That "capturing the culture" quote from Gramsci is fake

please don't trust random unsourced internet quotes

You may have seen some reactionaries repeating this quote, allegedly from Gramsci:

In the new order, socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.

It's fake. Gramsci never said this or advocated for this. This fake quote originally came from a truly insane book written in 1996 to oppose the "One-World Elite" led by "international Freemasonry". Since then, dozens of reactionary thought leaders have re-used the quote without bothering to check its source.

(Also: The blog looks longer than it is. The end contains a bunch of quotes and pictures irrelevant for general readers.)

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How many conservatives have repeated this fake Gramsci quote?

A lot.

It's easy to find conservatives repeating this fake Gramsci quote. The vast majority give no citation, because the vast majority of conservative pundits love to "cite" scary quotes from leftists (without ever actually bothering to read them).

To prove my point, here's a big long list of influential conservative writers and who've repeated the quote more than once:

• Christopher Rufo, a paid reactionary shill with the Manhattan Institute, repeated this fake Gramsci quote in a 2022 speech (pseudo-transcript #1, #2) at private Christian Hillsdale College, later republished in a 2022 article for conservative mag CityJournal and a 2022 article for conservative newspaper Epoch Times. No citations given.

• Michael O'Fallon, a Christian nationalist pundit with Sovereign Nations, repeated this fake Gramsci quote in a 2021 lecture series (picture) with James Lindsay, in a 2022 tweet, and a 2022 podcast (transcription). No citations given.

• James Lindsay, a reactionary "Marxism understander", summarized this fake Gramsci quote in a 2021 podcast on the conservative New Discourses channel. No citations given.

• Roger Kiska, a paid libertarian shill with the Acton Institute, repeated this fake Gramsci quote in a 2019 article for Acton, republished for conservative lobbyists Christian Concern, and cited anew in a 2021 article for conservative mag The Critic. No citations given.

• John O'Sullivan, Orban's pet thinker and paid reactionary shill with the Danube Institute, repeated this fake Gramsci quote in a 2017 article and introduced a 2020 book against "The Long March". No citations given.

• Damien Tudehope, a conservative representative, repeated this fake Gramsci quote in a 2017 article in conservative mag The Spectator. Cites "his prison notebooks", which don't feature this quote.

• Robert Smith, a conservative theologian, repeated this fake Gramsci quote in a 2018 article in evangelical journal Themelios and a 2021 reprint. Cites Tudehope's article.

• Nate Hochman, a reactionary pundit for the conservative National Review, repeated this fake Gramsci quote in a 2023 article for NR and a 2023 tweet promoting the article. No citations given.

• Jeff Carlson, a reactionary finance analyst, repeated this fake Gramsci quote in a 2017 blogpost, again in a 2020 tweet, and in a 2021 video for Epoch Times. No citations given.

• Alex Antic, a conservative representative, repeated this fake Gramsci quote in a 2021 speech to Australia's parliament. No citations given.

• This fake Gramsci quote appeared in a 2021 article for fundamentalist Christian WND, in a 2022 article by Point of View, in a 2022 article in an Alaskan newspaper, in a 2022 post by a a Christian nationalist blog. And on and on and on and on and on.

Why am I bothering to list all of this? Because most conservative pundits are ignorant grifters that can say just about anything, without facing repurcussions for lying. A dozen conservatives repeatedly cited a fake quote and gave no source.

Nobody stopped them: No editor, no publisher, no one. The conservative pundits themselves either didn't bother to check that the quote was real or didn't care that it was fake.

This happens because the money behind conservatism doesn't care about seeking truth, just about promoting useful propaganda. For conservatives, that should be a worrying sign!

In short: The fact that a fake quote can survive for so long and so widely in conservative spaces speaks to the fact that the conservative intellectual ecosystem is bankrupt.

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Where does the fake quote come from?

If you search for this Gramsci quote on Marxists.org, you'll get nothing.

That's because Gramsci didn't say it. Who did?

If we search for this fake Gramsci quote on Google Books and archive.org, the earliest mention is in Warder 1996, "Unholy Alliances: The Secret Plan And The Secret People Who Are Working To Destroy America".

The 300-page screed argues that the "One-World Elite" is composed of "international Freemasonry working for the Illuminati" who are inspired by "spiritually occultic Communist Luciferianism". Here's a taste from the conclusion: "Masonry stands at the head of all our society."

As far as I can tell, the only group that Warder doesn't think controls the world is Jewish people -- which is honestly better than I expected!

That screed is also the origin of that fake Gramsci quote:

Radical leftist Antonio Gramsci in May 1916 remarked: "Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity." In The New Order, Marxist Gramsci explained that Socialism would triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.

