WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.879 Welcome back to another deep dive. Today we are 00:00:02.879 --> 00:00:06.700 wading into waters that I think for most of us 00:00:06.700 --> 00:00:09.519 feel a little bit like drowning. We are talking 00:00:09.519 --> 00:00:11.779 about a phrase that just dominates the headlines. 00:00:11.919 --> 00:00:15.380 It fills up our social media feeds. And let's 00:00:15.380 --> 00:00:17.539 be honest, it probably raises your blood pressure 00:00:17.539 --> 00:00:20.899 just hearing it. It definitely triggers a visceral 00:00:20.899 --> 00:00:23.300 reaction. It's that, you know, tightness in the 00:00:23.300 --> 00:00:26.219 chest you get when you open Twitter or X or whatever 00:00:26.219 --> 00:00:28.510 and you just see everyone screaming. We are talking 00:00:28.510 --> 00:00:31.109 about the culture war. And the mission for this 00:00:31.109 --> 00:00:34.229 deep dive is it's a bit different than usual. 00:00:34.289 --> 00:00:36.270 Usually when people talk about this, they want 00:00:36.270 --> 00:00:38.250 to argue in the war. They want to debate the 00:00:38.250 --> 00:00:40.789 latest outrage, the banned book, the protest, 00:00:41.090 --> 00:00:44.109 the tweet of the day. We aren't doing that. No. 00:00:44.559 --> 00:00:46.979 We are not here to fight the war. We are here 00:00:46.979 --> 00:00:48.859 to look at the map. Yes. We want to take the 00:00:48.859 --> 00:00:50.859 back off the wash and see the gears turning. 00:00:51.140 --> 00:00:53.500 We want to understand the machinery. Because 00:00:53.500 --> 00:00:55.039 when I was going through the stack of research 00:00:55.039 --> 00:00:57.020 for this, and we have a massive stack today, 00:00:57.100 --> 00:00:59.460 listeners, ranging from 19th century German history 00:00:59.460 --> 00:01:03.259 to modern algorithmic studies, global political 00:01:03.259 --> 00:01:06.799 science, I realized something. I realized I didn't 00:01:06.799 --> 00:01:09.140 actually know what this thing was. Is it organic? 00:01:09.359 --> 00:01:12.079 Do we all just... naturally hate each other now? 00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:15.920 Or is this a machine? Is it a strategy? And that 00:01:15.920 --> 00:01:18.200 is the central question. It really is. And the 00:01:18.200 --> 00:01:21.079 answer, as we go through the sources, it points 00:01:21.079 --> 00:01:23.819 heavily toward machine. Right. It's a manufactured 00:01:23.819 --> 00:01:26.959 phenomenon with a history, a structure, and a 00:01:26.959 --> 00:01:30.040 surprisingly large global footprint. And spoiler 00:01:30.040 --> 00:01:32.980 alert. It did not start on Facebook. No, far 00:01:32.980 --> 00:01:35.260 from it. So let's start at the very beginning. 00:01:35.379 --> 00:01:37.140 Before we even get into the history, we need 00:01:37.140 --> 00:01:39.659 a working definition. Good idea. Because culture 00:01:39.659 --> 00:01:41.359 war is one of those terms that gets thrown around 00:01:41.359 --> 00:01:45.319 so loosely, it almost loses its meaning. When 00:01:45.319 --> 00:01:47.780 the sources define it, what are we actually looking 00:01:47.780 --> 00:01:51.079 at? So stripped of all the buzzwords, the core 00:01:51.079 --> 00:01:52.980 definition we're working with is that a culture 00:01:52.980 --> 00:01:56.379 war is a conflict, often metaphorical, but sometimes 00:01:56.379 --> 00:01:59.620 very real between social groups. Okay. But here's 00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:03.219 the key part. It's not just a disagreement. It 00:02:03.219 --> 00:02:05.980 is a struggle to politically impose a specific 00:02:05.980 --> 00:02:10.180 ideology or a set of values on mainstream society. 00:02:10.419 --> 00:02:13.719 That word impose feels like the heavy lifter 00:02:13.719 --> 00:02:16.080 there. It's not just I like chocolate. You like 00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:18.300 vanilla. Exactly. I like chocolate. You like 00:02:18.300 --> 00:02:21.500 vanilla is pluralism. That's a healthy society. 00:02:21.840 --> 00:02:24.680 You do your thing. I do my thing. Right. A culture 00:02:24.680 --> 00:02:27.919 war is your preference for vanilla is an existential 00:02:27.919 --> 00:02:30.240 threat to the nation. And I need to pass laws 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:32.979 to make sure vanilla is marginalized. It's a 00:02:32.979 --> 00:02:35.319 struggle for dominance. It's a struggle for reality. 00:02:35.539 --> 00:02:38.300 It is. It's about defining reality. It's taking 00:02:38.300 --> 00:02:40.979 a private preference or a moral belief and recognizing 00:02:40.979 --> 00:02:43.580 it into a public policy requirement. Right. Turning 00:02:43.580 --> 00:02:46.180 your taste into my law. Precisely. And in doing 00:02:46.180 --> 00:02:49.020 so, it creates what sociologists call a cleavage 00:02:49.020 --> 00:02:51.439 in society. Which sounds painful. It is painful. 