"Cultural Marxism"

The term used to refer to Gramsci's idea that mature and entrenched capitalism cannot be overcome without a preparatory stage in which the pervasive cultural hegemony of bourgeois values is gradually replaced over time with a cultural hegemony of values of and favoring the working classes.

Those using the expression "cultural Marxism" were generally right wingers like Pat Buchanan and others wishing to spread alarm that the transitional process in the West is well underway, pointing to the influence of the left, and particularly of political correctness and those called "social justice warriors" on American campuses.

But a YouTube clip of James O'Brien talking with an anti-alt.right caller led to O'Brien claiming it is somehow tied to some right wing and specifically anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

You know, Marx, Trotsky, and a lot of the others were Jews, as were members of the Frankfurt School.

So I guess that was going to happen.

And it is after all a central theme uniting Nazi anti-Semitism with Nazi anti-Communism.

What the Fascists did to Gramsci.

On 9 November 1926, the Fascist government enacted a new wave of emergency laws, taking as a pretext an alleged attempt on Mussolini's life several days earlier. 

The fascist police arrested Gramsci, despite his parliamentary immunity, and brought him to the Roman prison Regina Coeli.

At his trial, Gramsci's prosecutor stated, "For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning".

He received an immediate sentence of five years in confinement on the island of Ustica and the following year he received a sentence of 20 years' imprisonment in Turi, near Bari.

Over 11 years in prison, his health deteriorated: "His teeth fell out, his digestive system collapsed so that he could not eat solid food... he had convulsions when he vomited blood, and suffered headaches so violent that he beat his head against the walls of his cell."

An international campaign, organised by Piero Sraffa at Cambridge University and Gramsci's sister-in-law Tatiana, was mounted to demand Gramsci's release.

In 1933 he was moved from the prison at Turi to a clinic at Formia, but was still being denied adequate medical attention.

Two years later he was moved to the "Quisisana" clinic in Rome. 

He was due for release on 21 April 1937 and planned to retire to Sardinia for convalescence, but a combination of arteriosclerosis, pulmonary tuberculosis, high blood pressure, angina, gout and acute gastric disorders meant that he was too ill to move.

Gramsci died on 27 April 1937, at the age of 46.