{"id":1213,"date":"2025-10-02T04:04:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T04:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebrokeronline.eu\/breivik-and-the-gramscian-legacy\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T04:04:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T04:04:10","slug":"breivik-and-the-gramscian-legacy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.thebrokeronline.eu\/blogs\/social-change-blog\/breivik-and-the-gramscian-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Breivik And The Gramscian Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<section class=\"content column wide left blog_post content view\" id=\"content\">\n<div class=\"edit image\">\n\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebrokeronline.eu\/files\/var\/broker\/storage\/images\/blogs\/social-change-blog\/breivik-and-the-gramscian-legacy\/154802-2-eng-gb\/breivik-and-the-gramscian-legacy_full_view.jpg\" alt=\"Gramsci square, Rimini, Italy. Photo by Betta!\">\n\t<\/div>\n<article class=\"fader\">\n<header class=\"contents\">\n<div class=\"share\">\n\t\t\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n    var addthis_config = {\n        ui_language = 'en'\n    }\n<\/script><\/p>\n<div class=\"addthis sharing\">\n\t<!-- AddThis Button BEGIN --><\/p>\n<div class=\"addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style addthis_32x32_style\" addthis:title=\"Breivik and the Gramscian legacy\">\n\t<a class=\"addthis_button_twitter\" tw:via=\"thebrokeronline\"><\/a><br \/>\n\t<a class=\"addthis_button_facebook\"><\/a><br \/>\n\t<a class=\"addthis_button_pinterest_share\"><\/a><br \/>\n\t<a class=\"addthis_button_preferred_4\"><\/a><br \/>\n\t<a class=\"addthis_button_compact\"><\/a><br \/>\n\t<a class=\"addthis_counter addthis_bubble_style\"><\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n<p>\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\">var addthis_config = data_track_addressbar;<\/script><br \/>\n\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebrokeronline.eu\/files\/js\/300\/addthis_widget.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n\t<!-- AddThis Button END -->\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"addthis article_options\">\n\t\t<!-- \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebrokeronline.eu\/mandrill\/subscription\/add\/17209\/17982\">Subscribe<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t -->\n    \t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBreivik and the Gramscian legacy<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n<div class=\"clear\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"pubDate\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebrokeronline.eu\/experts-and-authors\/van-den-berg-maarten\/\">Maarten van den Berg<\/a>\t\t|<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t03 August 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"body contents\">\n\t<!-- body --><\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\"><b><\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">How the legacy of an obscure Italian Marxist came to motivate a Norwegian terrorist \u2013 and a Dutch politician.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">What do a Norwegian terrorist, a rightist politician in The Netherlands, some American think tanks and an editor of The Broker share in common? They all assign an important role to the work of Antonio Gramsci in the making of contemporary politics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\"><b>Gramsci?<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">Who but a few history buffs today has even heard of this Italian Marxist, who died in 1937 as a prisoner of the Fascist regime. Apparently Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik has, and so has Martin Bosma, the spin doctor of the Dutch rightist party PVV, as well as William S. Lind, an American publicist and promoter of cultural conservatism.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">The undersigned, now editor of The Broker, was once a devoted scholar of Gramsci. At the University of Amsterdam and also at York University in Toronto, Canada, I took part in exchanges among a group of International Relations students who identified themselves with \u2018neo-Gramscian analysis\u2019. I still consider the work of Gramsci a source of inspiration. In my view, Gramsci\u2019s notes on power, in particular his concept of hegemony, and his historical analysis of state-society relations continue to bear relevance today.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\"><b>Hegemony and multiculturalism <\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">So, when occasionally I come across a scholar or the rare journalist who refers to Grasmsci or uses a concept that derives from his work, I smile in recognition. Thus I smiled when I perused the book \u2018The Pseudo-Elite of the Counterfeiters\u2019 by Martin Bosma, a former journalist who is currently a prominent ideologue of the right in The Netherlands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">The book provides an account of how left-wing elites have risen to power since 1968, imposed multiculturalism on society and promoted \u2018mass immigration\u2019 \u2013 while casting a blind eye to the \u2018dangers of Islam\u2019. According to Mr Bosma it was Gramsci\u2019s concept of cultural hegemony that taught leftists it was \u2018better to seize power in the institutions of society, and thus dominate culture and political discourse\u2019 rather than to stage a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">When reading Mr Bosma\u2019s&nbsp; book, which was published last year, I figured he might have picked up his share of Gramscian concepts at the University of Amsterdam. He studied political science there in the 1980s \u2013 about the same time as I did. At that time, though, we employed Gramsci\u2019s concept of hegemony to understand the rise of neoliberalism rather than multiculturalism. In my view, multiculturalism has never been a hegemonic world view, and certainly not in Europe \u2013 not even at universities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\"><b>Breivik&#8217;s manifesto<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">Therefore I was not prepared to stumble upon an identical application of Gramsci\u2019s concept of hegemony in the bewildering manifesto \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/www.liveleak.com\/view?i=89a_1311444384\" target=\"_blank\">2083, A European Declaration of Independence<\/a>\u2019 released by Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik just before he set out on his killing spree. Similar to Mr Bosma, the author of this document asserts that Gramsci\u2019s work has inspired leftists since the late 1960s to focus their revolutionary aspirations on seizing power in the fields of education and culture. Indeed, the author considers Gramsci as the&nbsp;forebear of \u2018a generation of \u201cCultural Marxist radicals\u201d [that] has now become the establishment in the vast majority of our institutions of higher