It’s not often you have a public row about the meaning of “cultural Marxism”, but in the heated cauldron of contemporary politics, almost anything can become a controversy.
Last week, Tory MP and leading Brexiter Suella Braverman spoke of “this ongoing creep of cultural Marxism which has come from Jeremy Corbyn”. Critics seized on the phrase as being antisemitic. The Board of Deputies of British Jews observed that the phrase originated with the Nazis, who used the term Kulturbolschewismus (cultural Bolshevism) to accuse Jewish intellectuals of moral degeneracy. The deputies urged Braverman not to use the phrase in future. She insisted she was simply referring to Corbyn’s “authoritarian tendencies”.
In the postwar years, “cultural Marxism” became a phrase in academic debates about the changing character of Marxist theory. In the 1990s, many on the US right, such as Pat Buchanan, used it to criticise the “degeneracy” of the west. And it’s become a choice phrase on the contemporary far right, constantly used, for instance, by Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Breivik.
Few would suggest that postwar academics were being antisemitic. Most would accept that Breivik is. And Braverman? She was probably using the term more in the Buchanan than in the Breivik sense. It’s a stupid phrase, and unwise, but not necessarily playing to antisemitic themes.
What the row does illuminate is the inflamed character of public debate, the willingness to attribute bad faith to opponents, to look for “Gotcha!” moments. We should be careful not to reheat antisemitic terms. We should be careful, too, not to overheat public debates.
•Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist
