‘The time of monsters’: everyone is quoting Gramsci – but what did he actually say?

<p>Line handily sums up people’s bewilderment at state of world, but it isn’t quite what the Marxist thinker wrote</p><p>At a time when geopolitical certainties of old are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/06/donald-trump-new-world-order-venezuela-cuba-mexico-colombia-greenland">crumbling away</a>, it has become the go-to quote to make sense of the current moment in all its seeming senselessness. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters” is a line attributed to the former Italian Communist party leader Antonio Gramsci.</p><p>Over the last two months alone, it has been quoted – and often mangled – by a <a href="https://euobserver.com/197346/belgium-slams-monster-trump-at-davos-amid-eu-criticism/">rightwing Belgian prime minister</a>, a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1384297856685247">leftwing British political leader</a>, an <a href="https://www.centralbank.ie/news/article/speech-new-zealand-business-network-ireland-and-business-international-trading-alliance-governor-makhlouf-17-November-2025">Irish central banker</a> and in the title of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002mmrv">most recent BBC Reith lecture</a>, given by the author Rutger Bregman.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/14/the-time-of-monsters-everyone-is-quoting-gramsci-but-what-did-he-actually-say">Continue reading...</a>