Ep. 157: How the "Culture War" Label Is Used to Trivialize Life-and-Death Economic Issues
Added 2022-03-09 17:03:10 +0000 UTC"Let the Culture Wars Begin. Again," The New York Times announces. "How the ‘Culture War’ Could Break Democracy," warns Politico. "As The Culture Wars Shift, President Trump Struggles To Adapt," NPR tells us. "Will Democrats Go on the Offensive in the Culture Wars?" Vanity Fair wonders.
Over and over, we’re reminded that so-called culture wars are being waged between a simplified Left and Right. Depending on who you ask, they tend to encompass issues under very broad categories: “LGBTQ rights,” “abortion,” “funding for the arts,” “policing,” “immigration,” “family values.” While there is some validity to the label of “culture war issue” – say, Republican opposition to an art installation, or tantrums over the gender of M&Ms – most of the time, the term is woefully misapplied.
Despite what much of the media claims, LGBTQ rights, police violence, abortion, and so many other issues aren’t just “culture war” fluff in the same league as the latest Fox News meltdown about a cartoon character. Nor are they both-sides-able matters of debate. They’re matters of real, material consequence, often with life-and-death stakes. So why is it that these are placed under the “culture war” umbrella? And what are the dangers of characterizing them that way?
On this episode, we discuss the vague nature of the term “culture war”; how this lack of clarity is weaponized to gloss over and minimize life-and-death issues like police violence and gender-affirming healthcare; and how the only consistent criterion for a “culture war” seems to be issues that impact someone other than the media’s default audience, i.e., a white professional-class man.
Our guest is The Real News Network Editor-in-Chief Max Alvarez.
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Guest
Max Alvarez is the Editor-in-Chief of The Real News Network, a former editor at the Chronicle Review, and host of the Working People podcast. His book, The Work of Living, will be published by OR Books in the Spring of 2022.
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Show Notes
Adam Johnson | February 16, 2022 | The Column
It’s Time To Retire Culture War Journalism
Alessa Dominguez | December 23, 2021 | BuzzFeed News
Biden Must Resist the Calls for a ‘Sister Souljah’ Moment
Robert L. Borosage | September 9, 2020 | The Nation
America’s culture war is spilling into actual war-war
Thomas Zimmer | March 4, 2022 | The Guardian
Will Democrats Go On The Offensive In The Culture Wars?
Caleb Ecarma | February 16, 2022 | Vanity Fair
Why Democrats Keep Losing Culture Wars
Alex Samuels and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux | February 3, 2022 | FiveThirtyEight
These 7 culture wars dominated 2021 and will haunt the years ahead
Joe Berkowitz | December 27, 2021 | Fast Company
Democrats Are Losing The Culture Wars
Ronald Brownstein | December 9, 2021 | The Atlantic
The School Culture Wars: ‘You Have Brought Division to Us’
Sarah Mervosh and Giulia Heyward | August 18, 2021 | The New York Times
Welcome to the culture war, kids
Philip Bump | August 5, 2021 | The Washington Post
The Culture War Is a Leftist Offensive
Peggy Noonan | July 8, 2021 | The Wall Street Journal
Everything you wanted to know about the culture wars – but were afraid to ask
Andrew Anthony | June 13, 2021 | The Guardian
How Anti-Trans Bills Evoke The Culture Wars Of The 90s
Consider This | May 27, 2021 | NPR
Let the Culture Wars Begin. Again.
Jennifer Senior | August 24, 2020 | The New York Times
How everything became the culture war
Michael Grunwald | November 3, 2018 | Politico
Making sense of the culture war over transgender identity
November 16, 2017 | The Economist
Bill Clinton’s Stone Mountain Moment
Nathan J. Robinson | September 16, 2016 | Jacobin
David Mills | June 16, 1992 | The Washington Post
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Transcript
For a full transcript of this episode, go here.
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Comments
I became a patreon subscriber because of this episode. Phenomenal work
2022-03-29 17:38:39 +0000 UTCOMG yessss, THANK YOU. So depressingly timely and on-point. I've been making this argument with the same framing for a while now, but especially lately in response to certain "liberal" straight white guys in my life who are all-in on the propaganda from David Leonhardt et al. These assholes refuse to understand that not only are "culture war" issues in fact life-or-death material issues for oppressed and exploited groups that their ostensibly pragmatic thought leaders consider disposable, they are also the vanguard of the very fascist movement that liberals rightly claim to fear and despise. Bring up the Nazi burning of Magnus Hirschfield's library and you get blank stares. One minor point of disagreement, or at least nuance: I don't think Rogan is a distraction, any more than Leonhardt and his ilk in the MSM are. Dude has more influence than a lot of those "respectable" pundits, and he's a vile bigot and a leading vector of medical disinformation that has demonstrably sickened and killed people. I didn't see many leftists making the slippery slope argument about deplatforming Rogan (which is bullshit, as Max Alvarez says), I mostly saw it from the Greenwald / Taibbi / Tracey brigade, who are obviously enemies of the Left no matter how they try to market themselves. Anyway, this was super cathartic. Like you and Alvarez, I fucking see red when I try to talk about this shit, which makes me a poor advocate for my position.
Isadore Nabi
2022-03-10 04:07:31 +0000 UTC