It looks like later authors took this text's (absurd) description of Gramsci's writings in L'Ordine Nuovo -- which is not enclosed in quotes! -- and combined it with the former quoted text to create this Frankenstein:

In short: The fake Gramsci quote is taken from an insane anti-Masonic conspiracy nutter's rant against Gramsci, and treated as if it were a quote from Gramsci. The fake Gramsci quote sounds like a cartoon villain, because it was written to make Gramsci seem like one.

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What did Gramsci really say?

That religion was no longer necessary.

The few conservatives who do provide citations mostly cite each other (as above) or give different citations:

• Conservative theologian Peter Goeman cites [1] Tudehope's article and [2] "“Audacia e Fede,” Avanti, 22 (May 1916); reprinted in Sotto la Mole: 1916–1929 (Turin: Einaudi, 1960), 148."

• Creationist evangelist Patricia Engler cites "Selections from Prison Notebooks, 258"

Engler is wrong. Nothing like the fake Gramsci quote appears in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks (Quaderni del carcere). For example, see the Hoare Smith 1971 translation, which mentions "media" just once -- in a translator's footnote!

But Goeman is partially right. The fake Gramsci quote (on "capturing the culture") is often combined with a real Gramsci quote (on Christian socialism). I've bolded the real portion:

Any country grounded in Judaeo-Christian values can’t be overthrown until those roots are cut. [....] Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. [....] In the new order, socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.

That real quote comes from "Audacia e Fede", a very short article that Gramsci wrote in May 1916 in the column "Sotto la Mole" for socialist newspaper Avanti!. ("Sotto la Mole" just means "in the shadow of Mole Antonelliana", a Turin landmark.)

I've reproduced the article in full, original Italian at the bottom of this post. It does not contain any discussion of "capturing the culture", nor any discussion of schools or universities or mass media whatsoever.

In the article, Gramsci is not proposing some grand plan to depose Christianity and replace it with socialism. He's arguing against a group of Christian socialist authors from a magazine called Savonarola, who argue that "socialism should become Christian". Gramsci sharply disagrees, because he thinks Marxist historical materialism is at odds with Christianity:

The wish that concludes the innocent chatter is the best proof of this young man's incomprehension: ["]socialism should become Christian["]. This would be the same as saying: ["]the square should become a triangle["].

Because all these people have not realized, they who speak aptly, and more often inappropriately, of spiritual values, that socialism is precisely the religion that must kill Christianity. Religion in the sense that it too is a faith, that it has its mystics and its practitioners; religion, because it replaced the transcendent God of the Catholics in our consciences with the trust in man and his best efforts as the only spiritual reality.

Our gospel is a modern philosophy, dear friends of Savonarola, one that dispenses with the hypothesis of God in the vision of the universe, one that lays its foundations only in history, a history in which we are the creatures of the past and the creators of the future.

In brief: Gramsci argues that socialism is a religion, in the sense that it gives people meaning ("trust in man" replaced "trust in God") and a goal (creating the future). Gramsci is not arguing that socialism should be a religion, in the sense of a dogma enforced on society.

(To contextualize Gramsci's line that men are "creatures of the past, creators of the future", consider Marx's similar line from 1852: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." Or: Men make the future, in ways constrained by the past.)

In short: Gramsci says that socialism does not need Christianity, because nobody does. He's not calling for a new Pope of Socialism to replace Christianity.

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What did Gramsci really believe?

In short:

In long:

This fake Gramsci quote is usually paired with a (real but decontextualized) quote from socialist activist Rudi Dutschke, which argues that socialists have to conduct a "long march through the institutions".

Gramsci argues that, in pre-modern undemocratic societies, most political power laid purely in political institutions (such as kings) and in military institutions. Whoever controlled these controlled the country. In contrast, modern democracies vest a significant amount of power to civil society and popular will (such as churches and newspapers). Here's how the SEP describes his view:

Gramsci drew on a distinction, common in Italian political thought, between “force” and “consent”. Hegemony referred to consent, although this was understood usually to be balanced with force. Modern states aimed to absorb threats to their power by winning over potentially hostile social groups and classes, compromising the immediate interests of the dominant class to maintain general support. [...]

States could not be reduced to mere administrative units of executive authority — that is, to a separate “political society” — but were intertwined with a “sturdy structure of civil society” — schools, churches, “private associations”, newspapers, intellectuals and so on (SPN: 238). Unlike in Russia — where state power was strong and civil society weak (“primordial and gelatinous”) — modern states utilize the “trenches” of civil society by exercising “civil hegemony” (SPN: 243). This protected them from the threats to their rule caused by economic crises or civil disruption. [....]

