From 2020. If you disagree with the left's attempts to destroy the status quo and radically transform society, you are the one starting a culture war.
"Many pundits and politicians seem to blame UK prime minister Boris Johnson for provoking the latest installment of the culture wars that now dominate Anglo-American public life. Sections of the media, from the New York Times to the Guardian, have claimed that Johnson wants to argue over statues to distract from his poor handling of the Covid pandemic. Others, such as Labour’s David Lammy, reckon Johnson’s defence of the statue of Winston Churchill, against those who would deface or dismantle it, was a deliberate attempt to stoke the culture wars, and deflect attention from the Tories lack of progress on ‘racial injustice’.
These are massively disingenuous claims. After all, is it really surprising that a British prime minister would defend a memorial devoted to arguably the nation’s greatest modern figure? Moreover, Johnson was not initiating anything. He was responding to a movement that has been directing its energy towards the destruction of the symbols of Britain’s national history and culture. It takes tremendous bad faith to characterise Johnson’s defensive response to an attack on British culture as an attempt to launch a culture war...
What is striking is that neither side seems to have anything positive to say about the culture wars. Their characterisation as ‘poisonous’, by veteran conservative commentator Charles Moore, is a sentiment shared by virtually all sides of the political argument. They disagree merely on the questions of who is to blame for them, and what they mean.
One reason why so many observers are confused by the dynamics of the culture war is because it rarely assumes an explicit conflict-like character. It is often a silent conflict over what seem to be disparate issues – gay marriage, national identity, euthanasia – rather than a war between two clearly defined sides. In this sense, the modern culture war is very different to the German Kulturkampf of the 19th century, when there was an overt cultural struggle between Chancellor Bismarck and the Catholic Church...
Historically, it was set in motion in Western societies by a powerful impulse to detach the present from the past, which emerged at the turn of the 20th century. This project of liberating the present from the cultural values of the past was most clearly formulated by the Progressive movement in the US, and by the New Liberals in Britain. But it was the experience of the First World War that gave this sentiment real momentum. For the war fundamentally undermined the cultural continuity of the West.
Disconnected from the past, post-war Western societies found it difficult to develop a compelling narrative through which to transmit their cultural legacy to young people. One outcome of this development was the phenomenon known today as the ‘generation gap’. It emerged in the aftermath of the First World War precisely because it was not simply a generational gap, but also a cultural one – a gap, that is, between the pre- and post-war eras. In the decades that followed, these generational tensions would come to be experienced as the problem of identity...
Many commentators at the time, and in the decades to come, were blind to this cultural conflict. They focused on the ideological conflict between communism and capitalism, and the rise of fascism, rather than the loss of cultural authority of Western values.
One reason why Western ruling elites failed to address the loss of their moral authority was because of the difficulty they had in acknowledging that their own way of life was being unravelled by powerful corrosive influences internal to it. During the 1940s and 50s, even conservative commentators failed to appreciate the scale of the problem confronting their tradition. This became clear during what was the first significant, explicit conflict in the culture war: Senator Joseph McCarthy’s battle with communism and its supposed threat to American values.
The rise of McCarthyism in the US is often seen as an attempt to deploy anti-communist hysteria to silence political dissent. Yet it was also an attempt to roll back the cultural influences threatening traditional norms and values...
McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade can be seen as one of the earliest attempts (and failures) after the Second World War to revitalise traditional values in the face of their rapid demise. One of the most astute analyses of the McCarthy episode was provided by the conservative commentator, Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick understood that McCarthyism was not so much about communism as it was a struggle for ‘jurisdiction over the symbolic environment’. What was at issue was who would serve as the arbiter of culture and whose narrative would prevail.
