Do Not Lose Faith in Our Own Strength or Our Own Future
My debt to
the analytical framework of Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is well-known
to those of you who follow my posts. I have been particularly interested in his
concept of the “war of position”: the cultural and political contestation
within the institutions of state and civil society. A la Gramsci, I believe
that contention over the values society should be organized around occur at a
myriad of micro-sites in the labyrinthine institutional systems of modern
capitalism.
In July
2023 I remarked on the massive street protests that had occurred on the left
during movements from civil rights in the 1950s and 60s to BLM in the 2010s and
2020. Those episodes rocked the political establishment to its foundations. We
won some incremental victories and we imagined that we had taken the first
steps to setting the social order on a fundamentally new course. In the
institutional setting it was akin to “a fierce artillery attack (that) seemed
to have destroyed the enemy’s entire defensive system.”[1] But as Gramsci points out,
in modern industrial societies like the US “the superstructures (or
institutions) of civil society are like the trench systems of modern warfare.” Actually
our street protests and eloquent pleas in the media, etc., “had only destroyed
the outer perimeter, and our valient comrades found “ themselves confronted by
a line of defence which was still effective,” because “the defenders (of the system) are not
demoralized, nor do they abandon their positions, even among the ruins, nor do
they lose faith in their own strength or their own future.”[2]
Corporate America, the Federalist Society, White
Christian nationalists ... these are the bastions of the “system” which have
withstood massive assaults over the generations, have not lost faith in their
own strength of their own futures. They are still there and show no signs of
going away.
In the traumatizing wake of Trump’s return to office many
of us have been in a quandary as to what to do to stop his regime’s massive
assault on progressivism. I am among many who have advised us not to obey in
advance, and to defend institutions.[3]
In my posts I have done my best to chronicle those who have done those two
things.
As I digest the outcomes of local and state elections
across the country this week it occurs to me that after Trumps frontal assault
on agencies, bureaucracies, cities and entire states we in Blue America have
been reeling. But from the beginning there have been some naysayers willing to
stick their necks out in defiance, including, let me just once again
acknowledge, several federal court judges in this regard.
Recent cracks in Trumps edifice include:
· Farmers,
many of whom voted for Trump, are starting to have buyer’s remorse as China begins
to import from elsewhere in response to
Trump’s tariffs.
· When
ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel suggested that the alleged killer of Charlie
Kirk was a MAGA person, ABC suspended his show. ABC is a Disney company. Consumers
demonstrated their power by dropping their subscriptions from Hulu and other
Disney + streaming services. Disney + services lost nearly 3 million
subscribers in September. Kimmel was quickly put back on the air. [4]
· In
October a number of renowned artists and cultural organizations announced a
series of events they’re calling “Fall of Freedom” to oppose the “authoritarian
overreach by the Trump administration” in the world of the arts and cultural
production. Scheduled for November 21, “Fall for Freedom” will involve
filmmakers Ava DuVernay and Michael Moore, and leading institutions such as the
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York) Institute of Contemporary Art (Los
Angeles) and the Woolly Mammoth Theater (Washington, D.C.). It’s billed as
parallel to the “No Kings Movement” orchestrated by Indivisible.[5]
And on November 4th is their first opportunity to be
heard since last November voters nationwide delivered strong rebukes to the
direction the country is going under Trump 2.0. The sweeping victories of
Abigail Spanberger for governor of Virginia and Mikie Sherrill for governor of
New Jersey defied pundits seeing races they thought were tightening in recent
weeks. The victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who ran as a
Democrat, in the New York City mayoral election was also important for those
opposing Trump, but for different reasons. Add to these the overwhelming approval
of Proposition 50 in California, which counters Texas’s mid-decade pro-Republican
gerrymandering of Congressional seats with the same tactics for California, and
one sees many reasons to hope that we can sustain our multiracial democracy.
New Jersey and Virginia are different than New York City.
Sherrill and Spanberger ran as centrist while Mamdani represents the progressive
wing of the party. But they all ran on bread-and-butter issues of affordability
and inflation in the costs of groceries, gasolene and in Mamdani’s case housing.
These were all things Trump and MAGA were supposed to fix, yet inflation in these
areas and more continues apace fueled by Trump’s tariffs. The pushback from private
places in civil society and the expression of anti-MAGA sentiments in the political
sphere suggest that after being back on our heels the broad left has steadied
itself and is pushing back.
So now I want to flip the script. I have suggested in
earlier posts that we must defend Blue spaces against the Trumpian onslaught.
The results from this week’s elections suggest that Red America behind Trump is
being confronted by a
line of defence which was still effective,” that WE “are not
demoralized.” WE have not “ abandoned our positions, ... nor (lost) faith in (our)
own strength or (our) future.”[6]
Rather, WE are fighting the war of position in the trenches of civil society
and the state. Hitch up your seatbelts. That struggle is far from over.
1 Hoare, Q.,
& Smith, G.N. (Eds.). (1971). Selections from (Gramsci) the prison
notebooks. New York: International Publishers. (p. 235)
2 Ibid.
[3]
Most prominently, Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny,
[4] It
should be noted that Kimmel’s program is still scheduled for cancellation when
his contract expires next year. See https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/disney-lost-nearly-3-million-subscribers-after-jimmy-kimmel-suspension-report/ar-AA1OV7V4
[5] Small,
Z. Artist Plan to Unite in Defiance,” New York Times, Octber 15, 2025,
p. C5.
[6] Hoare
and Smith, p. 235.
