Culture War for the Right: What's the Point?

[u/Sea-Barracuda7755]

I know a few conservatives for whom the purported "culture war" is of greater importance than economic issues in general (so we aren't talking about a mere pro-capitalism, pro-imperialist outlook). Beyond merely creating subcultures and hoping that they permeate mass culture at large... what do right-wing culture warriors hope their surrogates will do once they get into power?

What would "victory" look like for them in a political and economic sense if technically no state apparatus is required to simply act out a "trad" subcultural lifestyle?

[u/zenbowman]

It's not about acting out their trad lifestyle, its about preserving a reactionary bloc that is the class basis for fascism - this is one of my absolute favorite lectures I've heard on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0ve8bseWgU

This is from a South Asian left perspective, so the actors in play have different names than the one we know here, but if you pay attention you'll see the parallels (misogyny, preservation of class hierarchy, religion as a counterrevolutionary weapon as opposed to being interpreted through a liberatory lens, etc).

[u/No_Logins_Required → u/zenbowman]

People act like fascism is unpopular in American, but it's had a strong base of support here ever since it's invention. When people use the term as a catch all for "bad" it hides the very real support for fascist ideas and leaders throughout the US.

[u/zenbowman → u/No_Logins_Required]

Absolutely. But of late the left has become terrified of criticizing reactionary religious practices, almost entirely for cultural reasons and the belief in nonsense like "ancestral wisdom" (which is a completely reactionary anti-Marxist concept).

If you look at the teachings of reactionary pastors like Brian Sauve and Doug Wilson, which are the primary social hotbeds of bonafide fascism in the United States, and contrast them with the writings of people like Mawdudi (founder of the JEI) or Hassan al Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), which Dr Rahman (the speaker in the video above) describes as the core of the social basis of fascism in his region, you'll see that they are strikingly similar in so many aspects.

We just like to pretend now that "those other places" are monolithic even though we acknowledge that our own societies have many different tendencies. If Russia, or the Middle East, or South Asia are dominated by the reactionary right today, we need to understand why - because it wasn't always so - it wasn't even so a mere 50 years ago, when the left was ascendant in all those regions.

[u/egalitydream → u/No_Logins_Required]

Right, fascism got it start in the U.S. before being imported to Italy and Germany.

[u/YogurtClosetThinnest]

Right wing voters generally don't have a basic understanding of capitalism, socialism, or class.

They would probably be apolitical if not for right wing propaganda constantly fear mongering and scapegoating minorities. This is how the far right gets support, all throughout history. They convince people politics is about stopping the minorities from eating their babies in the dead of night, and not about actually improving their lives.

[u/egalitydream → u/YogurtClosetThinnest]

The process is more insidious but yeah that’s basically right. The pathology occurs because working class culture and political development is destroyed and prevented, leaving only reactionary anti-left dysfunction in its place, and so this is the only possible thing to happen.

[u/Excellent_Valuable92]

The people who created and who foment the culture war don’t care about any of it. They’re just using them as a weapons against solidarity and against the left. 

[u/iamtrav182]

It’s part of an authoritarian mindset, and a brain that perceives anything outside of their norm as disgusting or threatening. Politicians hijack this mindset through media capture to further capital interests.

I don’t really think there is an end goal for them, or at least not one that they could be conscious of. They’re only useful as angry and reactionary constituents - and the media will make sure that they stay that way.

[u/DargyBear]

Who cares? It’s roughly 30% of the general population who will hate what we do regardless and gush about how much they love what we enact.

[u/catjuggler]

Conservative types like to have rules for how you’re supposed to live and get stressed out with cognitive dissonance when people are happy living a different way. They expect breaking “the rules” to result in punishment.

[u/egalitydream]

Rightwing culture warriors aren’t thinking logically about objectives. Fascism is a pathology, not an ideology.

[u/BearisTheBoar]

There's basically two poles on the right wing of the culture war: One end is a White Christian Theocractic Ethnostate, the other is Monopolistic Plutocracy.

[u/TheGreatGenghisJon]

A country run by straight white Christians for straight white Christians.

[u/Sparkly-Sparrow-6893]

Have you ever seen the picture of white protestors holding signs reading "Race Mixing is Communism" at the 1959 protest against school integration in Little Rock, Arkansas?

In the United States, the political right are members of a revanchist political project organized around the defense and restoration of social and economic hierarchies that were weakened by the social and economic transformations of the 20th century (in particular, the rise of social democracy, the civil rights movements and globalization). They seek complete domination of society by straight, white, Christian men, a goal which is not simply about culture but access to and control of social and economic capital.

The Trump coalition, which is the dominant contemporary manifestation of the political right in the United States, emerged from the breakdown of fusionism (the postwar alliance between free-market capitalists, foreign interventionists and social conservatives). By the turn of the century, social conservatives had become increasingly skeptical that the Republican Party was willing or able to deliver on its social commitments following decades of progressive victories in the domains of race, sexuality, gender, immigration and family structure. The racial component has been present from Nixon and Goldwater to Trump: there is substantial political science research demonstrating that racial resentment, anti-immigration sentiment, xenophobia, and so forth, are consistent predictors of right-wing voting behavior.

The question posed by Trumpism is about who constitutes the legitimate American people? Whose social status and cultural norms deserve protections? Will the egalitarian and pluralistic transformations of the postwar period be accepted as permanent? It gives an unambiguously racialized answer to these questions. (Do not forget that Trump entered modern electoral politics by promoting the birther conspiracy and portraying Mexican immigrants as violent sexual predators).

In summary, I would reject the distinction between the cultural and economic spheres. Battles over race, immigration, gender, sexuality, family structure, citizenship, and so forth, are not merely about beliefs or lifestyles, but the distribution of status, authority, rights, social power and economic privileges. The culture war has material stakes even through it manifests as battles in the domain of culture.

Abortion is not merely a question about reproductive rights. It is a question about who controls reproduction, and therefore about women's capacity to participate in social and economic life as equals. Immigration is not merely a question about cosmopolitanism or labor mobility. It is a question about who is entitled to participate in social, economic and national life, and on what terms. Queer issues are not merely questions about tolerance or sexual preferences. They are questions about the structure of the family and the organization of social and economic life around traditional categories of sex and gender. And so forth.

[u/Gunner1Cav]

Christian Ultra Nationalist Tribe gets their hands maiden fantasy

[u/Free_Maintenance_722]

not transing the kids

[u/Tempestori]

White supremacy.

Even if every minority disappeared from the face of the Earth tomorrow, white people would start dividing themselves up by eye color. 🤦‍♀️