Right’s lesson from US election is ‘culture wars work’

Hard right culture war warrior Kemi Badenoch (middle) (Photo: flickr/FCDO)

The far right in Britain celebrated Trump’s victory. Tommy Robinson claimed he had turned cartwheels in his prison cell. Nigel Farage cheered at Trump’s watch party in Pennsylvania.

The Conservative Party too shared this delight. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch could not wait to nail her colours to Trump’s mast. She demanded that Labour foreign secretary David Lammy apologise for having once called Trump a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath”.

Keir Starmer and David Lammy offer no challenge to this right wing juggernaut. Their only strategy is to make concessions, to promise action on illegal immigration and to ramp up state racism. This will only feed the beast.

Others on the left see the election as a reason to stay away from “identity politics” and concentrate instead on economics. But the right will seize on Trump’s election success to stir up ever nastier culture wars.

It believes that Trump has established a new model of success with his vicious attacks on migrants and women and his posing as an insurgent outsider boldly standing up to the “elite”.

Culture wars are about forging new alliances between groups of people with different aims. They have the potential to unite racists and Islamophobes, sexists and anti-abortionists, transphobes, climate change deniers, anti-vaxers and apologists for the British Empire into one movement.

Those drawn to the right get a purpose and a sense of importance. The right tells them they are defending their families, their country and Western civilisation from “enemies within”.

Culture wars also create a bridge between the far right and the mainstream right.

The Great Replacement Theory, for example, promotes the idea that global elites are replacing white people with black and brown immigrants. The theory was spawned by Nazi ideologues but is now regularly trotted out by conservative politicians.

Tory former home secretary Suella Braverman speaks about “cultural Marxism”, a revival of a Nazi conspiracy theory. It suggests Jewish intellectuals are attacking the West.

Kemi Badenoch gushed over US billionaire conspiracy theorist Elon Musk, saying, “I think Elon Musk has been a fantastic thing for freedom of speech. I will hold my hand up and say, I’m a huge fan of Elon Musk.”

This was after Musk fed Britain’s racist riots by repeating claims of police collusion with the Palestine movement.

Culture warriors claim that the left has captured all the key institutions in society—universities, the media, the civil service, public services and even the cops. And, if the establishment is run by the left, only the right wing can be anti-establishment.

Badenoch argues that Western civilisation is in decline, strangled by the “liberal elite”. This bureaucratic elite dominates society, stifles entrepreneurial spirit and risk‑taking, she says.

“In every country,” Badenoch asserts, “the rise of ‘safety‑ism’, stifling of risk, and a bureaucratic class to regulate and control us and protect the marginalised is rising steadily.

“The result of this has been a collapse in average advanced economy growth rates, from 2.7 percent in the 1980s to 2.1 percent in the 1990s and just 1 percent in the 2000s and 2010s.”

This is the height of economic illiteracy, but it makes for easy‑sounding solutions. Just tear up the red tape, drive out the lily-livered civil servants and free the bosses to conjure up economic growth.

The aim of culture wars is to divide and confuse. They demobilise opposition to slashing the welfare state, to tax cuts for the rich and to enriching the very elite they claim to stand up to.

They allow the super-rich to pose as insurgent outsiders. And they have the danger of becoming far more than a debate among politicians and commentators.

Some among the culture warriors know that, sooner or later, these “battles of ideas” will have to be settled with fists and boots.