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Let me introduce you to a social science term: hegemony. (Murmurs: thats a political term; he's wearing no pants) Rather, the term hegemony as described by Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was a 19^th century social theorist who was jailed by a newly fascist Italy for being a leader in the communist party. Eighty years later, his work is still debated and utilized. Imagine, say, a less ivory-tower Chomsky being thrown in jail today and producing over 2000 pages of theory which remained relevant through 2090; fucking aces. Gramsci used the word hegemony to describe relations of social dominance and subordination. A hegemonic social class is able to coerce subordinate classes into accepting, adopting and internalizing its system of values and norms. Gramsci his take on hegemony to describe the shit situation he was faced with then and, ironically, with which we are faced now: the pungent and strapping tendrils of consumer capitalism.

Our reining hegemony, like all hegemonies, maintains it power through a mix of consent and coercion (like Machiavelli’s prince for those who care or are pretending to care). Coercion is exercised through the legal apparatus of the State and consent is fostered through control of the social institutions of civil society. Our most minute action, our daily left-foot, right-foot bullshit is profoundly prejudiced by an amorphous conglomerate dubbed ‘civil society’: the ensemble of voluntary ideological and culture relations which form the fabric of our social lives. Grandma’s erotic book club, Grandpa’s whittling circle, Neo-nazi gangs, environmental advocacy groups, its all in there, everything outside of the force-backed structures of the State. Within civil society, there are bodies, institutions that, perhaps unwittingly, work to underpin a specific political structure in civil society: “the church, the educational system, the press, all the institutions which helped create in people certain modes of behavior and expectations consistent with the hegemonic social order” (Cox 1983: 164).

(is it too heavy, can they hear me? …)

It seems clear that the American educational system is geared towards producing producers, human capital for feeding hungry machines. Today’s students jump through standardized hurdles with a #2 pencil clenched between increasingly dulled teeth; they are learning to repeat. The press, jesus. It whores out fifteen second sound clips and thoughtless discussion with a swagger that belies it’s role as a mind control device; its content makes love to the status quo while the whole mess professes its role as guard of truth and reality. Endless Baby-Jessicas are falling down wells, fusing all eyes to the scrolling headlines and stock quotes, between which, with the right kind of eyes, you can see the terror that lies just beyond the electrified boundaries of this Magic Kingdom nation.

The influence of the Hegemony is so bare it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so fucking frightening. What can be done? Gramsci dreamed of two ways to challenge hegemony. One, a ‘war of movement,’ is useless here; polishing up our glocks and attempting to overwhelm the physical apparatus of the State will not destroy this hegemony, it is firmly entrenched within civil society. Neither guns nor anti-guns can stop the Hegemony, if the State falls, there will be an endless array of processes to back it up. Consumer capitalist values are all but grafted to the modern psyche; it will take more than bloody revolution to change that. Instead, we choose a ‘war of position’ in which we create alternatives; new social institutions, new relationships, a new civil society which undermines the power of the Hegemony through propagating a counter-hegemonic way of life.

(Swaying from left to right, the reader wants to know how this is relevant)