Normalization. This term has dominated much discussion of the new authoritarianism and the threat it represents to democratic societies. And rightly so. For we can argue that normalization – along with its antithesis, marginalization – provides a critical criterion to assess the success of any insurgent political project: to what extent are its ideas and values diffusing across society and becoming embraced, such that they might even be considered a new ‘common sense’? The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci is well known for his preoccupation with this question of how the matrix of cultural ideas intersected with economic conditions to allow for transitions between the dominant (or hegemonic) politics of a society. Often this would engage the methodologies socialists might use in order to win power and build an egalitarian society. His outlook challenged ‘vanguardist’ politics, emphasizing instead how a living basis for ideas had to form within society itself as a condition for successful state-level political efforts. But imprisoned by Benito Mussolini for 11 years before his premature death at the age of 46, Gramsci was equally concerned with how far right discourses could enter the body politic. This involved normalizing themselves as organic to the feelings and passions of certain social groups, in order to create the basis for a fascist takeover. A sense of this dual concern with the construction of progressive and reactionary hegemonies can be uncovered in his Prison Notebooks through reading his observations on how socialists might win support in parallel with his analysis of the rise of far right, nativist thought.

Gramsci argued that the process of ‘mass creation’ necessary for transforming the dominant ideas in society could not happen through the mere declaration of ‘a personality or a group … on the basis of its own fanatical philosophical or religious convictions’ (Gramsci, 1971, p 341). Instead all political blocs aiming to achieve power in society had to find a foundation for their ideas among groups in society. ‘Mass adhesion or non-adhesion to an ideology’, he wrote, ‘is the real critical test’ (Gramsci, 1971, p 341). A party that builds up a core base of support could pursue a wider battle of ideas. All ‘hegemony-seeking’ groups need such a foundation.