Tories, Telegraph, And Anti-Semitism

They keep getting caught using anti-Semitic tropes, but not only do they get away with it, their colleagues do it too: Tory MPs just can’t help themselves. First it was Suella Braverman and her “Cultural Marxism” slip, then came Priti Patel and her “North London Metropolitan Elite” sneer, then it was Jacob Rees Mogg calling Oliver Letwin and John Bercow “Illuminati” and claiming George Soros was behind the Remain campaign.

Later came Michael “Oiky” Gove conflating “Jews” and “Israel”, and Ben Bradley joining the “Cultural Marxism” gang. Now, in association with the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, 28 Tory MPs and peers - Twenty-Eight of them - have gone “Cultural Marxist” in unison, in a letter to the paper ostensibly attacking the National Trust.

This sudden veering across the anti-Semitism line has come in response to the Trust’s colonialism report, the continuing discussion around slavery, and those who made fortunes out of both. The Tel has a front page item today headlined “National Trust members object to charity’s ‘woke agenda’”, under the byline of Christopher “No” Hope.

Readers are told “National Trust members have vented their fury at the charity’s board of directors, accusing it of undertaking a ‘witch hunt into the lives of past property owners’ and pursuing a ‘woke agenda’ … One member condemned the Trust for ‘defaming’ the memory of Winston Churchill in a recent report linking Trust properties to colonialism and slavery, while another said she was cancelling her membership because the trust was now too ‘political’”. And then came the letter, which Hope proudly Tweeted out.

Who penned the letter is not told, but the usage of a sub-Spiked quote generator is all too obvious, with the inclusion of phrases such as “silent majority”, “elitist bourgeois liberals”, “woke agenda”, “snowflake”, and “powerful, privileged liberals”, which suggests that the likes of Peter Lilley, whose name appears as a signatory, did not write it.

The name of the Common Sense Group, consisting of 59 Tory MPs and seven peers, is cited at the outset. So perhaps they, and indeed Christopher Hope, can explain why the letter also includes the words “Part of our mission is to ensure that institutional custodians of history and heritage, tasked with safeguarding and celebrating British values, are not coloured by cultural Marxist dogma, colloquially known as the ‘woke agenda’”.

One, let us consider the definition of the term “Woke”. Oxford Languages tells us that the term means “alert to injustice in society, especially racism”. Perhaps all those MPs and peers would like to explain why that is a bad thing. They might also like to explain the use of “coloured by”, and reassure those concerned that this is not just more sly racism.

And Two, yes, “Cultural Marxist” is a nailed-on anti-Semitic trope. It derives from the Nazi-era Kulturbolschewismus. Tory MPs have used it, and been called out for using it, on more than one occasion previously. Telling everyone “look over there at the Labour Party” and then using terms like that, is leaping from gutter to sewer very swiftly indeed.

Anders Behring Breivik might be pleased, though. Hello Tories. Hello Telegraph.

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