Lambert here: Given that Marxism qua -ism — some might prefer to call it secular dispensationalism — is founded on class analysis, cultural Marxism is and must be a contradiction in terms, though logic never stopped a knee from jerking.
“How the far right embraced the Cultural Marxism conspiracy” [Georgios Samaras, London School of Economics (CC BY 4.0. )].
The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy by A. J. A. Woods is an intellectual history of the “Cultural Marxism,” an conspiracy theory that blames Western Marxism as being deliberately responsible for modern progressive movements and “wokeness.” Georgios Samaras deems it a rigorous, essential book that fills a key gap in the scholarship on the political history of the New Right.
There are certain books that, apart from filling a very important gap in the literature, cover ground that should have been covered by others long ago. That applies to A.J.A. Woods’ new book, The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy, which finally provides some much-needed answers to the wider circulation of some of the worst antisemitic and anti-communist sentiment seen in contemporary politics. Earlier work by Martin Jay, Jack Jacobs, Joan Braune, Jérôme Jamin and John E. Richardson had already identified parts of this history, but Woods’s book is distinctive in giving the conspiracy theory a full intellectual history of its own.
Written through an intellectual-historical lens, and drawing on archival research and critical theory, Woods traces how the Frankfurt School was turned from a body of difficult social theory into a portable enemy-image for the far right.
The Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory
For readers who are not familiar, the “Cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory is, at its core, a far-right, antisemitic conspiracy theory that misrepresents Western Marxism as being deliberately responsible for modern progressive movements and political correctness. The conspiracy theory posits that a group of Jewish philosophers who fled Germany in the 1930s and established themselves at Columbia University devised an unorthodox form of Marxism that took aim at Western cultural and Christian values — working, so the theory goes, to corrode society from the inside out. Nowhere was this more starkly illustrated in Britain than in March 2019, when then-Conservative (now Reform UK) MP Suella Braverman delivered a speech at a meeting of the right-wing Bruges Group think tank and declared that “as Conservatives, we are engaged in a battle against Cultural Marxism.” Braverman subsequently refused to apologise or revise her language, an episode that captures precisely the kind of mainstreaming this book is concerned with.
The phenomenon is explained in depth by Woods, who dives deep into the origins, starting in the 1960s, before going on to analyse the LaRouche movement and its sustained attacks on the Marxists of the Frankfurt School. The historical background Woods constructs is one of the book’s strengths — it resists the temptation to treat “Cultural Marxism” as a purely modern, internet-born phenomenon and instead roots it in decades of deliberate ideological groundwork, showing that what might appear to be fringe rhetoric was in fact carefully cultivated long before it found its way into mainstream parliamentary speeches. As an opening chapter it does a lot of work to establish the historical architecture of the conspiracy.
The roots of Trumpism and the New Right
In Chapter Two the analysis shifts to the New Right as a political force. The New Right refers to a late 20th-century current of conservative and far-right thought that sought to remake politics around markets, national identity, and strong opposition to socialist projects. Woods manages to integrate the think tank territory effectively to explain the development of political thought and how conservatism came to be infected by corrosive elements. That said, while this is primarily a discussion of historical strands, the treatment of the New Right represents something of a missed opportunity. It does not fully engage with the very early debates around far-right mainstreaming in the US – debates that matter because they explain how far-right elements were able to infiltrate liberal conservatism and gradually normalise some of the most authoritarian ideas that have since entered the mainstream. The New Right’s ideological trajectory deserves more space than it receives here, because understanding that trajectory is inseparable from understanding everything that follows.
This point becomes even more relevant in Chapter Three, which follows the thread from the New Right to the Tea Party and traces how those ideas re-entered the Republican Party. The most striking observation in this chapter is the argument that the Tea Party’s disappearance as a formal movement has in no way diminished its influence — quite the opposite. Its ideological legacy continues to shape the direction of the Republican Party under Trump, with the most extreme anti-communist narratives now being adopted openly in the media. The Tea Party was absorbed and that absorption is what made it so effective. Woods handles this well, and the chapter serves as a convincing bridge between the historical sections and the more contemporary analysis that follows.
Chapter Four draws the connections between the techniques used to mainstream the conspiracy theory and similar linguistic manoeuvres by far-right ideological currents, most notably the anti-woke narrative and the vilification of Critical Race Theory. This chapter is the strongest in the book. Trumpism takes centre stage in Woods’ analysis, and the timing of publication gives it a particular urgency. It accurately captures the ways in which buzzwords are manufactured and historical concepts deliberately distorted during periods of far-right mainstreaming. For example, the term ‘woke’ has been stripped of its original political meaning and recoded as a far-right shorthand for moral and cultural decline. In this form, it operates as an elastic accusation, used to delegitimise minorities and any social demand that falls outside the far right’s preferred image of order. The chapter manages something that is genuinely difficult — it traces the mechanics of how language is weaponised in politics without becoming purely abstract, keeping the argument grounded in specific political developments. Woods is at their best here.
Attacks on DEI and human rights
The conclusion skilfully brings together the book’s key findings to link them directly to what the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk have done. Woods draws on those historical developments around the vilification of concepts like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (or DEI) to impose the most aggressive rollback of rights seen in US politics in recent decades. Worryingly, this rollback has openly targeted minorities and people of colour. The connection to the historical context established in earlier chapters is eye-opening. It makes clear just how grave are the threats democracy is currently facing, and how deep the foundations of this project run. Some have pointed to the partial closure of DOGE after January 2026 as evidence of failure, but Woods’ argument focuses on how this damage is a product of a decades-long project tied directly to the New Right and Republicanism. Both have sought to infiltrate and reshape conservatism, turning it into a vehicle for the kind of politics that treats entire categories of people as expendable.
The book is excellent, and its only real weakness is the absence of a more direct and sustained engagement with far-right mainstreaming as it has unfolded across Europe. Beyond the British case of Braverman, the European dimension of this phenomenon, which has its own distinct dynamics, is largely left unaddressed. Though worth noting, this gap does not significantly diminish what is otherwise a sharp, well-researched, and timely piece of work. The book is an essential read for anyone interested in US conservatism, the politics of political language, and the authoritarian tendencies currently reshaping the West. It fills a genuine gap in the literature, and does so without flinching.