00:02:51.539 --> 00:02:53.659 It's a split. And the goal of the people waging 00:02:53.659 --> 00:02:55.819 these wars on either side is often to make sure 00:02:55.819 --> 00:02:58.539 that split is as wide and, you know, as unbridgeable 00:02:58.539 --> 00:03:00.580 as possible. They want a canyon. They want you 00:03:00.580 --> 00:03:03.560 to feel that you cannot possibly coexist with 00:03:03.560 --> 00:03:05.659 a person on the other side of that canyon. OK, 00:03:05.740 --> 00:03:08.819 so if that's the mechanism imposing values to 00:03:08.819 --> 00:03:11.319 create a split, where does it come from? If I 00:03:11.319 --> 00:03:13.580 ask the average person on the street, when did 00:03:13.580 --> 00:03:16.520 the culture war start? They'd probably say the 00:03:16.520 --> 00:03:20.280 1960s. Right. Woodstock, hippies. Vietnam, the 00:03:20.280 --> 00:03:22.560 counterculture, all of that. That's the standard 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:25.280 answer. Right. Or maybe they'd point to the 1990s 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:27.340 with Newt Gingrich and the Contract of America. 00:03:27.520 --> 00:03:30.180 But the research took us back a lot further to 00:03:30.180 --> 00:03:33.240 a place in time I really, really did not expect. 00:03:33.719 --> 00:03:37.620 We are talking about 1870s Germany. Yes. We have 00:03:37.620 --> 00:03:40.080 to talk about the Kulturkampf. Which is, that's 00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:41.879 just the German word for culture war, right? 00:03:41.960 --> 00:03:44.099 It is. The English phrase we use today is what 00:03:44.099 --> 00:03:46.680 linguists call a Kalk. It's a loan translation. 00:03:46.699 --> 00:03:49.610 We literally just translated Kulturkampf. Kultur 00:03:49.610 --> 00:03:52.650 meaning culture, Kampf meaning struggle or war. 00:03:52.909 --> 00:03:55.050 But they weren't fighting about gender pronouns 00:03:55.050 --> 00:03:59.349 or gastos in 1871 Berlin. No. What was the original 00:03:59.349 --> 00:04:01.449 culture war about? It was a heavyweight title 00:04:01.449 --> 00:04:04.569 fight between two massive powers. In one corner, 00:04:04.629 --> 00:04:08.370 you had the newly unified German Empire, led 00:04:08.370 --> 00:04:11.009 by the Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Okay. 00:04:11.110 --> 00:04:12.830 In the other corner, you had the Catholic Church, 00:04:12.990 --> 00:04:16.110 led by Pope Pius IX. Bismarck versus the Pope. 00:04:16.269 --> 00:04:19.079 That is... High stakes. That's like Godzilla 00:04:19.079 --> 00:04:22.100 versus Kong for the 19th century. Extremely high 00:04:22.100 --> 00:04:23.839 stakes. And you have to understand the context. 00:04:24.459 --> 00:04:27.639 Germany had just become a nation state in 1871. 00:04:27.860 --> 00:04:31.040 Right. Brand new. Bismarck is obsessed with unity. 00:04:31.240 --> 00:04:34.420 He wants a strong, modern, secular state where 00:04:34.420 --> 00:04:36.480 everyone speaks German and salutes the Kaiser. 00:04:37.259 --> 00:04:39.259 And he looks at the Catholic Church, which makes 00:04:39.259 --> 00:04:41.920 up about a third of the population, and he sees 00:04:41.920 --> 00:04:44.220 a problem. What's the problem? They're just going 00:04:44.220 --> 00:04:46.040 to church, aren't they? Bismarck didn't see it 00:04:46.040 --> 00:04:48.449 that way. He saw a group of people whose ultimate 00:04:48.449 --> 00:04:51.449 loyalty wasn't to the Kaiser or the German Constitution. 00:04:51.930 --> 00:04:56.290 But to Rome. But to a foreign power. The Vatican. 00:04:56.370 --> 00:04:58.670 He called them Reichsfeinde. Which means? Enemies 00:04:58.670 --> 00:05:00.970 of the empire. He believed that if push came 00:05:00.970 --> 00:05:03.449 to shove, a good Catholic would listen to the 00:05:03.449 --> 00:05:06.069 Pope, not the Chancellor. So it was a question 00:05:06.069 --> 00:05:08.290 of sovereignty. Who's really in charge here? 00:05:08.370 --> 00:05:11.899 Precisely. So he launched the Kulturkampf. And 00:05:11.899 --> 00:05:14.000 this wasn't just, you know, rhetoric or mean 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:16.699 tweets. He passed what were called the May laws. 00:05:16.879 --> 00:05:19.819 The May laws. The state took control of educating 00:05:19.819 --> 00:05:22.680 the clergy. They established a special court 00:05:22.680 --> 00:05:25.660 for ecclesiastical affairs. They made civil marriage 00:05:25.660 --> 00:05:28.740 mandatory, taking that power away from the church. 