National Conservatism

It's now becoming clear that the term "Cultural Marxism" is being gradually normalised on the political right, despite its history as a conspiracy theory and its well-known antisemitic connotations. According to the Guardian's coverage of the National Conservatism conference in London this week, the term is now "controversial", which contrasts with its more robust interpretation a few years ago. Presumably it will shortly be described as "contentious" and finally as evidence of a legitimate concern. While the paper's Peter Walker rowed back on that earlier choice of word later in the week with an analysis expressing "concern", he also included the suggestion that speakers might be using the term "naively". In other words, the right are being extended the sort of benefit of the doubt that was conspicuously absent in the coverage of the left during the Corbyn years when entirely legitimate criticism of Isreal was routinely branded as antisemitic. One other notable difference is that the media considered the possibility of the left winning the Labour leadership to be simply impossible until it happened while they appear almost resigned to the far-right taking over the Conservative Party.

It was notable that in Walker's report the term "globalists" was described as "a populist repurposing of leftwing criticism about economic globalisation and the increased power of corporations". The hints of horseshoe theory in that framing ignore that the term is common among historians of neoliberalism, and not just "leftwing" ones. Obviously globalists, in the sense of proponents of economic globalisation, is not the same as globalists as a proxy for "rootless cosmpolitans". But in framing it as the language of the extremes, liberals are able to dismiss the term altogether, much as many of them have taken to dismissing the historical reality of neoliberalism itself. Likewise, the readiness of commentators at the Jewish Chronicle to excuse the Tories' increasing use of the term Cultural Marxism with what amounts to an "It's complicated" defence is notable for the emphasis it places on the possibility of a non-antisemitic use, going so far as to suggest there's a legitimate concern by reviving the hoary old trope of Herbert Marcuse warping the minds of American youth in the 1960s.

This indulgence of the far-right is partly down to the way that antisemitism has been increasingly cast as primarily a problem on the left. This is not just a result of Corbyn derangement syndrome, and the media campaign it produced in the UK with the Jewish Chronicle a notable contributor, but of the longer running evolution of the antagonism between Israeli ethno-nationalism and progressive solidarity with Palestinians. This has seen the chief threat to Jews in the West reframed as the largely powerless political left at the same time as the actual existential threat to Israel has declined in the face of a nationalist cohabitation in the Middle East, following the Camp David Accords in 1978. With the delicate development of a three-way modus vivendi between Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran now underway, we can expect the focus on the leftist bogey to increase, which in turn means greater leeway for the political right in the West to exploit antisemitic tropes so long as they steer clear of overt Jew-hatred, or at least make it plausibly deniable.

Ironically, this growing tolerance (if not full acceptance) of the term Cultural Marxism reflects the way that its antisemitic animus is being pushed into the background in favour of a more generalised conspiracy theory that encompasses other minorities and their activism, from Black Lives Matter to trans rights. This was fully on display at the National Conservatism conference which was little more than a series of rants about people that the right hate, such as immigrants, graduates and women who decline to be brood mares. But as is always the case when the reactionary id is given free rein, that antisemitic element continues to lurk in the shadows. It will remain as the occult meta-narrative behind the interlinked conspiracy theories. For example, the claim that the "Great Replacement" of European Christians by Muslims is being organised behind the scenes by Jews like George Soros. It's a basic tenet of reactionary thought that if you dig deep enough into any topic considered malign or corrosive of society you will eventually find the Jews at work.

While the liberal wing of the Conservative Party has sat glumly by and worried about the direction of travel, many in the political centre have greeted the conference with ridicule, as if this development could be satirically dismissed as Fascist cosplay or laughed off as the raving of eccentric loons. But it's actually evidence that right-of-centre opinion-formers, including MPs such as Miriam Cates and Jacob Rees-Mogg, and the sort of people who get columns in The Times, like Katherine Birbalsingh, have bought into a paranoid worldview in which the nation is under threat from nefarious forces. The appearance of Michael Gove as the responsible adult, suggesting that the Tories need to turn down the dial on the "culture war", is significant not because it suggests the party may be more resilient but because it suggests that the door was long ago flung open to instrumental paranoia. Given his own history of indulging Islamophobic conspiracy claims, such as in the Trojan Horse affair, this should be obvious.

Some in the political centre have decided that the shift to the right spells electoral doom for the Tories. But this is to ignore that the direction of the party is usually a reliable guide as to where Labour will drift next, not simply in the tactical sense of opportunistically seizing the ground vacated but in the more instinctual sense of being unable to imagine a politics that isn't defined in conservative terms. The misjudgement of allowing Corbyn to contest the leadership in 2015 arose from the belief that giving the left's ideas an "airing" would lead to their rejection. The purge of the left since 2019 is intended to prevent that same mistake ever being made again, which means that the only permissible direction in which the party can now ideologically develop is towards the right. That Keir Starmer has adopted the language of performative patriotism, and now even goes so far as to describe Labour as the real conservative party, is not unrelated to the national conservative turn.