The Guardian should not refer to “the antisemitic term ‘cultural Marxism’” as if that were a settled fact (Tory in antisemitism row, 27 March). Suella Braverman can explain for herself what she meant by it – the article does not give her exact quote – but “cultural Marxism” was in common use in British and American humanities departments in the 1980s and 1990s, not for anything conspiratorial but merely as a term for a certain approach to what is still called “cultural studies”.
Numerous examples of that usage can be found by searching the phrase on the academic database Jstor. For instance, Ioan Davies’s history of “British cultural Marxism” in the spring 1991 issue of the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. The term also appears in this academic context in The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory, published in 2004 by Cambridge University Press. If it has since been seized upon by the alt-right, that is very unfortunate, and any antisemitic use or implication should be condemned. But it already existed long before that as a term for an academic enterprise that was, if anything, often rather abstruse, even boring.
Jeff Smith
Brno, Czech Republic
The Frankfurt School’s Horkheimer and Adorno’s seminal Dialectic of Enlightenment (which Jürgen Habermas called the “blackest book” written as it was in the shadow of its authors’ escape from the Nazis) is as far from introducing a straw-man world of political correctness as one can imagine, Ms Braverman.
That book’s central metaphor of western civilisation represented as a boat propelled by slaves with wax in their ears to shield them from the song that only their master, Odysseus, tied to the boat’s mast, is allowed to hear is as relevant today, in a world of Twitter, dog-whistle politics, antisemitism and Islamophobia, as ever. The book’s critique, too, of the culture industry, ironically, has been unacknowledgedly appropriated by those who take advantage of our precious bourgeois freedoms to propagate ideologies and viewpoints that are, like antisemitism and Islamophobia in our political parties, abhorrent.
If one good thing comes out of that Bruges Group speech by Ms Braverman, I hope it is that it prompts more people to read the core texts of the Frankfurt School, written as they were in the shadow of totalitarianism.
Stephen Douglas
Oxford
John Crace’s incisive sketch is normally mandatory reading, but his description of the Eurosceptic Bruges Group as the “paramilitary wing of the Rotary Club” (27 March) made me hit the keyboard in protest. Perhaps John is unaware that Rotary Clubs have no political, religious or sectarian allegiance? We welcome men and women with deep knowledge of their local communities’ needs, including development of young people’s skills. Members use their experience and expertise to raise millions for charity, often in uncomfortable conditions – cooking burgers and chips while knee deep in mud at a music festival, anyone?
Internationally, Rotary contributes to disaster relief, through money raised by Clubs to fund Shelterboxes, and is a major player in the campaign to eradicate polio. Many Rotary Clubs support colleagues in developing countries by volunteering and contributing to education, health and sanitation projects.
I don’t know what Rotary has done to upset John, but he’s very welcome to visit my club and see for himself the work that we do – we might even find a job for him at our next music festival catering gig!
Shelagh Garvey
Didcot, Oxfordshire
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