Culture Wars Are For Cowards
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Southern strategy
15 min read
The article discusses how culture wars are used to distract working-class voters in red states, particularly the South. The Southern strategy is the historical blueprint for this exact tactic—using racial and cultural wedge issues to realign white Southern voters away from economic populism toward the Republican Party.
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Solidarity (Polish trade union)
16 min read
The article's central argument hinges on 'solidarity' as both a principle and political strategy. The Polish Solidarity movement is the most successful modern example of working-class solidarity overcoming authoritarian power and cultural divisions—directly relevant to the author's vision of a Labor Party uniting workers across political lines.
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What's the Matter with Kansas? (book)
12 min read
Thomas Frank's influential 2004 book directly addresses the article's core question: why working-class voters in red states vote against their economic interests due to culture war manipulation. It provides the intellectual framework the author is both drawing from and pushing back against.
If one person has principles and says what they mean, and another person shiftily changes their principles according to whatever they think is popular, most people will respect the first person more, even if they disagree with them. Standing up for your beliefs is an admirable quality, while selling out for momentary advantage is not. This is a prime reason why the public dislikes not just politicians of the opposite party, but politicians as a class. It is less that they disagree with them than that they are snakes. When someone has principles, you can disagree with them face to face. When they don’t, they will stab you in the back.
Malcolm X understood this. So does Donald Trump. Most of the Democratic Party leadership does not.
Earlier this week I wrote a piece arguing that there is an opportunity for independent candidates with a strong pro-worker agenda—health care for all, living wages, tax the rich—to win elections in deeply red states and districts, if those candidates are not Democrats. This, I suggested, could be where the concept of a “Labor Party” in America would be most useful. Organized labor itself could recruit, train, and fund working class candidates and take advantage of the fact that the majority of Republican voters in red states are being screwed by Republican policies.
There were two common reactions from those who disagreed with me. The first was that people assumed that any such pro-worker candidate in a red state would naturally have to embrace conservative positions on culture war issues, as “centrist” Democrats have been doing for decades, and they saw my idea as part and parcel of that doomed and divisive philosophy. This is not what I what I mean, nor is it what I wrote. But it is indicative of the fact that the conventional wisdom about the necessity of taking right wing positions on red meat issues in red states is so deeply established that people just assume that that is a necessary part of the package.
The other objections was much simpler. People just said, “That won’t work, because red state voters are racists/ bigots/ deluded/ brain poisoned by Fox News/ etc.” These people have made the mistake of conflating an observation of current reality with a deep, immutable characteristic. Is the South, for example, full of people who vote for racist, bigoted, delusional right wing politicians?
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