In other words, states are kept standing by a combination of "consent" (popular ideology and civil society) and "coercion" (military and other force).

In response to this, Gramsci (and Dutschke) rejected the older revolutionary model (such as that of the American revolution and Russian revolution), where a bunch of armed people seized control of government offices and called it a day. (Gramsci calls this the "war of maneuver".)

Instead, they argued for what I'd call a combination of prefigurative politics and entryism. Socialists should both attempt to construct dual power structures (to win the "coercion" battle) and to gradually move culture production leftward (to win the "consent" battle). Gramsci calls this the "war of position". Here's the SEP again:

[H]egemony described a general condition applicable to both bourgeois and proletarian forms of rule. Revolutionary transformation — for any class — cannot be focused exclusively on the seizure of coercive and bureaucratic power but must engage the state’s wider system of defenses. [....] A revolutionary project, he suggested, must first build consent across civil society before taking formal power (SPN: 57). That did not mean that coercion would never be necessary, only that its status was diminished in modern states.

Gramsci certainly formalized this strategy more than previous political writers. But it's not as if he discovered these facts anew. Nearly every political movement, ever, has recognized that obtaining social power helps obtain political power. It's easier to take and hold power when you're popular!

In short: Gramsci believed that revolutionary socialists must fight for both social power and military power. This contribution is valuable, but certainly not unique!

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Why does it matter?

Rightists justify their transgression by alleging leftist transgressions.

Conservatives love to trot out these quotes in order to suggest that leftists are engaged in a grand conspiracy to take over the institutions from within. For example, conservative pundit Larry Taunton repeated this fake Gramsci quote in a 2020 blogpost,

The “frontal assault” strategy would not work in the West, he said, at least not in the beginning because these institutional pillars of Western society were much too strong. These must be subverted from within first, softening them up for the frontal assault when the Western colossus was sufficiently weakened. Gramsci’s strategy was, in effect, that of the Trojan Horse.

“Socialism will triumph,” he wrote, “by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”

This Trojan Horse approach is called “Cultural Marxism.” Subvert families, traditional morality, and the touchstones of national identity, and penetrate educational institutions, the church, and the legal system, and eventually that country will fall like a ripe fruit into the hands of Marxists.

Of course, this is bullshit. Neither Dutschke nor Gramsci argued for a secret cabal of leftist fifth columnists to subvert Judeo-Christian values. (Nor does any such cabal exist -- though if The Cabal is reading this post and has any job openings, please hit me up!)

Gramsci argued that a socialist revolution could only succeed in Western democracies with large degrees of popular support and intellectual legitimacy. Neither of these requires secrecy -- in fact, building popular support demands the exact opposite!

Reality be damned, this alleged conspiracy of infiltrating leftists justifies their attempts to disempower percevived leftists. For example, reactionary pundit Andrew Roberts begged Boris Johnson to seize back control:

Therefore you need to institute a Gramscian counter-march through the institutions, liberating one after the other from the grip of the Left. The economic and political battles are not the whole struggle.

More generally, conservatives use the idea that schools, universities, and government agencies are filled with leftists to justify privatizing those services. Chris Rufo makes this strategy explicit in his 2022 speech, where he calls for privatizing K-12 schools:

[The institutions] have been captured at the structural level and can’t be reformed from within. [....] The ideology is baked in. That’s why I call for a siege strategy. [....] With public institutions like K-12 education, another crucial step is to decentralize them. [....] Too many parents today have no escape mechanism from substandard schools controlled by leftist ideologues. Universal school choice — meaning that public education funding goes directly to parents rather than schools — would fix that.

And that's why this fake Gramsci quote matters: Conservatives aren't just intellectually bankrupt morons. They're intellectually bankrupt morons actively fighting to tear down the social spending that keeps millions of people out of poverty, to tear down the institutions that protect democracy against capture by the ultrarich.

In brief: Conservatives use the boogeyman of leftist-controlled institutions to justify their own attempts to take over the institutions -- or destroy them.

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Does a secretive cabal of socialists control the institutions?

🎵 If only it were true 🎵

Let's look at colleges as an example.

Conservatives constantly claim that colleges are controlled by liberals and leftists -- and have founded organizations, like Turning Points USA, to take them back with Koch Brothers money. Yet, conservatives almost never bother to demonstrate actual systemic bias. As Burmila 2021 says: "That such studies have not been attempted [...] suggests that talking points, not systematic evidence, is the goal."

