Next time you are linked to the internet, choose a search engine--Yahoo, Excite, or any other-- and enter "gramsci" as the keyword. You will be quickly presented with hundreds of items. As you start clicking away at them, you'll find several that are useless: numerous businesses scattered all across Italy that are located on a "via Gramsci." You'll also find several articles, course syllabi, and reading lists that mention Gramsci and/or refer to his work. And, of course, you'll also come across the web site set up by John Cammett with its searchable bibliography and the text of the past issues of the IGS Newsletter. If you look closely enough, you'll also discover some very surprising items.
A recent search for "gramsci" on the world wide web unearthed a most unlikely site wherein references to Gramsci abound. It is the site of "The Fatima Network". Its electronic address is:http://www.fatima.org. The home page of this site offers a number of options for further exploration: "News", "History", "Apostolate", "Prayer", "Resources". "Bookstore." A click on "Resources" leads to a page titled "Our Lady's Library. Articles, Essays, Stories, from the Pages of The Fatima Crusader Magazine." Directly under that general heading is the title of the first article: "Russia Hearkens to Gramsci's Ghost" by John Vennari.
What is Gramsci--or, rather, Gramsci's ghost--doing here? The blurb introducing the article explains: We continue to lose ground because the culture war against us continues to secularize our minds, preparing the West to openly embrace Marxism. This is the strategy of Gramsci. Read about this to arm yourself.
The Perstroika and Glasnost initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev is not the conversion of the Soviet Union as is naivley proclaimed by many Churchmen in high place and even by the majority of Fatima Apostolates. The so-called "conversion" of Russia is nothing more than the implementation of a kinder and gentler Marxism/Leninism, one more acceptable to the West, according to the strategy of the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, who died just before World War II. [END PAGE 6]
The rest of the article describes what it calls "the political formula Gramsci devised . . . to spread Marxism through the capitalist West", and it purports to reveal how that "formula" is being applied today by the enemies of religion and Western civilization. The connection among Russia, Gramsci, and Our Lady of Fatima is made more explicit as the article procedes, and especially towards the end where one reads:
Leninist flexibility, colored by Gramsci's subtle tactics and modified to supply whatever was lacking in Gramsci's blueprint for victory--this constitutes the Glasnost/Perestroika program. NOW, EVEN OUR LADY OF FATIMA IS BEING USED AS A GRAMSCI ALLY [caps in the original], by those who say this Gramsci ruse is actually the long-awaited Triumph of Our Lady's Immaculate Heart promised at Fatima.
The author of the article, John Vennari, is described as "the editor of Catholic Family News" and the article itself is the text of a speech "given to the Bishops in Mexico City"--no date is provided.
There are several other articles at the same site in which Gramsci is demonized in similar fashion. Interestingly, this view of Gramsci echoes, or is echoed by--it is hard to determine the sources-- Rush Limbaugh's (see Charlie Bertsch's article, "Gramsci Rush: Limbaugh on the Culture War" in the previous issue of the IGS Newsletter).
When surfing the web you may want to take look at this site:
Its wealth of material is divided into the following sections:
Biography of Antonio Gramsci
Gramsci's Politics
Gramsci's Theory of Hegemony
Definitions of Hegemony
A Brief Look at Hegemony and the Internet
Reflections and Conclusions
References
Links to Other Sites Pertaining to This Topic