![]() ![]() Longmarchism served as an all-purpose explanation of everything that angered the right during the Trump era: the belligerence of the news media, increasingly overt hostility from respectable Americans, and the final collapse into failure of the Trump administration. But it was only at the tail end of the Trump administration that a more comprehensive version of the idea suddenly burst forth into the frontal cortex of the conservative mind. The notion that ex-hippies have burrowed into the Establishment (especially universities) has been floating around the right for many years. Rufo initially, erroneously, attributed this strategy to the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, before correctly crediting his disciple Rudi Dutschke, who proposed a “long march through the institutions.” Rufo’s version, which is the most developed iteration of the theory, posits that the 1960’s far left hit a wall when the working class failed to support its revolutionary program, and instead decided to gain control of society from above by burrowing into its elite sectors. Up From Conservatism: Revitalizing the Right After a Generation of Decay, a collection of essays edited by the Claremont Institute’s Arthur Milikh, uses the long march as its premise and proposes an array of retaliatory actions. America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything, by Christopher Rufo, attempts a sweeping historical theory tracing the ascent of a brand of left-wing identity politics from the 1960s New Left to its present position (according to Rufo) of dominance of the commanding heights of American society. Two new books expound upon Longmarchism, as you might call it. Ron DeSantis has placed this theory at the center of his governing vision (“elected officials who do nothing more than get out of the way are essentially greenlighting these institutions to continue their unimpeded march through society,” he writes in his campaign book.) Donald Trump is personally sub-ideological, but the intellectuals around him have embraced it too. The idea has spread so rapidly through the conservative elite that, before it has even gotten a name, the segments of the party most predisposed against it have adopted it. Instead, to my surprise, the only portion of my account he questioned was the word “theory.” To his mind, the long march and its grim implications for the party’s strategy were simply an obvious truism. Since the man I met was exactly the sort of Republican the Trumpists are plotting to displace from power - (Jewish coastal elitist, donor, mortified by Donald Trump, vocally pro–gay marriage yet intrigued by Ron DeSantis, etc.) - I assumed he would express either ignorance of the long-march theory or else outright opposition. This theory has largely been associated with the new, Trumpier factions of the right that have risen up as alternatives to traditional conservatism. I asked him what he made of the new theory sweeping the right, which held that radical leftists had conducted a “long march through the institutions,” seizing control of American culture, education, and business, and thus forcing Republicans to use government to dislodge their power.
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