Aculture war is a form ofcultural conflict (metaphorical "war") between differentsocial groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology (moral beliefs, humanevirtues, and religious practices) uponmainstream society,[1][2] or upon the other. In political usage,culture war is a metaphor for "hot-button" politics aboutvalues andideologies, realized with intentionally adversarial social narratives meant to provokepolitical polarization among the mainstream of society over economic matters,[3][4] such as those ofpublic policy,[5] as well as ofconsumption.[1] As practical politics, a culture war is about social policywedge issues that are based on abstract arguments aboutvalues,morality, andlifestyle meant to provokepolitical cleavage in amulticultural society.[2]
In the history of Germany, theKulturkampf (Cultural Struggle) was the seven-year political conflict (1871–1878) between theCatholic Church in Germany led byPope Pius IX and theKingdom of Prussia led by chancellorOtto von Bismarck. The Prussian church-and-state political conflict was about the church's direct control over both education andecclesiastical appointments in the Prussian kingdom as aRoman Catholic nation and country. Moreover, when compared to other church-and-state conflicts about political culture, theKulturkampf of Prussia also featuredanti-Polish sentiment.
In modern political usage, the German termKulturkampf describes any conflict (political, ideological, or social) between the secular government and the religious authorities of a society. The term also describes the great and small culture wars among political factions who hold deeply opposing values and beliefs within a nation, a community, and a cultural group.[6][better source needed]In the English language, the termculture war is acalque of the German wordKulturkampf (culture struggle), which refers to an historical event in Germany. The term appears as the title of an 1875 British book review of a German pamphlet.[7]
Since the time that James Davison Hunter first applied the concept of culture wars to American life, the idea has been subject to questions about whether "culture wars" names a real phenomenon, and if so, whether the phenomenon it describes is a cause of, or merely a result of, membership in groups like political parties and religions. Culture wars have also been subject to the criticism of being artificial, imposed, or asymmetric conflicts, rather than a result of authentic differences between cultures. Researchers have differed about thescientific validity of the notion of culture war. Some claim it does not describe real behavior, or that it describes only the behavior of a small political elite. Others claim culture war is real and widespread, and even that it is fundamental to explaining Americans' political behavior and beliefs. A 2023 study on the circulation of conspiracy theories on social media noted that disinformation actors insert polarizing claims in culture wars by taking one side or the other, thus making the adherents circulate and parrot disinformation as a rhetorical ammunition against their perceived opponents.[1]
Political scientistAlan Wolfe participated in a series of scholarly debates in the 1990s and 2000s against Hunter, claiming that Hunter's concept of culture wars did not accurately describe the opinions or behavior of Americans, which Wolfe claimed were more united than polarized.[8] Ameta-analysis of opinion data from 1992 to 2012 published in theAmerican Political Science Review concluded that, in contrast to a common belief that political party and religious membership shape opinion on culture war topics, instead opinions on culture war topics lead people to revise their political party and religious orientations. The researchers view culture war attitudes as "foundational elements in the political and religious belief systems of ordinary citizens."[9]
Some writers and scholars have said that culture wars are created or perpetuated by political special interest groups, by reactionary social movements, by party dynamics, or by electoral politics as a whole. These authors view culture war not as an unavoidable result of widespread cultural differences, but as a technique used to createin-groups and out-groups for a political purpose. Political commentator E. J. Dionne has written that culture war is an electoral technique to exploit differences and grievances, remarking that the real cultural division is "between those who want to have a culture war and those who don't."[10]
Sociologist Scott Melzer says that culture wars are created by conservative, reactive organizations and movements. Members of these movements possess a "sense of victimization at the hands of a liberal culture run amok. In their eyes, immigrants, gays, women, the poor, and other groups are (undeservedly) granted special rights and privileges." Melzer writes about the example of theNational Rifle Association of America, which he says intentionally created a culture war in order to unite conservative groups, particularly groups of white men, against a common perceived threat.[11] Similarly, religion scholar Susan B. Ridgely has written that culture wars were made possible byFocus on the Family. This organization produced conservative Christian "alternative news" that began to bifurcate American media consumption, promoting a particular "traditional family" archetype to one part of the population, particularly conservative religious women. Ridgely says that this tradition was depicted as under liberal attack, seeming to necessitate a culture war to defend the tradition.[12]
