Scapegoats and Phantom Enemies: The Idiocy of the Culture Wars
As much as I try to avoid getting mired in the swamp of U.S. politics, and specifically the culture wars that so often take the place of real political discussion, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time on Twitter lately. As with U.S. corporate media in general, there’s only so much time you can spend on what users quasi-affectionately call the “hellsite” before you have to take notice of the culture wars sooner or later.
Part of that is down to the inescapable presence of Twitter’s new owner. Elon Musk, born into wealth and a living rebuttal to the idea that we live in a meritocracy, is impossible to escape on Twitter. His politics are your basic right-wing nonsense. But in the same way that Donald Trump becoming president forced everyone to pay attention to a bigoted game show host, Musk’s status as the world’s richest man and his 121 million followers allow him to force himself into the cultural conversation. In that context, it’s revealing to see just what the world’s richest man thinks are the most pressing problems facing the human race.
Hear that? The biggest issue facing humanity isn’t the climate crisis threatening to make our planet unlivable, nor is it the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed 6.6 million people to date. It’s not the 3.4 million people who die every year because they lack clean drinking water or the 9 million who die annually of hunger. It’s not the consignment of nearly half the world’s population to extreme poverty, or growing inequality in which the poor get poorer while wealthy parasites like Elon Musk grow ever more obscenely wealthy. No, it’s the “woke mind virus”.
“Woke”, of course, has become an all-purpose buzzword for anything the right wing despises. It’s really nothing but a 21st-century update of the ’90s culture wars over “political correctness”. Nick and CJ at the Revolutionary Blackout Network had some great commentary lately explaining the origins of the word “woke” in Black American culture, which ultimately amounted to being alert to social problems such as racism. It’s astounding that this has become a pejorative, but then it’s also mind-boggling that a phrase like “Black Lives Matter” could ever become controversial. For billionaires like Musk, as RBN points out, being “woke” in the most basic sense of criticizing societal injustices is indeed a problem because it threatens the status quo that the capitalist ruling class benefits from. In its most far-reaching form, awareness of these injustices can lead to growing class consciousness which in turn can have revolutionary implications. No wonder that wealthy capitalists like Musk (not to mention Musk buddies like Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan) see “wokeness” as the biggest threat to their interests.
Being anti-“woke”, as we see, has become a badge of honour for all breed of reactionaries in the ongoing culture wars.
Still, this leads to a further question. Why have the culture wars played such a central role in U.S. politics? I believe it ultimately comes down to the lack of a mass working class party. In the absence of a mass labour/socialist party representing U.S. workers, what you’re left with are two capitalist parties that both represent the ruling class. Democrats and Republicans agree on all the most important issues, such as endless war to feed the military-industrial complex, defending U.S. imperialist interests abroad, and funneling money from workers and the poor to corporations and the rich.
Of course, none of this can be admitted openly. To do so would destroy the illusion that the United States is a democracy in which there is significant difference between the two bourgeois parties, and ordinary citizens have a say in government policy through their vote. Maintaining this illusion requires focusing the attention on the populace on wedge issues that can differentiate the two parties from each other.
Enter the culture wars. By focusing on issues such as abortion and LGBTQ rights, these two parties which fundamentally represent the same interests can represent themselves as polar opposites. Mostly this is smoke and mirrors. Democrats, who pose as the “progressive” party that will defend gains such as abortion rights, have shown in practice for decades they have no actual interest in doing so. For the Democrats, pretending to care about issues like abortion is useful as a fundraising tool, since they have nothing else to offer. Meanwhile, the Republicans pose as the defenders of Christianity and “traditional values”, which in practice means fomenting bigotry to keep the working class divided and re-directing growing mass anger from societal collapse towards scapegoats such as LGBTQ people.
The end result of this is that a huge amount of energy, from politicians and the media down to ordinary people, is wasted on some of the most mind-numbingly stupid discourse you can imagine. In recent years, Democrats have succeeded at turning liberals into Bush-era neocons by painting Vladimir Putin as the ultimately enemy, puppetmaster of Donald Trump, through the Russiagate conspiracy theory. But when it comes to the culture wars specifically, the dumbest takes tend to come from the right, by definition the most vociferous defenders of hierarchy and the status quo. Because they cannot challenge those who actually hold the most power in society, right-wing politicians and pundits must resort to phantom enemies that they can demonize as responsible for all societal ills. In practice this means scapegoating minorities and the most vulnerable groups in society. Examples of groups that have served as scapegoats include Jews, Black people, women (or “feminists”), LGTBQ people, Muslims, and immigrants.
A worldview in which the most oppressed groups with the least power are perceived to have the most power is fundamentally irrational. It makes no sense. That’s why the right wing, and particularly the far right, inevitably gravitates towards conspiracy theories which in the last analysis are rooted in antisemitism. Just as the crusade against “wokeness” is the old decrying of “political correctness” with a fresh coat of paint, so tirades against “globalists” are just old antisemitic conspiracy theories with plausible deniability. There’s a reason the right-wing conspiracy theory of “cultural Marxism” fixates on the Frankfurt School, the members of whom all happened to be Jews, or billionaires such as George Soros who also happens to be Jews. (Ironically, thinkers of the Frankfurt School were petit-bourgeois academic Marxists whose theories had little in common with genuine Marxism.) A statement commonly attributed to the 19th century German social democrat August Bebel, but which more likely came from Austrian liberal politician Ferdinand Kronawetter, held that “antisemitism is the socialism of fools.” That idea still holds true today for modern variants of right-wing populism, which always imagine phantom enemies as a scapegoat that directs attention away from the capitalist class that really rules society.
On a surface level, this right-wing irrationalism and backward worldview can be funny, as when reactionaries imagine that corporations that exist to maximize profit actually have a secret “woke” agenda.
This tweet about “woke” Pizza Hut is a perfect example of the difference between idealist and materialist philosophical perspectives. The former holds that ideas shape history, whereas the later finds an explanation in material conditions. Contrary to what “Carolina Patriot” believes, the reason people talk more about politics these days isn’t because corporations have some hidden “woke” agenda. It’s because capitalism is incapable of solving our most pressing problems and society is collapsing around us.
In practice, however, this search for scapegoats always results in oppression aimed at the most marginalized people in society. The antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews were somehow responsible for both capitalism and communism was completely irrational, yet the belief of millions in this view led to the Nazi Holocaust. Currently anti-LGBTQ legislation is favoured by right-wing politicians. The petty cruelty of acts like Texas removing LGBTQ suicide prevention resources from state websites is reflective of a larger campaign to demonize an already marginalized and oppressed group. This fomenting of hate is directly responsible for atrocities such as the mass shooting at the Club Q nightclub in Colorado Springs.
The antidote to the poison of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all other forms of oppression which seek to direct popular anger to the most oppressed groups in society is to tell the truth about the world we live in. It means a materialist worldview in which we can see that all these forms of oppression are ultimately rooted in class society, in this case capitalism. It means recognizing the common interests of working class people across lines of race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other division, and fighting for the socialist transformation of society. Only through the elimination of class divisions can we put an end to the scapegoating of marginalized groups, which is the most favoured method of the ruling class to divide workers and maintain their own power.