00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:32.639 Wow. At the height of this, almost all the Catholic 00:05:32.639 --> 00:05:36.370 bishops in Prussia were either imprisoned. So 00:05:36.370 --> 00:05:38.589 when we talk about culture war today being nasty, 00:05:38.829 --> 00:05:41.310 it's not imprisoning bishops nasty. Not yet. 00:05:41.389 --> 00:05:44.480 Not quite. But the dynamic is identical. It was 00:05:44.480 --> 00:05:47.120 a secular modernizing state trying to break the 00:05:47.120 --> 00:05:49.259 power of traditional religious authority. And 00:05:49.259 --> 00:05:51.139 there's another layer to this that often gets 00:05:51.139 --> 00:05:53.040 missed, which I found really interesting in the 00:05:53.040 --> 00:05:54.980 notes. The ethnic element. The Polish connection. 00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:57.279 Right. A lot of the Catholics in the Prussian 00:05:57.279 --> 00:06:00.399 territories were ethnic Poles. So for Bismarck, 00:06:00.399 --> 00:06:02.860 attacking the church was also a way to suppress 00:06:02.860 --> 00:06:06.300 Polish nationalism and force Germanization. Which 00:06:06.300 --> 00:06:09.639 sounds eerily familiar to modern debates. It's 00:06:09.639 --> 00:06:12.379 never just about the stated issue, is it? Never. 00:06:12.540 --> 00:06:15.939 It's about identity, ethnicity, and who belongs 00:06:15.939 --> 00:06:18.740 in the nation. That is the DNA of the culture 00:06:18.740 --> 00:06:20.920 war. It's always about who gets to define the 00:06:20.920 --> 00:06:24.079 soul of the nation. Is Germany a secular Protestant 00:06:24.079 --> 00:06:27.500 empire? Or is there room for Polish Catholics? 00:06:28.060 --> 00:06:32.379 Bismarck said no. So the term exists in the 1870s. 00:06:32.459 --> 00:06:35.139 How does it get to America? Does it just hop 00:06:35.139 --> 00:06:38.889 on a boat? It hybridated for a long time. The 00:06:38.889 --> 00:06:41.569 term would pop up in obscure academic papers 00:06:41.569 --> 00:06:44.329 or newspapers in the 1920s and 40s, usually referring 00:06:44.329 --> 00:06:46.670 back to Germany. But it wasn't something regular 00:06:46.670 --> 00:06:49.689 people said. An intellectual curiosity. Exactly. 00:06:49.689 --> 00:06:52.740 But the feeling. The dynamic that arrived in 00:06:52.740 --> 00:06:55.060 the U .S. way before the word did. The sources 00:06:55.060 --> 00:06:57.660 point to the 1920s as the first real American 00:06:57.660 --> 00:07:00.540 culture war. And the parallels between the 1920s 00:07:00.540 --> 00:07:02.439 and the 2020s are actually staggering. Really? 00:07:02.740 --> 00:07:04.579 Oh, yeah. If you look at the societal pressures, 00:07:04.660 --> 00:07:06.680 it's almost a mirror image. OK, set the scene 00:07:06.680 --> 00:07:08.459 for us. All right. So you have the roaring 20s. 00:07:08.459 --> 00:07:10.839 World War I is over. You have this massive explosion 00:07:10.839 --> 00:07:13.839 of technology and urbanization, radios, cars, 00:07:14.139 --> 00:07:16.639 movies. And for the first time in American history. 00:07:17.050 --> 00:07:19.730 More Americans live in cities than in the countryside. 00:07:19.910 --> 00:07:22.550 And the cities are where the sin is. In the eyes 00:07:22.550 --> 00:07:25.350 of the rural traditionalists, yes. The cities 00:07:25.350 --> 00:07:28.329 had jazz. They had flappers with short hair and 00:07:28.329 --> 00:07:31.129 short skirts. They had speakeasies. All the fun 00:07:31.129 --> 00:07:35.170 stuff. And crucially, they had immigrants. Millions 00:07:35.170 --> 00:07:37.430 of Catholics and Jews arriving from southern 00:07:37.430 --> 00:07:40.069 and eastern Europe. So the rural Protestant majority 00:07:40.069 --> 00:07:43.889 feels besieged. They feel like they're losing 00:07:43.889 --> 00:07:46.379 their country. They feel like their values are 00:07:46.379 --> 00:07:48.879 being eroded by these aliens in the cities who 00:07:48.879 --> 00:07:51.139 drink alcohol and listen to syncopated music. 00:07:51.199 --> 00:07:53.180 So you get a massive backlash. And this is the 00:07:53.180 --> 00:07:55.639 era of prohibition. This is the era of prohibition, 00:07:55.639 --> 00:07:57.379 which we often think of as a health thing. But 00:07:57.379 --> 00:08:00.459 it was a direct culture war attack on the drinking 00:08:00.459 --> 00:08:03.160 habits of urban immigrants. The German beer halls, 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:06.829 the Irish pubs. Exactly. And you also see the 00:08:06.829 --> 00:08:10.009 resurgence of the KKK in the 20s, but not just 00:08:10.009 --> 00:08:12.870 as anti -black. In this era, they were explicitly 00:08:12.870 --> 00:08:15.649 anti -Catholic and anti -immigrant. Right. They 00:08:15.649 --> 00:08:18.550 were trying to enforce a 100 percent Americanism. 