Comment by datsci_est_2015
8 hours ago
It’s a pretty commonly repeated theory amongst far right / reactionary “thought leaders”. They call it the “Long March Through the Institutions”. I think the comment you were responding to was ironically referencing it.
The phrase wasn't concocted by the right wing, it's was coined by a left-winger as an explicit plan of approach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institu...
> To extend the base of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working within them, but not simply by 'boring from within', rather by 'doing the job', learning (how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time preserving one's own consciousness in working with others.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a German student activist's definitionally anodyne proposal to engage with society and barely referenced in the decades since has probably been coopted more than a little to concoct a new boogeyman for the right wing.
Yes, often one wing of political thought leaders will adopt terms and ideas from the other wing to serve as a foundation for their theories. I never suggested that the term itself was invented by someone on the right, merely that it’s a term widely used to describe the very specific idea of a calculated political effort to expel conservatives from academia. Ironically, Rudi’s ambitions were much more grand than simply transforming academia, he wanted to transform society.
Anyway, what you presented is not a “gotcha”, despite the fact that I’ve heard it a million times when engaging with right wing “intellectuals”. It’s still a conspiracy theory.
It's not especially a "right wing theory" anymore than climate change is a "left wing theory"
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/conservati...
You misunderstand, the idea of the “Long March Through the Institutions” is that innocent conservative intellectuals are the victims of a central, coordinated campaign for them to be expelled from academia in order to transform academia into an institution that serves leftwing agendas. It’s an explicit rejection that such a transformation could occur naturally, and can fairly be considered a conspiracy theory by the mainstream specifically because it meets Barkun’s criteria for conspiracy theories:
as well as the lack of a smoking gun.
I don't really buy that idea, but like the one black guy at the Country Line Dance, you get the strong vibe you are not in the right place, and kind of just want to leave, regardless of how people are upfront treating you.
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