The journalist and author Ian Leslie has written an excellent Substack post to coincide with the paperback publication of his book Conflicted, now renamed How to Disagree. (You can preorder it on Amazon here.) In the post, he writes about a curious phenomenon whereby commentators on the liberal left tend to brand anyone who challenges the leftward creep of our public institutions as a ‘culture warrior’ and cast them as beyond the pale rather than honestly arguing for the changes that have taken place and which they approve of. This rhetorical move struck me as very similar to the attempt by defenders of scientific orthodoxy when it comes to the pandemic and climate change to sidestep debate by branding any facts that challenge their worldview as ‘misinformation’ and the people who use these facts to question the prevailing orthodoxy as ‘conspiracy theorists’.
On one level, this is perfectly rational behaviour. After all, trying to present your point of view as just a statement of incontrovertible fact – or the logical conclusion that anyone with a functioning moral compass would come to once they’re acquainted with those facts – may be a more effective way of defending that viewpoint than making a more conventional argument. But on the other hand, the attempt to conceal the normative values underpinning that opinion, or denying that it is informed by those values, or acknowledging that it is but pretending there’s nothing remotely contestable about those values, is so fundamentally dishonest it may not be a very effective way of promoting those views in the long run. Indeed, that may be one reason why woke positions seem to be unravelling in some areas – the participation of transwomen in women’s sports, for instance.
Anyway, here’s Ian Leslie on the use of this rhetorical move in the cultural arena.
For me, this tweet encapsulates the way in which the term ‘culture war’ gets used by commentators on the liberal left:
Background: the OCR, one of Britain’s main exam boards, is reorganising the GCSE poetry syllabus to introduce more ‘accessible’ and ‘diverse’ voices (I put those words in quotation marks because they involve some rather tenuous assumptions), at the expense of poems by Philip Larkin (An Arundel Tomb) and Wilfred Owen (Anthem For Doomed Youth). That, to me, is cultural activism, even if you agree with it.
The OCR is effectively lowering the status of poetic tradition and raising the status of contemporary poetry, in order to meet certain social goals. Just because the decision-makers sit in an office in Cambridge instead of waving placards in the street, and just because they deploy bland language, that doesn’t mean they’re not engaged in politics.
Now, I’m sceptical of the whole exercise – I broadly agree with David James – but even if I thought the OCR was doing something smart and necessary here, I hope I’d be honest enough to admit that this is a politically assertive move, and be willing to defend it as such.
Instead, what happens is that policies like this are presented by left-liberals as apolitical, common sense, quasi-scientific decisions, taken by experts. They’re just the way things are, or have to be. So if anyone voices criticism, as the education secretary does in this case, that can only be because they are unreasonably belligerent.
We’re just taking sensible decisions on your behalf; if you object, you are engaging in a culture war. I’m a moderate, pacific commentator; you are a ghoul.
I have long thought it’s a bit odd quite how much people on the left love to bemoan culture war discourse. They talk about it all the time, despite or perhaps because of the fact the left has made a lot of progress on the cultural battles of recent years and met surprisingly little resistance. But it’s always the other side which makes war, never ‘us’. Meanwhile, to most voters, it’s probably the other way around. The left comes across as more culturally aggressive than the right, the more likely to ‘call out’ incorrect language or behaviour. I don’t think trying to make or police cultural change is necessarily a bad thing, by the way – the left has changed society for the better that way in the past. I just think it’s a bad thing not to be honest about it.
It’s true that the current government pro-actively engages in petty, and frankly futile, provocations, but such tactics are very small fry compared to the way that political, civil, academic and corporate elites have engaged in a stealthy redefinition of what it means to be, say, racist, or a woman. In some ways the discourse around these issues has been changed for the better as a result, in other ways not. But however you look at it, significant changes in cultural norms have been introduced from above, sometimes under the guise of a false consensus.
I think we should stop using culture war as an insult. After all, culture is very important to society and worth arguing over. I’ve written a whole book about how conflict can be productive. But for conflict to be healthy it has to happen out in the open rather than under the table or behind closed doors. It shouldn’t disguise itself as something else. If you think ‘decolonisation’, for example, is a meaningful and necessary activity, then recognise it as a contentious political goal, argue for it on that basis, and welcome counter-arguments. Instead, it gets presented as a neutral, merely bureaucratic term, and the pearl-clutching epithet of ‘culture war’ is wheeled out when anyone questions it. All of the actual arguments are thereby avoided.
Have it out, people! Let’s fight our culture wars honestly.
If you enjoyed that, it’s worth subscribing to The Ruffian, Ian Leslie’s Substack newsletter.
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.
Sorry, I find it obvious why the modern left deny the ‘Culture War’. Its because they are the ones who initiated it. Its in a similar vein to how quite a few wars are started, ie under false assumptions, or pretexts. Didnt Hitler say Poland attacked Germany at the start of WW2? Wasnt the invasion of Afghanistan just a war on terror, which turned into occupation? Im sure there are many other examples. Its just a big con, to let themselves off the hook, and make themselves look like the ‘good guys’, they will only admit to the Culture War, when it starts coming for them, ala Bindel and Moore etc.
At its heart, leftism is all about them controlling us; telling us what to do, what not to do, how to spend any money they leave to our personal choice and what we should lioke mor not like. They have now moved on to exploit the Frankfurt school ideas by telling us what words mean and how we should comminucate with each other.
I am not sure why or how the left got involved with the woke phase, anti-feminism and the rest but I am sure they think it will assist their take over.
They are nearly there. when so much of our GDP is controlled by the state, when accountability is so limited and when regulation is so extensive, pervasive and perverse, they are almost totally in control. It would not surprise me to learn that the left now control more of the UK economy than the Soviets did in Russia or at least all of Eastern Europe.
Aren’t “liberal” and “left” (“left” in the sense implied by this article, not the old left) contradictory?
As to why, of course they portray their enemies as fighting a war and them not, because that implies that “liberal left” beliefs are the accepted norm.
Contradictory? Yes and an oxymoron. In the same way Fascist or Nazi are ‘extreme Right’.
Extreme Right policies are sovereignty of the individual, liberty, property rights, free market capitalism (the essence of liberal)… the polar opposite of Extreme Left which is empowerment of the State over the individual; central economic planning and control, collectivism not individualism. These later are shared by Communism, Fascism, National Socialism.
Because when you KNOW you are right, everyone else must be wrong. You are pious and virtuous and peaceful, it is they are who are venal, demonic and agressive.
We need a pogrom… bring back the stake.