Catherine Gorka’s Heritage Foundation report traces cultural Marxism—rooted in Antonio Gramsci’s 1930s theory—to the 1960s "new left," where activists like C. Wright Mills and Harvard’s 1959 Castro invitee reshaped institutions via education, media, and art. She links BLM’s communal child-rearing calls and CRT to a violent utopian agenda, funded by Soviet/Chinese disinformation and NGOs like Planned Parenthood, while warning corporations now amplify it through university indoctrination. Despite institutional dominance, Gorka highlights parental activism (Moms for Liberty), Southern Wesleyan’s anti-"woke" stance, and localized politics as countermeasures, stressing wealthy conservatives must fund media resistance to reclaim cultural ground. [Automatically generated summary]
So as we fight this war, the enemy, I think, the main, our main opponent is cultural Marxism.
It's a really interesting and deep subject, and we have a great report on it by Catherine Gorka.
Catherine served at the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration.
She most recently was the director for civil society and the American Dialogue at the Heritage Foundation.
And she's the co-author of this very thorough report, the Heritage Foundation special report called How Cultural Marxism Threatens the United States and How Americans Can Fight It.
Catherine, it's good to have you on.
Hey, it is so good to be here.
Well, this is a terrifying report, but I think before we get to the terrifying part, I want you to explain what cultural Marxism is, why it's cultural, and why it's Marx, and what makes it Marxism.
Okay, all super important questions and questions that we also thought were important to answer, and that's part of what we did in the paper.
So Marxism, you know, and it is something that's really hotly debated.
Is this Marxism or not?
But I think it is in the sense that it really believes it has to tear down what's here.
It has to tear down the existing society in order for it to survive.
And I think because of the way it sees the world as oppressor and oppressed, those are fundamentally Marxist.
Now, a lot of people will say, but this isn't Marxism because it doesn't focus on the economic element of life.
No, that's why we call it cultural Marxism.
And this is something that came about through the thinking of the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci.
He saw in the 1930s that the workers' revolts that Marx had predicted were not happening in the industrialized societies of the West.
They weren't happening in the United States.
I mean, yes, communism got a foothold here, but it never really took off, right?
And Gramsci saw this in the United States, in Italy, in France, in Germany.
And he realized that they are not going to bring about Marxism or communism through a frontal assault of the worker on the middle class.
No, we had to have a different strategy.
And the strategy was much more subtle.
We have to take over the institutions and change the thinking through the institutions.
So, you know, in a sense, largely taking over the cultural institutions, the culture, the writing, the literature, the art, Hollywood, educational institutions.
And you really saw that transformation here in about 1960 was sort of a pivotal moment with the emergence of the new left.
And that's when there was this just tremendous explosion of, you know, Marxism, the new Marxism amongst youth and intellectuals.
And it kind of moved away from the worker and moved onto the campus.
So that's kind of what we're writing about.
So, you know, you're talking with what's often called the long march through the institutions.
And this is something that I've always wondered about.
How intentional was this?
I mean, I know that philosophers talked about the need for it and Marxists talk about the need for it, but was there like a meeting somewhere where they also were all going into the universities?
Or was that just a kind of natural place for them to go?
That is such an interesting question.
And I'm not sure that I can answer it definitively.
But what I will say, I mean, what Mike and I found, and it was so interesting to dig into this, right, was to find sort of pivotal moments that kind of helped further it along.
So I'm going to say I think it was probably a little bit of both.
I think there was some discussion somewhere amongst people.
Yes, this is going to work.
But then also they saw it happening.
So, you know, one of the things that I think is really interesting there is that there's a moment in 1960 when the Columbia sociologist C. Wright Mills kind of observed, you know, he didn't plan this, but he observed the revolutionary movements around the world seem to be happening among the young intelligentsia.
So therefore, this is the new left.
Boom.
That kind of, you know, that gained traction because people already saw this.
But I think it's really interesting when you think about it.
Just the year before Harvard University invited the young Fidel Castro to come and give a talk.
So Fidel, you know, a 32-year-old law student at that point had just, you know, brought about his own revolution in Cuba.
You know, I'm sorry, I just have to ask, what the heck were they thinking to invite him to Harvard?
But they did.
And, you know, that too sort of sparked.
And so there were so many factors, I think, that led into this.
So I'm going to say, I think in some way, I think it was probably a combination of some planning, some thought, but also some kind of spontaneous, this thing just started gaining speed.
And what exactly is the intention?
I mean, when we talk about economic Marxism, we know that the intention is kind of the workers, you know, own their own, the means of production and that everybody's sort of equal.
There's no economic injustice.
What is the purpose of cultural Marxism?
Well, I think it's, first of all, I think it's constantly evolving and changing.
I do think every individual Marxist has their own vision of their utopian future.
I mean, let's just take one example, and that would be sort of Black Lives Matter.
I mean, they are a perfect manifestation of this cultural Marxism, and they've told us what they want.
Let's Talk About Cultural Marxism00:04:13
They want the traditional family destroyed.
They want children brought up in community.
They want basically a reverse power structure.
They want, you know, they want to be in power.
You know, or conversely, take another one.
You know, the critical race theorists.
What do they want?
They want to basically do away with the United States as we know it.
I think they'd happily see the Constitution go by the wayside.
And I think this is what's really interesting about Marxism at all is the very idea that people think they're going to reach some kind of utopian future.
Whereas those of us who bother to look at history, we know where Marxism goes.
And I can guarantee you, all those people that are advocating for cultural Marxism, they will be the first ones to have their heads chopped off.
Why are they so effective?
I mean, let's start with schools and the academies and all this.