Political scientists Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins have written about an asymmetry between the US's two major political parties, saying the Republican party should be understood as an ideological movement built to wage political conflict, and the Democratic party as a coalition of social groups with less ability to impose ideological discipline on members.[13] This encourages Republicans to perpetuate and to draw new issues into culture wars, because Republicans are well equipped to fight such wars.[14] According toThe Guardian, "many on the left have argued that such [culture war] battles [a]re 'distractions' from the real fight over class and economic issues."[15]
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In American usage,culture war may imply a conflict between those values consideredtraditionalist orconservative and those consideredprogressive orliberal. This usage originated in the 1920s when urban and rural American values came into closer conflict.[16] This followed several decades of immigration to the States by people who earlier European immigrants considered 'alien'. It was also a result of the cultural shifts and modernizing trends of theRoaring Twenties, culminating in the presidential campaign ofAl Smith in 1928.[17] In subsequent decades during the 20th century, the term was published occasionally in American newspapers.[18][19] Historian Matthew Dallek argues theJohn Birch Society (JBS) was an early promoter of culture war ideas.[20] Scholar Celestini Carmen traces the JBS's apocalyptic culture war rhetoric through the connections ofChristian right leaders such asTim LaHaye andPhyllis Schlafly to the JBS and their founding of theMoral Majority.[21]
James Davison Hunter, asociologist at theUniversity of Virginia, introduced the expression again in his 1991 publication,Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Hunter described what he saw as a dramatic realignment and polarization that had transformedAmerican politics andculture. He argued that on an increasing number of "hot-button" defining issues—abortion,gun politics,separation of church and state,privacy,recreational drug use,homosexuality,censorship—there existed two definable polarities. Furthermore, not only were there a number of divisive issues, but society had divided along essentially the same lines on these issues, so as to constitute two warring groups, defined primarily not by nominal religion, ethnicity, social class, or even political affiliation, but rather by ideologicalworld-views. Hunter characterized this polarity as stemming from opposite impulses, toward what he referred to asProgressivism and asOrthodoxy. Others have adopted the dichotomy with varying labels. For example,Bill O'Reilly, a conservative political commentator and former host of theFox News Channel talk showThe O'Reilly Factor, emphasizes differences between "Secular-Progressives" and "Traditionalists" in his 2006 bookCulture Warrior.[22][23]
HistorianKristin Kobes Du Mez attributes the 1990s emergence of culture wars to the end of theCold War in 1991. She writes thatEvangelical Christians viewed a particular Christian masculinegender role as the only defense of America against the threat ofcommunism. When this threat ended upon the close of the Cold War, Evangelical leaders transferred the perceived source of threat from foreign communism to domestic changes in gender roles and sexuality.[24]
During the1992 presidential election, commentatorPat Buchanan mounteda campaign for theRepublican nomination for president against incumbentGeorge H. W. Bush. In aprime-time slot at the1992 Republican National Convention, Buchanan gave his speech on the culture war.[25] He argued: "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself."[26] In addition to criticizingenvironmentalists andfeminism, he portrayedpublic morality as adefining issue:
The agenda [Bill] Clinton and [Hillary] Clinton would impose on America—abortion on demand, alitmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units—that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation that we still call God's country.[26]
A month later, Buchanan characterized the conflict as about power over society's definition of right and wrong. He named abortion, sexual orientation and popular culture as major fronts—and mentioned other controversies, including clashes over theConfederate flag, Christmas, and taxpayer-funded art. He also said that the negative attention his "culture war" speech received was itself evidence of America's polarization.[27]
The culture war had significant impact on national politics in the 1990s.[4] The rhetoric of theChristian Coalition of America may have weakened president George H. W. Bush's chances for re-election in 1992 and helped his successor,Bill Clinton, win reelection in 1996.[28] On the other hand, the rhetoric of conservative cultural warriors helped Republicans gain control of Congress in 1994.[29] The culture wars influenced the debate overstate-school historycurricula in the United States in the 1990s. In particular, debates over the development ofnational educational standards in 1994 revolved around whether the study of American history should be a "celebratory" or "critical" undertaking and involved such prominent public figures asLynne Cheney,Rush Limbaugh, and historianGary Nash.[30][31]
