Laying Siege to the Institutions

From “Laying Siege to the Institutions” by Christopher F. Rufo in the April/May 2022 issue of Imprimis: The leftist dream of a working-class rebellion in America fizzled after the ’60s. By the mid-1970s, radical groups like the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground had faded from prominence. But the leftist dreamers didn’t give up. …

Communists know that words matter.

[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 …