The Class War is dead. Long live the Culture War!
A Prolegomena to Any Future Critique of Ideology
In November 2022, the paradigmatic US Leftist, editor of Current Affairs, and intellectual bohemian impersonator Nathan J. Robinson made a Tweet that spoke the minds of millions of worried Oberlin students:
We see a cartoon of a MAGA-Trumper and a purple haired Ivy League humanities students fighting the “culture war” in a terrarium, while Elon Musk, the “bad capitalist” in the eyes of the Left (as opposed to Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Larry Fink, or Albert Bourla) looks on in glee. Musk wearing a top hat is a very 19th century imagery of the industrial capitalist - you have to admire its plasticity.
Apart from the irony that Nathan himself has fired the complete staff of Current Affairs the moment they questioned his primadonna behaviour and constantly behaves according to his class interests of a petit-bourgeois socialist, this image, I’m afraid, epitomises how the Left understands the relation between the culture and the class war: while the culture war is a “distraction” that dégoutant “right-wing” capitalists exploit, we should be fighting the class war.
Coming from Nathan J. Robinson in his dark blue velvet three-piece and pince-nez, this is beyond parody.
But there is something more profoundly wrong with this view of the relation between the culture and the class war: for in the absence of a working-class movement, the identity politics/culture war issues the left so casually dismisses is precisely the form of appearance of class politics today. There is no other “form” except the culture war in which the fate of workers’ interests, universal democratic rights, and – let’s face it –civilization itself is decided today. The class war is dead, and the culture war has taken over its social function. Dismissing the culture war as a distraction is precisely the distraction. The dismissal comes at the cost of understanding the function of the culture war in a new constellation between capital and labour, which is no longer regulated by the labour contract, but by a pure Will to Power of an unhinged elite class.[1]
We can identify various issues in the culture war, like the topics of free speech, racism, sexism, maybe even abortion rights. Some, like left-wing commentator Paolo Gerbaudo, have also dismissed the Covid-19 vaccine “debate” – or much rather the denunciation of so-called “anti-vaxxers” - as a culture war topic, mindlessly burying workplace mandates, which directly infringe workers’ rights, in a pile of less-than-worthy cultural issues (and with an unspeakably authoritarian, but no less casual, gesture told me “come on, 5 million people have died, HAVE SOME PITY”). Others, like one Twitter mutual who bears unfortunate initials for a leftist would simply exclaim: “The only righteous position in the culture war is to say STFU everybody”, another battle cry for “Dirtbag leftists of the world, unite and take over”.
The topic of LBGTQ-rights, however, seems to be the most widespread identitarian culture war issue of all. Black Lives Matter’s inability to incite outrage after the Jordan Neely killing shows that its glory days are over. Facing the logical convulsions of trans ideology, feminism must “find itself” again. And free speech is contested too matter-of-factly to be worthy of a corporate identity. Let it be mentioned that I am well aware of many lesbian and gay rights organisations who reject the “TQ” (rightfully so), but government PR manufacturers do not care much: “LGBTQ rights” is the current official form of Western state ideology. Within those, “trans rights”, i.e., the self-cancelling judicial expression of (mostly) men pretending to be women, are the most cherished, nurtured and cared-for. In other words, gender ideology is the ideology of the ruling class. Let me provide a few random examples:
Twitter mutual Syd Steyerhart noted: “In the total state you cannot simply have an escalator. It must be a Pride escalator. The escalator itself must be ideologically correct.” Remember also the main street decorations at London Pride, in which millions of trans pride and rainbow-flags lined the streets and reminded not just a few of us of Nazi Germany’s Swastika flags in their heyday. They share an ideological aim: total submission. But while Hitler had the honesty to exclaim that “The Public Weal Transcends the Interest of the Individual”, LGBTQ state ideology zealously pushes its normative collectivism under the pretense of self-expression and individuality.
In another example, a Catholic school in Switzerland has recently announced a “Gender Day”, complete with the trans symbol and required obligatory attendance. The implicit threat to punish criticism with bad grades or food withdrawal was celebrated by the original kindness-feigning rhetoric of the invitation: “We are looking forward to having a fun day with you!”. The Catholics also made sure that the children would learn about the gender spectrum and “lifesaving” gender reassignment surgeries, but cigarettes and alcohol would be strictly forbidden on site.