00:08:18.569 --> 00:08:20.990 Right. That was Protestant and rural. And this 00:08:20.990 --> 00:08:23.769 all culminated in an election that sounds like 00:08:23.769 --> 00:08:28.079 a total nightmare. 1928. Al Smith. Oh, poor Al 00:08:28.079 --> 00:08:30.959 Smith. He was the perfect villain for the culture 00:08:30.959 --> 00:08:33.379 warriors of the time. He was the Democratic nominee. 00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:35.879 And he was the governor of New York, the ultimate 00:08:35.879 --> 00:08:38.779 city slicker. He was a wet. He wanted to end 00:08:38.779 --> 00:08:42.779 prohibition. And most damning of all, he was 00:08:42.779 --> 00:08:45.639 Catholic. The first Catholic major party nominee. 00:08:46.269 --> 00:08:48.769 And the attacks on him were just vicious. We 00:08:48.769 --> 00:08:52.009 think fake news is new. People circulated pamphlets 00:08:52.009 --> 00:08:53.809 claiming that the Pope was going to build a tunnel 00:08:53.809 --> 00:08:57.169 from Rome to the White House to give Smith his 00:08:57.169 --> 00:09:00.250 daily orders. A tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean. 00:09:00.429 --> 00:09:02.889 A literal tunnel. It's funny. We look back at 00:09:02.889 --> 00:09:04.590 that now and laugh about the tunnel, but people 00:09:04.590 --> 00:09:06.909 really believed it. They did. It speaks to the 00:09:06.909 --> 00:09:09.269 level of fear. It taps into that primal fear 00:09:09.269 --> 00:09:12.409 of foreign influence. And Smith got absolutely 00:09:12.409 --> 00:09:15.309 crushed. Right. The country wasn't ready. The 00:09:15.309 --> 00:09:18.250 traditional forces won that battle. But the war, 00:09:18.330 --> 00:09:20.590 the divide between urban modernists and rural 00:09:20.590 --> 00:09:23.190 traditionalists, it never went away. It just 00:09:23.190 --> 00:09:25.769 simmered. OK, let's fast forward a bit. We move 00:09:25.769 --> 00:09:28.250 through the mid -century and we have to talk 00:09:28.250 --> 00:09:31.210 about a group that keeps popping up in our research 00:09:31.210 --> 00:09:34.250 like a bad penny. Yes. The John Birch Society. 00:09:34.389 --> 00:09:36.470 The John Birch Society is like the Kevin Bacon 00:09:36.470 --> 00:09:39.289 of right wing conspiracy theories. Everything 00:09:39.289 --> 00:09:41.269 connects back to them. Who are they? Founded 00:09:41.269 --> 00:09:46.159 in 1958 by Robert Welch. They were ostensibly 00:09:46.159 --> 00:09:49.500 an anti -communist group, but they were extreme. 00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:52.740 I mean, truly extreme. How so? They believed 00:09:52.740 --> 00:09:55.820 that President Eisenhower, a five -star general, 00:09:55.980 --> 00:09:59.539 the hero of D -Day, was a secret communist agent. 00:09:59.980 --> 00:10:01.759 Eisenhower, the guy who built the highway system? 00:10:02.179 --> 00:10:04.840 A commie. In their world, yes. They believed 00:10:04.840 --> 00:10:07.460 there was a massive internal conspiracy to destroy 00:10:07.460 --> 00:10:10.039 American sovereignty and values. They thought 00:10:10.039 --> 00:10:11.980 the civil rights movement was a communist plot. 00:10:12.220 --> 00:10:14.139 And water fluoridation. And water fluoridation, 00:10:14.259 --> 00:10:16.720 yes. And while they were marginalized by mainstream 00:10:16.720 --> 00:10:20.299 Republicans for a while, their ideas, they didn't 00:10:20.299 --> 00:10:22.960 die. The sources trace a direct line from them 00:10:22.960 --> 00:10:25.179 to the modern Christian right. It's a straight 00:10:25.179 --> 00:10:27.559 line. You can trace the personnel and the tactics 00:10:27.559 --> 00:10:29.919 from the John Birch Society to people like Phyllis 00:10:29.919 --> 00:10:33.019 Schlafly. She was the anti -feminist icon, right? 00:10:33.100 --> 00:10:34.700 The one who stopped the Equal Rights Amendment. 00:10:34.980 --> 00:10:37.639 Correct. And she started her career promoting 00:10:37.639 --> 00:10:40.450 John Birch Society literature. Then you have 00:10:40.450 --> 00:10:43.330 Tim LaHaye, who wrote the massive bestselling 00:10:43.330 --> 00:10:46.190 Left Behind series about the rapture. He was 00:10:46.190 --> 00:10:48.909 deeply influenced by this Bircher style of paranoia, 00:10:48.909 --> 00:10:51.809 the idea that the world is divided into us, the 00:10:51.809 --> 00:10:54.990 faithful, and them, the conspirators, globalists. 00:10:55.169 --> 00:10:57.029 So they built the infrastructure, they built 00:10:57.029 --> 00:10:59.350 the mailing lists, they built the sense of persecution. 