International bodies like religions function as transnational political parties mediating between nations

Evidence

Religion, for example, has always been a source of such national and international ideological-political combinations, and so too have the other international organisations Freemasonry, Rotarianism, the Jews, career diplomacy. These propose political solutions of diverse historical origin, and assist their victory in particular countries—functioning as international political parties which operate within each nation with the full concentration of the international forces. A religion, freemasonry, Rotary, Jews, etc., can be subsumed into the social category of “intellectuals”, whose function, on an international scale, is that of mediating the extremes, of “socialising” the technical discoveries which provide the impetus for all activities of leadership, of devising compromises between, and ways out of, extreme solutions. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 764

Categorization

• XREF: Frames religion as a transnational ‘intellectual’ layer — directly preparative for how Islamophobia readings treat global Islamist and global anti-Muslim movements as coordinated international forces operating within national contexts.
• QUESTION: Gramsci’s inclusion of ‘the Jews’ as an international political party is a striking pre-1948 formulation — worth tracing how this sits with the racialized Jew of his own era and with Said-style critique of such lumping.