A Brief History of the Culture Wars
How you're being played by the billionaires and what you can do about it
I haven’t written for a while, but I’ve been consumed with job hunting, freelancing, and a conference. If anyone missed me, I apologize! That said, you probably didn’t because—as this article outlines—we’ve got way too much to pay attention to.
I guess I’m late to the party, but until two weeks ago, I’d never encountered an infamous article that ran in Free Inquiry in 2003. The author analyzed seven fascist and protofascist regimes and found 14 shared characteristics. While the original article wasn’t particularly controversial, a variation of it—cutting out some context, rewriting all the characteristics, and falsely claiming the author held a doctorate—soon emerged on a conspiracy site. (Because of course it did.) The article has been used as evidence that presidents as varied as Obama, Bush, and Trump are fascists.
This characteristic really stood out to me in the context of the culture wars:
Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often, the regimes would incite ‘spontaneous’ acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and ‘terrorists.’ Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.
In this piece, I want to talk about the role of enemies and scapegoats in solidifying political affiliation and how the fear of the “other” is monetized and exploited by politicians and billionaires. But first, let’s talk about how we got to where we are today.
The Origins of the Term
In 1991, James Davidson Hunter coined the phrase “culture wars” in his book of the same name. Hunter’s publisher called it “a riveting account of how Christian fundamentalists, Orthodox Jews, and conservative Catholics have joined forces in a battle against their progressive counterparts for control of American secular culture.”
A year later, Pat Buchanan gave a speech at the Republican National Convention using a very similar term.
“My friends, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe, and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.”
Whew. Pat knew how to whip up some fearfulness.
Thirty-three years later, it feels like that cultural war has only deepened. Roe was overturned, a religious charter school case is in front of the Supreme Court, and the Constitution is challenged daily. The one bright spot, faint as it is, is that George Carlin’s stand-up still holds up.
A Brief History of the Culture Wars
You’d be excused for thinking that the culture wars are a relatively new phenomenon if the term only emerged in 1991. However, as I reviewed history to find a clear-cut “birthday,” I realized that wasn’t the case. In fact, the more I thought about it, the farther back it seemed like we could go.
Each decade had plenty of conflict. The aughts had the Iraq War, “freedom fries,” and the villainization of Muslims. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich fought viciously while Gingrich worked with pollster Frank Luntz to get GOP officials to use extremely combative language. (Some historians believe the 1990s initiated the intense polarization we’re seeing today.)
The 1980s had Reagan and the “welfare queens” driving Cadillacs. The 1970s didn’t have much positive going for them other than a lot of great, dark cinema and the end of the long Vietnam War. Before that, we had the turbulent college protests of 1968, a spate of Civil Rights-related assassinations, and the rise of the Southern Strategy.
The Civil Rights Movement, rooted in the failure of Reconstruction, accelerated due to the social change of WWII. When Black people, unable to get wartime factory jobs, threatened to march on Washington in 1941, FDR finally passed anti-discrimination laws. Of course, this didn’t magically solve racism. Jim Crow persisted, and FDR created internment camps for American citizens of Japanese descent. In the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, Hispanic residents of Los Angeles were beaten by sailors ostensibly upset by the fabric wasted by their suits—and the victims were arrested.
The conflict was never-ending: the AIDS crisis, McCarthyism (which had its roots in the 1930s), suffrage, Prohibition, the Immigration Act of 1924. As I thought about each decade, I began to wonder if the United States was ever free from a culture war. I honestly think the answer is no. Reconstruction is often held up as a brief, shining moment in our history, but it ended because the KKK undermined those efforts and white supremacy rose to power again.
It’s probably not a coincidence that the term “culture wars” emerged just as the Cold War ended. Of course, culture wars had existed prior to 1991, but it does seems as though they accelerated around that time—just after the Fairness Doctrine was eliminated and the attention economy, which thrives on polarization, began to rise.
The Culture Wars Are Built on Fear
If you’ve watched reality TV or lived in an un-air-conditioned freshman triple with a roommate who plagiarized your other roommate’s paper,** you understand there’s nothing more unifying than an “other.” Cohesion often forms quickly in opposition to a common enemy.
That enemy doesn’t even have to be actively working against you. They might just be refusing to relinquish a shot at something that you feel is either rightfully yours or is in scarce supply, like a spot in an Ivy League college, a coveted job, or a path to citizenship.
This is exacerbated by the fact that many of us in the United States view life through a lens of competition and “winning.” It’s increasingly clear that many of us—and our current leadership—see competition as a zero-sum game where there’s one winner and many losers.
More recently, it’s become common to accuse anyone who wins over you is “cheating,” even if there’s no evidence to back that up. That obviously undermines the winner’s legitimacy and adds to the feeling that a win you deserved was stolen. I believe this is a really dangerous development that tends to amp up negative feelings toward your perceived competitors.
In the pre-internet days, if you were upset about the legalization of abortion, you might protest outside a clinic and volunteer for an anti-abortion political candidate. You could join a national organization and even attend an annual convention or rally. This was often quite effective. For example, Phyllis Schlafly coordinated local efforts and managed to prevent the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which previously had bipartisan support. She chipped away at that support by drumming up fear that the ERA would lead to gay marriage, unisex bathrooms, and the draft for women.
Schlafly was a force of nature, as well as a highly educated and affluent woman. She understood even then that the culture wars fed the attention economy. Of course, with the rise of the internet and social media, it became even easier to command attention by focusing on the culture wars. After all, if you create and spread fear online, you’ll find willing soldiers for your side.