A political view calledneoconservatism shifted the terms of the debate in the early 2000s. Neoconservatives differed from their opponents in that they interpreted problems facing the nation asmoral issues rather than economic or political ones. For example, neoconservatives saw the decline of the traditionalfamily structure as well as the decline of religion in American society asspiritual crises that required a spiritual response. Critics accused neoconservatives ofconfusing cause and effect.[32]
During the 2000s, voting for Republicans began to correlate heavily withtraditionalist ororthodox religious belief across diverse religious sects. Voting for Democrats became more correlated withliberal ormodernist religious belief, and with beingnonreligious.[10]Belief in scientific conclusions, such asclimate change, also became tightly coupled with political party affiliation in this era, causing climate scholarAndrew Hoffman to observe thatclimate change had "become enmeshed in the so-calledculture wars."[33]
Topics traditionally associated with culture war were not prominent in media coverage of the2008 election season, with the exception of coverage of vice-presidential candidateSarah Palin,[34] who drew attention to her conservative religion and created a performativeclimate change denialism brand for herself.[35] Palin's defeat in the election and subsequent resignation as governor of Alaska caused theCenter for American Progress to predict "the coming end of the culture wars," which they attributed to demographic change, particularly high rates of acceptance ofsame-sex marriage amongmillennials.[36]
In the early 2010s, the American Left pushed further against established social norms. While theAmerican right took issue with the perceived worldwide dominance of leftism in international politics and corporate activity,anti-nationalism, and secularhuman rights policies and activism not based onAbrahamic religious worldviews.[37]
While traditional culture war issues, like abortion, continue to be a focal point,[38] the issues identified with the culture war broadened and intensified in the mid-late 2010s.Jonathan Haidt, author ofThe Coddling of the American Mind, identified a rise incancel culture viasocial media among young progressives since 2012, which he believes had "transformative effects on university life and later on politics and culture throughout the English-speaking world," in what Haidt[39] and other commentators[40][41] have called the "Great Awokening". JournalistMichael Grunwald says that "PresidentDonald Trump has pioneered a new politics of perpetual culture war" and listsBlack Lives Matter,U.S. national anthem protests,climate change, education policy, healthcare policy includingObamacare, and infrastructure policy as culture war issues in 2018.[42] The rights oftransgender people and the role of religion in lawmaking were identified as "new fronts in the culture war" by political scientist Jeremiah Castle, as the polarization of public opinion on these two topics resembles that of previous culture war issues.[43] In 2020, during theCOVID-19 pandemic, North Dakota governorDoug Burgum describedopposition to wearing face masks as a "senseless" culture war issue that jeopardizes human safety.[44]
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This broader understanding of culture war issues in the mid-late 2010s and 2020s is associated with a political strategy called "owning the libs." Conservative media figures employing this strategy emphasize and expand upon culture war issues with the goal of upsetting liberals. According toNicole Hemmer of Columbia University, this strategy is a substitute for the cohesive conservative ideology that existed during theCold War. It holds a conservativevoting bloc together in the absence of shared policy preferences among the bloc's members.[45]
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A number of conflicts about diversity in popular culture occurring in the 2010s, such as theGamergate controversy,Comicsgate and theSad Puppies science fiction voting campaign, were identified in the media as being examples of the culture war.[47] JournalistCaitlin Dewey described Gamergate as a "proxy war" for a larger culture war between those who want greater inclusion of women and minorities in cultural institutions versus anti-feminists and traditionalists who do not.[48] The perception that culture war conflict had been demoted from electoral politics to popular culture led writer Jack Meserve to call popular movies, games, and writing the "last front in the culture war" in 2015.[49]
These conflicts about representation in popular culture re-emerged into electoral politics via thealt-right andalt-lite movements.[50] According to media scholar Whitney Phillips, Gamergate "prototyped" strategies of harassment and controversy-stoking that proved useful in political strategy. For example, Republican political strategistSteve Bannon publicized pop-culture conflicts during the 2016 presidential campaign ofDonald Trump, encouraging a young audience to "come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump."[51]
Some observers inCanada have used the term "culture war" to refer to differing values betweenWestern versusEastern Canada,urban versusrural Canada, as well asconservatism versusliberalism andprogressivism.[52] The phrase has also been used to describe theHarper government's attitude towards thearts community.Andrew Coyne termed this negative policy towards the arts community as "class warfare."[53]
