Abstract
This essay examines the conspiratorial dynamics of the term Cultural Marxism, which has been deployed by a number of extreme right activists. Jamin parses this discourse from its origins in the Free Congress Foundation, to its uptake by the high-profile American politician Pat Buchanan, to its eventual employment by Anders Breivik. As well as in Anglophone settings such as Breivik’s manifesto, analysis also highlights that the concept has found a relevance within the British extreme right. Figures including Nick Griffin have drawn on this terminology, a discourse offering a useful crutch to support various political arguments. Jamin’s conclusions highlight the nebulous nature of this discourse, allowing a variety of protagonists to use it to mobilize a range of passions.
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Notes
Edward Ashbee, ‘The Also-Rans: Nader, Buchanan and the 2000 US Presidential Election’, The Political Quarterly, 72/2 (2001), 159–69.
See the author’s doctoral thesis devoted to, among others, the ideological universe of Pat Buchanan: Jérôme Jamin, L’imaginaire du complot. Discours d’extrême droite en France et aux Etats-Unis (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 161–271.
Pat Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 78–9.
Pat Buchanan, Right from the Beginning (Washington: Regnery Gateway, 1988), 352.
As a conspiracy theory explained by one of its main defenser, see Pat Robertson, The New World Order (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1991).
For an analysis of the writings of one of the key voices who influenced Anders Breivik (Peder Jensen writing under the pen name Fjordman), see Paul Jackson “The License to Hate: Peder Jensen’s Fascist Rhetoric in Anders Breivik’s Manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence”, Democracy and Security, 9/3 (2013), 247–69.
On this borrowing of text, see Øyvind Strammen, ‘A propos d’UTØYA et de la banalisation de l’extrême droite’, Recherches internationales, 92 (2011), 96.
Eurabia refers to a conspiracy between Arab countries and European elites to build a Muslim Europe in exchange for financial support and access to cheap oil. Read the main author of this theory: Bat Ye’or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005).
Recommended readings include, among others, Liz Fekete, ‘The Muslim conspiracy theory and the Oslo massacre’, Race and Class, 53/3 (2012), 31
Øyvind Strammen, ‘A propos d’UTØYA et de la banalisation de l’extrême droite’, Recherches internationales, 92 (2011), 95–104.
Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (London: Cape, 1966), 6.
A. Goldschläger and J. Lemaire, Le complot judéo-maçonnique (Bruxelles: Labor/Espace de libertés, 2005), 7.
Raoul Girardet, Mythes et mythologies politiques (Paris: Seuil, 1986), 54–5.
Fran Mason, “A Poor Person’s Cognitive Mapping” in Peter Knight, Conspiracy Nation (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 43–4.
Michael Wine, ‘Trans-European trends in Right-Wing Extremism’, in Mapping the Far Right in Contemporary Europe Local, National, Comparative, Transnational, ed. by Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin and Bryan Jenkins (New York: Routledge, 2012), 329.
Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), 156.
On the definition of the scapegoat within conspiracy theories, see our article “Bouc émissaire” in Pierre-André Taguieff, Dictionnaire historique et critique du racisme (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2013), 228–30.
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© 2014 Paul Jackson and Anton Shekhovtsov
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Jamin, J. (2014). Cultural Marxism and the Radical Right. In: Jackson, P., Shekhovtsov, A. (eds) The Post-War Anglo-American Far Right: A Special Relationship of Hate. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137396211_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137396211_4
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