learning\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\"><b>Cultural relativism<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">Mr Bosma and the author of Mr Breivik\u2019s manifesto also share in a sweeping explanation on how \u2018cultural Marxism\u2019 spread throughout Europe and the US, and why the left-wing elites it informed promote multiculturalism. In this explanation, a whole host of other European Marxists figure alongside Gramsci, including the Hungarian Georg Luk\u00e1cs, and a group of German Marxists that convened in Frankfurt in the 1930s \u2013 hence the Frankfurt School as short-hand for their ideas. As this group was forced to move to Geneva and later to New York in the wake of Hitler\u2019s rise to power, their ideas spread and found a following among leftists on both continents. According to both authors, most prominent among these ideas was \u2018cultural relativism\u2019, including a rejection of nationalism and deference for minority cultures. In the eyes of leftists, Mr Bosma laments, \u2018nationalism or even asserting the unique traits of one\u2019s own culture, is by definition suspect\u2019. Similarly, Mr Breivik complains that \u2018nationalists in Western Europe are systematically being ridiculed, silenced and persecuted by the current cultural Marxist\/multiculturalist political establishments\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">One of the things that puzzles me in the accounts of both authors is why they consider all these European Marxists the fathers of cultural relativism. After all, the founder of cultural relativism is the American anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942). A German by origin, Boas was a staunch critic of nationalism and racism, but he is not generally considered a Marxist. And in my readings at university, Marxists, including contemporary bearers of the Frankfurt School such as J\u00fcrgen Habermas, were usually on the receiving end of cultural relativist criticism. No so for Mr Bosma and Mr Breivik: for both authors, \u2018cultural Marxism\u2019, \u2018cultural relativism\u2019 \u2018multiculturalism\u2019 as well as \u2018political correctness\u2019 are practically interchangeable; they are merely terms for the dominant view, imposed on society by the leftist establishment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\"><b>Radical conservatives<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">In view of the striking similarities, one is easily persuaded to conclude that Mr Breivik\u2019s and Mr Bosma\u2019s accounts of the roots of multiculturalism use the same sources. Unfortunately, neither of the authors is very generous with footnotes in this respect. Yet Mr Breivik, so it turns out, is a shameless plagiarist. Most of his account is literally copied from articles authored by William S. Lind, an American publicist, and other self-proclaimed &#8216;cultural conservative&#8217; activists associated with think tanks such as the Free Congress Foundation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">In the world view promoted by these radical conservatives in the US since the early 1990s, the country\u2019s elite has pursued a \u2018deliberate agenda\u2019 to rob ordinary Americans of their culture. Disguised as \u2018multiculturalism\u2019 or \u2018political correctness\u2019, this agenda is in fact a strand of cultural Marxism that, as Mr Lind explains, started in Europe with Gramsci and Luk\u00e1cs and was brought to American universities by the Marxists of the Frankfurt School (Lind, \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/www.academia.org\/the-origins-of-political-correctness\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Origins of Political Correctness<\/a>\u2019, 2000). According to Mr Lind and other radical conservatives such as Patrick J. Buchanan, the ultimate objective of that agenda is nothing less than \u2018the destruction of Western culture and the Christian religion\u2019 (Lind, \u2018Who stole our culture\u2019, 2007) by means of propaganda, education, family planning, and unchecked immigration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\"><b>Saving the nation<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">It is thus from the same sinister account, promoted by American conservatives, of a global Marxist conspiracy that spans almost a century, from which both Mr Bosma and Mr Breivik have derived inspiration for their mission. Of course that doesn\u2019t make the Dutch politician an accessory to the atrocities committed by the Norwegian terrorist. But I do believe it is safe to say that Mr Bosma would recognise himself in Mr Breivik&#8217;s self-description as merely \u2018a dedicated cultural conservative\u2019 who seeks to save his nation from \u2018cultural suicide\u2019 and \u2018Islamic colonisation\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"yunu3cvqabft7vifv\">\n<p class=\"credit\">Photo credit main picture: Gramsci square, Rimini, Italy. Photo by Betta!<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<!-- body -->\n\t<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"clear\"><\/div>\n<section class=\"commentform content column wide left\">\n<div class=\"disqus_content\">\n\t\t\t<a name=\"comments\" id=\"comments\"><\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"disqus_thread\"><\/div>\n<p>\t\t\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n\t\t\t\t\/* * * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE * * *\/\n\t\t\t\tvar disqus_shortname = 'broker'; \/\/ required: replace example with your forum shortname\n\t\t\t\tvar disqus_identifier = '7406';\n\t\t\t\t\/* * * DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * *\/\n\t\t\t\tfunction trackComment(comment)\n\t\t\t\t{\n\t\t\t\t\tconsole.log(comment);\n\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\tfunction disqus_config() {\n\t\t\t\t\tthis.callbacks.onNewComment = [function() { \n\t\t\t\t\tconsole.log(comment);\n\t\t\t\t\t}];\n\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\t(function() {\n\t\t\t\t\tvar dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text\/javascript'; dsq.async = true;\n\t\t\t\t\tdsq.src = '\/\/' + disqus_shortname + 'https:\/\/www.thebrokeronline.eu\/files\/blogs\/social-change-blog\/.disqus.com\/embed.js';\n\t\t\t\t\t(document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);\n\t\t\t\t})();\n\t\t\t<\/script><br \/>\n\t\t\t<!--\n\t\t\t<noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the <a href=\"http:\/\/disqus.com\/?ref_noscript\">comments powered by Disqus.<\/a><\/noscript>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"http:\/\/disqus.com\" class=\"dsq-brlink\">comments powered by <span class=\"logo-disqus\">Disqus<\/span><\/a>\n\t\t\t-->\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false,"raw":""},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Breivik and the Gramscian legacy Maarten van den Berg [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template_2.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1213","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - 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