Antonio Gramsci, Cultural Hegemony, and the Transnational Corporate Elite Project to Reorder Popular Conscious by Assailing Reason and Tradition
Update: 2:21 PM 7.26.24. So much to take in. The best part is when, instead of the self-described “love activist” who played the role of Jesus and her apostles feasting on the body of Apollo, the Greek god of sun, light, prophecy, music, poetry, and healing, they were served the living body of Dionysus, aka Bacchus, the god of wine, fertility (odd choice there), ecstasy, and theater. Apollo, who represents order, reason, and harmony was a no show. Instead we get the god of frenzied dance and rituals seeking to break down the barriers of individuality and transgress social norms. It was the perfect choice given the politics projected by performance. In gender ideology, this is known as “queering” the space. A key part of queering spaces, situations, and activities is to subvert traditional religious beliefs and practices, as well as Enlightenment values, and substitute for them debauchery and nihilism. Hence the role of Jesus played by a “love activist.” You have to grasp both postmodernist politics and the study of mythology to see this for what it was. Although, frankly, it sort of explained itself. Especially when the man in black with his testicles hanging out of his shorts rubbed up against the child right near the “love activist.”
Update: 11:28 PM. I forgot to include this bit. The Olympics are trying to deny the imagery from the opening ceremony. It was not the Last Supper but the Greek god Dionysus they say. “The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.”
Ok, then, Dionysus (the blue Smurf looking dude) was served on a huge dinner plate at a table with an obese woman wearing a halo surrounded by drag queens and cross dressers arranged in such a manner as we see below. (The man in black talking to the child in yellow had his balls hanging out the whole time.) Do a Google search for other depictions of the Last Supper and you will see Jesus with the halo seen in the above image. There is not a chance that this is not mocking Christianity.
Mocking religion is fine. Free speech and all. We’re free to do that. I’m an atheist who has mocked religion many times. I have penned many essays on Freedom and Reason defending the ridiculing of religion. But that’s not really the issue here. The issue is the praxis, i.e., the propagandistic purposes of the performance. I clarify those in this essay. France’s Inter-LGBT President James Leperlier told the Associated Press, “We know in the LGBTQ community in France we are far from what the ceremony showed.” Leperlier is telling us that he wants a France that looks like what was on that stage. This is what I mean by imperial ambition. Moreover, as I show, it’s not the first time the Olympics have been used for imperial ambition.
One last point. I am hearing from people that this is no big deal. Christians are silly for letting this trigger them, etc. Christians understand that this performance is not disconnected from the project to undermine the family and sexualize children. You don’t have to be a Christian to care about that. However, it is typical of the progressive style to deny something is what it is and, when they can no longer deny that, to say that it is no big deal and that others are overreacting. Such pompous posturing is an expression of the elitist mentally that infects the progressive mind.
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The opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics took place along the Seine River, highlighting French culture with athletes parading on boats. Departing from the traditional stadium setting, the event offered picturesque views of Parisian landmarks and featured performances contrasting France’s Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian heritage with decadent postmodern elite culture, one especially focused on elements of trans activism and stylized reflections of the Reign of Terror. The corporate media conveyed the visuals in rhetoric of parody and lightheartedness. In fact, the performances were mocking and subversive. They were, moreover, a clear signal of the presence of the New World Order and its strategy of cultural hegemonic programming.
One notable segment included drag queens parodying Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” which drew criticism from figures like European Parliament member Marion Maréchal. Critics argued that the performance mocked a sacred religious scene and accused the organizers of prioritizing “woke” culture over the traditional Judeo-Christian sensibilities. Indeed. That was its purpose. It was an instantiation of transgressive praxis trans activists call “queering space.” Organizers defended the performance as a celebration of diversity and inclusivity, reflecting contemporary societal values. But these aren’t contemporary societal values. Nor do these performances have anything to do with diversity and inclusivity. These are the “values” of the New Aristocracy, the transnational corporate elite and their subalterns. Performances like this are the products of the culture industrial project to disrupt contemporary societal values to prepare populations for the New World Order, organized by transnational corporate elites.
Using the Olympics to disrupt and reprogram mass consciousness is not a new thing. The 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin, Germany, under Adolf Hitler, were a massive propaganda event for the Nazi regime. Berlin had been awarded the Games in 1931, before the Nazis came to power, but once Hitler assumed control in 1933, the regime quickly recognized the event’s potential to promote National Socialism, the ideology organizing the establishment of totalitarian monopoly capitalism, a system of corporate state control (fascism) not unlike the present-day system being mapped over the world. The Nazis spared no expense in preparing for the Olympics, constructing new facilities like the Reich Sports Field and the iconic Olympic Stadium, all designed to impress visitors and showcase German efficiency and prosperity. (I have published several essays on the contemporary problem of fascism. I have an essay pending on the transhistorical and corporate elements of fascism and their relationship to the European Union. I will provide links to several of these essays there. Stay tuned.)
The regime aimed to demonstrate the supposed superiority of the Aryan race through athletic excellence and efficient organization, ostensibly to bolster national pride and international prestige. More fundamentally, spectacle and personification were designed to prepare mass consciousness for the new world order Hitler envisioned, an order based on corporate statism. The Games provided an opportunity for the regime to soften and sublimate its radical social policies to create a facade of normalcy. The opening ceremony was indeed a grand spectacle, featuring a torch relay from Olympia, Greece, to Berlin, which introduced a tradition that continues to this day. Hitler used the event to present an image of a peaceful, strong, and united Germany. The Nazis skillfully used media, including film and radio, to broadcast the event globally, commissioning filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to create the documentary “Olympia,” which presented a glorified image of the Games and Nazi Germany.