The failure of McCarthy to hold the line and the rapid decline of his reputation had important implications. These things indicated that, although a potent political resource, anti-communist ideology on its own could not contain the corrosive outcomes of the moral depletion of Western culture. Kirkpatrick asserted that McCarthy’s demise and the victory of his critics was a ‘precondition of the rise of the counterculture in the 1960s’. Whereas during the McCarthy era, the term ‘loyalty’ was rarely openly contested, by the 1960s it had lost some of its cultural value. Anti-war demonstrators, draft-dodgers and ordinary members of the public rejected loyalty as an unwelcome imposition on their ability to be themselves. As Kirkpatrick recalled, the ‘peace marchers were far more aggressive in their defiance of traditional taboos than the timid victims of Joe McCarthy’. This, Kirkpatrick concluded, ‘reflected the distance that the cultural revolution had proceeded’.
The casual manner with which traditional taboos were derided in the 1960s showed that those who upheld traditional values could no longer assume that they occupied the moral high-ground. In this, the cultural assault on the values of capitalist consumer society played a significant role. However, this assault should be seen as a catalyst for, rather than a cause of, the unravelling of the Cold War consensus on Western values. The inner corrosion of the ethos of capitalism had been at work for many decades, and the lack of self-belief among the ruling elites contributed to its diminishing influence.
Since the interwar era, capitalism as a social system has found it increasingly difficult to justify itself against its critics. Matters were made worse by the reluctance of conservative and liberal thinkers to confront this problem directly.
The absence of an intellectually compelling, normative foundation for capitalism meant that even at the height of the postwar boom, capitalism was exposed to a cultural critique of its values. Consequently, even in these very favourable circumstances, capitalism acquired only a limited influence over intellectual and cultural life. This estrangement of capitalism from its own culture emerged with full force in the late 1960s, when many of its values were explicitly challenged in what would turn out to be an interminable culture war...
By the 1970s, it became clear that supporters of ‘adversarial culture’ had gained the upper hand...
Since the 1970s, the representatives of traditional America have been constantly on the defensive. Instead of initiating debates and attempting to set the agenda, they have been continually forced to react to the latest blow directed at their way of life. This cycle of defensive responsiveness can be seen on many issues, from gay marriage or trans rights to claims about white privilege.
The pessimistic diagnosis offered by Moynihan and Brittan was widespread among conservative thinkers. Periodic attempts to promote ‘back to basics’ campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s proved to be singularly ineffective. At this point in time, the mainstream conservative and right-wing parties attempted to evade the consequences of their cultural isolation by emphasising their ability to achieve economic success. The high point of this strategy arrived during the Thatcher-Reagan years, when their brand of economic liberalism gained hegemony over public life. However, what the supporters of Thatcher and Reagan failed to notice, or acknowledge, was that despite the electoral success of their parties, their opponents were winning the culture war. Paradoxically, it was during the Thatcher and Reagan years that what came to be known as political correctness gained ascendancy and identity politics became institutionalised, first on campuses and later in the public and private sectors.
Today, when the reality of a culture war is widely recognised, it is worth noting that until recently almost all sides of the political divide were reluctant to draw attention to it. That is why supporters of political correctness went out of their way to deny there was such a thing as PC. Similarly, until recently, advocates of identity politics insisted that identity politics was a dishonest invention of their opponents...
One reason why [Pat] Buchanan’s speech caused such a stir was because, by 1992, the old traditional elites had more or less been entirely sidelined by their adversaries. The countercultural movement had been institutionalised, and its representatives dominated institutions of culture, higher education and the public sector. And, since then, businesses and the private sector have also come under its sway.
Having gained hegemony, members of this countercultural establishment are now less and less afraid to impose their own values on the rest of society. From their standpoint, Boris Johnson is an elite outlier, and his defence of Churchill offers them a reminder that there are still obstacles to the realisation of the project of detaching society from the legacy of its past. They now constitute the cultural establishment, and people who wish to defend the statues of Churchill or Abraham Lincoln are their countercultural adversaries."
The identitarians are winning the culture wars
"A history of the culture wars, published in 2015, concluded that ‘the logic of the culture wars has been exhausted’, adding that ‘the metaphor has run its course’. That the culture war is far from exhausted has been strikingly demonstrated by the recent focus on BAME victims of the Covid pandemic and, above all, by the Black Lives Matter protests.
