a rival government, better organized, better staffed, betterrnobeyed. . . . At a given revolutionary crisis they step naturallyrnand easiK’ into the place of the defeated go’ernment.”rnWhile Gramsci and Hitler sought to develop their culturalrnstrategy for totalitarian ends, communist in the case of Gramscirnand national socialist in the case of Hitler, the same strategyrncan be used for conservative purposes, and probablv evenrnmore successfully in the United States since beneath the encrustationrnof the dominant cultural apparatus of the left in thisrncountry there still persists an enduring cultural core of traditionalrnbeliefs and institutions. Indeed, while the Americanrnright has generalh ignored cultural forces, preferring to dwellrnon economic, foreign policy, and narrow political issues and tornconcentrate on policy bargaining within the government (usuallyrnon terms defined by their opponents), the EuropeanrnNew Right explicitly invokes Gramsci as a source of its ideasrnand strategy. Thus Tomislav Sunic writes in his account of thernEuropean New Right: “The main reason that conservativernmovements and regimes have been unable to gain lasting politicalrnlegitimacy lies in their inability of successfulh infiltratingrnthe cultural society and introducing another ‘counterideology’rnto the masses. Should conservati’e movements genuinelyrndesire to become politically consolidated, they must firstrnand foremost elaborate their own cultural strategy, which willrnultimately help them to dislodge socialist and liberal leveragernon the political arena. One must first conquer the brains beforernconquering the state.”rnThe inadequacy of the political power of the right in Americarnin the absence of cultural power is perfectly illustrated in the •rncases of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush administrations. Nonernof the Republican administrations possessed sufficient culturalrnresources and allies to enable whatever ideas and policy initiativesrnthey expressed to endure, and much of their time andrnenergy were consumed with explaining and often retreatingrnfrom what they put forward in the face of the almost total oppositionrnof the dominant cultural elite in the mass media andrnthe higher circles of education. The Republicans had indeedrnwon election to the “outer ditch” of government, but none ofrnthem ever came close to penetrating the “powerful system ofrnfortresses and earthworks” of cultural hegemony on which thernreal power of the left rests. The Bush administration in particularrncame to rely on an essentially liberal discourse to justifyrnits actions. As a result, the administration accomplished almostrnnothing in altering the framework of public discussion orrnin challenging the fundamental terms of debate in Americanrnpolitical culture, so that today it is far more difficult to arguernpublicly against the legitimacy of homosexuality, against affirmativernaction, against the welfare state and its assumptionsrnabout man and goxernment, or against a globalist foreign policyrnthan it was before Bush, Quayle, Kemp, and William Bennettrngave us the benefit of their wisdom. Bv replicating and repeatingrnthe rhetoric of the left, the American right merelyrnconfirms and legitimizes the cultural dominance—and thereforernthe political power—of the left.rnNor does there seem to be much prospect that the RepublicanrnParty as it is now constituted will offer any serious challengernto that cultural dominance, or that the tame neoconservativernintelligentsia that serves as the GOP’s ideologicalrnvanguard will do so. Thus, neoeonservative Michael Joyce,rnpresident of the $420-million Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee,rnwhich the National journal calls “the nation’s largest underwriterrnof conservative intellectual activity,” recently told thernjournal that “Em . . . not ready to repeal the welfare state. Irnwant to ameliorate the problems of the welfare state.” Similady,rnin the spring of 1992, just after President Bush, underrnpressure from Pat Buchanan, fired NEA chairman John Erohnmayer,rnthere began to build for the first time a small consensusrneven among some liberals that the NEA might not be necessaryrnafter all. Who should jump out of the woodwork to tell us thatrn”abolitionist sentiment, however understandable and defensible,rnwill be ineffectual” but Mr. Joyce’s mentor, Irving Kristol,rnthe ubiquitous godfather of the neoconservatives, and it wasrnKristol’s contribution to the Kulturkampf to suggest that all wernreally needed to do was just hand the NEA over to a neoeonservativernmanager who could fork up the pasta to the right people,rnnamely the neoconservatives. Mr. Kristol then sallied forwardrnto tell us, in the Wall Street journal, that “I regret torninform Pat Buchanan that those [i.e., the culture] wars are over,rnand the left has won.. . . the left today completely dominatesrnthe educational system, the entertainment industry, the universities,rnthe media.” “One of these days the tide will turn,” hernwrites, but there is nothing anyone can do about it now. Well,rnno doubt some day the tide will turn, but when it does it willrnnot be because Mr. Kristol was paddling in the right direction.rnIf Antonio Gramsci had had comrades like Irving Kristol andrnMichael Jovce, Mussolini could have used his prisons for morernserious threats to his power.rnAs far as I can see, there is virtualh’ no reason to think thatrneither the Republican Party leadership or the neoconserxativernintelligentsia or for that matter most of the mainstreamrnconservative establishment either wants or is able to mount anrneffective challenge to the dominant cultural apparatus of thernleft in this country. They do not want to do so because they arernperfectly happy holding petty offices, publishing reams ofrnbackground papers, and giving each other immense financialrndonations within the left’s framework of cultural and politicalrnhegemony, and the most that thev want to do is trim up thatrnframework, reform it, take it over themselves, and, in Mr.rnJoyce’s term, “ameliorate” it. They are not able to mount an effectivernchallenge because the establishment right has long isolatedrnitself from the grassroots foundations of the real Americanrnculture and locked itself in its phone booth, where theyrnemploy their time and money making conference calls to eachrnother, periodically emerging to raid the direct-mail icebox,rnand venturing all the way to Milwaukee to squeeze anotherrnlarge slice of the Bradley family’s fortune out of Mr. Joyce.rnThe people who are challenging the cultural hegemony ofrnthe left and are trying to construct a “counter-hegemonicrnforce” are the American people themsehes, through the effortsrnof leaders like Mary Gummins and her allies in the belly of thernbeast. New York City, and through similar efforts in Golorado,rnOregon, Galifornia, and other states where the long silent andrndormant core of American civilization is beginning to awaken.rnThese efforts are not the products of strategies thought out inrnthe Beltway, and as far as I know they owe nothing to the financialrnlargesse of conservative foundations. They are largelyrnlocal in orientation and thereby reflect the authentic grassrootsrnnature of the real American culture. Independent of both thernfederal state and its cultural tentacles, they do not merelyrnreplicate the assumptions of the incumbent cultural regime;rnthey express their own vision of culture, and in their activismrnthey defy the kind of passivity that the dominant culture seeksrnto induce in Americans, if they are going to develop andrnU/CHRONICLESrnrnrn