Deconstructing The Culture War

There's been some vaguely lefty adage flying around semi-recently, claiming that the "Culture War" is effectively a distraction to avoid a class war. In terms of interests, this is not so far-fetched, and in principle it might be useful to treat it like it was true. The political angle behind a culture war does seem to be quite convenient, especially in parliamentary systems with only two parties or those, in which parties position themselves primarily along the left-right spectrum, but it should be no surprise that in other forms of representative democracies, these structures also form. Whether they do so "naturally" or whether they get "imported" is perhaps a question worth inspecting, but that is not the topic of this piece. Instead, we should briefly make sure we recognize the elements of a culture war, not unlike we did for the generational conflict in a previous essay.

In most non-totalitarian states, there is a sense of a "right wing" and a "left wing", vaguely the "conservatives" and "progressives". While this has been the most prominent perspective used to evaluate political narrative, it's standard fare for many circles to add at least a second axis to this categorization. Perhaps the reader is familiar with the "political compass". Still, notions of the culture war usually pit the progressives against the conservatives (often excluding the revolutionaries), so the discussion implicitly strengthens the idea that progressives and conservatives have irreconcilable interests. There is probably little point in repeating the thesis of the essay on generational conflict. It's essentially the same, although culture war issues have a slightly different nature than those centered in the generational conflicts.

The Material Argument

As discussed, the generational conflict derives its existence and mainstay in the zeitgeist chiefly along the borders of class lines. In contrast to that, culture war issues never really seem to change much. At their core, they are often questions wherein the parties have very different material investment. The inclusiveness of queer identities illustrates this clearly. Even within the capitalist paradigm of modern healthcare, integrating their needs into the pre-existing structures need not actually be any more difficult than it would be for those lucky enough to count themselves outside of any marginalized identities. Yet, their basic human rights are often centered as issues between conservatives and progressives. While strictly speaking this could be disambiguated as a question of moral philosophy, we don't deal in those terms here. Rather, we should inspect the material investment that advocates of either side actually would have to make, should they concede to the other side. We'll have to make some approximations, because humans are rarely ever this simple, but in the regular case, somebody advocating for inclusionary rights of any sort of identity is doing so because they lack protections in a way that impacts their material reality. This might be the criminalizing or pathologizing of certain inherent, and unrelated qualities, the denial of resources necessary for a healthy life, usually in form of healthcare and/or housing, the blacklisting from certain positions (or rather the relegation to a certain type of job), or simply turning a blind eye toward often silent, often less visible forms of discrimination. In their case, the stakes are very high, and affect either them directly, or at least people that exist in their (more or less immediate) sphere.

On the flipside, the conservative concession would upset little but their sense of ego, some upholding of a constructed hierarchy. The material effect here is not beyond that of the inclusion of any other person, the conservative included. In a way then, many issues that exist in this culture war picture are heavily constructed on at least one side. The progressive means well, certainly, and is advocating for mostly correct things, but the conflict is not balanced simply, because both sides do not have the same material investment in the question. The conservative can be very flippant about the issue without compromising their own material reality or that of the people in their circle. It is the same imbalance socialists will be familiar with when arguing on structural solutions with anybody to their right. Note, that here the reactions are the same.

When looking at the kind of arguments that are made in culture war debates, there is a heavy tendency on the progressive side to cite numbers and studies, because they feel a need to educate themselves about the issue. And the refusal to engage with said numbers and studies on the side of their opposition is also the same. It frames the discussion in ways that aren't actually helpful when coming to a concensus, not only because these behaviors are quick to be essentialized due to their apparent symptomatic nature, but also because these are two very different discussions happening over top of one another.

Marxists specifically will often find themselves in political discussions and get concessions from their opposition to the tune of "That's probably the ethically correct thing, (but...)" and while I don't usually correct them, that's rarely actually the argument I'm crafting. Ethics, especially the European conception of ethics are highly constructed frameworks, usually built not without some specific intentions beyond the pure inspection of ethics. Keen readers will have noticed that the above example had at least a measure of material stakes on the one side, and purely "ethical" stakes on the other. For sake of legibility, I'll mark the side of the immaterial argument as "reactionary" from here on out.

Culture as a Reactionary Cop-Out

When politicians talk about culture in the context of progressive reforms, that is usually somewhat of a misattribution. The culture, as in the zeitgeist, is not set or fixed by legislation, in the same way that slang is not set or fixed by dictionaries. At best the former is acknowledged or legitimized by the latter. In this sense, what happens when these topics are centered as part of political rhetoric, it's not about analyzing the "culture" and rather dictating values to the constituents. While this is of course primarily effective for values that already intersect with that of the constituents, most of the details are usually very much "vibes-based". It's not by coincidence that conservative parties and progressive parties are vaguely in agreement about the ideas they embrace, across country borders, but the details of how exactly to hamper immigration, how many rights queer or differently-abled people are supposed to enjoy is very diverse. When the culture argument is applied to the rough shape of an issue, it's almost guaranteed to resonate with the correct sort of audience. It's almost like an entree at a fancy restaurant. It gets the audience into the right mindset, butters them up, so that whatever comes next is easier to swallow. When it's applied to the detail, it then effectively functions as an argument from authority, to clearer stress the in-group-out-group mentality that politics so often depends on. Culture as an argument saves the orator the trouble of structuring a proper analysis, and often they are ahistorical and hollow as a result.

To serve an example: One might be familiar with the idea that non-heteronormative partnerships are supposed to be "foreign to ones culture", or in other words: unnatural. Despite the appeal to some nebulous human nature that somehow the orator is aware of in more details than the myriad of scientific fields of studies that touch on the question, there is really no evidence for this. Obviously it's bad to argue with the "natural behavior of animal species", considering there are enough same-sex pairings in nature. There are also models of partnerships in nature that are, arguably, more scandalous to the stereotypical conservatives, which, if translated into the human world, were akin to polycules. Beyond this, Ligers are the product of interspecies coupling, which should probably disqualify animal species behavior as the argument to end all arguments. Also, in the self-interest of these gentlemen with a penchant for pseudo-science, female praying mantises tear off the heads of their male partners after copulation for sustenance. On the other hand, this might explain the irrational fear of women a certain sort of conservative men seem to develop (A side-note on the matter of trans- and intersex people: Certain snails act as either the male or female, depending on the stage of their life.). The claim that specifically human nature dictates exclusively hetero-normative relationships also raises questions, specifically, when humans supposedly started to deviate from this presumably once unshakable norm. We know of enough practices in ancient Rome, many Indigenous Peoples cultures saw such relationships as a normal facet of communal life, sometimes even including sexes beyond "male" and "female" (coded) ones, often even in roles that were central to their families. Clearly the argument is built with bread sticks and denial, and still we see variations of this claim in modern rhetoric.

Ideas like these aren't (just) constructed out of laziness. These are arguments formulated to defend a position that is just factually wrong. This is not to say that people use this line of thinking with the explicit goal of proliferating ideas they know to be wrong, just that it's very easily possible to construct many factually wrong arguments by using it. In a way, this is not dissimilar to the "argument from authority", a type of logical fallacy, with the authority in question here being a hypothetical (senior) majority, which is often assumed to include the relevant leading authorities on the issue.

Tradition Betrayed

The pervading streak of anti-intellectualism in conservative and reactionary circles is an ever-recurring phenomenon. It can be often found in forms of fascism, recognized in the thought that stands at the root of destroying libraries and burning books, and is also often included in modern reactionary campaign rhetoric. American conservatives often conjure the image of elitist intellectual institutions, not necessarily in the way they actually are elitist, but as a caricature of the public sphere intellectual, whose leading characteristics are obtuse speech, practical ineptitude and general contempt for the working class. Initially, this phenomenon is a little odd, considering these institutions are an integral part of the traditional superstructure that is their supposed guiding star. At the same time, these tendencies habitually employ the results of think-tanks, which often use similar methods and almost identical presentation. This strikes me not as the reactionary tendency taking issue with the methods, or the type of person moving in academic spaces, but rather as an issue with the results. Far be it for me to claim that the results that academia publishes are always stellar, or infallible, but there is often a clear tendency toward liberal-progressive values. It's maybe more of a feeling of betrayal.

It's probably not a coincidence, that many young conservatives like to point toward conservative public intellectuals as part of their central influence on their politics. While these people might not have a very long shelf-life, compared to the likes of Chomsky or Bookchin, their profile tends to be somewhat more defined in the public sphere, well into their descent into infamy. Still, a common thread linking these conservative public intellectuals is an appeal to "logic" or "rationality". This makes a lot of sense, of course. In an age of science, all sides would like to have scientific findings to support their claim, and by the nature of conservativism, the academic institutions did indeed fill this role for their ideology once. How far back this might be, is a separate question, but in many of the modern examples, the institutions used to agree with them during their lifetime, or at least during their parents' lifetime. It's, however, in the nature and interest of science to evolve, and make corrections. Evolving past repressive beliefs, supported by evidence or not, is, to them, not exclusively a political act, and often the priority of these institutions is reevaluation, not any specific question of politics. For many reactionaries, this might not be the case. In this instance, academia "betrays" them.

