United States toppled a
statue of Christopher Columbus in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on June 10, 2020.
1920s–1991: Origins In American usage,
culture war may imply a conflict between those values considered
traditionalist or
conservative and those considered
progressive or
liberal. This usage originated in the 1920s when urban and rural American values came into closer conflict. This followed several decades of immigration to the States by people who earlier European immigrants considered 'alien'. It was also a result of the cultural shifts and modernizing trends of the
Roaring Twenties, culminating in the presidential campaign of
Al Smith in 1928. In subsequent decades during the 20th century, the term was published occasionally in American newspapers. Historian Matthew Dallek argues the
John Birch Society (JBS) was an early promoter of culture war ideas. Scholar Celestini Carmen traces the JBS's apocalyptic culture war rhetoric through the connections of
Christian right leaders such as
Tim LaHaye and
Phyllis Schlafly to the JBS and their founding of the
Moral Majority.
1991–2001: Rise in prominence James Davison Hunter, a
sociologist at the
University of Virginia, introduced the expression again in his 1991 publication,
Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Hunter described what he saw as a dramatic realignment and polarization that had transformed
American politics and
culture. He argued that on an increasing number of "
hot-button" defining issues—
abortion,
gun politics,
separation of church and state,
privacy,
recreational drug use,
homosexuality,
censorship—there existed two definable polarities. Furthermore, not only were there a number of divisive issues, but society had divided along essentially the same lines on these issues, so as to constitute two warring groups, defined primarily not by nominal religion, ethnicity, social class, or even political affiliation, but rather by ideological
world-views. Hunter characterized this polarity as stemming from opposite impulses, toward what he referred to as
Progressivism and as
Orthodoxy. Others have adopted the dichotomy with varying labels. For example,
Bill O'Reilly, a conservative political commentator and former host of the
Fox News Channel talk show ''
The O'Reilly Factor, emphasizes differences between "Secular-Progressives" and "Traditionalists" in his 2006 book Culture Warrior''. During the
1992 presidential election, commentator
Pat Buchanan mounted
a campaign for the
Republican nomination for president against incumbent
George H. W. Bush. In a
prime-
time slot at the
1992 Republican National Convention, Buchanan gave his speech on the culture war. He argued: "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself." In addition to criticizing
environmentalists and
feminism, he portrayed
public morality as a
defining issue: The agenda [Bill] Clinton and [Hillary] Clinton would impose on America—abortion on demand, a
litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units—that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation that we still call God's country. The culture war had significant impact on national politics in the 1990s. The rhetoric of the
Christian Coalition of America may have weakened president George H. W. Bush's chances for re-election in 1992 and helped his successor,
Bill Clinton, win reelection in 1996. On the other hand, the rhetoric of conservative cultural warriors helped Republicans gain control of Congress in 1994. The culture wars influenced the debate over
state-school history
curricula in the United States in the 1990s. In particular, debates over the development of
national educational standards in 1994 revolved around whether the study of American history should be a "celebratory" or "critical" undertaking and involved such prominent public figures as
Lynne Cheney,
Rush Limbaugh, and historian
Gary Nash.
2001–2012: Post-9/11 era ,
Donald Rumsfeld, and
Paul Wolfowitz were prominent neoconservatives of the 2000s. A political view called
neoconservatism shifted the terms of the debate in the early 2000s. Neoconservatives differed from their opponents in that they interpreted problems facing the nation as
moral issues rather than economic or political ones. For example, neoconservatives saw the decline of the traditional
family structure as well as the decline of religion in American society as
spiritual crises that required a spiritual response. Critics accused neoconservatives of
confusing cause and effect. During the 2000s, voting for Republicans began to correlate heavily with
traditionalist or
orthodox religious belief across diverse religious sects. Voting for Democrats became more correlated with
liberal or
modernist religious belief, and with being
nonreligious.
Belief in scientific conclusions, such as
climate change, also became tightly coupled with political party affiliation in this era, causing climate scholar
Andrew Hoffman to observe that
climate change had "become enmeshed in the so-called
culture wars." who drew attention to her conservative religion and created a performative
climate change denialism brand for herself. Palin's defeat in the election and subsequent resignation as governor of Alaska caused the
Center for American Progress to predict "the coming end of the culture wars," which they attributed to demographic change, particularly high rates of acceptance of
same-sex marriage among
millennials.