To understand what happened last night in Paris, I find helpful the insights of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist theorist (author of the Prison Notebooks), who introduced the concept of “cultural hegemony” to show how dominant groups in society maintain their power not merely through coercion but by manufacturing consent, that is by controlling mass consciousness, a feat enabled by elite control over the sense-making institutions, including the culture industry, educational institutions, mass media, progressional associations, and regulatory agencies. Cultural hegemony refers to the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values—so that their worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm, the new social logic, or common sense. Ironically, Gramsci’s theory, meant to expose how elite domination worked, became the blueprint for elite domination going forward, as corporatists (social democrats) and progressives colonized the sense-making institutions in part using Gramsci’s insights. The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics was not extraordinary when you understand what is happening to Western Civilization.
In Gramsci’s view, cultural hegemony is achieved through the institutions that produce and disseminate culture, including education, the media, religion, and, crucially, the family, which is why family relations and the organic beliefs and values that sustain them are the main target of elite propaganda and traditional institutional disruption. Although the praxis of queering space was not an element in Gramsci’s criticism, he would certainly have recognized the praxis as a tactic in a project to disorder common sense. Queering space is the act of overthrowing heteronormativity by disrupting the most basic truths of gender and gender relations and the importance of norms safeguarding children and women. Drag queens in this context represents the practice of “woman-face” where men appropriate feminine stereotypes and exaggerate them to degrade women and emasculate men. The costumes are clownish for a reason: they’re aimed at children. the queer project is essentially pedophilic in character. This is what is being mapped over the West. It’s why public school classrooms are festooned in Pride Progress propaganda, etc.
Transnational corporate capitalism, characterized by the globalization of markets and the concentration of economic power in multinational corporations, has extended this hegemony on a global scale and, with it, established cultures of futility and perversion intentionally designed to confuse and disorganize the masses, undermine the family, and take control over individuals. These corporations wield commanding influence over global institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the United Nations (UN), which play pivotal roles in shaping economic policies, health guidelines, and political decisions that affect billions of people worldwide. Professional associations, such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), its mission to promote the medical-industrial project of producing simulated sexual identities through body modification euphemized as “transgender health,” depend on the successful disordering of social logics organic to the species to accumulate ever more power and privilege.
The people must see what they see and resist the woke mind virus. Global institutions, ostensibly created to promote international cooperation and development, exist to serve the interests of the global corporate elite. The policies advocated by these institutions reflect the priorities of transnational corporations and wealthy nations, leading to economic practices that exacerbate inequalities and entrench corporate power. For example, structural adjustment programs imposed by the IMF and World Bank require countries to adopt neoliberal economic policies, such as austerity and the deconstruction of democratic governance structures, which benefit transnational corporations at the expense of local economies and governments. Today, austerity and antidemocratic machinations have been come standard operations. This is the function of climate hysteria and pandemic preparedness. All these institutions embrace and project the elite queer project, which is being pressed into the rest of society across institutions private and public. The spectacle of last night’s opening ceremony was a high-profile moment to push the agenda even deeper into mass consciousness, to make paraphilias appear popular and normal.
The media, as part of the broader culture industry, plays a crucial role in maintaining cultural hegemony. Owned and controlled by a small number of powerful conglomerates, the media shapes public perception by framing issues, selecting what news to report, and how to report it. This concentration of media ownership limits the diversity of viewpoints and reinforces the dominant capitalist ideology. News outlets and entertainment media propagate narratives that support consumerism and the legitimacy of the corporate state, while marginalizing or vilifying alternative perspectives, including populism and substantive critiques of corporate power and authoritarian governments. As outrage was expressed across the West at the mocking of Christianity, the media’s role was to reframe it as exceptional and playful.
What the world saw last night was the work of the culture industry. Cultural hegemony works in realm of beliefs and values. Hollywood, popular music, social media platforms (X excluded), television—the culture industry portrays traditional institutions such as Christianity and the family in a negative light, while elevating the perversions of gender ideology. This can be seen as part of a broader effort to undermine these institutions’ authority and replace them with values that align more closely with corporate interests, such as bureaucratic collectivism and technocratic control. By mocking or devaluing traditional family relations and religious beliefs, the culture industry contributes to a cultural environment where the corporate worldview is normalized, and alternatives are marginalized. It replaces the family with the corporation and the old religion with the neoreligion of gender ideology and other postmodernist notions.
What is the New World Order? It’s a globalized world where national boundaries are effectively erased, and economic and political power is concentrated in the hands of a world elite who control all sense-making institutions. It’s not a conspiracy. It isn’t a Jewish cabal. It is right in front of you if you only open them and see it for what it is. Fully integrating populations of the world into the new order is facilitated by the establishment of cultural hegemony which is mean to close your eyes to all it. Through corporate media, the culture industry and transnational institutions, the global elite promote values that support their interests at the expense of democratic governance, local cultures, and national sovereignty. Because the nation-state system is dependent upon the Judeo-Christian traditions and Enlightenment principles from which it emerged to sustain its integrity, those traditions and principles must be destroyed.
But we can stop it if we understand and organize against it. Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony provides a powerful framework for understanding how transnational corporate capitalism maintains its dominance in the contemporary world. The corporatists certainly understood that, and used the man’s work, penned in a prison cell in Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, to mastermind their long march through the institutions. By controlling global institutions and shaping cultural and moral narratives, the transnational corporate elite perpetuate a system that serves their interests while marginalizing alternative viewpoints and undermining traditional institutions. Understanding cultural hegemony is crucial if are to challenge and promote instead a more free and just world, a world governed by democratic-republic values in the context of a system of sovereign nation-states ordered by classical liberal values.
freedom and reason 
Strong stuff, as always. Well done.