And then there was the recent Chile referendum that made culture war-dismissing leftists uncomfortable: too bad that idpol was the ticket on which the reform of the Constitution ran (which was praised as nothing short of emulating Salvador Allende’s social justice reforms) – no wonder it had to fail! The vulgar leftist platform Jacobin commented:
“…with millions of politically and organizationally unmoored voters obligated to cast their ballots, the Left’s prioritizing of an incongruous jumble of identitarian, social justice concerns over classwide material rights and protections only aggravated the mistrust and resentment of ordinary Chileans pummeled by decades of neoliberal shocks.”
Bummer, when you fail to understand that this was no failure of the left, but the enactment of its class interests. Culture war topics like indigenous rights and feminism constitute the Left’s war against the working class, which hails back to the day that Wall Street became the harbinger for global Social Justice, especially in the South. This is something that everyone except Leftists have realised for long. Jacobin’s and others pathetic attempt to hold the Left accountable is as meaningful as it would have been to ask of the NSDAP to be nicer to the Jews.
And then there is of course esoteric grifter Marianne Williamson who I think is simply not smart enough to realise that her “it’s the economy, stupid” talking points serve the interests of the Democratic elite. Her celebration of trans ideology and casual denunciation of “all those right-wingers” is just a vamped-up, Margaret Atwood-version of AOC. That Jacobin should praise her as a female version of Bernie shows just how out of touch with ordinary Americans they are. Ultimately rooted in left-wing culture war, Williamson is an exponent of the elite, not its opponent.
We should therefore dismiss the identitarian culture war at our own peril: it is the modern form of class politics, the mode in which the ruling class governs. Recently, several “Reporting Centres for Antifeminism, Sexism and Transphobia” have been launched in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia – with tax money. They are none other than Orwellian Denunciation Hubs. The Leftist elite’s Will to Power must exert itself this way to make sure that its cruelty can come across as altruism. The ruling class no longer wants to merely lower wages or make the conditions of labour more precarious. It wants to crawl under your skin. It wants a society of mutual denunciation. To do so, it needs a powerful ideology that precisely by its irrationality keeps the masses in check. By no means this implies that the executive and judicative powers agree to the content of that set of ideas. All that matters is that helps promote its own power. And what would offer itself more astutely than trans ideology? Because if there is no argument to be made for men being women, people start to scream. Indeed, as Daniel Hadas recently tweeted, the “institutional left’s cultural politics is largely maintained by a single trick: this is to scream at people that they are heartless monsters if they step out of line.” Not an alleged violation of minority rights, but the breaking of ranks is the crime.
Comme toujours, it is about the power and control the government, but also unelected officials can hold over us, the People. All that was ever given to us in this constellation was free speech, and even that is of the past. Naturally therefore, free speech itself has mutated into a culture wear issue: is it not wrong to ban transgender promoting school curriculums, like Ron DeSantis did in Florida? Wouldn’t that be speech control in its own right? This only becomes an issue if we avoid an analysis of power. If we focus on power – the force that puts policies into action – the question turns itself around. Because transgender and (to a lesser degree) Critical Race Theory represents State Ideology, Ron DeSantis’s decision to get rid of CRT and transgender content in schools is not an infringement on free speech, but its enactment. The first amendment protects the speech of those who do not agree with the federal government: this is what it was written for. Moreover, the MSNBC/CNN/NPR’s sudden outrage about “DeSantis killing free speech” is itself quite insane: DeSantis has not banned Math or English from the curriculum, but an artificially created grievances studies program that no one missed until ideologues had their way in politics.
“Woke”, let us remember, is promoted by the governments, banks, the NGO apparatus, Universities, corporations, security services, and military. And Communists, as Avenging Lukaschenko correctly said on Twitter, have always taken up the ideological struggle. I’m not asking you to all to become MAGA communists now. But as long as we still have the choice, it is good to know the option exists.
Cover: video still from “Suedehead” by Morrissey (1988).
[1] See my https://weltwoche.ch/daily/willkommen-im-gruenen-mittelalter-die-graeueltaten-von-baerbock-und-habecks-mindsets-zielen-nicht-nur-auf-materielle-enteignung-und-machtzuwachs-sondern-auf-die-enteignung-des-denkens-ueberhaupt/
"I’m not asking you all to become MAGA communists now"
Too late :)
Fellow Morrissey fan?