Perverted liberalism has led to neo-Marxism, perverted patriotism may yet lead to neo-fascism

Telegraph

9 hours ago

It is, on balance, helpful, that the current American president and vice-president are both interested in Britain. We are one of the few allies not deliberately antagonised by the Trump administration. This is a Brexit benefit.
Yesterday, Donald Trump had things to do in Anchorage, Alaska, but last month he was in Aberdeenshire, and next month he will be over here for his second state visit.
JD Vance, the vice-president, ended the week staying on an estate in Ayrshire, after spending a few days near Adlestrop in the Cotswolds, scene of Edward Thomas's much anthologised pastoral poem about a summer railway station where nothing happens.
What draws these two powerful men here? Mr Trump likes – and owns – golf courses, and his mother came from the Hebrides. He seems to prefer her Scottish roots to his father's German ones, and he is in love with the British monarchy.
Mr Vance has Scottish roots, too, but his quest seems more cultural, intellectual and political. He was mixing a family holiday (accompanied by a few non-political old mates) with discussions about ideas with his English friend, Dr James Orr, a Cambridge theologian, and Danny Kruger, the Conservative MP who recently made a powerful parliamentary speech in favour of Christianity in Britain. He saw the billionaire businessman Sir Paul Marshall, owner of The Spectator and patron of several conservative and Christian causes.
The vice-president entertained and was entertained by Tom Skinner – patriotic Essex man, former market trader and star of The Apprentice, whose catchword is 'Bosh' – and a much more famous public entertainer, currently from Clacton, called Nigel Farage.
Through the good offices of George Osborne, a surprising ally, given Mr Osborne's Remainer, globalist views, Mr Vance also met assorted Conservatives – Robert Jenrick, Chris Philp, Laura Trott and the rising star of the party's new intake, Katie Lam. It was a mark of how even Tory centrists feel the need to trim to the Atlantic wind that the journalist Daniel Finkelstein was among the guests. Lord Finkelstein's column this week was a fine read for Kremlinologists, as it sidled cautiously closer to Mr Farage.
There is something attractive about Mr Vance's quest for ideas. Although it can be tactless (and may be intended to be), his readiness to propagate them is refreshing too. Since the days of Theodore Roosevelt, who invented it, the 'bully pulpit' has been the property of the US president. Mr Trump, however, is more bully than pulpit, and Mr Vance, a Catholic convert, is a most articulate preacher. He is searching, like so many, for a conservatism which goes deeper than economics and pays greater heed to those left behind by social change and discriminated against by modern public doctrine. He is influenced in this by the National Conservatism movement in the United States.
In developing these views, Mr Vance and Maga allies identify 'woke' as their main internal opponent. They see woke doctrines, advancing under the camouflage of liberal tolerance, as neo-Marxist attempts to set different groups, tribes and classes against one another and to dissolve the proud historical identity of the nation state. This is an even more incendiary subject in America than in Britain but, goodness knows, it is hotting up here, chiefly because of this century's huge increase in immigration encouraged under both main parties.
Mr Vance has expressed this vividly: 'I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don't belong today.'
He seeks allies for a comparable message here and, in more directly political terms, for the best political vehicle. He is contemplating a different party configuration on the Right. At present, he sees Reform, if allied with 'sound' Tories, as the likelier means than the present Conservative Party.
I have my doubts about the practicality of that, and the wisdom of foreign politicians, Anglophile though they may be, getting involved. But what I want to discuss today is not party-political manoeuvring. It is the philosophical and moral ways in which the Vance Anglosphere crusade – given the militant Christian roots involved, the word 'crusade' may be apposite – could all go wrong. I write as someone who wants it to go right.
The first danger – though I agree that Christianity is the most important single root of our institutions, our civil society and our shared culture – arises because there is usually something unscrupulous about using Christianity as a political weapon.
Look at how politics in the Muslim world is corrupted by Islamist ideology and you will see the analogy.
The second danger is that the anti-wokeists may replicate on their side what they so dislike about their opponents. Just as woke people try to smear all conservatives as racists, so some conservatives smear all wokeists as unpatriotic traitors.
Many Maga supporters are doing this already, especially online. They lament how the 'mutual loyalty' of American society has been gashed by political correctness, but they are not doing much to bind up the wounds. Like that of woke, their rhetoric attracts people who enjoy hating other people.
If perverted liberalism leads to neo-Marxism, could not perverted patriotism lead to neo-fascism?
Take, for example, Dr Orr's recent advocacy of the slogan 'Faith, Flag and Family'. All three are indeed good things, but he, an intelligent and well-educated man, must know how similar are these words to the propaganda of Vichy France (' Famille. Travail. Patrie ').
One well-known Vichy poster contrasted an attractive, well-built house founded on these principles with a crumbling one built on 'capital', 'Jewishness', 'democracies' and other supposed evils. Does that not worry him? It should. In the United States, sometimes assisted by people as prominent as Tucker Carlson, anti-Semitism, which in the past 30 years has become increasingly the property of the Left, is being reclaimed by elements on the Right.
A good index of bad trends of thought is what some on the Right say about Ukraine. There are, of course, reasonable arguments to make for peace talks, but note the omissions. Neither President Trump nor his vice-president ever says that Putin's invasion struck against the 80-year peace of all Europe, which depends on inviolable borders. Neither draws attention to Putin's more minor but significant provocations and infiltrations in most other eastern European nations.
Note, too, the shifting of blame – most strikingly on to President Zelensky himself, whose crime seems to have been to refuse to run away as the Russian tanks rolled towards Kyiv – and also on to the West in general (a persistent claim made by Nigel Farage).
Finally, note how the wilder attacks on wokeism in the West invoke Putin almost as the goodie. On the BBC in May, Dr Orr appeared with the Liberal Democrat MP, Max Wilkinson. Complaining (rightly) about growing free speech restrictions in this country, Dr Orr said, 'A lot more people have got into trouble in the UK for free speech offences than in Putin's Russia.' When challenged for this astonishing statement, he 'gladly' promised to send Mr Wilkinson the evidence to back it up. He has never done so.
If Maga people are sincere, as I believe they are, in wishing to reassert the self-determination of independent nation states and disapproving of imperial 'forever wars', why do they excuse Putin's Russia and disparage Ukraine's battle to maintain the rights of nationhood? How did the national conservatism of Edmund Burke get muddled up with the Putinist opportunism of Viktor Orban's government in Hungary?