On its face, academia is obviously not the only institution capable of evolving past its supporters. Another common institution to do so, are political parties, especially the populist ones (note, that I'm using the classical definition of populism here, as in: following the popular line of issues. This is, without closer inspection and within liberal democracies, a neutral term, and I'm intending to use it as such here). Populist parties will periodically face iterations of the same issue: It's voter base is aging. Every few years, they will have to make the decision to either adapt a more progressive position, which is more often held by younger people, and also filters upward toward the elder generations, provided there is a culture of discussing politics, or remain true to the voters that have ostensibly favored them during the last few legislations. Often, adapting is a sustainable option, the price of which is "betraying" their old voter base. This is of course a structural issue, endemic to systems that don't give (much) value to sustained political education, but such has been the lived reality of many European and European-inspired populist parties. What's more interesting is their own reaction to these accusastions of betrayal.

Being criticised for effectively abandoning a former position is usually independent of the values that are supposed to form the basis of a party's politics. While it's usually only addressed, when enough of their former voter base decide to withhold their vote (seeing as this phenomenon is often observed as being an act of protest, "withholding" is the correct expression), what follows is not seldomly resolute abandonment of the self-ascribed values, a motion that will often earn said party the "reactionary" label alongside those that decry their alleged downfall. In this way, the party will have chosen to align themselves against the principled line of their school of thought, and instead with a group of individual voices, which often can't produced a principled political argument for their case.

About those Crises

Having spoken about the individualist tendencies embedded in the culture war rhetoric, let's go into the bases that make it attractive to frame this dichotomy as a "war". In general, I think it's a little tacky to label every societal divide as a "war", and I would really prefer speaking of a "culture divide", but in these cases, the exact vocabulary used is actually quite relevant to the discussion. For example, we have seen what happens if someone apparently changes sides in this discussion. Not only is this taken as a form of betrayal, the retribution is often harsh, and very difficult to come back from. In a simple discussion, this would not be the case.

Part of why the "culture war" is framed as such, is probably that the issues at its base are taken as "crises" to begin with. Questions centered include the climate crisis, human rights and equity questions on the left, all of which are on paper understandable to those not entirely in denial (this is not the same as agreeing with the specifics of how the issues are addressed by progressives); and masculinity, morality and national identity on the right. Now, it shouldn't be a secret which of these I find more convincing, but let's make an effort to understand the claims that the right makes, as they trickle into the talking points of the general population, as well as tainting causes that are actually well founded and will need to be addressed sooner or later. At the same time, we should understand that this essay in no way claims to provide a comprehensive list or analysis for either of the issues.

Of these three problems, I find it easiest to frame morality. I've stated often that I don't like to argue using morality. I should probably explain why. "Morality" in itself is not a defined "thing", there is no reification of morality that one can reasonably address and expect to get a response that's not in it's base tainted by the thought-patterns one has already fallen into. This isn't an indictment of people using morality in everyday life to make decisions, nor of morality as a concept. If it works for you, then it's a perfectly good framework. In a sense, it's been stress-tested by history and philosophy, so there's certainly worse ways to go. However, I think the limitations of morality should be kept in mind upon use. Morality being "stress-tested" doesn't mean that it's static over long stretches of time. It, too, is highly dependent on the place and time it exists in. What makes it a framework I dislike using, makes it an easy thing to worry about. It being so intangible, situationally dependent, and crucially, known to fail throughout history, makes it something that is technically sensible to worry about. Extending this by the assumption morality is a reflection of society completes the picture. This idea is firmly grounded in liberal philosophy, which forms the basis of western democratic states. It's generally worth interrogating the function of structures like morality in the context of a state. Similar to culture, morality really isn't anything that can be dictated down into the population, and states aren't really beholden to moral values the same way an individual is. Morality instead tends to find itself enshrined into constitutions or comparable texts. This is not to say that consititutions don't change with the times, hence perhaps serving as the best reification of national moral guidelines enshrined into law. The unchanging constitution is actually a very western conception, which is partially grounded in the enlightenment method, which - for all its posturing about rationality - is really heavily vibes-based. As an example, the famous witch hunts were still going strong and were being formalized in law. This, too, was done on the basis of morals.

Masculinity is only the easier of the two remaining bullet points, because it's defined in a way that people will understand intuitively, even if they won't always be able to put it into words. This, and any question of gender roles is really a question of tradition, and the power that tradition confers to certain groups. In this way, masculinity has been "in crisis" as long as the notion of masculinity as presentation (i.e. gender norms as a concept) has been a factor in popular consciousness. Of course the conception of masculinity, just like morals (for popular conception of both tend to be deeply entwined) is highly flexible. There are mainstays, of course. The traditionalist's image of the man as a sort of warrior comes to mind, though the details of this physicality varies over time. I choose to highlight masculinity in this place, because it interacts the most heavily with the other issues that get raised in the general area. I hold with the works of feminist theory by de Beauvoir and Federici, in the sense that masculinity is, by most measures, an absence of definition. Patriarchal structures define identities that are separate from the one they hold up to venerate, away from said identity and into a neat box, and once all "different" identities (what we refer to as "marginalized") identities are defined into their boxes, the masculine identity is free to roam in what is left. This is a rather standard process of separating different identities, but this of course works best as a system, when the aforementioned boxes include mostly vices. The fact, that femininity was allowed to have parental love and emotional capacities, can be charitably called an accident that was too difficult to correct without undoing the structures that enabled this effect in the first place. The former was an accidental inclusion from the times women were relegated to doing unpaid labour in the form of household chores and raising the children, and the second is a hold-over from enlightenment times, which held emotional detachment as part of the rational ideal.

