Can Dissidents Ever Win?

From stagnation to hope

Handmade drawing by Alessandra Bocchi, original for Founding Members

Dissidents are winning elections, and they increasingly dominate the online political-cultural entertainment sphere, but nothing substantial seems to change in the lives of ordinary citizens. Quite the contrary. Not to sound defeatist, but it’s important to honestly describe our reality. European populists gave us a sense of excitement that Europe could revive itself, yet the economy is increasingly stagnant, young people cannot afford to create their own families or fulfil their professional aspirations, and mass migration is accepted as the new, inevitable normal. The Trump election promised to usher in a new “Golden Age”, yet Americans continue to live through more precariousness, cultural and spiritual degradation, and more Middle Eastern wars. The Epstein revelations gave us hope that we would finally see a glimpse of justice for an unaccountable elite, but the story quickly lost its shock appeal, and nothing came of it. All of these events teach us a valuable lesson if we choose to see it. They reveal how little power voting serves in changing the status quo, and how the organic online community that gives rise to these electoral victories is more limited in function than we believed.

Today, dissidents can learn from those in the past, but I propose a new, adapted format. Antonio Gramsci, the former head of the Italian Communist Party, perhaps the most influential political theorist for the Left, provided progressives with a roadmap to rise up the ranks of institutional power and consolidate their influence. In his book Prison Notebooks, written while imprisoned by Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime, he coined the term “cultural hegemony”, by which he meant:

In the new order, socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.

Gramsci was a prominent founder of neo-Marxism, a movement that was born to explain the failure of 20th-century communism. Karl Marx’s original theory of history was called dialectical materialism; it was composed of a base, defined as the mode of production (in modern society, that was capitalism), which dictated the superstructure, defined as the cultural institutions that constitute the dominant ideology. Marx’s dialectical materialism follows Friedrich Hegel’s “dialectics”, whereby a thesis is confronted by an opposing antithesis, resulting in a synthesis which unifies the two opposing concepts. In contrast to Hegel, Marx believed the material world held precedence over the ideal world, hence the term “dialectical materialism”. However, Gramsci attempted to break away from Marx’s material determinism. In his understanding, Marx was wrong; the false consciousness of the proletariat would be awakened, not by overthrowing the means of production, but the other way around - by taking over the cultural institutions that shape the dominant consensus. No violent revolution was necessary. Control of the superstructure of these cultural institutions was enough for this to trickle down to economics. It was a continuation, and simultaneously an inversion of Marx’s theory of history.

What lessons can neo-Marxists like Gramsci teach dissidents today about the importance of cultural institutions in creating a new ideological consensus? I will use dissidents as an umbrella term to identify today’s intelligentsia who loosely disagree with the dominant neoconservative, neoliberal, and progressive agenda: they include Christian traditionalists, neo-Pagans, classical liberals, new-right wingers, certain libertarians, and old-school leftists who have rebelled against “wokeism” (though it’s a term that I’m allergic to using because of its abuse). I will amalgamate these various emerging ideologies into a single term, “dissidents”, despite their significant differences, because they share a common element in their beliefs. They seek to find an alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy in Western society. They also share a failure, which is their inability to replace it.

It is important to note how modern “right-wingers” have inadvertently understood and supported the value of Gramsci’s theory. Conservatives tend to despise neo-Marxism; the most notable figure vociferously opposed to its thesis is clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson. But some conservatives have adopted its premise. Andrew Breitbart famously said, “politics is downstream from culture”, which is a succinct way of defining Gramsci’s notion that culture dictates politics, not the other way round. Trump’s social media platform, “Truth Social”, is remarkably post-modern in name, as it implies that truth is a mere social construct. But “right-wingers”, in contrast to the neo-Marxists of the day, have failed to capture or create effective parallel cultural institutions that are necessary to win the culture war.