2012–present: Broadening of the culture war , defaced during
protests in Richmond, Virginia, was removed on July 7, 2020. In the early 2010s, the
American right took issue with the perceived worldwide dominance of leftism in international politics and corporate activity,
anti-nationalism, and secular
human rights policies and activism not based on
Abrahamic religious worldviews. While traditional culture war issues, like abortion, continue to be a focal point, the issues identified with the culture war broadened and intensified in the mid-late 2010s.
Jonathan Haidt, author of
The Coddling of the American Mind, identified a rise in
cancel culture via
social media among young progressives since 2012, which he believes had "transformative effects on university life and later on politics and culture throughout the English-speaking world," in what Haidt and other commentators have called the "
Great Awokening". Journalist
Michael Grunwald says that "President
Donald Trump has pioneered a new politics of perpetual culture war" and lists
Black Lives Matter,
U.S. national anthem protests,
climate change, education policy, healthcare policy including
Obamacare, and infrastructure policy as culture war issues in 2018. The rights of
transgender people and the role of religion in lawmaking were identified as "new fronts in the culture war" by political scientist Jeremiah Castle, as the polarization of public opinion on these two topics resembles that of previous culture war issues. In 2020, during the
COVID-19 pandemic, North Dakota governor
Doug Burgum described
opposition to wearing face masks as a "senseless" culture war issue that jeopardizes human safety. This broader understanding of culture war issues in the mid-late 2010s and 2020s is associated with a political strategy called "
owning the libs." Conservative media figures employing this strategy emphasize and expand upon culture war issues with the goal of upsetting liberals. According to
Nicole Hemmer of Columbia University, this strategy is a substitute for the cohesive conservative ideology that existed during the
Cold War. It holds a conservative
voting bloc together in the absence of shared policy preferences among the bloc's members. in
Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017; an event associated with the alt-right and neo-Nazi movements, regarded as a battleground in the culture wars. A number of conflicts about diversity in popular culture occurring in the 2010s, such as the
Gamergate controversy,
Comicsgate and the
Sad Puppies science fiction voting campaign, were identified in the media as being examples of the culture war. Journalist
Caitlin Dewey described Gamergate as a "
proxy war" for a larger culture war between those who want greater inclusion of women and minorities in cultural institutions versus anti-feminists and traditionalists who do not. The perception that culture war conflict had been demoted from electoral politics to popular culture led writer Jack Meserve to call popular movies, games, and writing the "last front in the culture war" in 2015. These conflicts about representation in popular culture re-emerged into electoral politics via the
alt-right and
alt-lite movements. According to media scholar Whitney Phillips, Gamergate "prototyped" strategies of harassment and controversy-stoking that proved useful in political strategy. For example, Republican political strategist
Steve Bannon publicized pop-culture conflicts during the 2016 presidential campaign of
Donald Trump, encouraging a young audience to "come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump."
Canada in Montreal, left vacant after the statue of Canada's first
Prime Minister was toppled during a 2020 protest and later removed. Some observers in
Canada have used the term "culture war" to refer to differing values between
Western versus
Eastern Canada,
urban versus
rural Canada, as well as
conservatism versus
liberalism and
progressivism. The phrase has also been used to describe the
Harper government's attitude towards the
arts community.
Andrew Coyne termed this negative policy towards the arts community as "
class warfare."
Australia During the tenure of the
Liberal–National Coalition government of 1996 to 2007, interpretations of
Aboriginal history became a part of a wider political debate regarding Australian national pride and symbolism occasionally called the "
culture wars", more often the "history wars". This debate extended into
a controversy over the presentation of history in the
National Museum of Australia and in
high-school history curricula. It also migrated into the general Australian media, with major broadsheets such as
The Australian,
The Sydney Morning Herald and
The Age regularly publishing opinion pieces on the topic.
