Religion can bind intellectuals and masses only when it originates from the people

Evidence

It must be observed that in Italy, unlike other countries, not even religion acted as an element of cohesion between people and intellectuals, and that for this very reason the philosophical crisis of the intellectuals did not extend to the people, because it did not originate from the people and there did not exist a ‘national-popular bloc’ in the religious field. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2641

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘national-popular bloc’ concept as cohesion between intellectuals and people.
• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s hegemony and organic intellectual framework that later Islamophobia readings build on — the gap between elite and popular culture as a precondition for ideological control failing.