To be clear, the ideas of contemporary dissidents are manifestly successful at the voting booth. The democratic victories of Brexit in the U.K., Donald Trump in the U.S., and Giorgia Meloni in Italy, to name a few, testify to the fact that the liberal establishment, which has largely dominated Western societies since the end of the Cold War, is no longer immune to electoral challenge. Yet it is remarkable how, after a decade, this electoral dissatisfaction fails to translate into an ideological architecture, where the Overton window continues to shift in an opposite direction, and even more fatalistically than before. Notions like the West being embroiled in more Middle Eastern wars, inflationary policies, ongoing economic recessions, and more mass migration would be considered unacceptable. Today, they are passively accepted as the new normal, and individuals feel largely demoralised despite their electoral efforts, realizing there’s no point in participating in politics, and focusing instead on surviving day by day. As if change is becoming a naive dream. Curiously, the ideas that are losing the democratic vote are the ones that increasingly define and constrain our lives outside the halls of power.

Dissidents, therefore, fail to hold power where it truly lies, in the cultural institutions that shape our society’s consciousness. Even when they try to take over these institutions, however, nothing seems to change. And it is because these institutions are a relic of the past that hold society back, rather than bringing us forward to a new cycle. It is important to note that these rebellious thinkers are notably successful in online spaces, in creating engaged political ecosystems through social media networks, YouTube channels, podcasts, and online outlets. These means allow them to sway public opinion; it is through these channels that many have been awakened to the “lies” perpetrated by the legacy media and establishment politicians. Dissenting thinkers dominate an online alternative political space, which has created a thriving culture of its own that relies on entertainment, like a soap opera. But herein lies the issue. It’s predominantly a polemical current, and one that often provides us with a mere illusion of change in our minds that doesn’t translate into real life. We need, instead, to create new parallel cultural institutions that can shape our consciousness to motivate an underlying change in the economic system, in a way that leads us out of stagnation and hopelessness and into organic and lively action.

Art, philosophy, literature, faith. These means provide meta-narratives outside of politics to instil purpose and transcendence. They enable us to live in and contribute to a society that embraces every aspect of our humanity. It is why I have joined a neo-Renaissance arts academy. To take part and contribute in a way that brings meaning and significance to my political and journalistic endeavours. I would like to see a new arts figurative current, but how can I will that movement into existence without being a part of its creation? After all, what is politics without real life?

This phenomenon can be defined as a vicious cycle; these “rebels” are so often fixated with their online political convictions that they become incapable of appreciating the meaning of life outside this partisan vortex. The online space in which they are effectively relegated only reinforces their inability to take part in cultural life. By working predominantly online, in an echo chamber, it is increasingly unlikely for them to shape the living, breathing spaces of their communities outside of their political silos. They often look down upon participants in these communities as “normies” (a pejorative term for people living normal lives, which, to their credit, is appropriate), who haven’t been “redpilled”. An entire lexicon was created to provide a sense of solidarity among this political fringe. But “normies” hold the keys to the changes they so desperately want to see in society, and engaging them is essential. They are crucial to shaping society’s perceptions of value. Without them, dissidents are destined to create parallel, subordinate cultural spheres without the means to influence the mainstream culture they decry.

Dissidents also become captive to their audiences, because our current economic structure requires it. We no longer have patrons; our techno-billionaire class rarely concerns itself with these deeper, transcendental, and cultural matters. So they need to produce ever-increasing contrarian content for the algorithm, feeding their masses of hungry listeners to stay relevant. This trend has been correctly defined as grifting, but it’s losing its power and is now increasingly stigmatized. The audiences are beginning to observe the inconsistencies and the lack of originality of their favorite political celebrities. And while their lamentations are legitimate and have borne their fruits in terms of democratic victories, they now only fortify their marginalisation from the cultural power structures necessary for transformation. If they seek to win the war over people’s consciousness, they need to start, as Gramsci argued, not merely by infiltrating the institutions, we’re past that point. Those institutions are becoming irrelevant. They need to start replacing and creating parallel arts and humanities, schools, universities, media, and places of worship. To create a new intelligentsia that can shape the emerging consensus, convinced that change is possible and that it can be material. If they continue to act as outsiders, that is the fate that will await them. But if they start participating in life actively, new, vibrant communities can emerge. And the ruling classes should start engaging, as they once did, in shaping this growing consensus.

Gramsci said, “The challenge of the modern world is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.” If dissidents want to succeed, the illusion that participation in an increasingly insular online political culture, and that through voting we will effect meaningful change, is one we can’t afford. The escape comes from disillusionment into hopeful action.

Alessandra Bocchi is editor of Alata Magazine and artist at Painting Life.