This blog was written by Laura Hassler, Director and Founder of Musicians Without Borders
Antonio Gramsci, prophet of our times: the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.
Gramsci wrote this in 1924, in an age when European colonialism still thrived in all its racism and barbarity, an age in which the end-product of capitalism and imperialism on the home front – fascism – grew.
Imprisoned from 1926-1937 – 11 years – Gramsci died shortly thereafter.
These days, many quote him, especially these prophetic words. ‘Now is the time of monsters.’
Reading about Gramsci, I notice that all the philosophers he quotes, all the Marxists and revolutionary leaders whose theories are discussed and debated – they are all men. Of course. The brilliant women thinkers of those times went largely unnoticed. Today, wanting to understand what is happening, I follow more sites and podcasts than is good for my own mental health, and notice, even today, that most of them are moderated by men, and most of their guests are men. And most of them, not all but most, are talking about war, about weapons, about economics, about power struggles. Very few are talking about life, about protecting life, about cherishing life.
It is not for a lack of smart, informed, reflective women. In the last few months, I have attended inspiring talks by several of them, including Naledi Pandor, Noura Erakat, Mariam Barghouti, Sally Rooney, and Varsha Gandikota. Women, one and all, who speak about the human values, the life realities, the impacts of global politics on human beings that are so basic to the reasons to oppose the political and military powers of our day. Why are they not on the mainstream news, not even the alternative mainstream?
Meanwhile, I chat with a colleague, a young man, smart, skillful, professional, who talks about his baby boy and how they see that the little one loves music. How he loves to walk with his little son in a carrier, close to his chest. When I was a young mother, only the women carried their babies. Fathers, it seems, couldn’t connect with infants, and waited to bond with children until children were old enough to hold rational conversations.
In my mind, I make a connection between the inability of that generation of fathers to embrace an infant, and the age of monsters.
Today, while the old colonialism is dead, neo-colonialism is alive and well: the men of the ‘white’ countries still dominate, controlling most of the world through banks and debt and corrupt client regimes, extracting natural resources from the global south, dominating economies, trade and global wealth. Look at the US, demanding jurisdiction over the Strait of Hormuz – a half a world away – threatening to destroy an entire civilization. Look at western-led corporations, stealing the wealth of the Global South. Look at the domination of western military power across the world. (The US alone has more than 800 military bases in other countries.) And also: look at the billionaire ‘tech bros’, claiming that empathy is our greatest human weakness. And look at the continuous squandering of the world’s wealth on the war industry, on bombs and guns and fighter jets and drones and AI targeting and all the bloody rest.
Yes, there is now some resistance – whoever imagined that a country like Iran could successfully challenge US hegemony in Western Asia, the results reverberating across the globe?
But it’s still the men, vying for military, physical, economic power. And meanwhile killing mercilessly – first 165 schoolgirls, and then thousands more across the region. And the podcasts and talk shows focus on the strategic and military response to western power. But it’s still only about physical, military power. Not about life and protecting life, not about survival, connection, community. Not about that which connects us – empathy, our ability to understand our common humanity.
Can this new generation of men, who know how to hold a baby, align with women who step into leadership in opposing genocide, opposing militarism, standing for our human and planetary rights – can we together be the force that brings the change we need, that confronts the monsters and steers us away from them?
My dear colleague, with his little boy, there’s some hope for us all.
Laura Hassler, May 2026
