Business guru Peter Drucker supposedly coined the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast” to describe how the persistence of institutional culture defeats management reforms in large organizations such as businesses or government agencies. There’s some argument about whether Drucker actually uttered these precise words or simply inspired one of his many acolytes to coin it, but there can be no doubt of its potency. Anyone who has ever fought a cultural reform battle inside and organization — as I did for many years in the world of nuclear security — know just how painfully true this is.
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Conservatives have learned, to their great cost, that the Drucker dictum also applies, and in spades, to the larger business of reclaiming our country from the “progressive” onslaught. I’ve written about this before here and here and here at The American Spectator, and, in just this last week, several of my favorite TAS colleagues have focused fresh attention on the challenges we face.
Start with Itxu Diaz, whose essay last Tuesday describes how the left is just evolving in one direction, namely the most radical version of itself. He sums this up in this potent observation, “The past four years have taught us that the culture war must be fought where culture actually resides: in the media, universities, and major corporations.”
As long as we sit back and allow ourselves to be hammered, we will only lose ground.
He further notes that, while conservatives kept talking to themselves in recent decades, the left very consciously set out to capture these institutions. My only quibble, having watched this personally for seven decades and studied the history of the 1920s and 1930s, is that this is no recent development — it started over a century ago, in Bolshevik Russia.
There, and through the machinations of the Comintern, Soviet Russia’s agency of foreign influence, communists and their fellow travelers everywhere became agents of influence, “influencers” before the term gained currency. The influential German film industry of the 1920s was filled with radical leftists. Hollywood itself came under left-wing influence in the 1930s, something that grew apace during WWII, when sympathy for our Soviet allies could be rebranded as “patriotic.”
For all the attempts to “whitewash” various leftist screenwriters, directors, and actors since the 1950s, the so-called “blacklists” reflected some very dark behavior. It’s no accident that Ronald Reagan’s first political battles grew from his encounter with these underground elements and their baleful influence in the movie industry. Something very similar occurred in our colleges and universities. The stage for 1960s hard core student radicalism was set by the “soft” Marxism of many supposedly liberal professors, who gained tenure and vast influence in the 1940s and 1950s.
From high to low, then, and for a very long time, the “commanding heights” of American culture, to borrow a phrase from Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin, have been under assault. Lenin, after all, understood a few things about achieving dominance; our new Leninists of the “Democratic Socialists of America,” and their cadre of influential fellow travelers have taken Lenin’s lesson to heart. In this respect, Itxu Diaz’s point is very well taken. What once was subtle and gradual has now become urgently aggressive and openly vicious.
Our Lou Aguilar personalized this point in his recent painful lament about the book publishing industry. I find it utterly reprehensible that Lou’s publishers, with whom he’s enjoyed a productive relationship, chose to cancel his latest novel for overtly political reasons. My own experience with the publishing community leaves me disgusted, but not at all surprised. As Lou correctly notes, the “Big Five” publishers have long been captured by the so-called “progressive” literary establishment.
If one has any doubts about this, “Big Five” publisher Simon & Schuster just underscored the point by choosing, through its Atria Books imprint, to republish two notorious works by the Palestinian-American radical feminist author, Susan Abulhawa. Ms. Abulhawa’s work and her public rhetoric are so full of anti-Semitic hatred that even New York Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, in most respects her ideological compatriot, has distanced himself, calling her rhetoric “patently unacceptable” and “reprehensible.”
When your Jew hatred is too much even for Mamdani, then you’ve surpassed even the outermost boundaries of disgusting behavior. Yet here is Simon & Schuster, one of the bastions of the publishing industry, choosing to promote your work. One suspects that the Jewish founders of the company which still bears their names must be doing about 3,500 RPM in their respective graves. Once again, a tip of the hat to our own Anna Miller, who highlights this monstrosity in her article for The American Spectator on August 12, (READ MORE: Simon & Schuster Should Explain Its Decision to Republish Susan Abulhawa)
Sadly, it doesn’t stop there. Even the smaller, supposedly “independent” publishers remain prisoners of a Zeitgeist that rewards angry leftist tropes or touchy-feely LGBTQ-tinted feminism to define the limits of “acceptable” fiction. Years ago, before I found liberation by turning my back on the conventional publishing industry, I was told, repeatedly, that there was no longer a market for male newcomers to the action/adventure or mystery market. When I sought support among the supposedly “independent” community of small publishers, I found it equally unwelcoming, for explicitly political reasons.
One sees this in its highest form, of course, in the movies and TV. I love thrillers populated with “strong female characters,” not least because in my career in counter-terrorism and nuclear security, I came across quite a few women who personified strength and who repeatedly demonstrated capabilities that earned them a respected place in those fields. But I frankly despise, the cardboard cutout “superwoman” adventure series characters, who strike me as lame parodies, insulting to the real women I’ve known in these fields.
It all makes for a depressing litany, and yet there is reason for hope, for the simplest of reasons. Conservatives have finally decided to fight back, and not just by confining themselves to defensive, rearguard battles. For too long, we’ve contented ourselves with critiquing the output of the likes of Disney and the other purveyors of woke garbage. For far too long, as Itxu Diaz observes, we’ve allowed them, in military terms, to “shape the battlespace.” Now, however, there are small tactical victories all around us.
Once again, the pages of this week’s The American Spectator offer ample reminders of what can be. Daniel Flynn presents one example in his review of W. H. Crocker’s new WWII adventure novel, Kruger’s Korps, which I now look forward to reading. In his review, Flynn notes that the author,” allows the reader to pass the time more pleasantly, without the obligatory sermons so many authors regard as more important than the story,” and then concludes with the trenchant observation that “the secret of success for a conservative novelist involves more novel, less conservative.”
