True danger from the right comes from likes of Douglas Murray

Sue-Ellen Braverman is just aching to get herself sacked so she can run for Tory leader after Rishi Sunak leads the party to disaster next year. We shouldn’t play her game.

No, the real danger does not come from comic-book English fascists – such as Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, who prefers to be known as Tommy Robinson these days – who are nothing more than jumped-up football hooligans. It comes from those who are more disciplined and want political power rather than a rammy. Witness Marine Le Pen or Giorgia Meloni.

Nor is the ludicrous Braverman likely ever to be Tory leader. We might note in passing that her existing parliamentary seat has disappeared in boundary changes, so she is busy publicity seeking partly to try to ensure she wins her new seat.

My personal political worries lie elsewhere and so should yours. Genuine fascism needs an ideology. The thuggery and comic populist rhetoric – taking tents off the homeless, for instance – is merely an adjunct.

READ MORE: Suella Braverman responds to pro-Palestine march on Armistice Day

More importantly, the alt-right needs to forge a new political and social narrative if it is to successfully destroy the old social democratic consensus or even kill off One-Nation Tory liberalism. And for this it needs a new breed of right-wing intellectuals with a sophisticated suite of ideas. These are the folk to worry about.

They include the suave, slightly manic Douglas Murray, who is London-born but whose mother hails from the Isle of Lewis and speaks Gaelic. Murray has emerged as perhaps the leading alt-right ideologue of the younger generation.

A prolific writer and commentator, he is now associate editor of The Spectator, the holy bible of the right. Last week Murray entered the Scottish political firmament with a virulent public attack on Humza Yousaf. Murray suggested the FM was an “infiltrator” (hint, hint) and “the first minister for Gaza”. Murray also reheated a doctored social media post (possibly not realising it was bogus) that implied Yousaf had made anti-white remarks.

Such public bile should not lead us to dismiss Murray as a typical populist ranter. He has a forensic mind and significant influence in Britain, Europe and particularly the United States. But it is a mind that sees “the West” being subverted and destroyed by a grand conspiracy of godless high-tech billionaires, the entire Islamic world and universities captured by cultural Marxists.

Traditional nation states and Christian civilisation and values have been replaced by a rapacious global (“cosmopolitan”) managerial elite which uses identity politics as a battering ram to exert control.

This puts Murray squarely in the conspiracy theory mould. But he is more intellectually effective than most in justifying his ideas. Populist, Trumpist racism may appeal to the lumpen elements but Murray supplies a more intellectually satisfying conspiracy menu for the middle classes.

Ostensibly, he deconstructs “fascist Islam” and the alleged infiltration of the elite universities – inevitably Murray is an Oxford graduate himself – by Marxist academics. Murray is also a bag of personal contradictions. He is gay and an atheist and even supports (in a convoluted way) same-sex marriage. Not that you might know it from some of his public renderings.

Part of me feels sorry for Murray. He is a bright young man marooned in a generation where rampant consumerism and unhinged individualism has destroyed social community, while the death of the socialist project has removed hope. Folk such as Murray end up as intellectual nihilists desperately trying to forge some impossible conservative Valhalla to find an anchor in life.

At least it begins that way, but it quickly slides towards an intellectual justification for outright fascism. The mass demonstrations in the UK and Europe protesting Israeli bombing of Gaza seem to have unhinged Murray.

I’ve seen a video of him circulating on social media in which he says the police in Britain “have lost control of the streets” (shades of Braverman) and that “we might need to send in the army”. What are the army supposed to do – shoot demonstrators?

Then, even more chillingly, Murray suggests sending in the army might not work – he actually wrote a book about the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry and their aftermath. Instead, he muses that the “British public” might have to take matters into their own hands.

We can always dismiss Braverman as a maverick, over-ambitious politician who should be sacked. But Murray is busy constructing the intellectual architecture for a new, mass fascist movement. That is much more dangerous, especially for a UK where the alt-right has traditionally been kept in its cage by a fuzzy alliance between the establishment (which want a quiet life), the provincial middle classes (who also want a quiet life) and the Tory Party.

Last month, 12,000 people turned up at the O2 arena in London and paid big bucks to hear Murray and Jordan Peterson, the other intellectual superstar of the global alt-right. This was billed as the launch of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, or ARC (get it!). They were joined by luminaries such as American social media guru Ben Shapiro.

ARC’s aims have been described as: “To replace a sense of division and drift within conservatism, and Western society at large, with a renewed cohesion and purpose.”

The thing about the ARC event was its refusal to provide a platform for existing politicians, conservative or populist. Quite the reverse unless you count ARC’s association with maverick US presidential hopeful, Vivek Ramaswamy.

Murray and Peterson are trying to build a mass movement outside of the traditional right-wing parties. There is also a cultish, semi-religious tone to the project which promotes self-help rather than who to hate.

At least so far. But Murray’s virulent, anti-immigrant stance – remember “infiltrators” – suggests the old bile is still bubbling under the surface. Again, I need to stress that Murray and Peterson are a new, seductive breed of right-wing anti-politician.

Peterson in particular picks away at the genuine total loss of person control people feel under late capitalism. But self-help – which I’m not denigrating – won’t remove the exploitative economic power structures that dominate 21st-century life.

And I agree that people prefer living in a political community of shared values – a community small enough for them to feel a sense of control. Which is why I find it utterly contradictory that the alt-right clings stubbornly to the myth of the “United Kingdom” rather than allow the Scots to go their own way.

Instead, we have Braverman – whose parents are from Mauritius and Kenya – extolling the dubious values of empire. And Murray calling for the deportation of those he disagrees with. “Send them back” remains a ridiculous slogan for what was once the world’s biggest colonial empire.

Both Murray’s Spectator magazine and its stablemate The Daily Telegraph, are up for sale. One likely bidder is Sir Paul Marshall, the hedge-fund billionaire who is bankrolling Murray’s ARC and who was an early investor in GB News. Behind the alt-right ideologues are always the billionaires with vested interests. Be warned.