Marcia Langton has referred to much of this wider debate as "war porn" and as an "intellectual dead end". Two Australian Prime Ministers,
Paul Keating (in office 1991–1996) and
John Howard (in office 1996–2007), became major participants in the "wars". According to
Mark McKenna's analysis for the Australian Parliamentary Library, Howard believed that Keating portrayed Australia pre-
Whitlam (PM 1972–1975) in an unduly negative light, while Keating sought to distance the modern
Labor movement from its historical support for the monarchy and for the
White Australia policy by arguing that it was the conservative Australian parties which had been barriers to national progress. He accused Britain of having abandoned Australia during the
Second World War. Keating staunchly supported a symbolic apology to
Aboriginal Australians for their mistreatment at the hands of previous administrations, and outlined his view of the origins and potential solutions to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage in his
Redfern Park Speech of December 10, 1992 (drafted with the assistance of historian
Don Watson). In 1999, following the release of the 1998
Bringing Them Home Report, Howard passed a parliamentary
Motion of Reconciliation describing treatment of Aboriginal people as the "most blemished chapter" in Australian history, but declined to issue an official apology. Howard saw an apology as inappropriate as it would imply "intergeneration guilt", saying measures were a better response to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage. Keating argued for the eradication of remaining symbols linked to colonial origins, including deference for
ANZAC Day, for the
Australian flag, and for the
monarchy in Australia, while Howard supported these institutions. Unlike fellow Labor leaders and contemporaries,
Bob Hawke (PM 1983–1991) and
Kim Beazley (Labor Party leader 2005–2006), Keating never travelled to
Gallipoli for ANZAC Day ceremonies. In 2008 he described those who gathered there as "misguided". The defeat of the
Howard government in the
2007 Australian federal election and its replacement by the
Rudd Labor government altered the dynamic of the debate. Rudd made an
official apology to the Aboriginal
Stolen Generations with bi-partisan support. Like Keating, Rudd supported an Australian republic, but in contrast to Keating, Rudd declared support for the Australian flag and supported the commemoration of ANZAC Day; he also expressed admiration for Liberal Party founder
Robert Menzies. Subsequent to the 2007 change of government, and prior to the passage of the official apology, historian Richard Nile argued: "the culture and history wars are over and with them should also go the adversarial nature of intellectual debate", a view contested by others, including conservative commentator
Janet Albrechtsen.
Climate change in Australia is also considered a
highly divisive or politically controversial topic, to the point it is sometimes called a "culture war". The
2017 Same Sex Marriage Plebiscite was also a divisive topic within Australia with many supporters of marriage equality were targeted with
Homophobic vandalism in the lead up to the Plebiscite. Since the defeat of the
2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, there has been a significant calls reignited from
conservative politicians and commentators, including federal opposition leader
Peter Dutton to oppose or scale down
Indigenous Reconciliation, viewing customs such as
Welcome to Country ceremonies and placing the
Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander flags alongside the national flag as "divisive".
African continent According to political scientist Constance G. Anthony, American culture war perspectives on human sexuality were exported to Africa as a form of
neocolonialism. In his view, this began during the
AIDS epidemic in Africa, with the United States government first tying HIV/AIDS assistance money to evangelical leadership and the
Christian right during the
Bush administration, then to LGBTQ tolerance during the
administration of
Barack Obama. This stoked a culture war that resulted in (among others) the
Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014. Zambian scholar
Kapya Kaoma notes that because "the demographic center of Christianity is shifting from the
global North to the
global South" Africa's influence on Christianity worldwide is increasing. American conservatives export their culture wars to Africa, Kaoma says, particularly when they realize they may be losing the battle back home. US Christians have framed their anti-LGBT initiatives in Africa as standing in opposition to a "Western
gay agenda", a framing which Kaoma finds ironic. North American and European conspiracy theories have become widespread in
West Africa via social media, according to 2021 survey by
First Draft News.
COVID-19 misinformation,
New World Order conspiracy thinking,
QAnon and other conspiracy theories associated with culture war topics are spread by American, Pro-Russian, French-language, and local
disinformation websites and social media accounts, including prominent politicians in
Nigeria. This has contributed to
vaccine hesitancy in West Africa, with 60 percent of survey respondents saying they were unlikely to try to get vaccinated, and an erosion of trust in institutions in the region.
