How Do You Defeat the Oligarchy?

Who leads when our leaders are the problem?

This moment of institutional rot in America poses huge challenges to our country. Not only have many of the institutions that should have been bulwarks of our democracy failed in that role, they are using their power in ways that exacerbate our problems.

You may, if you have a good memory or are attending a graduate seminar in my Substack writings, recall my discussion a while back of the concept of “cultural hegemony.” This is an idea proposed by the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci in which he describes it as the way a ruling elite can influence and ultimately control a society by using their power to shape the core beliefs and values of society.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (which I find is a great resource because I really like to add heft to my superficiality with the illusion of depth) describes it in the following way:

“Gramsci’s discussion of hegemony hinged, in part, on the empirical observation that capitalist rule in developed western states, increasingly, is founded on the generation of consent across civil society, not solely on the deployment of coercion via the army, police or law courts.

“Expanding on his suggestion from 1926 (see §2.3 above) that the ruling class had available to it “political and organizational reserves”, Gramsci now argued that modern states since the mid-nineteenth century have tended to cultivate consensual support—or hegemony—across civil society such that coercion, or its threat, was no longer the primary form of rule, except in “moments of crisis of command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed””

I keep returning to this idea because I think it is so essential to the shape of our society and indeed, to any society. Throughout history, those in power have used the tools by which belief systems are manipulated—religion, the arts, intellectual discourse—to promote ideas that can help them maintain or grow their wealth and power. Often, these concepts were actually antithetical to the real interests of those among whom they were promoted and yet, with the right amount of “political and organizational reserves” behind them, they took hold.

The Lies That Guide Us

You know the greatest hits promoted by elites throughout history. They include: “Live in poverty and do what your liege lord says and although your current life may be misery, if you don’t complain too much and go along with the way of life we’re promoting, you’ll be rewarded in the next life.” “Don’t challenge the rule of our king or you will go to hell because it was God that put the king on the throne.” “Die for our God.” “Sacrificing your life for your country is noble.” “Support our dictatorial leader and he will make the world see that we are the master race.”

Here in the U.S. they have featured compelling ideas like: “It is our manifest destiny to conquer this continent and the people who were here before us.” “America is an exceptional nation, the best of all those in the world, and we need not follow the rules that bind other nations, even if we are the authors of those rules.” “Live in poverty and do what your liege lord boss says and you will find fulfillment through your work and maybe a gold watch before you die.” “America is the land of opportunity.” “We are great because we are a capitalist nation, our millionaires and billionaires are a sign of our shared greatness.” “Trickle down works.” “We are great because we value the individual and our rivals are week because they are too concerned about the communities in which they live.” “We are a great democracy, the world’s greatest.”

Ok. Maybe my biases are slipping in there. But you see the truth in all that surely. From our earliest childhoods we are inculcated by parents and churches and schools and movies and museums and songs with the idea that America is special, that our history of killing and enslaving millions to seize the nation was justified (mandated by Heaven even), that if you work hard you can advance to the highest heights, that exploitation of the poor and middle class by the rich was actually capitalism working for everyone and that there were perfectly good explanations why the majority of our population (women, people of color, differently-abled people, LGBTQ+ people) did not have the same set of rights as the rest of us.

Sometimes what we were taught actually celebrated the patently evil—see the promotion of the “noble” “Lost Cause” narrative of the Civil War. (“Birth of a Nation.” “Gone with the Wind.”)

Why? Because it suited the needs of those in power. So they selected stories and ideas and entire ideologies that suited them and the promoted them via all the means at their disposal.

Manipulated cultural narratives is recognized by those in power—and has been throughout history—as a key element of controlling a society.

This is not, of course, abstract. It has existed throughout time. And it exists today. Representatives of the far right, concerned that too many ideas that could threaten their interests were being promoted via America’s cultural infrastructure, have systematically sought to buy and alter our biggest newspapers, broadcast outlets, social media platforms. They are using their power on the boards of non-profits to change missions and to police content. The Trump Administration is doing likewise on their behalf with its campaign against “wokeness,” DEI, critical race theory, and other ideas that have won public support over the past half century or more.

Today, the Trump Administration announced an initiative to audit and edit the content available at the museums of the Smithsonian Institution just as they have done at what Trump today referred to in a social media post as the “Trump-Kennedy Center.”

This is neither peripheral nor accidental. It is the same reason Nazis targeted the “degenerate art” associated with intellectuals, communists, Jews and gays. It is the same reason the Taliban and ISIS destroyed non-Islamic art. It is the reason, Russia is demanding that people in the territories it conquers in Ukraine speak Russian and learn history from a Russian perspective.

Indeed, while prominent academics like Harvard’s late scholar Joe Nye have promoted ideas about culture as being part of “soft power” they have actually done a disservice in so doing. There is nothing soft about the power of culture. It is in fact, far more potent than armies. (Remember that in Vietnam, the U.S. mission ultimately became winning Vietnamese “hearts and minds”—which we failed to do in key respects.)