Yet while the reality of the culture war is now widely recognised, its profound influence over the conduct of public life is not. There is still a tendency to see the culture war as a distinct, isolated discourse or approach, separate from mainstream public life. Hence, one commentator talks of the ‘culture war’ as something the Tories are deliberately promoting, almost like a policy. Others contend that the culture war is a distinctly American phenomenon that should have no place in British and other European societies. Or as Madeline Grant put it in the Telegraph, ‘our freedom is under threat from an American-exported culture war’.
In one sense, it is true that many of the issues, idioms and symbols through which culture is now being politicised globally derive from the US. However, while the culture war is especially intense in the US, it is also potent in Britain and many other parts of the world, too.
That is because the culture war is not one political domain among many others. It does not come and go as certain issues, such as gay marriage or Brexit, drop in and out of the headlines. Rather, the culture war now constitutes politics in general. Indeed, since the 1970s, the politicisation of culture has succeeded in displacing, or fundamentally altering, all the powerful ideologies of the modern era. It has successfully marginalised conservative and classical-liberal ideas, be they tolerance or democracy, within institutions of socialisation, such as schools and universities. And it has turned many cultural institutions, from the arts to the media, against humanist sentiments and ideals associated with the Western tradition that runs from Classical Greek philosophy through the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Even classical socialist ideals of solidarity and internationalism have been torn asunder by the politicisation of culture and identity.
These developments take the form of a one-sided war against the past in general, and the legacy of the West in particular. Those upholding the importance of tradition and historical continuity now appear to be always on the defensive. Indeed, they seem to be resigned to losing the battle for the soul of society.
That air of resignation is understandable. Those upholding a principled commitment to the civilisational accomplishments of humanity have been on the receiving end of several defeats in recent decades. In her 1965 lecture, Some Questions of Moral Philosophy, Hannah Arendt reflected on the disappearance of values that once seemed permanent. She noted that ‘without much notice’ the moral values that helped people ‘tell right from wrong’ had ‘collapsed almost overnight’. Fifty-five years later, those moral values really have ceased to influence the conduct of public life. Indeed, in universities the language of morality is frequently denounced as a sham, or as a discourse to be deconstructed and exposed.
The apparent loss of the moral imagination, which so haunted Arendt, has profoundly affected contemporary life. As I note in my new book Why Borders Matter, the ability to ‘tell right from wrong’ has been compromised by the cultural devaluation of boundaries, such as those between good and evil; adult and child; man and woman; human and animal; and private and public. All of these symbolic boundaries have been called into question in recent decades. The binary distinction, for example, between man and woman is now denounced as transphobic. Even the very concept of the binary itself is castigated as exclusionary and discriminatory.
The main casualty of this war against traditional ideals has been the collapse in the moral status of judgement. Today, moral judgment — the attempt, that is, to distinguish right from wrong — is considered suspect, discriminatory, judgemental. Instead, it is the ethos of non-judgmentalism that is ascendant today. And that loss of faith in moral judgement indicates the extent to which the war to uphold the precious gains of civilisation is being lost.
The present phase of the culture war began in the 1970s. It was during this decade that traditional Western elites quietly abandoned the fight against the countercultural movements of the 1960s. By the end of the 1970s, the values of the counterculture had gained hegemony. They were institutionalised, first in education and the cultural industry, and later in other sectors of society. Some scholars and observers have characterised this development as the cultural turn.
In the late 1970s, the cultural turn was attributed to a ‘new class’ of cultural elites, which was committed to so-called non- or post-material values. According to the political scientist Ronald Inglehart, this new class was concerned with post-material needs, such as the need for aesthetic satisfaction, and what psychologists called ‘self-actualisation’ (2). Its members were increasingly interested in environmentalism, and sought out therapeutic self-help groups. More broadly, they were increasingly preoccupied with the question of identity.