United Kingdom '' on June 9, 2020, the day of its removal A 2021 report from
King's College London argued that many people's views on cultural issues in Britain had become tied up with the side of the
Brexit debate with which they identify, while the public party-political identities, although not as strong, show similar alignments and that around half the country held relatively strong views on "culture war" issues such as debates on Britain's colonial history or Black Lives Matter; however, the report concluded Britain's cultural and political divide was not as stark as the Republican–Democratic divide in the US and that a sizeable section of the public can be categorised as having either moderate views or as being disengaged from social debates. It also found that
The Guardian, as opposed to the centre-right newspapers, was more likely to talk about the culture wars. The
Conservative Party have been described as attempting to ignite culture wars in regard to "conservative values" under the tenure of Prime Minister
Boris Johnson. Others argue that it is the left who are engaging in "culture wars", particularly against liberal values, accepted words, and British institutions. Observers such as
Johns Hopkins University professor
Yascha Mounk and journalist and author
Louise Perry have argued that the collapse in support for the
Labour Party during the
2019 United Kingdom general election came as a result of both a media-induced public perception and a deliberate strategy of Labour of pursuing messages and policy ideas based on cultural issues that resonated with more university educated grassroots activists on the left of the party but alienated Labour's traditional working class voters. An April 2022 survey found evidence that Britons are less divided on "culture war" issues than has often been portrayed in the media. The greatest predictor of opinion was how people voted in the UK's referendum on membership of the European Union,
Brexit, yet even among those who voted Leave, 75% agreed "it is important to be attentive to issues of race and social justice". Similarly, even among Remainers and those who last voted for the Labour Party, there was moderately strong support for several socially conservative positions.
Turkey Europe in Prague was removed in 2020. In 2020, French President
Emmanuel Macron promised that France would not erase elements of its history or remove statues of controversial public figures, saying "The Republic won't erase any name from its history. It will forget none of its artworks, it won't take down statues." Several politicians, such as Poland's
Law and Justice party, Hungary's
Viktor Orbán, Serbia's
Aleksandar Vučić, and Slovenia's
Janez Janša, have been often accused of fomenting culture wars in their respective countries by encouraging dissent, resistance to LGBT rights, and restrictions on abortion. One facet of the controversy in Poland is the removal of
Soviet War Memorials, which is divisive because some Poles viewed the memorials positively as commemorations of their ancestors who died during
World War II, while others felt negatively due to the oppression that some Poles experienced under the Soviet-backed
Polish People's Republic. Culture war in Hungary is alleged by
Kim Scheppele to be a disguise for
democratic backsliding by Orbán. Ukraine also experienced a decades-long culture war pitting the eastern, predominately Russian-speaking, regions against the western Ukrainian-speaking areas of the country. LGBT rights are controversial in Poland, as exemplified by President
Andrzej Duda's vow in 2020 to oppose both
same-sex marriage and
LGBT adoption. Different interpretations of bitter events during
World War II have become especially contentious in Poland since 2015, shortly after the start of the
Russo-Ukrainian War. One disputed issue is whether Poland bears any
responsibility for
the Holocaust, or whether Poland was entirely a victim of
Nazi Germany. This dispute is embodied by the "
Polish death camp" controversy (involving
concentration camps that had been built by
Nazi Germany during
World War II on German-occupied Polish soil) and an attempt to address that controversy with a now
partly repealed law. A second issue, also addressed by the partly repealed law, revolves around
Poland–Ukraine relations. In the region, in passing a law to criminalize negative interpretations of the country's collaborationist nationalist movements during World War II, Poland is not alone, and
Poland–Ukraine relations have suffered as a result of a
similar law in Ukraine that was criticized in Poland for deflecting blame away from the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army and their
massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. , April 11, 2022
Derussification in Ukraine is a process of removing Russian influence from the post-Soviet country of Ukraine. This
derussification started after the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and intensified with the
demolition of monuments to Lenin during
Euromaidan in 2014 and the further systemic process of
decommunization in Ukraine. The
Russian invasion of Ukraine gave a strong impetus to the process. In 2024, the city of
Vienna rejected a monument to Polish King
John III Sobieski due to concerns about
Islamophobia and
anti-Turkish sentiment. ==See also==