Elites seek cultural hegemony because they know that ideas and the arts and intellectual discourse are what form the bonds within nations, ensure the stability and endurance of key institutions and persuade people that their identities are actually linked to ideas that benefit those in power. (“If AI means we don’t have to work as much, that will be terrible because my identity comes from my job!” is one I often hear. It’s ludicrous, of course. There is no reason identity cannot come from family or using your time to explore or understand life in new ways or to find avenues of self-expression that could not have been explored in the past.)

Trump doesn’t just seek to control the Smithsonian or the Kennedy Center because he is a malignant narcissist wannabe king….although that’s part of it. He does it on behalf of those who are sponsoring his Christo-fascist or ethno-nationalist movement and thereby building a powerbase that can serve the real big bosses, the oligarchs at the top of the food chain who are cynically tapping into white grievances to gain an ever bigger piece of the pie and to further entrench themselves so their interests cannot be challenged by something as flighty and unpredictable as the will of the people.

The Battlefield on Which All Will Be Won or Lost

In other words, the powerful seek cultural hegemony because they recognize something that the rest of us really need to get our heads around. When our institutions have failed or lined up on behalf of the oligarchs (and their army of useful racist-misogynists) there is only one avenue left to us that can both restore democracy and advance the ideas that can be their undoing.

That avenue is culture broadly defined—encompassing academia, the arts, the media, the engines of debate and discourse that can reshape how we see ourselves, what we believe, what we prioritize.

When oligarchs have seized or compromised many of our most critical institutions the last remaining bastion of democratic ideals, the last mechanism by which the views of the majority can overtake and ultimately overthrow the proponents of a society run to serve the few, the billionaires and millionaires among us, is culture.

Not only do we all still determine what ideas become popular, spread virally, get embraced, galvanize us to action, but as our others sources of influence are carved away—like our voting rights—the cultural collaboration of the people of this country, the meeting of our minds, the melding of our hearts, becomes the most potent tool left to our disposal.

The Founders understood this. It is why they enshrined free speech and freedom of expression and freedom of assembly in the First Amendment to the Constitution. They saw first hand how the power of a grass roots cultural movement could change history. One in five Americans got a copy of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.” The rest were surely exposed to it in town meetings and around dinner tables. Despite our focus on the great and not-so-great men who signed the Declaration of Independence or wrote the Constitution, the American revolution was sparked and enabled from the ground up.

By the same token, their efforts to keep religious institutions out of our government and to constrain the power of our leaders in each branch of the government served the same purpose, they want to limit the ability of any one person or group to achieve what could be called “cultural hegemony.” (Even if that terminology took another century and a half to evolve and ultimately did on another continent in very different circumstances.)

If we are to undo the power of America’s oligarchs and to reverse the grievous damage being done daily by Trump and MAGA and the GOP and their puppets in the Congress and the courts, we must recognize that in today’s America that work will not be done by representatives of the institutions we once thought we could count on. It can be accomplished only by us.

Further, there is a special responsibility that falls at moments like this to those who can inspire and elevate and energize public discourse through the cultural tools available to them…through the arts…through academia…through writing…via social media…via social movements…from the pulpit…across a dinner table.

Frankly, I have been disappointed by the passivity of our cultural leaders, by those with the power to lead change, to reject the culturally hegemonic impulses of oligarchs and their agents, to actually seize the moment. There are artists who have done it.

Who would have imagined that John Oliver or the kids of South Park would become the Walter Cronkite of the nation in a country when most media outlets are compromised or spineless? Who would have thought that Bad Bunny or Taylor Swift would be among the voices that connected with tens of millions of Americans in ways that opposition political leaders have failed to do?

I’ll tell you who would imagine it: history’s most potent leaders. They understand that you don’t maintain real power at the end of the barrel of a gun. They understand that you can’t do it merely by offering better rational arguments. (I wish my Democratic friends and colleagues would understand this.) You can only do it by touching people in the gut, in their beliefs, in the ideas that are inextricably intermingled with their identities.

That is why the “culture war” of the right was not some shallow folly that many in the center and on the left may have laughed off. Culture wars are what determine the future of nations. Our culture war is what will determine the future of our nation. And as far as I can see, right now, those in the one percent have seized the advantage in that which will determine what kind of country America will be in the future. They are actively rejecting all the ideas that threaten them, the people that threaten them, the words that threaten them, they are beginning to control what we can say and how we can express ourselves and where.

And we in the opposition in this war for the future of the United States? What of us? So far, it is very much as though, we have not yet begun to fight as history and our obligations to future generations dictate we must.

Yes, I am worried about Trump’s sending the military and his militarized goon squads into the streets of America’s cities. His power grab is chilling as are the implications for our future. That is why it is so important we recognize that the only way we can successfully fight back is by winning on the one battlefield that will determine our destiny, a battlefield that also more truly than anything else represents the landscape of our greatness and offers the true heights from which we can ultimately gain advantage…that is the vast and vibrant expanse of our culture, of the ideas, ideals, ideologies and artistic creations that can energize and elevate us and, in the end, enable that which is best within this nation to triumph.

NOTE: I WILL DISCUSS SOME CONCRETE IDEAS RE: AN ACTION PLAN IN REGARD TO THE ABOVE IN MY NEXT POST.