00:10:59.590 --> 00:11:02.769 Yes. But we still don't have the name yet. When 00:11:02.769 --> 00:11:05.409 does culture war become a household term in the 00:11:05.409 --> 00:11:09.110 United States? 1991. The pivot point. Enter James 00:11:09.110 --> 00:11:11.809 Davison Hunter. James Davison Hunter is a sociologist 00:11:11.809 --> 00:11:14.389 at the University of Virginia. And he publishes 00:11:14.389 --> 00:11:17.850 a book called Culture Wars, The Struggle to Define 00:11:17.850 --> 00:11:20.370 America. And this book hits the intellectual 00:11:20.370 --> 00:11:23.529 scene like a bomb because he finally gave a name 00:11:23.529 --> 00:11:25.370 to what everyone was feeling. What was his big 00:11:25.370 --> 00:11:27.289 insight? Because he wasn't just saying people 00:11:27.289 --> 00:11:29.690 disagree. He was saying something fundamental 00:11:29.690 --> 00:11:32.230 had changed in the American landscape. Right. 00:11:32.309 --> 00:11:35.129 His thesis was that the old lines of division 00:11:35.129 --> 00:11:37.960 in America were dissolving. For most of history, 00:11:38.100 --> 00:11:40.340 the divide was denominational Protestant versus 00:11:40.340 --> 00:11:43.600 Catholic versus Jew. Or it was economic labor 00:11:43.600 --> 00:11:46.799 versus capital. Hunter said, no, the new divide 00:11:46.799 --> 00:11:49.679 is ideological. He called it progressivism versus 00:11:49.679 --> 00:11:53.139 orthodoxy. OK, break those down. What does he 00:11:53.139 --> 00:11:56.220 mean by orthodoxy in this context? Orthodoxy, 00:11:56.220 --> 00:11:59.139 in Hunter's definition, is the belief that moral 00:11:59.139 --> 00:12:02.450 truth is external, transcendent. and unchangeable 00:12:02.450 --> 00:12:05.830 fixed it is fixed it comes from god or scripture 00:12:05.830 --> 00:12:09.009 or natural law you don't get to vote on it It 00:12:09.009 --> 00:12:11.809 was true in 1890, and it is true in 1990. And 00:12:11.809 --> 00:12:14.070 progressivism. Progressivism is the belief that 00:12:14.070 --> 00:12:16.750 moral truth is an ongoing process. It evolves. 00:12:16.950 --> 00:12:19.429 We discover it through reason, science, and social 00:12:19.429 --> 00:12:22.269 change. It's adaptable. It's adaptable. As society 00:12:22.269 --> 00:12:24.909 learns more, our morals should shift. And his 00:12:24.909 --> 00:12:27.149 key observation, which I found really fascinating, 00:12:27.429 --> 00:12:29.769 was about who ends up sharing a foxhole in this 00:12:29.769 --> 00:12:32.470 new war. Yes, this is the aha moment of the whole 00:12:32.470 --> 00:12:34.450 book. Right. He pointed out that an Orthodox 00:12:34.450 --> 00:12:37.779 Jew An Orthodox Catholic and an Evangelical Protestant 00:12:37.779 --> 00:12:40.059 suddenly found that they had more in common with 00:12:40.059 --> 00:12:42.019 each other than they did with the progressive 00:12:42.019 --> 00:12:44.419 members of their own faiths. That's the realignment. 00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:47.580 The Orthodox Jew and the Evangelical agree on 00:12:47.580 --> 00:12:49.960 the nature of truth, even if their theology differs 00:12:49.960 --> 00:12:52.820 on the details. Exactly. They both agree that 00:12:52.820 --> 00:12:55.940 there is a book, and the book says X. Meanwhile, 00:12:56.279 --> 00:12:59.139 the Reformed Jew and the liberal Protestant agree 00:12:59.139 --> 00:13:01.259 that the book is a metaphor, and we need to... 00:13:01.450 --> 00:13:03.649 Update our views. And because they disagree on 00:13:03.649 --> 00:13:05.830 the nature of reality, they clash on everything 00:13:05.830 --> 00:13:09.289 else. Everything. Abortion, gun politics, separation 00:13:09.289 --> 00:13:13.649 of church and state, privacy, drug use, homosexuality, 00:13:13.690 --> 00:13:16.409 censorship. Hunter argued these aren't separate 00:13:16.409 --> 00:13:19.490 arguments. They are battles in a single war over 00:13:19.490 --> 00:13:22.659 who gets to define reality. Is reality fixed 00:13:22.659 --> 00:13:25.340 by God or defined by us? Now, there's another 00:13:25.340 --> 00:13:27.759 theory in the stack about why this exploded in 00:13:27.759 --> 00:13:30.200 the early 90s specifically. And it's a psychological 00:13:30.200 --> 00:13:33.379 one involving the Cold War. This is from historian 00:13:33.379 --> 00:13:36.179 Kristen Kobes -Demez. This is one of my favorite 00:13:36.179 --> 00:13:38.240 insights in the research because it explains 00:13:38.240 --> 00:13:40.940 the timing. It's the vacuum theory. Tell us about 00:13:40.940 --> 00:13:44.740 the vacuum. So for 40 years. From the late 40s 00:13:44.740 --> 00:13:48.299 to 1989, American conservatives, and specifically 00:13:48.299 --> 00:13:51.340 evangelicals, had a clear, terrifying enemy, 00:13:51.539 --> 00:13:55.139 the Soviet Union. Godless communism. Right. It 00:13:55.139 --> 00:13:57.360 was an existential threat. It could end the world. 