‘Cultural Marxism’ Conspiracies Have Found Their Way Into Government: The Left Needs To Fight It Head On
While the concept of ‘Cultural Marxism’ has been in circulation for decades amongst the conspiratorial far-right, its recent presence on the lips of liberal academics and so-called respectable mainstream politicians and pundits has seemed to have slipped under the radar. Readers will be well aware of the lengths that the establishment will go to in undermining the popular appeal of a better world, but while this new rhetorical plaything of the elites appears so deeply unserious as to render giving any respect to it futile, this in fact is a culture war tactic that the left cannot afford to ignore any longer.
‘Cultural Marxism’ now holds considerable pedigree in western political discourse, coming to the fore most prominently in the years following the end of the Cold War, as the newly hegemonic neoliberals sought a new bogeyman to direct their propaganda towards. Often used interchangeably with political correctness and identity politics (although how these developments align with the work of Marx remains a mystery), ‘Cultural Marxism’ is claimed to be a resurgent threat which fundamentally rejects the foundations of western liberal democracy. Proponents of this theory would have you believe that this phenomenon is infecting the west with a culture of intolerance, stifling healthy criticism and debate. This argument has a disturbingly embedded popularity, as it cunningly rests upon premises that are commonly sympathised with — that political correctness can be too stifling, and that student social justice activism can be over-reactive and confrontational. Yet the validity of these premises holds no relevance whatsoever to the notion of an imaginary all-triumphant puppet master left, tightening its grip on cultural institutions.
It is important to deconstruct this notion of ‘the west’, used repeatedly to describe the home of capitalism, individualism and traditional Christian values. ‘Cultural Marxism’ therefore must resemble the opposite: anti-westernism, collectivism, socialism and atheism. It is easy to discard the ‘plotting to destroy the west’ rhetoric so often spouted by trendy faux intellectuals like Jordan Peterson as nothing more than geographical chauvinism — after all, Marxism is a western philosophy, founded in Europe with rich histories across the west thereafter. It does not take a rigorous analysis to discover that what is termed ‘Cultural Marxism’ is not antithetical to western liberal democracy at all. On the contrary, it grows as a result of the ‘western values’ that a coalition of hard right-wingers and classical liberals resort to desperate measures in order to defend — democracy, free speech and expression, and the traditional Christian ethics of manners and tolerance. Crudely speaking, a rejection of the importance of developments like identity politics in social life could be classed as intolerant in itself.
Whether it be in disagreement with anti-capitalist materials in school curricula, or legal rights for self-identification, the ever-accelerating obsession on the right with ‘Cultural Marxism’ serves the purpose of invoking a fantasy spectre to account for things they disagree with, and forms the latest lazy attack on the entirety of the modern left — itself a sizeable umbrella consisting of Marxists, postmodernists, single-issue activists, feminists and progressive liberal politicians. To readers with a vivid memory of the nature of the British left during the Corbyn era, the idea of the above list combining to form a conspiratorial supergroup all agreed upon one common goal will seem absurd — imagining such a united force on the left since the fall of the Berlin Wall more generally is laughable. Jason Wilson’s insight from 2015 on the motives of the ‘Cultural Marxism’ fanatics deserves full quotation:
‘It allows those smarting from a loss of privilege to be offered the shroud of victimhood, by pointing to a shadowy, omnipresent, quasi-foreign elite who are attempting to destroy all that is good in the world.’
However, despite its comical incoherency the left must be wary of undermining the power of this propaganda. ‘Cultural Marxism’ has a rich history of being deployed as a scaremongering tactic for political gain, resulting in lamentable consequences. The term first arrived in the written word, most famously at least, within Nazi propaganda (‘Kultur Bolschewismus’) — advancing a theory of Jewish, Bolshevik Communists plotting to destroy Western civilisation and its values. Fast forward to the 21st century, where Anders Breivik was found to have murdered 77 young Norwegian social democrats in 2011 through a belief that their party was involved in a ‘Cultural Marxist’ plot to dissolve traditional European values by means of mass immigration from the Middle East. In his self-published manifesto, Breivik included the term 107 times. In 2019, Brenton Tarrant killed 51 people across two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Tarrant had written publicly on matters such as ‘The Great Replacement’, and that the western education system has ‘long since fallen to the long march through the institutions committed by the Marxists’.
So why then, has a longstanding far-right talking point slithered its way into appearances in mainstream political culture? It is increasingly the case that the nebulous ‘Cultural Marxism’ is anything Paleo-Conservative reactionaries want it to be. Dubbing anything that seeks to bring about long overdue education and change in attitudes regarding racial or social justice ‘Cultural Marxism’ is far-fetched at best, desperate at worst, and more recently motivated through fear of the re-emergence of popular socialism in the post-pandemic epoch.
It is vital that we on the left more fervently resist the ability of the establishment to weaponize conspiratorial narratives in order to avoid debates they are destined to lose — on class, climate change, housing, poverty and racism — and vocalise our disgust at the attempt to legitimise a phrase which so often finds its way into the hands of the most sinister pockets of humanity.