During the tenure of theLiberal–National Coalition government of 1996 to 2007, interpretations ofAboriginal history became a part of a wider political debate regarding Australian national pride and symbolism occasionally called the "culture wars", more often the "history wars".[54] This debate extended intoa controversy over the presentation of history in theNational Museum of Australia and inhigh-school history curricula.[55][56] It also migrated into the general Australian media, with major broadsheets such asThe Australian,The Sydney Morning Herald andThe Age regularly publishing opinion pieces on the topic.Marcia Langton has referred to much of this wider debate as "war porn"[57] and as an "intellectual dead end".[58]
Two Australian Prime Ministers,Paul Keating (in office 1991–1996) and John Howard (in office 1996–2007), became major participants in the "wars". According toMark McKenna's analysis for the Australian Parliamentary Library,[59] John Howard believed that Paul Keating portrayed Australia pre-Whitlam (Prime Minister from 1972 to 1975) in an unduly negative light; while Keating sought to distance the modernLabor movement from its historical support for the monarchy and for theWhite Australia policy by arguing that it was the conservative Australian parties which had been barriers to national progress. He accusedBritain of having abandoned Australia during theSecond World War. Keating staunchly supported a symbolic apology toAustralian Aboriginals for their mistreatment at the hands of previous administrations, and outlined his view of the origins and potential solutions to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage in hisRedfern Park Speech of 10 December 1992 (drafted with the assistance of historianDon Watson). In 1999, following the release of the 1998Bringing Them Home Report, Howard passed a ParliamentaryMotion of Reconciliation describing treatment of Aborigines as the "most blemished chapter" in Australian history, but he refused to issue an official apology.[60] Howard saw an apology as inappropriate as it would imply "intergeneration guilt"; he said that "practical" measures were a better response to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage. Keating has argued for the eradication of remaining symbols linked to colonial origins: including deference forANZAC Day,[61] for theAustralian flag and for themonarchy in Australia, while Howard supported these institutions. Unlike fellow Labor leaders and contemporaries,Bob Hawke (Prime Minister 1983–1991) andKim Beazley (Labor Party leader 2005–2006), Keating never traveled toGallipoli for ANZAC Day ceremonies. In 2008 he described those who gathered there as "misguided".[62]
In 2006 John Howard said in a speech to mark the 50th anniversary ofQuadrant that"Political Correctness" was dead in Australia but: "we should not underestimate the degree to which the soft-left still holds sway, even dominance, especially in Australia's universities".[citation needed] Also in 2006,Sydney Morning Herald political editorPeter Hartcher reported that Opposition foreign-affairs spokesmanKevin Rudd was entering the philosophical debate by arguing in response that "John Howard, is guilty of perpetrating 'a fraud' in his so-called culture wars ... designed not to make real change but to mask the damage inflicted by the Government's economic policies".[63]
The defeat of the Howard government in theAustralian Federal election of 2007 and its replacement by theRudd Labor government altered the dynamic of the debate. Rudd made anofficial apology to the AboriginalStolen Generation[64] with bi-partisan support.[65] Like Keating, Rudd supported an Australian republic, but in contrast to Keating, Rudd declared support for theAustralian flag and supported the commemoration of ANZAC Day; he also expressed admiration for Liberal Party founderRobert Menzies.[66][67] Subsequent to the 2007 change of government, and prior to the passage, with support from all parties, of the Parliamentary apology to indigenous Australians, Professor of Australian Studies Richard Nile argued: "the culture and history wars are over and with them should also go the adversarial nature of intellectual debate",[68] a view contested by others, including conservative commentatorJanet Albrechtsen.[69]Climate change in Australia is also considered ahighly divisive or politically controversial topic, to the point it is sometimes called a "culture war".[70][71]
Since the defeat of the2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, there has been a significant calls reignited from Conservative Politicians and Commentators to oppose or scale down Indigenous Reconciliation, viewing policies likeWelcome to Country ceremonies and placing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait flags alongside theNational Flag as 'divisive'.[72]
According to political scientist Constance G. Anthony, American culture war perspectives on human sexuality were exported to Africa as a form ofneocolonialism. In his view, this began during theAIDS epidemic in Africa, with the United States government first tying HIV/AIDS assistance money to evangelical leadership and theChristian right during theBush administration, then to LGBTQ tolerance during theadministration ofBarack Obama. This stoked a culture war that resulted in (among others) theUganda Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014.[73]
Zambian scholarKapya Kaoma notes that because "the demographic center of Christianity is shifting from theglobal North to theglobal South" Africa's influence on Christianity worldwide is increasing. American conservatives export their culture wars to Africa, Kaoma says, particularly when they realize they may be losing the battle back home. US Christians have framed their anti-LGBT initiatives in Africa as standing in opposition to a "Westerngay agenda", a framing which Kaoma finds ironic.[74]