How The Culture Wars Are Monetized
In a 2021 interview, Hunter reflected on how the culture wars have changed since his book first came out in 1991. He believes that conservatives, who “owned Middle America,” see liberals and their way of thinking as “an existential threat to their way of life, to the things that they hold sacred.” If you’ll remember Pat Buchanan’s quote from 1992, he said, “This war is for the soul of America.” In other words, the stakes are extremely high and, consequently, very polarizing.
Conservatives seem to have recently gained first-mover advantage over the liberals in terms of the culture wars and are—at least in my opinion—driving the conversation while Democrats merely react. They’re doing this by leveraging local and state politics, then elevating particularly contentious issues to the national stage.
While Schlafly rose to prominence years ago, I’d argue that she was successful because she seemed to intuitively grasp a fact that studies later confirmed—national issues first percolate locally. We tend to think that national parties drive the conversation, but that’s likely not the case. In a presentation for the 2016 American Political Science Association, three academics found that state parties began addressing the issues of abortion and gay rights many years before those issues began emerging in the national party platforms.
In the 2006 book Is There a Culture War?, Hunter notes how “elites” leverage and magnify local conflicts. From an executive summary:
“He notes the tendency of elites to swoop into local controversies, galvanize the population and use the disputes to promote their own interests. The general population is not as polarized as these activists, Hunter notes. But the power of elites is made even greater by the larger public’s inability to challenge their stark, uncompromising framing. This leads to polarized choices at election time, forcing Americans – even those in the middle – to choose sides.”
Hunter’s co-author, Alan Wolfe, doesn’t necessarily agree that most people, with the exception of journalists and politicians, are paying attention to the culture wars. However, I think that’s exactly why this tactic is so successful. People aren’t paying attention to the details about an issue until it is already controversial and is being debated by the elites.
Semafor recently broke an article that hasn’t gotten the kind of attention it deserves. During the pandemic, group chats sprang up with some unlikely alliances—tech billionaires, “liberal intellectuals” who signed the Harpers letter, and journalists. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen was one of the most avid, with someone estimating that he spends “half his life” on these chats.
Conservative activist Chris Rufo was also there. In the Semafor article, he admits:
“I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high-impact new coalition partners for the right.”
This is in keeping with Rufo’s Twitter strategy of announcing what marginalized group he’d leverage for division. I’ve always wondered why that didn’t attract more media attention, and the group chat that included journalists might explain why. (I also wonder why billionaires don’t seem to mind the admission that they’ve been blatantly manipulated by a supposed ally, but that’s a whole other piece.)
After the group chat with a mix of views imploded, Rufo’s strategy succeeded. Andreessen began a chat with only conservative thinkers and influencers, and as the Semafor article outlines, his politics shifted right. Andreessen is influential in Silicon Valley, which has also moved to the right.
Of course, it’s no secret that tech billionaires have been buying up newspapers, media, and social media, which are all crucial parts of the attention economy. Not only can they advance their own views very easily, they can leverage polarized issues for clicks and monetization, instead of furthering greater discussion and consideration.
As Hannah Arendt famously pointed out during the Eichmann trial, real evil is the “absence of thought.” When you no longer have an inner dialogue, you become more malleable. The culture wars have always been dangerous because they forced someone to knee-jerk pick a side, but they may be even more dangerous now that we as a society are exhausted by a constant onslaught of information.
In fact, we’re so barraged by new issues, new scandals, and new enemies that most of us want to simply opt out of the conversation. That may be the most effective strategy of all. After all, if we’re just reading headlines (which often don’t accurately reflect the articles) and scrolling social media, we’re probably not thinking deeply about any of the issues. It’s easier to let our worldview be shaped, rather than shape it ourselves. As we descend further and further into an oligarchy, it’s worth examining who benefits.
As Steve Bannon has said, his “flood the zone” strategy, which floods the media and public with a barrage of issues, serves to advance his conservative agenda. As Ezra Klein wrote in response, a lack of focus hinders a coherent resistance. If the target’s always moving, you can’t figure out how to hit it.
So, what can we do? I don’t have a full solution, but I do have some ideas.
Pick an issue (or a few issues) that really matter to you and focus on those. Of course, to be effective in the long term, this means that we need to effectively divide and conquer—but in the meantime, at least resistance can build on each issue.
Get involved in local politics. Remember Schafly’s success? She worked locally, then created an organization that bridged up to the national level. As we’ve seen over the last few years, conservatives have had spectacular success by taking over local school boards and then boosting “parents’ rights” issues to the national level. Democrats, learn from this!
Stop infighting. Liberals often agree on the end goal but disagree—and fight—about how to get there. This often brings resistance to a standstill when efforts would be better unified against the people thwarting your end goal. See what seems to be most effective on a local level, then elevate that winning approach to the state and national level.
Perhaps the most important thing is to continue to think critically. That doesn’t mean that we all have to pay attention to everything all the time. In the current age, that’s practically impossible. But as Arendt points out, the absence of thought is the most dangerous thing of all. Pull back when you must so you don’t exhaust yourself, then get back to examining issues.
After all, capitulation might be the easiest thing, but it’s also the most dangerous thing.
*Interesting that VP candidate Al Gore didn’t even rate a mention. Apparently, the right found Hillary Clinton deeply threatening even before her husband was elected.
**Shout out to my roommate Sue for not murdering our third roommate.