It's true that most American academics identify to the left of the American public. But that's just evidence that professors lean left, not evidence of anti-conservative bias or "leftist capture of the institutions". Nearly all attempts to find systemic anti-conservative bias in academia have failed:

• Do conservative students receive lower grades due to instructor bias? No. Musgrave Rom 2015 found no reason to believe that conservative students are victims of biased, harsher grading.

• Do leftist educators churn out brainwashed leftist students? No. Mariani Hewitt 2008: In a sample of 6807 students across 47 colleges, 27% moved left and 16% moved right. But the proportion that moved left/right had no significant correlation with the average political orientation of faculty at a college.

• See Burmila 2021 for a general review of the extremely weak evidence for "liberal bias" in colleges.

In general, it's hard for most professors to get their students to read the syllabus and turn up to class. The idea that they can easily lead brainwashing sessions is absurd!

The right should spend less time explaining how the left took control of the institutions (for our nefarious goals) and more time proving that the left did actually do so.

In short: Many institutions of cultural production, such as universities and the media, lean leftward because the people they attract lean leftward and the job moves them leftward. This does not demonstrate a secretive leftist march through the institutions.

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Conclusion and shilling

In short:

• Rightists love to use this fake Gramsci quote, because it suggests that leftists are leading a secretive campaign to usurp universities and media from the inside.

• In turn, this justifies their push to take over these institutions.

• In reality, these institutions tend leftward for mundane reasons of selection bias and persuasion by doing.

• Conservative pundits can cite this quote, despite it being fake, because the conservative intellectual ecosystem is broken.

I'm writing blogs on socialist and progressive topics. To support my work:

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Giving credit

Posts about this fake Gramsci quote by Twitter users James B @piercepenniless and Andrew Woods @adubwoods inspired me to write this article.

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Full text of Audacia E Fede

Here's the full text of "Audacia E Fede", from LiberLiber:

«Io parlo audacemente e perché? Perché credo». Le parole di Gerolamo Savonarola servono di motto al giornaletto che dal suo nome si intitola. Parlare audacemente è sempre una bella cosa, quando l'ingegno dà alle parole un contenuto, e la forza morale che viene dalla convinzione sincera dà loro dignità di apostolato. Ma i giovani che compilano il «Savonarola» (alcuni di essi sono nostri amici personali e perciò ci permetteranno una certa rudezza di linguaggio) non ignorano anche che spesso l'audacia è prodotta da una completa incomprensione dell'argomento che si prende a trattare. A della gente che insiste continuamente sulla fede, sulla verità, sulla sincerità, non è permesso sfiorare con leggerezza offensiva idee e fatti che involgono la fede e l'entusiasmo di altri; perché allora l'audacia diventa impudenza, prosopopea, sopportazione, qualità tutte che non rientrano precisamente nella tradizione savonaroliana.

Che abuso di vecchi clichés in un articolo del loro premier che si occupa di socialismo, che tanfo di cenci da rigattiere! Melensaggine nell'espressione dei luoghi piú comuni, completa deficienza di ogni nozione teorica e storica del movimento socialista. Concezione idilliaca del socialismo che dalla «bocca di Gesù ha tolto le parole di carità e di fratellanza», dopo averle spogliate della loro virtú religiosa.

Storia: «Durante cinquant'anni di socialismo, il popolo quali progressi ha fatto? Economici: qualcuno. Intellettuali: pochi. Morali: nessuno». E via di questo audacissimo tono. Tanta scempiaggine ci sbalordisce. Potremmo ritorcere le domande adattandole al cristianesimo, e con risposte analoghe dimostreremmo solo la nostra insipienza. Ma non vogliamo incrudelire con chi, nel suo candore di neofita zelante, è cosí giudice delle cose nostre: il candore è troppo spesso sinonimo di minchioneria, e non bisogna essere severi coi... candidi.

L'augurio che conclude la cicalata innocente è la prova migliore della incomprensione di questo giovinotto: il socialismo dovrebbe diventare cristiano. Ciò che sarebbe lo stesso che dire: il quadrato dovrebbe diventare triangolo. Perché tutta questa gente non si è accorta, essa che a proposito, e piú spesso a sproposito, parla di valori spirituali, che il socialismo è precisamente la religione che deve ammazzare il cristianesimo. Religione nel senso che è anch'esso una fede, che ha i suoi mistici e i suoi pratici; religione, perché ha sostituito nelle coscienze al Dio trascendentale dei cattolici la fiducia nell'uomo e nelle sue energie migliori come unica realtà spirituale. Il nostro evangelo è la filosofia moderna, cari amici del Savonarola, quella che fa a meno dell'ipotesi di Dio nella visione dell'universo, quella che solo nella storia pone le sue fondamenta, nella storia, di cui noi siamo le creature per il passato e i creatori per l'avvenire.