(I find it hugely ironic that Kruger’s Korps is published by the same Simon & Schuster that is throwing anti-Semitic drivel in our faces, but Crocker evidently earns a pass by virtue of being an established writer and editor, thus well-credentialed in the publishing community.)
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The left understood Flynn’s point a long time ago, an understanding that accounted for much of their culture war success. Take, for example, the 1960 Kirk Douglas movie Spartacus. The historical Spartacus had long been embraced by communists as an inspirational model for working class heroism; when the communist party in Germany staged an uprising in 1919, the insurgents proudly labeled themselves “Spartakists.”
The eponymous novel that inspired Spartacus was written by Howard Fast, a dedicated member of the Communist Party of the USA; Dalton Trumbo, famous among the ranks of Hollywood’s blacklisted Communists, wrote the screenplay. Yet American moviegoers, who flocked to the movie in vast numbers, absorbed the underlying radical message only subliminally, in much the manner as many other movies of the era.
The quiet subversion, however, set the stage for much of the harder edged radicalism that would emerge in the Sixties and Seventies. One can chart a path from these movies to sympathy for Castro, the elevation of “Che” to iconic status, even to the college campus chants of “Ho-ho-Ho-Chi-Minh.” Jane Fonda didn’t emerge out of nowhere, nor did many of the other leftist filmmakers. The ground had been tilled and fertilized for a very long time.
Ironically, the leftist cultural juggernaut seems to have forgotten the source of their ideological success. New movies regularly tank because the makers insist on browbeating audiences with their political messages. The publishing industry laments the disappearance of readers, consoling itself that this is structural, the result of readers turning to other, less demanding forms of entertainment. The idea that readers don’t want propaganda tracts dressed up as entertainment seems to have escaped them altogether.
This creates a huge opening for conservatives. Thankfully, some are already doing just that. Greg Maresca’s review this week of Angel Studios’ new movie, The Brink of War, illustrates how one takes advantage of this opening. The movie tells the story of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Iceland, dramatizing a pivotal diplomatic moment that led directly to the end of the Cold War. This is important history, history that the mainstream moviemakers have avoided because they can’t bring themselves to portray Ronald Reagan positively. As Maresca describes it, however, the movie works because it tells this important story entertainingly. Angel Studios seemingly has broken the code when it comes to telling stories with great production values, quality acting, and narratives that moviegoers can actually enjoy.
This stands in stark contrast to many earlier attempts at “conservative” moviemaking — I won’t embarrass anyone by naming culprits — that were tiresome exercises in ideological drumbeating, poorly produced, and with dialogue seemingly written so as not to offend the most vaporous of little old ladies — call it the “tea cozy” school of filmmaking.
Much the same quality has infused too much of supposedly conservative fiction writing. It’s very hard to have readers sit still through 300 pages confected out of the fulminations of a third-rate political after-dinner speech and the narrative sensibilities of an IKEA assembly manual. The departure point must be entertainment, a good story, one with rich characters, well-told. The message can certainly be explicit, but it should never hit the reader in the face with a 2X4.
One can see the outlines of this emerging, in the Flynn and Maresca reviews this week, but not just in those instances. Even Lou Aguilar’s painful rejection shouldn’t be discouraging, not to my friend Lou, nor to the rest of us who are similarly engaged. Every day more and more of us are finding new and profitable pathways to circumvent the stranglehold of the woke establishment.
Look, for example, at how Scott McKay’s new Mike Holman novel is now coming to you in the pages of The American Spectator, a publishing approach that harkens back to the days of Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, testament to how the old can become very new again, and even more how the time has come for us all to become more creative. And, by the way, do look at Scott’s new novel, I’ve seen a preview and it is great, and a perfect example of good conservative storytelling.
I can’t resist inviting you to read my own Letter of Reprisal and The Zebras from Minsk, which readers have found to be good and entertaining examples of conservative storytelling. Despite lacking a major support platform, I’ve even managed to reach an international audience. Oh, and Angel, if you’re reading this, my readers also think these would make good movies.
Ukraine’s recent successes have come about because they quit trying to win a conventional slugging match with a more conventionally powerful adversary. Instead of trying to match tank for tank or soldier for soldier, they now hunt down individual Russian soldiers with cheap, off the shelf, drones and destroy critical Russian infrastructure with newly crafted long-range strategic drone weapons of their own devising.
I realize the analogy is stretched, but still, the point should be clear. As long as we sit back and allow ourselves to be hammered, we will only lose ground. If we sit back and wait for powerful patrons to save us, we will wait in vain. Powerful patrons will always look for worthy subjects for patronage, which we should be at pains to provide. We should also be mindful that the most powerful patron of all is a vast public that wishes to be entertained and then, perhaps, instructed, and not the other way around. But if we focus on promoting conservative talent, and building an entertaining and attractive cultural message, I’m convinced that we can work wonders.
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James H. McGee is a retired nuclear security and counter-terrorism professional. His most recent novel, The Zebras from Minsk, was featured among National Review’s favorite books in 2025. His next novel, The Cathedral of Sorrows, will directly focus on the plight of Africa’s Christians. You can find The Zebras from Minsk and his previous thriller, Letter of Reprisal in paperback and Kindle editions at Amazon. The Cathedral of Sorrows will appear this fall.
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