance.

Gramscians are now running America's political parties, banking system, movies, television and other media. Moreover, as they possess enormous financial and political strength, they are also able to oversee the appropriate distribution of subtle anti-Christian, anti-American, Marxist propaganda in political institutions, high schools, universities and even churches.

As a result of such efforts over the past forty years, America, blissfully brainwashed into ignorance, now stands perilously close to a Marxist, totalitarian state.

The structure of America was formed by the pillars of liberty, patriotism, faith in God, and limited constitutional government. And it is no coincidence that all those pillars are currently being subverted by the Gramscian Marxists and their demons popping out of every cultural nook and cranny in America, monotonously droning their constant anti-Christian, anti-American message.

We must no longer delude ourselves. America can be redeemed from the Gramscian Marxists only if we are bold, swift and decisive, and act with God's blessing and guidance. [end quote]



I admit with some embarassment that this came as a surprise to me. I am myself a follower ("demonic disciple" sounds a bit harsh, I think) of Gramscian political ideas, and failed to notice our total political triumph.

Further, I was recently at a conference attended by some of the leading scholars of Gramsci in the English-speaking world, and there was no mention of this remarkable achievement, which would have provided a splendid occasion for revelry and merriment. I guess that this kind of knowledge is held on a need-to-know basis. But that does make me wonder:

HOW IS IT THAT STEVE HAS APPARENT INSIDE KNOWLEDGE OF A GRAMSCIAN CONSPIRACY SO SECRET THAT EVEN THE GRAMSCIANS DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT?

Surely that is "no accident". What else does Steve know that we don't know? Who's been whispering in Steve's ear, and what is their hidden agenda? Is Steve being manipulated by a sinister conspiracy within a conspiracy -- appearing as a simple Christian Patriot but in fact a diabolically clever conduit for the propagation of the conspiracy's most treacherous propaganda directly into the Christian Patriot community??? Inquiring minds want to know, Steve.

A word of explanation for the perplexed (thanks Mark ... we're too stupid here at FR to figure this out!!):

The "demonic disciples of Antonio Gramsci" screed is another product of the "Christian Patriot" sub-culture that persists on US far-right, just this side of the white supremacists (although they may overlap somewhat). Belief that the US constitution is divinely inspired forms the basis for their fusion of Christian fundamentalism and nationalism.

They think the US is under siege by the forces of Satan ("demonic disciples", etc) -- internationalist, socialistic (by which they understand powerful, intrusive government regardless of ideology) -- seeking to undermine God-given rights and liberties as enshrined in the US constitution (but somehow mysteriously absent from other liberal republics) and the "family values" which inhere in the conservative, patriarchal, nuclear heterosexual unit (nice imagery in that last bit, eh?).

They believe that the Fordist-Keynesian state was the product of a conspiracy involving "international bankers" and marxist revolutionaries.

In a nutshell, the conspiracy robs hard-working American taxpayers in order to support welfare cheats, run up large government deficits (tax and spend, and spend some more), enrich the mega-bankers (by paying interest on the mounting national debt) and advance the anti-Christ (by undermining America's moral and/or dietary fiber). So in the context of that kind of narrative they are able to conflate Gramscians (as the cultural arm of the marxist arm of the imagined tentacular conspiracy) with the dominant class & with the state apparatus (not to mention Satan; did I mention Satan?). It's kind of like staring into an Escher print until you no longer know which way is up.


At one level, right-wing conspiracy-mongering is amusing; but at another, it's repulsive and scary -- especially in those variants where the main categories of the conspiracy narrative are racialized: (white) hard-working Americans; (non-white) welfare cheats; (Jewish) international bankers, and so on. This is where conspiracism shades into the overt racism and scapegoating characteristic of white supremacists. For background on and critical analysis of right-wing conspiracism, visit the web page of Political Research Associates.

It's tempting to dismiss conspiracists as pinheads, but of course that's too easy. Cultural theorist Mark Fenster has argued that it is a mistake -- both analytical and political -- to trivialize conspiracist thinking by framing it in terms of metaphors of pathology, especially paranoia; for framing it in this way draws attention away from the real social circumstances to which conspiracism might otherwise be seen to respond.

Pathologizing conspiracism not only produces inadequate explanations of it but is also politically self-limiting, since the appropriate response to pathology is treatment of the individual(s) suffering symptoms. Rather than being symptomatic of pathology, Fenster argues that contemporary conspiracism articulates, in distorted and self-limiting ways, a populist critique of contemporary social conditions and a desire for a meaningful political space which can be inhabited by ordinary “citizens.” Fenster writes, “just because overarching conspiracy theories are wrong does not mean that they are not on to something”:


Although conspiracy as a totalizing, instrumental entity might not exist, …relatively secretive, and at times quite open, concentrations of power, built through economic and social connections among elite groups, do. Conspiracy theory is thus ideological in that it substitutes the populist discourse of an antagonism between the people and powerful elites for the analysis of specific structures of power and the processes of struggle, particularly, though not exclusively, concerning class.

…Conspiracy theory as a theory of power, then, is an ideological misrecognition of power relations, articulated to but neither defining nor defined by populism, interpellating believers as “the people” opposed to a relatively secret, elite “power bloc.” Specifically, [conspiracy theories] ideologically address real structural inequities, and constitute a response to a withering civil society and the concentration of the ownership of the means of production, which together leave the political subject without the ability to be recognized or to signify in the public realm.

On this view, conspiracy theory ought not to be pathologized and treated, but rather understood as a distorted populism, framed in response to real social conditions but contradictory and deeply ambiguous in its political implications. Pinheads or not, conspiracists are able to appeal to elements of popular common sense in this country, and it's that which explains their persistence. Ironically, a Gramscian conceptual vocabulary can help us to understand this."

The above is helpfully supplied, via Google ... Thanks Mark Rupert, Professor of Politcal Science at Syracuse U.!!

[lepton]

bookmark bump

[Valin]

In many cases exceeded it.

[dennisw]

He died tough

[lainde]

bttt

[MEG33]

Bump!