Cultural Marxism: far-right conspiracy theory in Australia's culture wars. (1st November 2020)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Cultural Marxism: far-right conspiracy theory in Australia's culture wars. (1st November 2020)
- Main Title:
- Cultural Marxism: far-right conspiracy theory in Australia's culture wars
- Authors:
- Busbridge, Rachel
Moffitt, Benjamin
Thorburn, Joshua - Abstract:
- ABSTRACT: As a conspiracy promoted by the far-right, Cultural Marxism has gained ground over the past quarter century. In its dominant iteration, the US-originating conspiracy holds that a small group of Marxist critical theorists have conspired to destroy Western civilisation by taking over key cultural institutions. Yet what does such a conspiracy look like in a transnational context – and how are such conspiracy theories adapted for local use? In this article, we trace Cultural Marxism's use and function in Australia's recent culture wars, asking when, where and in what contexts the conspiracy is invoked in the Australian political and media landscape. Our analysis examines the ways in which Cultural Marxism has moved from the 'fringe' to the 'mainstream', revealing the porous nature of divisions on the contemporary Australian right as well as differences between 'old' and 'new' right. We pay particular attention to the localised use of the conspiracy in the 'Safe Schools' controversy of 2016–2017, whereby Cultural Marxist tropes were imbued with local concerns about sexuality and gender issues. The article provides an important illustration and analysis of the ways in which transnational conspiracy theories and tropes of the far-right can be translated, adapted and used in different national contexts.
- Is Part Of:
- Social identities. Volume 26:Number 6(2020)
- Journal:
- Social identities
- Issue:
- Volume 26:Number 6(2020)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 26, Issue 6 (2020)
- Year:
- 2020
- Volume:
- 26
- Issue:
- 6
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2020-0026-0006-0000
- Page Start:
- 722
- Page End:
- 738
- Publication Date:
- 2020-11-01
- Subjects:
- Cultural Marxism -- conspiracy theory -- far-right -- transnationalism -- culture wars
Group identity -- Periodicals
Ethnicity -- Periodicals
Culture -- Periodicals
Political sociology -- Periodicals
302.15 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/csid20/current ↗
http://www.tandfonline.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1080/13504630.2020.1787822 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 1350-4630
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - 8318.110450
British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 22420.xml