Charles Moore wants to sound like the cautious elder statesman of Tory journalism. His column on JD Vance’s recent jaunt through Britain is presented as a sober warning: patriotism, if “perverted,” could slide into neo-fascism. But look closely and the piece is not a warning at all. It is an act of indulgence, even complicity. The careful laundering of the MAGA vice-president’s politics for a British audience.
Moore sets the stage with travelogue: Vance in Ayrshire, Vance in the Cotswolds, Vance quoting Edward Thomas, Vance dining with theologians and MPs, as if this were a story of a curious mind on holiday. But who is on the guest list? James Orr, the Cambridge divine who coined the slogan “Faith, Flag and Family.” Danny Kruger, the Tory backbencher who wants Christianity re-established in British law. Paul Marshall, billionaire funder of The Spectator. Nigel Farage, the eternal opportunist. George Osborne, Robert Jenrick, Laura Trott, and the new Tory darling Katie Lam. This isn’t a weekend of contemplation. It’s an Atlantic strategy meeting, a chance to test whether the cultural politics of Trumpism can find a foothold among Britain’s fracturing Right.
The Manufactured “Neo-Marxist” Enemy
Moore reproduces without question the central catechism of National Conservatism: that “woke” is “neo-Marxism,” advancing under the cover of liberal tolerance to dissolve the nation. He tosses the phrase around as if it requires no evidence, no definition, no engagement. That’s because it isn’t meant to explain anything. It’s a bogeyman, a Cold War chant reheated for today’s culture war.
But what does he mean? Marxism is a critique of exploitation, of capital’s contradictions, of class struggle. Its inheritors today examine global capitalism, imperial wars, and ecological collapse. That has nothing to do with diversity workshops or immigration policy. The movements that Vance calls “neo-Marxist” are liberal projects of representation and recognition. They may be timid, shallow, or compromised, but they are not Marxist.
The irony is that what Moore and Vance describe as “neo-Marxism” is simply capitalism’s own fallout. The fragmentation of community, the rise of identity politics, the atomisation of public life. These are products of neoliberalism, of privatisation, of decades of wage stagnation and the destruction of trade unions. A real Marxist analysis would show that clearly. Moore can’t allow that, so he reaches for the ghost of Marx to spook his readers.
The False Balance
This leads to the sleight of hand at the centre of Moore’s piece: “If perverted liberalism leads to neo-Marxism, could not perverted patriotism lead to neo-fascism?” It sounds judicious, a warning from the middle ground, but it collapses under scrutiny.
There is no neo-Marxist project at work in Britain or the US. There are no Marxist parties in power, no mass movements threatening revolution, no workers’ councils plotting to overthrow the state.I wish there was, but there isn’t. What exists is neoliberalism. The continued management of capitalism through austerity, war, surveillance, and borders alongside liberal identity politics, which gestures at inclusion while leaving structures of power intact.
Neo-fascism, by contrast, is not hypothetical. It is present. It is Vance proclaiming that descendants of Civil War soldiers have a greater claim to America than immigrants. It is Farage excusing Putin. It is Orbán dismantling democracy in Hungary while being feted by the Right as a model. And it is James Orr, the Cambridge theologian, reviving Vichy-style slogans. His mantra — “Faith, Flag and Family” — sounds harmless enough until you place it where it belongs, in the lineage of reactionary politics. Moore himself admits it echoes the Vichy triad of Famille, Travail, Patrie. That was not an accidental similarity. It was the ideological scaffolding of collaboration: patriarchy as “family,” clerical obedience as “faith,” chauvinism as “flag.”
What Orr is doing is rebranding the same formula for a 21st-century Anglosphere audience. Faith as the antidote to secular equality. Flag as the totem of exclusion against migrants. Family as the code for rolling back feminism and gay rights. It is an ideological package whose purpose is not to defend “roots” but to narrow belonging to the nation, the church, and the patriarchal household. That’s why the slogan resonates with MAGA as much as with Farage: it is fascism’s language softened for dinner parties and op-eds.
Moore notices the resemblance but treats it like a curiosity. In reality, it is the warning sign flashing in his own column: the Anglo-MAGA Right has already reached for the slogans of collaborationist Europe.
Religion as a Weapon
Moore concedes that there is “something unscrupulous” about using Christianity as a political weapon. But instead of drawing the obvious conclusion, he pivots to Islamism. As if the main problem were the embarrassment of looking like “them.” He cannot admit that Christianity, as deployed by Vance, Kruger, and Orr, is not a neutral cultural root but an ideological instrument. It sanctifies hierarchy, provides cover for patriarchy, and offers theological legitimacy for nationalism. “Faith, Flag, Family” is not a call to virtue; it is a call to exclusion.
Christianity has always been one of the props of conservative order. What makes this moment dangerous is that it is being weaponised in an era of capitalist crisis. When material security collapses, religion is wheeled out to patch over the cracks. Moore half-sees this, but recoils from the obvious conclusion: that he is watching the re-clericalisation of politics in real time.
The Continuity of Reaction
Moore asks how the national conservatism of Edmund Burke has become entangled with Orbán and Putin. The answer is that it was never separate. Burke defended hierarchy against revolution, property against redistribution, empire against emancipation. That through-line runs straight to today’s national conservatives, who defend fossil capital against climate action, border regimes against migrants, imperial interests against democracy.
There is no “perverted” patriotism here. Patriotism itself is the perversion: the replacement of class solidarity with national identity, the fetish of borders over people, the lie that “the nation” is the real unit of political life. When capitalism breaks down, patriotism offers the illusion of unity. Fascism is not a distortion of that logic but its culmination.
The Real Function of Moore’s Warning
Moore thinks he is striking a note of caution. What he is really doing is opening the door. By conjuring a phantom enemy in “neo-Marxism,” he makes Vance’s project appear as a serious, balanced alternative. By equating fascism with liberal “excess,” he disguises the asymmetry between fantasy and fact. By admiring Vance’s “search for ideas,” he dresses up a strategy meeting of oligarchs, opportunists and theocrats as a philosophical quest.
This is how fascism is normalised. Not by cranks screaming on the street corner, but by polite Tory columnists presenting the vice-president of the United States as a pilgrim for tradition, someone who might go astray if we’re not careful, but who deserves a fair hearing. For all the talk of danger, the real work of the column is to make Vance respectable.
