[Italian Communist agitator Antonio] Gramsci believed that Marxists should aim to attain what he called “cultural hegemony,” an early expression of Andrew Breitbart’s famous dictum that “politics is downstream of culture.” And the beating heart of culture is language.
In the little-read Discourse or Dialogue about Our Language, Machiavelli compares the infiltration of an opponent’s language with the military tactics used by ancient Rome to control foreign territories and armies. By “cultural hegemony,” Gramsci understood, as did Machiavelli, that society may be overcome not solely by force but also by internal subversion. A crafty revolutionary may find more success by transforming a society’s traditions, institutions, and most of all its language than by picking a fight out in the open.
Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, by Michael Knowles, p 19
As Rush Limbaugh often said, “Words mean things.” Communists know this well.