The national-popular is a cultural historic bloc mediated by intellectuals, not populism

Evidence

The notion of the “popular-national” (or, more frequently “national-popular”) is one of the most interesting and also most widely criticised ideas in Gramsci’s thought. Supposedly at the origin of the cultural policy of the PCI since the war, it is perhaps best taken as describing a sort of “historic bloc” between national and popular aspirations in the formation of which the intellectuals, in the wide, Gramscian use of the term play an essential mediating role. It is important to stress, however, that it is a cultural concept, relating to the position of the masses within the culture of the nation, and radically alien to any form of populism or “national socialism”. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2703

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the national-popular as a cultural historic bloc between national and popular aspirations, with intellectuals as mediators.
• XREF: Core Gramscian tool that later Islamophobia readings will need: the national-popular concept undergirds analyses of how nationalist discourse incorporates or excludes the masses.