From the outset, the emerging post-material values were not presented neutrally, as one set of values among others. Rather, they were seen by their advocates as superior to traditional values, such as patriotism, nationalism and deference to authority. Inglehart himself thought that the move from traditional values to post-material values was positive, because it would erode the influence of greedy materialism in society.
But the significance of the cultural turn lay less in the so-called post-material values it promoted than in its effect: namely, the further politicisation of culture and of identity. For opponents of the old society, this took the form of a war on previously hegemonic values.
It is important to note that advocates of the cultural turn against traditional values consistently refused to acknowledge their role in politicising culture. Instead, they blamed their opponents for starting the culture war. One can see this happening during the current phase of the culture war. For instance, in Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism (2019), Inglehart and his co-author Pippa Norris, portray populism as being responsible for a culture war against post-material values. They appear unaware of their own side’s role in politicising culture, and forcing those who uphold different values on to the defensive.
The cultural turn marginalised traditional values. In the main, this was achieved through the capture of the institutions of socialisation by the new post-material elites. As sociologist Alvin Gouldner explains, a new class of intellectuals and knowledge workers achieved a monopoly over institutions of education and expertise, promoted the cultural turn, and unleashed forces that worked towards the de-authorisation of traditional cultural values.
Gouldner contends that this development was facilitated by changes within the family. The twin forces of women’s emancipation and the expansion of education in the context of growing prosperity had weakened paternal authority. This, in turn, damaged the capacity of the prevailing system of socialisation, which had been centred on the family, to communicate the legacy and the values of the past.
Gouldner’s analysis provided fascinating insights into the relationship between the disrupted socialisation within the family unit and the intensification of cultural conflict. He claimed that schools and universities provided the ‘institutional basis for the mass production of the new class’. In these institutions, teachers claim to represent society as a whole and, in that capacity, are ‘not defined as having an obligation to reproduce parental values in their children’. The expansion of education works towards insulating children from their parents’ cultural influence...
One of the ways in which children become, through education, culturally distanced from the values of their parents is through their ‘linguistic conversion’ to a form of speech that reflect the values of the new class. What Gouldner characterised as the ‘culture of critical speech’ of the new classes ‘de-authorises all speech grounded in traditional societal authority, while it authorises itself, the elaborated speech variant of the culture of critical discourse, as the standard of all “serious” speech’. Although published in 1979, Gouldner’s analysis anticipated the later institutionalisation of speech codes and the policing of language. It also provides important insights into the vitriol that often accompanies disputes about words and ‘offensive’ speech...
By the turn of the 21st century, institutions of learning, especially universities, were not simply involved in the business of education. They were also concerned with re-education and re-socialisation. In the US in particular, new students were expected to attend numerous workshops to ‘raise their awareness’ on certain issues. ‘Raising awareness’ is best understood as a euphemism for converting individuals to the values of the awareness-raisers themselves.
Campus initiatives designed to raise awareness provide participants with virtues and moral qualities that distinguish them from the supposedly ‘unaware’ and unenlightened. The exhortation to ‘acknowledge white privilege’ is a very clear model of awareness-raising. Those who confess and acknowledge their guilt are able to distinguish themselves from the supposedly narrow-minded, prejudiced people who have not done likewise. The possession of awareness is therefore a marker of one’s superior status. And its absence marks one out as inferior. That is why the refusal to abide by the exhortation to ‘be aware’ invites moral condemnation.
Over recent decades, the cultural distancing of successive generations of young people from the moral outlook of their parents has ensured that the values of the past have lost much of their purchase. Through the medium of linguistic conversion, new cultural values have successfully displaced old ones. The goal is to develop conventions about what can and cannot be said and thought.
At present, this desire to overhaul language is most systematically expressed by advocates of trans culture... Society has become increasingly sensitive and hesitant about which words are appropriate, and which are not. It is a short step from being able to control language to gaining influence over the way people think.
