Woke culture in British schools is driving children to self-harm and even suicide, according to Tory MP Miriam Cates.
Cates told a Right-wing conference that ‘cultural Marxism’ was effectively ‘destroying our children’s souls’.
The evangelical Christian MP also criticised the tax system for failing to ‘subsidise’ couples for raising children and warned that plummeting birthrates in the developed world were an ‘overarching threat to Western civilisation’.
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The Mail Online reports: Cates told the National Conservatism conference in Westminster that young people would not have children if they did not have ‘hope for the future’.
She said: ‘That hope is sadly diminishing in so many of our young people today, because liberal individualism has proven to be completely powerless to resist the cultural Marxism that is systematically destroying our children’s souls.
‘When culture, schools and universities openly teach that our country is racist, our heroes are villains, humanity is killing the Earth, you are what you desire, diversity is theology, boundaries are tyranny and self-restraint is oppression, is it any wonder that mental health conditions, self-harm and suicide, and epidemic levels of anxiety and confusion characterise the emerging generation?’
She added: ‘We must end the indoctrination of our children with destructive and narcissistic ideologies, instead protecting childhood, training children in the timeless virtues and teaching them how to love our country.’
Her use of the phrase ‘cultural Marxism’ is likely to raise eyebrows. Home Secretary Suella Braverman was criticised for using it in 2019 by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which said it ‘has a history as an anti-Semitic trope’.
John Mann, the Government’s antisemitism tsar, criticised Ms Cates’s use of the term ‘cultural Marxism’, saying it has its origins in a ‘conspiracy theory with anti-Semitism at its core’.
He said: ‘Its overlap with anti-Semitism today is seriously problematic and is part of the language being used to target Jewish people in very dangerous ways.
‘No UK politician should be comfortable in using it and needs to understand where it comes from and why that is problematic.’
But Yoram Hazony, the conference chairman and an orthodox Jewish theologian, said the term is ‘apt’.
He said: ‘I deplore this attempt to smear a friend of the Jews such as Miriam Cates with the utterly preposterous accusation of anti-Semitism.
‘The term ”cultural Marxism” is an apt phrase to describe the cultural agenda promoted by many on the left today. The Edmund Burke Foundation offers no platform to anti-Semites. We are proud to number Miriam Cates among our speakers and friends.’