00:13:57.480 --> 00:13:59.519 It was easy to rally the troops. We have to be 00:13:59.519 --> 00:14:02.500 strong to fight the Reds. Very easy. And Dumez 00:14:02.500 --> 00:14:05.120 argues that they constructed a specific identity 00:14:05.120 --> 00:14:07.740 around that. They championed strict masculine 00:14:07.740 --> 00:14:10.360 gender roles and the traditional nuclear family, 00:14:10.460 --> 00:14:12.480 not just because the Bible said so, but because 00:14:12.480 --> 00:14:14.720 they viewed it as a defense strategy. A strong 00:14:14.720 --> 00:14:17.480 father protects the nation from communism. Softness 00:14:17.480 --> 00:14:19.899 equals death. The family unit was the bunker. 00:14:20.059 --> 00:14:23.460 But then... 1991 comes along. The Berlin Wall 00:14:23.460 --> 00:14:26.600 is down. The Soviet Union collapses. We won. 00:14:26.899 --> 00:14:29.519 We won. But for a movement built on fighting 00:14:29.519 --> 00:14:32.139 an existential threat, victory is a catastrophe. 00:14:32.379 --> 00:14:34.700 Right. If the dragon is dead, what does the dragon 00:14:34.700 --> 00:14:37.980 slayer do? The external threat vanished. The 00:14:37.980 --> 00:14:40.100 defining antagonist that held the coalition together 00:14:40.100 --> 00:14:43.039 was gone. So they needed a new dragon. Exactly. 00:14:43.159 --> 00:14:45.639 Dumez argues that the leadership transferred 00:14:45.639 --> 00:14:48.259 that threat perception. They took all that fear, 00:14:48.419 --> 00:14:51.080 all that organizational energy and that militant 00:14:51.080 --> 00:14:53.460 mindset, and they turned it inward. The call 00:14:53.460 --> 00:14:56.460 is coming from inside the house. Literally. The 00:14:56.460 --> 00:14:59.059 new threat wasn't nuclear missiles. It was feminism. 00:14:59.279 --> 00:15:02.700 It was gay rights. It was secular humanism. They 00:15:02.700 --> 00:15:05.440 framed these domestic changes as just as dangerous 00:15:05.440 --> 00:15:08.159 to the nation's survival as the Soviets had been. 00:15:08.440 --> 00:15:11.100 Wow. They argued that moral rot would destroy 00:15:11.100 --> 00:15:14.259 America just as surely as a nuclear bomb. And 00:15:14.259 --> 00:15:16.480 that sets the stage perfectly for the declaration 00:15:16.480 --> 00:15:20.700 of war. 1992. The 1992 Republican National Convention 00:15:20.700 --> 00:15:23.379 in Houston. I looked up the video of this speech. 00:15:23.519 --> 00:15:25.879 Pat Buchanan. It is intense. It's legendary. 00:15:26.220 --> 00:15:27.919 It doesn't look like a modern political speech. 00:15:28.059 --> 00:15:30.120 It looks like a sermon from a pulpit. Remember. 00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:32.720 Buchanan had run against the sitting president, 00:15:32.940 --> 00:15:35.720 George H .W. Bush, in the primary. He represented 00:15:35.720 --> 00:15:38.379 the insurgent, paleo -conservative wing. Right. 00:15:38.559 --> 00:15:41.600 He lost. But he got a primetime speaking slot 00:15:41.600 --> 00:15:44.320 to unite the party. He did not give a let's all 00:15:44.320 --> 00:15:48.159 get along speech. No, he threw a grenade. He 00:15:48.159 --> 00:15:50.940 said, and I'm quoting here, there is a religious 00:15:50.940 --> 00:15:54.039 war going on in our country for the soul of America. 00:15:54.960 --> 00:15:58.259 It is a cultural war as critical to the kind 00:15:58.259 --> 00:16:01.019 of nation we will one day be, as was the Cold 00:16:01.019 --> 00:16:03.659 War itself. There it is. He explicitly links 00:16:03.659 --> 00:16:06.500 it to the Cold War. He's telling the base the 00:16:06.500 --> 00:16:09.279 war isn't over. The battlefield just changed. 00:16:09.419 --> 00:16:12.580 And he listed the targets. Environmentalists, 00:16:12.659 --> 00:16:15.759 feminists, abortion, homosexual rights. He basically 00:16:15.759 --> 00:16:18.080 said, if you aren't with us, you are against 00:16:18.080 --> 00:16:21.379 America. It was a watershed moment. Strategically, 00:16:21.379 --> 00:16:23.700 it's debated. Many political scientists think 00:16:23.700 --> 00:16:26.059 it actually hurt George H .W. Bush in the short 00:16:26.059 --> 00:16:28.620 term. How so? It made the party look angry and 00:16:28.620 --> 00:16:31.159 exclusionary, and moderate suburban women drifted 00:16:31.159 --> 00:16:33.139 toward Bill Clinton. But in the long term? In 00:16:33.139 --> 00:16:35.759 the long term, it worked. It energized the base. 00:16:35.980 --> 00:16:38.340 It proved that culture war rhetoric motivates 00:16:38.340 --> 00:16:40.700 the core voters. It gets people to the polls. 