National Identity is a difficult topic to to approach, since it's filled to the brim with fascist dog-whistles. There is, however a good case for the cultivation of a national identity in form of culture and way of life. These things are part of a preservation of diverse traditions. For this topic, it's all about how this identity is lived and thought about.

The standard approach sees national identity as a set of constraints that is imposed on the members of community, especially the ones that migrate into it. Extremes of this can be charted as nationalism, but lesser forms show up as microaggressions and calls for integration. Where national identity becomes problematic, is when it's entangled with the notion of exclusive land rights, i.e. the idea hat the owner of an area of land having the sole authority over what is allowed to happen on it, even if this ownership is collective within an exclusive group. Many cultures include practices that are considered forbidden in others, and being able to exclude benign practices from a place will always stray close to weaponized nationalism, rather than cultural preservation. Possible exceptions to this include groups like land/water protectors, which would like to impose certain constraints on usage of specific spaces, though not only is their conception of ownership somewhat different than the liberal approach, but one could argue that these are as much environmental preservation efforts as they are cultural ones.

The question of national identity carries the most edge cases, but in general it could be said, that where exactly this identity is put into practice is not as relevant as with whom it is practiced. This means, of course, that the points that aren't straight up nationalism aren't actually a question of "national" identity, but rather that of a "cultural" one. The former European empires, too, had a conception of national identity, which they tried to impose onto their colonies. This can be seen in the continued practice of predominantly Catholicism in many countries in Latin America. Their practices could be mostly kept alive regardless of location, and nowadays, this is done within many diaspora households. Perhaps the specifics of their location will dictate some of the details, such as the exact food that will be involved, but as long as the oral history is preserved, and practicing these rites isn't criminalized by either state nor the dominant groups of society, this culture adapts and proliferates. The way Christmas is celebrated globally, even in non-Christian majority countries is a good example for this. Not only is it now something that people are aware of globally, they tend to be receptive to exchanging different forms of the holiday.

War comes with a few boons during public relations. As we have had the displeasure of observing in real time during these past few years, the rhetoric around war allows both the orator and the audience to switch off a good amount of critical thinking. War propaganda has a long tradition of putting nations into a frenzy to support whichever side they had predetermined to support, inventing weapons of mass destruction where they don't exist, and stepping over the human dignity of the enemy. Usually, the playground method of assigning blame works best. Whoever started it is at fault. Obviously then, it's helpful to choose a the start of the conflict (usually arbitrarily) and paint the "victim" in a favourable light. This is why the framing of this divide as a war is important. It obscures both who is attacking, and what is being attacked.

At this point it might be good to reexamine who drives the narrative of the culture war. The reason that I've focused so much on decrypting the conservative position is that the issues of culture war tends to be dictated by conservatives. In a sense, they are forcing the progressives to take up a defensive position in the discourse, something that progressives have historically been somewhat bad at. Conservative establishments such as certain news outlets and prominent figures primarily drive the conversation, much beyond their grass-roots equivalents. Because of this, I would argue that progressives trying to really mount a "culture war" stance are playing into the narrative against their benefit. In the interest of consistency, liberal progressives can't really resort to militancy to counter the militancy that conservatives tend to embrace as part of their repertoire, so they are on the back-foot arguing points that likely won't convince anybody who wasn't in agreement either way, at least not without stringent theory that is rarely available to those of a liberal (petit-)bourgeoise disposition. Further, without a good reason to strike morality, tradition and bourgeois national identity from the basis of argumentation, this discussion is functionally unwinnable, seeing as these paradigms are, as we've seen, arbitrary.

Engaging With Culture War

We've now hopefully understood both the underlying mechanics and our positions in the culture war discussion. In the words of Lenin: What is to be done? After all, we'll have difficulties avoiding the rhetoric, and not engaging with it will leave certain narratives to be completely co-opted by the reactionaries.

Like most propaganda, the best remedy against the culture war is education, read: counter-propaganda. This consists of learning proper theory, that is equipped to disarm the reactionary arguments and base, and of imparting this theory where possible. Where militancy is required, there's no shame in mounting a counter-militancy. Dialectically, the discussion should be taken seriously as a form of provocation, finding ways to shut down the discussion rather than winning it, and offering resistance where strategically convenient.