On Monday, we learned that senior pro-Brexit Tories (all white men) had nicknamed themselves the “Grand Wizards”. On Tuesday, that the pro-Brexit Bruges Group of Tory MPs had held a meeting at Westminster which called for a “Blueshirt” street movement to riot until Brexit was delivered, and in which senior MP Suella Braverman said they’re in a “war” against “Cultural Marxism”.
We’re told by mainstream commentators not to feel too worried about any of this. The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg reassured us that the Brexiteers were using the Grand Wizard nickname “informally, no intended connection to anything else”. Others have however noted that Michael Gove had run into trouble for comparing himself to a “Grand Wizard of the KKK” before.
The blueshirts might evoke Hitler’s Blackshirts or Mosley’s Brownshirts (or indeed, the earlier, fascist Irish blueshirts), but calling for such a force is “less menacing” than it sounds, the Guardian’s Peter Walker told us, because they’re mostly old men. The Tory MP and hard Brexiteer Suella Braverman “probably wasn’t aware” of the history of the term “Cultural Marxism” when she used it, we’re told by most commentators – even though she was challenged by Guardian journalist Dawn Foster on its use as a far-right talking point and by the terrorist Anders Breivik, and merely doubled down.