E i nostri maestri hanno volgarizzata questa filosofia, l'hanno assunta come guida dei nostri destini, e ci hanno insegnato con logica ferma che il popolo, di cui tanto parlate voi, è un'astrazione sociologica, che la carità vuol dire elemosina, e non si fa elemosina ai forti, ai conquistatori, che l'amore e la fratellanza devono solo significare solidarietà di classe, se vogliono essere fecondi di risultati. Perché i socialisti, il proletariato non sono degli infelici, dei mendichi, degli spiantati, come immagina la fantasia democratica cristiana. Sono degli audaci lavoratori di un nuovo edificio sociale, di una nuova civiltà, che non domandano aiuto e pietà a nessuno, perché hanno la certezza di vincere con le sole loro energie. Non è una dottrina di schiavi in rivolta la nostra, è una dottrina di dominatori che nella fatica quotidiana preparano le armi per il dominio del mondo.

And here's a machine translation from Google (different from translations given above):

«I speak boldly and why? Because I believe." The words of Gerolamo Savonarola serve as a motto for the little magazine that takes its name from his name. Speaking boldly is always a beautiful thing, when ingenuity gives words a content, and the moral strength that comes from sincere conviction gives them the dignity of an apostolate. But the young people who compile «Savonarola» (some of them are personal friends of ours and therefore will allow us a certain rudeness of language) are also aware that audacity is often produced by a complete incomprehension of the subject that is being treated. People who continually insist on faith, truth, sincerity, are not allowed to lightly touch ideas and facts that involve the faith and enthusiasm of others; because then audacity becomes impudence, pomposity, forbearance, all qualities that do not precisely fall within the Savonarolian tradition.

What an abuse of old clichés in an article by their prime minister who deals with socialism, what a stench of junk rags! Foolishness in the expression of the most clichés, complete lack of any theoretical and historical notion of the socialist movement. Idyllic conception of socialism which from the "mouth of Jesus took the words of charity and brotherhood", after stripping them of their religious virtue.

History: «During fifty years of socialism, what progress has the people made? Cheap: someone. Intellectuals: few. Morals: none." And so on with this audacious tone. Such stupidity astounds us. We could twist the questions by adapting them to Christianity, and with similar answers we would only demonstrate our foolishness. But we don't want to be cruel to those who, in their candor of a zealous neophyte, are so judges of our affairs: candor is too often synonymous with foolishness, and we don't need to be severe with... candid people.

The wish that concludes the innocent chatter is the best proof of this young man's incomprehension: socialism should become Christian. Which would be the same as saying: the square should become a triangle. Because all these people have not noticed, they who speak aptly, and more often inappropriately, of spiritual values, that socialism is precisely the religion that must kill Christianity. Religion in the sense that it too is a faith, that it has its mystics and its practitioners; religion, because in the consciences of the transcendental God of Catholics it has replaced trust in man and in his best energies as the only spiritual reality. Our gospel is modern philosophy, dear friends of Savonarola, the one that dispenses with the hypothesis of God in the vision of the universe, the one that lays its foundations only in history, in history, of which we are the creatures for the past and the creators for the future.

And our teachers have made this philosophy popular, they have taken it as a guide for our destinies, and they have taught us with firm logic that the people, of whom you talk so much, is a sociological abstraction, that charity means almsgiving, and alms are not given to the strong, to the conquerors, that love and brotherhood must only mean class solidarity, if they are to be fruitful in results. Because the socialists, the proletariat are not unhappy, beggars, penniless, as the Christian democratic fantasy imagines. They are daring workers of a new social edifice, of a new civilization, who ask no one for help or pity, because they are sure of winning with their own energies alone. Ours is not a doctrine of slaves in revolt, it is a doctrine of rulers who in their daily toil prepare their weapons for domination of the world.

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Many images including the fake Gramsci quote

This section provides a bunch of fake Gramsci quote pics I've seen floating around, in hope that it'll be easier for Google Image Reverse Search to find refutations of the fake quote:

orig: socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture

alt: socialism will triumph first by capturing the culture

And, as a prize for scrolling all the way to the end: Here's an extremely funny use of the quote to promote some gay panic nonsense, from "Batman vs. Superman: who wins the Woke Wars?" in MercatorNet:

NOOO YOU CAN'T MAKE BATMAN GAY, THE KIDS ARE GONNA EMBRACE COMMUNISM NOW!!!