During its current phase, the culture war encompasses virtually all areas of everyday life. It has encouraged an unprecedented level of polarisation over matters that once would have been seen as non-political. That is why today just about anything, from the food you eat to the clothes you wear, can become a subject of vitriolic argument...
Even people’s personal decisions, including who one chooses to have sex with, are interpreted as political statements.
The personalisation of politics can be interpreted as an example of what
the German sociologist Max Weber called the ‘stylisation of life’.
Through the embrace of styles, people set themselves apart, reinforce
their status and draw a moral contrast between their styles of life and
those of others. As Pierre Bourdieu, in his influential essay Distinction,
noted, ‘aesthetic intolerance can be terribly violent’. Struggles over
the ‘art of living’ serve to draw lines between behaviour and attitudes
considered legitimate and those deserving of moral condemnation. The
fury with which the culture war is fought out on social media over
trivial matters such as one’s hairstyle or taste in fashion speaks to
the unrestrained emotionalism at work these days.
Twenty-first-century cultural conflict is waged over the art of living. In universities, this trend is apparent in the numerous conflicts over cultural appropriation. The outbreak of rows over the consumption of culturally insensitive food or the wearing of inappropriate clothes shows that nothing is too trivial or too personal to constitute a political battleground today.
Increasingly, in the culture war, hostility is directed less at people’s beliefs than at people’s cultural identity. This can be seen in the project of pathologising male identity as ‘toxic masculinity’, or of stigmatising white people through the self-serving concepts of ‘whiteness’ and ‘white fragility’, both of which assume white people to be inherently racist. The politicisation of identity in this way is divisive, and gives all arguments an intensely emotional force.
The advocates of the politicisation of identity and culture have been relatively successful in forcing their opponents on the defensive. Through their control of language and institutions of culture, they have certainly emerged as the main beneficiaries of the culture war. But while they have undermined the influence of traditional norms and values, they have failed to elaborate a positive vision that might inspire society as a whole.
That identity politics has become the dominant force in Western life today serves as a powerful reminder of the hegemonic influence of the cultural turn. The advocates of identity politics see this as positive, of course. Hence they present the politicisation of culture as a triumph for diversity over discrimination and oppression. But this is misdirection. The politics of culture has no redeeming qualities. It has rarely allowed the forging of strong bonds between different groups, as the acrimonious dispute between feminists and trans activists shows. Quite the opposite. The intensely personal dimension of identity politics actively impedes the development of human solidarity. And the unprecedented level of polarisation of public life is only going to intensify if the politicisation of identity continues unchecked.
The sacralisation of identity is all the more remarkable given the shallow moral and intellectual resources that support it. Not that it needs much support, given the absence of resistance. Indeed, it is precisely the absence of resistance that has allowed Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, a superficial and trashy exercise in guilt-tripping, to become a set text in schools and universities.
What is most remarkable about the experience of the past 50 years is the historic failure to challenge the forces politicising culture. With a few exceptions, representatives of the key strands of the modern era – be they conservative, liberal or socialist – pretended not to notice what was going on. In many cases, they simply left the field of battle altogether. This has allowed their opponents to monopolise the institutions of socialisation and influence the young.
There is little doubt about it: the post-1970s cultural crusaders are winning. Their influence is no longer confined to institutions of culture and education. With every generational transition they have succeeded in influencing an ever-growing proportion of society, from business to sport.
Even the judiciary has been won over to the identity-obsessed worldview prevailing in the West. Hence a supposedly conservative-dominated US Supreme Court recently ruled to extend LGBT rights in the workplace...
The war against the narrow-minded ethos represented by identitarians
will be lost unless those of us concerned with defending the legacy of
human civilisation step up and take the fight to their favoured
battleground – the sphere of education. At present, children are
educated to regard themselves as vulnerable and fragile individuals, and
to obsess over their identity. We need to adopt a different approach –
one that educates children for freedom and cultivates their aspiration
for independence. This might seem like a modest objective. But the
outcome of the culture war will be determined by the ideals with which
we can inspire our children."
