Why We Need to Win the Culture War
Frank Furedi has written a very interesting piece for Spiked about the necessity of winning the culture war.
It is particularly welcome for those of us who spend our lives shouting about this stuff, while politicians call it a ‘divisive’ distraction, and the average person, more understandably, just wants to ignore it all.
Here’s an excerpt:
Too many commentators still fail to take the culture war seriously. Some tell us that, compared with issues like the cost-of-living crisis, climate change or the war in Ukraine, the culture war is peripheral. Others say the culture war is imagined, an artificial attempt to distract us from the problems that matter. As one commentator in the Guardian argued last year: “Something is dishonest about these battles.”
For decades, we were told that politics was a contest between Left and Right over questions of economics. Many imagine that it is only a matter of time before this ‘real’ politics returns. “People on their way to food banks don’t care about identity politics,” the refrain often goes.
One such writer is Henry Mance of the Financial Times, who last year asked, “Is Britain tiring of the culture war?” “Perhaps identity politics felt contrived compared with the cost-of-living squeeze,” he wrote. “Economic identities have come to the fore again.”
Mance could hardly be more wrong. Because judging by recent developments in the West, it is clear that people’s undoubted concerns about economic conditions do not in any way diminish the impact of the culture war on society.
Furedi later points out that, although many have been slow to acknowledge the importance of the culture war, at least now the contest is becoming less one-sided:
When elites lament the culture war they are really just lamenting that the culture war is no longer a one-sided affair. Until recently, the counter-cultural movement that emerged in higher education in the 1960s was rarely confronted effectively by its opponents. The phenomenon now known as ‘woke’ has succeeded in gaining hegemony over mainstream culture and education, and even over the running of the corporate world. Meanwhile, conservative adversaries of these anti-Western culture warriors proved singularly inept at upholding their own norms and values. Indeed, during the past 50 years they lost just about every important battle.
However, in recent times, the culture war has become less of a one-sided affair. The dire consequences of transgender ideology, toxic racial identitarianism, the decolonisation movement and cancel culture are all becoming increasingly clear. More and more people, not just conservatives, are realising that they can no longer ignore the threat these pose to their way of life.
For me, Furedi is right on the money here. I’m not totally certain we would remain on the same side if we finally do win this culture war, since many at Spiked still call themselves Marxists (while I identify as a reactionary satirist). But I hope I get the chance to find out.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: As if to ram the point home, Malcolm Clark has a piece in Spiked in which he reports that the BBC has succumbed to trans activism.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Losing the “culture war” probably means the destruction of Western Christian Civilisation as we have known it. All the evidence points to the likelihood that the enemy will never stop, that their demands will become ever more extreme.
Yes, we keep being told we’ve reached ‘peak woke’, but they come up with ever-greater extremes. They have a weirdly Biblical apocalyptic view. They’ll be happy with the Earth is scorched and all humanity is burned away, all learning destroyed. The modern left is a manifestation of the Khmer Rouge. And just because it happened in far off Cambodia doesn’t mean it can’t happen here.
Humouring them, apologising, making concessions, hoping the whole horrid business goes away, hasn’t worked so far.
Exactly. But I fear we’ve let them get so far into the system that civil war of national divorce will be the only way to exorcise them.
There is a just-about-conceivable mechanism in the US – states seceding. I can’t see anything like that happening in the UK
Agreed. The UK is effed. We saw that in the lockdown era. We had authoritarian England and N Ireland or totalitarian Scotland and Wales.
In the past, people would pack up their belongings and move somewhere better. Now we’re in a global prison with our nations turned in to prison wings.
As Andrew Breitbart observed before his sudden death: politics exists downwind of culture. The culture war is where everything starts. The outcome of the culture war decides what sort of economy you’re trying to create. Sadly, the culture war needed to be fought in the 1980s, but Baroness Thatcher ignored it. I think we’ve already lost it, to be honest. My bigger concern is for the future. If we’ve lost, where do we escape? How do we preserve our books, films and history from the new Red Guards and their postmodern ‘deconstructionists’ and ‘revisionists’? In the Dark Ages, people in Britain escaped to remote places like Skellig Michael, taking their books and art with them and the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire survived in the East. The Holy Roman Empire emerged and Charlemagne had all the surviving ancient texts transcribed, which is how we still have as much reference work from antiquity as we do. Now, Skellig Michael would be taken out be a cruise missile. Charlemagne would be taken out by a drone strike. Constantinople would be nuked by Red China. We have to start out by accepting the culture war has been lost. So what do we do and where… Read more »
I’m surprised the above comment is proving so controversial, split almost half and half. I didn’t think it was particularly.
Maybe it’s because as soon as anyone has a bad word to say about Mrs Thatcher, some people will immediately downvote it:
“Sadly, the culture war needed to be fought in the 1980s, but Baroness Thatcher ignored it.”
Perhaps. I’m a big fan of Baroness Thatcher. Imagine she had fought the culture war: it would have made a huge difference. Charles Moore’s excellent biography even points out that it was probably her greatest failure and allowed her enemies to destroy her.
A good way of winning the culture war would be to realize that verbal battles over air superiority in US domestic politics between Repocrats and Dempublicans are completely irrelevant for the rest of the world.
My view of Furedi’s opinions is somewhat jaundiced by the constant reminder that his wife’s life’s work has been in vacuuming up helpless foetuses. I know that’s not his fault, but I’ve never heard him speak out against it – please correct me if that’s not the case. Regardless of whether this offends anyone, it’s true and needs to be said.
Stopping apologising and call out those like the wimp Clarkson that do apologise to these low life miserable creatures may be a good starting point in the fight back.
Yes. The animated Markle-cartoon can hardly imagine that she’s gained much of the love of the British public by trying to piss them off hard at every opportunity.
” … the counter-cultural movement that emerged in higher education in the 1960s was rarely confronted effectively by its opponents.” No? It depends what you mean by “effectively”, of course, but read The New Idea of a University by two ex-academics called Robinson and Maskell, and ask yourself what you can find ineffective in it. It was published about the turn of the century but is based on experiences going back at least twenty or thirty years earlier.