Great powers weaken rivals by backing their internal opposition parties
Evidence
With regard to party conceit, this may be said to be worse than the national conceit of which Vico speaks. Why? Because a nation cannot help existing; and in the fact that it exists it is always possible—maybe with a little goodwill and an invocation of the texts—to discover that its existence is pregnant with destiny and significance. A party on the other hand may not exist by virtue of its own strength. It should never be forgotten that, in the struggle between the nations, it is in the interest of each one of them that the other should be weakened by internal struggles—and the parties are precisely the elements of internal struggle. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 683
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects forward to the Islamophobia readings’ treatment of state sponsorship of communal/identity factions, and to Gramsci’s later hegemony passages in this module.