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:43.799 Two years later, in 1994, the Republicans took 00:16:43.799 --> 00:16:45.600 control of Congress for the first time in 40 00:16:45.600 --> 00:16:48.320 years. The Republican Revolution. Driven largely 00:16:48.320 --> 00:16:51.080 by this cultural angst. And one of the specific 00:16:51.080 --> 00:16:53.940 battles in that 94 era was the history wars, 00:16:54.179 --> 00:16:57.620 which, again, reading the notes, I felt like 00:16:57.620 --> 00:16:59.659 I was reading a newspaper from today. The debate 00:16:59.659 --> 00:17:01.980 over the national history standards. Right. You 00:17:01.980 --> 00:17:05.220 had Dick Cheney's wife attacking these proposed 00:17:05.220 --> 00:17:07.779 education standards. She said they were too depressing. 00:17:07.960 --> 00:17:10.819 Right. Too much about slavery, the KKK, the Great 00:17:10.819 --> 00:17:13.539 Depression. She wanted celebratory history. And 00:17:13.539 --> 00:17:15.519 the other side wanted critical history. It's 00:17:15.519 --> 00:17:18.000 the exact same script. It is. The question was. 00:17:18.460 --> 00:17:20.900 Should history class be about building patriotism 00:17:20.900 --> 00:17:24.180 and myths? Or should it be an honest accounting 00:17:24.180 --> 00:17:27.680 of failures? It is the exact same debate we are 00:17:27.680 --> 00:17:30.519 having today about critical race theory or the 00:17:30.519 --> 00:17:33.339 1619 Project. The script hasn't changed in 30 00:17:33.339 --> 00:17:35.799 years. Only the acronyms have. It really does 00:17:35.799 --> 00:17:38.339 feel like we are stuck in a lute. We are. Because 00:17:38.339 --> 00:17:41.119 the underlying value clash imposing one view 00:17:41.119 --> 00:17:43.420 of the nation over the other hasn't been resolved. 00:17:43.740 --> 00:17:45.539 OK, so that's the history. We know where it came 00:17:45.539 --> 00:17:47.099 from. But now I want to get to the part of the 00:17:47.099 --> 00:17:49.519 outline that challenges the whole premise. Segment 00:17:49.519 --> 00:17:52.819 four. Is this war even real? This is where we 00:17:52.819 --> 00:17:55.180 have to put on our skepticism hats. Because there 00:17:55.180 --> 00:17:57.220 is a school of thought that says we normal people 00:17:57.220 --> 00:18:00.119 actually get along fine. Right. This is the Wolf 00:18:00.119 --> 00:18:03.029 thesis. Political scientist Alan Wolf. wrote 00:18:03.029 --> 00:18:05.490 a book in the late 90s called One Nation After 00:18:05.490 --> 00:18:08.130 All. Okay. He went out and did qualitative interviews 00:18:08.130 --> 00:18:10.630 with middle class Americans in the suburbs, and 00:18:10.630 --> 00:18:12.769 he found that they weren't screaming at each 00:18:12.769 --> 00:18:15.730 other. They were pragmatic. They were moderate. 00:18:15.890 --> 00:18:19.109 They were tolerant. Yes. He argued that the culture 00:18:19.109 --> 00:18:23.119 war was a myth invented by elites. It was politicians 00:18:23.119 --> 00:18:26.359 and cable news hosts screaming for ratings while 00:18:26.359 --> 00:18:28.839 real people just wanted to mow their lawns, raise 00:18:28.839 --> 00:18:30.759 their kids, and get along with their neighbors. 00:18:30.980 --> 00:18:33.420 That sounds nice. Is it still true? That's the 00:18:33.420 --> 00:18:36.440 scary part. The data suggests Wolf was right 00:18:36.440 --> 00:18:40.319 then, but he's wrong now. What changed? The conflict 00:18:40.319 --> 00:18:43.980 trickled down. We have sorted. A meta -analysis 00:18:43.980 --> 00:18:47.380 of data from 1992 to 2012 showed that culture 00:18:47.380 --> 00:18:49.779 war attitudes have become foundational elements 00:18:49.779 --> 00:18:52.190 of people's belief systems. Meaning what? It 00:18:52.190 --> 00:18:54.390 used to be that you picked a political party 00:18:54.390 --> 00:18:57.670 because of your union or your taxes or your family 00:18:57.670 --> 00:19:00.230 tradition. And maybe you disagreed with the party 00:19:00.230 --> 00:19:03.170 on abortion or guns, but you stayed. Sure. Now 00:19:03.170 --> 00:19:04.970 it's the opposite. If you have a strong view 00:19:04.970 --> 00:19:07.509 on guns or abortion, you pick your party based 00:19:07.509 --> 00:19:10.170 on that. You even pick your church based on your 00:19:10.170 --> 00:19:12.650 politics. So we are stacking our identities. 00:19:12.769 --> 00:19:15.500 All the flags are the same color. Yes. And that 00:19:15.500 --> 00:19:17.500 means we don't just disagree with the other side. 00:19:17.640 --> 00:19:19.640 We don't know them. We don't live near them. 00:19:19.720 --> 00:19:21.859 We don't worship with them. We have physically 00:19:21.859 --> 00:19:24.279 and socially sorted ourselves into two different 00:19:24.279 --> 00:19:26.599 countries. But there's still this element of 00:19:26.599 --> 00:19:30.039 fabrication, the idea that someone wants us to 00:19:30.039 --> 00:19:32.440 be fighting. E .J. Dionne has this great quote. 