Gramsci, Frankfurt School, Alynsky, et al: Muenzenberg's Acolytes
The weakness of previous attempts to analyze the origins of Politically Correct Progressive beliefs, strategies and tactics was that the…
The below essay was my answer to a reader’s question about Muenzenberg, Alynsky, Frankfurt School, Gramsci. He wanted to know the source of the momentum to destroy Normal American culture. He’d heard and read the various theories, propagated as answers, and was confused.
Happy to help. This is a fascinating subject, but easy to get side-tracked by confusing clues.
The weakness of previous attempts to analyze the origins of Politically Correct Progressive beliefs, strategies and tactics was that the analysts, like Codevilla, Stan Evans, and others, have no background in espionage operations. They were either academics, journalists, or political science analysts. They focused on published and written sources (Alynsky’s Rules for Radicals, Gramsci’s writing, public records, etc.) That was a fool’s errand! The political warfare system against Normal-America was a Comintern/KGB covert action operation!
One reason that Gramsci became prominent is because he was a nobody! Sort of counter-intuitive. The other is that the Italian communists needed a figurehead, and Gramsci made a good one — he was both dead and they found his notebook full of his notes on Willi Muenzenberg’s operational planning.
Muenzenberg was a covert operator. All his operations were covert — secret, NOT published, NOT public. He was at the highest levels of Bolshevik, and then Soviet power, working with Lenin, the Comintern power structure, heading their covert influence and propaganda operations. He had a “cover,” a public persona, that to this day confuses the non-operational attempts to analyze his work. The most prominent biography of Muenzenberg is a laughably naive analysis of the financial records of his Comintern-financed cover operation — a publishing and movie company. The poor author who did the research called his biography “The Red Millionaire.” If you have an understanding of espionage operations, you can see that the millions that passed through that company were cover funds to allow Muenzenberg, and his minions, to do their real work of espionage.
Gramsci is a similar case to Saul Alinsky — he just wrote down what he learned in the Muenzenberg covert influence groups that he was part of. Alynsky is a perfect example of an American Willing Accomplice. He drank deep of Muenzenberg’s message, transmitted through the cover organizations in the US and Europe. He learned the covert influence/covert action methods in these groups.
Once the Comintern collapsed, Muenzenberg was murdered, and McCarthy exposed the massive subversion of our culture, the Soviet support for the influence disappeared. It was up to Alynsky, and others to apply what they’d learned in the “Innocents Clubs” (that’s what Muenzenberg called the organizations he set up in the USA). Direct links from Muenzenberg to today’s identical organizations set up with names that sound good, but whose goal is to destroy Normal-America — Black Lives Matter; Women’s March; Organizing America; etc, etc.
All the other imputed sources of Politically Correct Progressive beliefs, like “Frankfurt School,” and “critical theory,” and all the rest come directly from Muenzenberg’s work.