Culture wars, culture snores
Have we seen peak culture wars? What do the public think?
They are nowhere, but everywhere. Hard to define, but simple to consume. An enigma, but easy to access. They are culture wars or, perhaps, increasingly, culture snores.
According to historian Dominic Sandbrook, culture wars are as old as the hills. Throughout history they have frequently had a religious or moral dimension. Their modern incarnation has been turbo-charged by the pandemic, by populism, conspiracy theories and the cold anonymity of social media, an attention economy which rewards shrill voices and clickbait controversy.
Culture wars have tended to coalesce around issues of ‘identity’ including gender, sexuality and ethnicity. As Sandbrook says, “there are moments in history when disputes about history, identity, symbols, images and so on loom very large”. Recent ‘wars’ in Britain have focused on flags, statues, names, words, terms and labels, anthems, songs and taking the knee.
What and why?
Journalist Jon Ronson has shared a second-hand definition of culture wars as disputes which do not involve economics. But they are perhaps much harder to define than this. For example, immigration is an issue which has some economic elements as well as more moral ones. This makes them malleable. Some issues have probably been hi-jacked as culture wars — 15-minute cities spring to mind.
The media seems besotted. According to King’s College London, the number of articles focusing on “culture wars” in the UK rose from just 21 in 2015 to 534 in 2020, 1,869 in 2021 and 2,224 in 2022. Ronson attributes society’s focus on them to psychological breakdown during the pandemic - his excellent podcast series is aptly called ‘Things Fell Apart’. He suggests narcissism is at play. as well as typical human traits such as ‘othering’.
Cancel culture (wars)?
In Britain, disputes about ‘identity’ seem to exist only at the fringes and there is a mainstream middle and broad consensus on most issues. Research by Ipsos and King’s in 2019 considered the change in social attitudes over a 30-year period and found society had become far more tolerant, and opinion more cohesive, on issues including illegal drug use, homosexuality, abortion, and many aspects of sex in popular culture. As Professor Bobby Duffy put it at the time; “Once pressing moral concerns have become simple facts of life for much of the public.”
These issues are simply not important to most people and are a long way down the list of voters’ priorities. According to Ipsos, just 1% of the public say transgender rights will be one of the main issues determining their vote in the election. Even fewer say the same about race relations or women’s rights. As Keir Starmer put it, “The NHS trumps woke every day of the week”.
Six in ten (62%) people agree politicians invent or exaggerate culture wars as a political tactic, up from around four in 10 (44%) in 2020. A majority, think that politicians who talk about divisions over cultural issues are just trying to distract people from other important topics, and there is a similarly held view that this serves to divide society further.
Ronson talks of fatigue, something Keir Starmer has referred to while criticising the Conservatives’ “McCarthyite”-like anti-woke attack on the RNLI and the National Trust. Woke does cut-through though; 42% say they would consider it an insult if someone described them this way — up from 36% in 2022 and 24% in 2020 (the proportion considering it a compliment has stayed the same). That’s a big number and an impressive trajectory for anyone in politics seeking popularity, hence perhaps the ‘Pop Con’ goal of “combating” the “spread of wokery”.
Culture wars offer politicians the opportunity to present opponents to tap into a sense that the elite is out of touch. This isn’t entirely new; I’ve found an Ipsos poll in 2007 recording 85% of people taking the view that ‘political correctness has gone too far’. More recently, YouGov found 57% of people reporting they had held back expressing political or social views for fear of judgement.
While cynical about culture wars, the public think there is more to them than ‘dog whistle’ politics. Half (49%) see them as a real-life problem, not one that only exists in the media and on social media (22%). A similar proportion say culture wars are a serious problem for UK society and politics, an increase over the past three years.
A new front?
There are signs of new, emerging cultural rifts. In more research by Ipsos and King’s College London, an important gender split was evident among younger age groups on attitudes towards feminism, gender equality and masculinity.
This was starkest in terms of the term “toxic masculinity”, whether it’s harder to be a man than a woman, whether feminism has done more good than harm to society, and approval of the influencer Andrew Tate.
Culture wars won’t ever go away but they will evolve. There are signs that their controversy is itself becoming controversial.
Keir Starmer is not the only one who wants to move away from culture wars. If a truce in the wars isn’t possible, then working towards more harmony would be a good start.
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Recommended:
King’s College London, Policy Institute — research programme:
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/research-analysis/culture-wars-in-the-uk
Things Fell Apart podcast:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m0011cpr
