Who is Responsible for the Culture Wars?
Both sides are guilty, and we need to push back equally
Like many people, I'm sick and tired of the culture wars. As a classical liberal who believes in free speech and a healthy marketplace of ideas, I'm especially frustrated that culture warriors on both sides are hampering free speech, and poisoning the marketplace of ideas. Finding a way to end the culture wars has become my number one political priority in recent months. To borrow a popular saying, I'm now thoroughly not left, not right, but anti-culture war.
The first obstacle to ending the culture war is that neither side would admit to being responsible for it. The left likes to say that they are only trying to make society better and more just, and the problem lies solely with the reactionary right. The right likes to say that they would be minding their own business if not for the left's attempts at changing everything in a radical way. However, based on my recent analyses, it is clear that both sides are very much responsible. We can't end the culture wars without properly acknowledging this.
Let's talk about the left first. While the (cultural, rather than economic) left might truly think that they are only working for social justice, what they are effectively doing is imposing a radical new culture on society without most people consenting to it. This would, by definition, amount to waging a culture war. The problem here is not their commitment to social justice, but the influence of postmodernism and critical theory in their worldview. That ideology calls for the most radical deconstruction and dismantling of all existing cultural institutions, social structures and linguistic norms. According to postmodern critical theory, social justice cannot be achieved without this radical change. However, this does not align with observed reality. Universal suffrage, women's rights, the civil rights movement, gay marriage and so on were all successfully achieved without the massive destruction of the social fabric advocated by postmodern critical theory. Instead, these reforms were all won via the power of persuasion, along the lines of normally accepted logic, in the marketplace of ideas. There is no objectively valid reason to abandon the successful track record of liberal reformism at all, except in the twisted philosophy of postmodern critical theory.
All this is to say that postmodern critical theory has brainwashed many people on the left to support what is effectively a culture war on the status quo that is not necessary, and even counterproductive, for achieving social justice causes. When you don't respect the objective truth anymore, but instead insist that there can be a difference between 'your truth' and 'my truth', you are inviting people to abandon the common ground of objective truth, and make truth claims subject to culture war tribalism. When you refuse to debate things using the commonly accepted logic, but insist on endlessly questioning the common sense, you make rational discourse impossible. When you force society to change its language and culture without most people really agreeing with the changes in their hearts, you are in effect waging culture war on society, and all you are going to get is backlash. (The backlash is often suffered by disadvantaged minorities, with the privileged activists just walking away, looking for the next fight elsewhere.) Hence, getting rid of the influence of postmodern critical theory would go a long way in ending the culture wars, which would also be very good for social justice in the real world. We need to make those on the left aware of this. We need to unplug them from the postmodern programming.
Now, let's talk about the right. The right isn't innocent either. As I've discussed on multiple occasions, the US Republican Party has particularly leaned hard into culture war issues to build their voting coalition ever since the 1960s, often with the side effect of introducing authoritarian policies too. There was the distasteful alliance with segregationists during the period of the 'Southern strategy', the deprivation of civil liberties during the 'war on terror', and the empty moral panic over gay marriage, just to name a few shameful chapters of this history. The counterfeit conservatism called 'fusionism' was essentially an attempt to hide a very radical economic and foreign policy with reactionary culture wars, and selling the package as 'conservative' to voters distracted by cultural issues. It is this long-term encouragement of culture warriorism that has led to the rise of reactionary populist movements that are borderline fascistic in character. Even if those on the left suddenly became reasonable again, it is unlikely that this populist, culture war right would be able to engage with more reasonable reformist proposals at all. This is why ending the culture war needs to be a both sides thing.
To end the culture wars would require those of us who are still awake to its harms to speak the truth. We need to bravely speak the truth, in the face of the increasingly unreasonable stance of the culture warriors on both sides, and bring everyone back down to the common ground of reality. Given the culture wars are being encouraged on both sides by people with power, money and influence, the act of speaking against culture warriorism would indeed be a good example of speaking truth to power. We need to do it more before it's too late.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
You can also read and follow TaraElla's second substack, focused on political philosophy, here.