North American and European conspiracy theories have become widespread inWest Africa via social media, according to 2021 survey byFirst Draft News.COVID-19 misinformation,New World Order conspiracy thinking,QAnon and other conspiracy theories associated with culture war topics are spread by American, Pro-Russian, French-language, and localdisinformation websites and social media accounts, including prominent politicians inNigeria. This has contributed tovaccine hesitancy in West Africa, with 60 percent of survey respondents saying they were unlikely to try to get vaccinated, and an erosion of trust in institutions in the region.[75]
A 2021 report fromKing's College London argued that many people's views on cultural issues in Britain had become tied up with the side of theBrexit debate with which they identify, while the public party-political identities, although not as strong, show similar alignments and that around half the country held relatively strong views on "culture war" issues such as debates on Britain's colonial history or Black Lives Matter; however, the report concluded Britain's cultural and political divide was not as stark as the Republican–Democratic divide in the US and that a sizeable section of the public can be categorised as having either moderate views or as being disengaged from social debates. It also found thatThe Guardian, as opposed to the centre-right newspapers, was more likely to talk about the culture wars.[76]
TheConservative Party have been described as attempting to ignite culture wars in regard to "conservative values" under the tenure of Prime MinisterBoris Johnson. Others argue that it is the left who are engaging in "culture wars", particularly against liberal values, accepted words, and British institutions.[77][78][79][80] Observers such asJohns Hopkins University professorYascha Mounk and journalist and authorLouise Perry have argued that the collapse in support for theLabour Party during the2019 United Kingdom general election came as a result of both a media-induced public perception and a deliberate strategy of Labour of pursuing messages and policy ideas based on cultural issues that resonated with more university educated grassroots activists on the left of the party but alienated Labour's traditional working class voters.[81][82]
An April 2022 survey found evidence that Britons are less divided on "culture war" issues than has often been portrayed in the media. The greatest predictor of opinion was how people voted in the UK's referendum on membership of the European Union,Brexit, yet even among those who voted Leave, 75% agreed "it is important to be attentive to issues of race and social justice". Similarly, even among Remainers and those who last voted for the Labour Party, there was moderately strong support for several socially conservative positions.[83][84]
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Several politicians, such as Poland'sLaw and Justice party,[85] Hungary'sViktor Orbán, Serbia'sAleksandar Vučić, and Slovenia'sJanez Janša,[86] have been accused of fomenting culture wars in their respective countries by encouraging dissent, resistance to LGBT rights, and restrictions on abortion. One facet of the controversy in Poland is the removal ofSoviet War Memorials, which is divisive because some Poles viewed the memorials positively as commemorations of their ancestors who died duringWorld War II, while others felt negatively due to the oppression that some Poles experienced under the Soviet-backedPolish People's Republic.[87][88] Culture war in Hungary is alleged byKim Scheppele to be a disguise fordemocratic backsliding by Orbán.[89] Ukraine also experienced a decades-long culture war pitting the eastern, predominately Russian-speaking, regions against the western Ukrainian-speaking areas of the country.[90] LGBT rights are controversial in Poland, as exemplified by PresidentAndrzej Duda's vow in 2020 to oppose bothsame-sex marriage andLGBT adoption.[91][92]
Different interpretations of bitter events duringWorld War II have become especially contentious in Poland since 2015, shortly after the start of theRusso-Ukrainian War.[93] One disputed issue is whether Poland bears anyresponsibility forthe Holocaust, or whether Poland was entirely a victim ofNazi Germany. This dispute is embodied by the "Polish death camp" controversy (involvingconcentration camps that had been built byNazi Germany duringWorld War II on German-occupied Polish soil) and an attempt to address that controversy with a nowpartly repealed law.[94] A second issue, also addressed by the partly repealed law, revolves aroundPoland–Ukraine relations. In the region, in passing a law to criminalize negative interpretations of the country's collaborationist nationalist movements during World War II, Poland is not alone,[95] andPoland–Ukraine relations have suffered as a result of asimilar law in Ukraine that was criticized in Poland for deflecting blame away from theUkrainian Insurgent Army and theirmassacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.[96]
Not since Pat Buchanan's famous 'culture war' speech in 1992 has a major speaker at a national political convention spoken so hatefully, at such length, about the opposition.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)This is, at one level, part of the pre-scripted culture war being orchestrated by those around [Boris] Johnson.
The dictionary definition ofculture war at Wiktionary
