Political parties can serve foreign powers rather than their own interests

Evidence

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. Hence it is always possible to pose the question of whether the parties exist by virtue of their own strength, as their own necessity, or whether rather they only exist to serve the interests of others (and indeed in polemics this point is never overlooked, in fact it is even a recurring theme, especially when the answer is not in doubt-so that it takes hold and creates doubts). — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 683

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the toolkit concept of how internal divisions are exploited by foreign powers; would pair well with postcolonial/nationalist readings in the Islamophobia module. — connects to: The Democratic Party functions as a state department, not a real party — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 324