Why is it so, how is it possible, for instance, that all of a sudden, in what seems like 10 minutes, people suddenly believe that a man can turn into a woman?
I don't believe that anybody actually thinks that's true.
But why are they so effective at selling their bill of goods?
Why does critical race theory and anti-family information, anti-American information, why does that catch on so quickly?
Well, I don't think it does catch on quickly.
I think a part of what's happening is, and I think there are many, many factors here.
It's intellectuals driving this.
It's, you know, I think it's the Soviet Union and China feeding us with disinformation, manipulating, you know, tensions in the culture.
But I will say this.
I will point to what I think is one of the really significant factors here, and it's our foundations, our big philanthropies.
So this was another paper that Mike and I did right after we did this one.
And it was really an eye-opener for me.
They have been pumping millions, millions, tens of millions of dollars into this for years now.
And I think it's, you know, money talks.
It's, I think it's really, they've been laying the groundwork.
They, they fund, you know, and it's, it's not just the big foundations, but let's talk about some of the NGOs as well.
But I mean, you know, Planned Parenthood with what they fund and Southern Poverty Law Center with what they fund.
It all kind of feeds into this sort of same anti-American narrative.
It is interesting as my wife and I look at places to give money.
It's very, very hard to find a charity that's not woke and is not promoting a lot of these ideas.
What about big business?
When you think about Marxism, you think about big business is the enemy, but now it seems that to some degree at least, the corporate world is on board with critical race theory and on board with gender theory and all the other culturally Marxist theories.
Why is that?
This to me is one of the biggest mysteries.
You know, you think they of anybody would understand, you know, how effective our free market system is in not just in allocating resources, but in innovating, in leading people to prosperity and, you know, and just in so many things that it really kind of baffles me.
And all I can say is I guess people get caught up in the band in the bandwagon.
You know, that this is the woke moment.
And honestly, it truly, truly baffles me that our corporations above all have gone in this direction.
And I truly, I don't understand it.
I think they're insane and they're foolish.
And, you know, I think if anything, it's, you know, partly we have to blame the universities.
You know, this stuff has been seeping into the universities for a long time now.
And you think that, you know, every CEO went to an American university.
Generation Fighting Back00:04:45
What were they being taught?
So I think that's part of the problem too.
You know, so if you step back now and you say, where are we?
What, you know, what's what's what's the if we want to fight back about this, which is the next question I'm going to ask you.
But before I get to that, what's the battlefield look like now?
Are we completely routed or is it 50-50 or where do you think we are?
Oh, no, we are so outnumbered.
Okay.
The battlefield is a little bit scary, but I will say this.
You know, when I think about in the long term, when I think about like it's going to be sort of the homeschooled kids up against the public school kids, I put all my money on the homeschooled kids, right?
So I say, thank God for homeschooling.
Thank God for classical education.
There are still American youth who are being educated with the right ideas, right?
And I think, you know, I'm going to put my faith in them.
And, you know, I think the other thing I have to say is the parent of two kids in their 20s.
It's been really interesting to see sort of their evolution.
I think in a lot of ways, COVID was good for us because I think it showed a lot of kids what it looks like when the government takes control of your life.
And they hated it.
You know, it was irrational.
It was controlling.
It was unjust.
They did not like that feeling that their lives were not in their own hands.
So, you know, maybe in the long run, that's going to be the thing that saves us.
Do you think it's possible to take the institutions back or do we have to start to build new?
You know, you talk about homeschooling, but, and I'm very, very in favor of homeschooling, but it's sort of saying the public schools are a lost cause.
Do you think that there's any chance of winning back the Yale and Harvard or do you have to start again?
I think, again, that's a very, very important question.
I'll tell you where I put my hope is in the 100,000 plus members of Moms for Liberty and other organizations like that, all the parents that are now really putting themselves out there to fight for their children in K through 12 education.
What I think is going to happen is you've got a whole generation now of parents that have really put themselves on the line fighting for their kids.
And I think as their kids go to college, you're going to start to see the fight happening there.
I don't think it happened in my generation.
You know, we blithely sent our kids off to the schools that we respected when we were young.
I think now we know better.
But I think it's sort of this next generation.
And the only other thing I'll say is I do think, I mean, again, this is a tiny movement, but I am encouraged because I increasingly hear of colleges and universities that are fighting back.
So somebody just told me about Southern Wesleyan University, where they've got a new president who said, you know, woke comes here to die.
He is really taking a stand.
And you do have a handful of those.
But boy, I tell you, it is going to be the fight of our generation.
Interesting.
You know, one thing, I've only got like about a minute left, but a lot of people on the right talk about localism.
The localism is the answer.
We've got to start fighting on the local level.
We've got to stop worrying about what's happening at Davos and start concentrating on our communities.
You sort of recommend that in this report.
What exactly does that look like in everyday life?
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
I mean, it means everything from volunteering to be an election officer to running for a local office to supporting your local candidates, getting out and fighting for your local candidates, getting involved in your local citizen organizations.
I 100% agree that it's going to happen.
The change is going to happen locally.
So you're talking about political action.
What about cultural action?
I mean, I think that's a tougher one because I still think most of the culture is shaped out there somewhere.
It's in Hollywood.
I mean, I know this is a topic you care passionately about.
Our wealthy conservatives have to start funding movies and TV shows to push back against Hollywood.
So I think on the cultural level, I see that as that takes big money.
It takes big money.
Yeah.
Catherine Gorka, really nice talking to you.
The report is from the Heritage Foundation on Cultural Marxism.
As I say, it's not comforting, but it's interesting.
And I think we have to know it if we're going to fight back.