00:19:32.500 --> 00:19:35.119 He said, the division is between those who want 00:19:35.119 --> 00:19:37.819 to have a culture war and those who don't. Who 00:19:37.819 --> 00:19:40.240 wants a culture war? Who benefits from us being 00:19:40.240 --> 00:19:43.230 angry? People who need to mobilize a base but 00:19:43.230 --> 00:19:46.609 don't have popular economic policies or organizations 00:19:46.609 --> 00:19:50.430 that need to raise money. Sociologist Scott Meltzer 00:19:50.430 --> 00:19:54.069 did a fascinating deep dive on the NRA, the National 00:19:54.069 --> 00:19:56.599 Rifle Association. I thought the NRA was just 00:19:56.599 --> 00:19:59.099 about gun safety originally. It was. For a long 00:19:59.099 --> 00:20:01.740 time, it was a sportsman's club. Hunting, marksmanship, 00:20:01.900 --> 00:20:04.940 safety, conservation. But Meltzer argues they 00:20:04.940 --> 00:20:07.440 intentionally pivoted to a culture war footing 00:20:07.440 --> 00:20:11.200 in the late 70s. How? They started framing gun 00:20:11.200 --> 00:20:14.720 ownership not as a hobby, but as a proxy for 00:20:14.720 --> 00:20:18.200 freedom, for masculinity, and for real America. 00:20:18.480 --> 00:20:21.519 They're coming for your guns. Exactly. They created 00:20:21.519 --> 00:20:25.019 a narrative of victimization. Elites in Washington 00:20:25.019 --> 00:20:27.680 want to take your heritage away. This creates 00:20:27.680 --> 00:20:30.480 a much tighter bond than I like shooting targets. 00:20:30.700 --> 00:20:32.880 Right. It creates an in -group and an out -group. 00:20:33.019 --> 00:20:35.019 And once you have an out -group, you can mobilize 00:20:35.019 --> 00:20:37.359 people and raise money. Fear pays better than 00:20:37.359 --> 00:20:39.400 hobbies. Much better. The notes also mention 00:20:39.400 --> 00:20:41.480 focus on the family doing something similar with 00:20:41.480 --> 00:20:44.619 the media. Yes. Susan B. Ridgely writes about 00:20:44.619 --> 00:20:47.200 how Focus on the Family realized that if their 00:20:47.200 --> 00:20:50.140 followers watched mainstream news, CBS, NBC, 00:20:50.480 --> 00:20:52.759 they might hear perspectives that soften their 00:20:52.759 --> 00:20:56.079 views or normalized liberal ideas. So they built 00:20:56.079 --> 00:20:59.500 an alternative news ecosystem. Radio shows, magazines, 00:20:59.819 --> 00:21:03.160 yes. They told their followers, the mainstream 00:21:03.160 --> 00:21:05.859 media is lying to you. We are the only source 00:21:05.859 --> 00:21:08.599 of truth. They depicted the traditional family 00:21:08.599 --> 00:21:12.079 as being under constant siege. That is the precursor 00:21:12.079 --> 00:21:14.140 to the social media bubbles we live in today. 00:21:14.319 --> 00:21:17.180 It's the direct ancestor. They bifurcated reality. 00:21:17.539 --> 00:21:20.339 You create a closed loop where your followers 00:21:20.339 --> 00:21:22.960 only hear what you want them to hear. Now, this 00:21:22.960 --> 00:21:24.960 leads to a theory that might upset some people, 00:21:25.059 --> 00:21:28.480 but it's in the data, the asymmetry thesis. This 00:21:28.480 --> 00:21:30.579 is from political scientists Grossman and Hopkins. 00:21:31.200 --> 00:21:33.259 it's essential for understanding why the two 00:21:33.259 --> 00:21:35.319 parties talk past each other what's the theory 00:21:35.319 --> 00:21:37.740 they argue that the two parties are not mirror 00:21:37.740 --> 00:21:39.900 images they are structurally different beasts 00:21:39.900 --> 00:21:42.920 the republican party they argue functions as 00:21:42.920 --> 00:21:45.279 an ideological movement meaning meaning it is 00:21:45.279 --> 00:21:47.700 organized around a core set of conservative principles 00:21:47.700 --> 00:21:51.400 small government Tradition, liberty. It's easier 00:21:51.400 --> 00:21:53.720 to unify an ideological movement around abstract 00:21:53.720 --> 00:21:57.519 culture war ideas like freedom or the flag. The 00:21:57.519 --> 00:22:00.200 messaging is top down and cohesive. And the Democrats. 00:22:00.400 --> 00:22:02.960 The Democratic Party functions as a coalition 00:22:02.960 --> 00:22:06.160 of social groups. You have labor unions. You 00:22:06.160 --> 00:22:08.619 have environmentalists. You have black voters. 00:22:08.900 --> 00:22:13.059 You have LGBTQ activists. You have urban professionals. 00:22:13.339 --> 00:22:16.579 It's a big tent. A very big, messy tent. And 00:22:16.579 --> 00:22:18.960 these groups often don't agree with each other. 00:22:19.240 --> 00:22:21.799 A union pipe fitter might not agree with an environmental 00:22:21.799 --> 00:22:24.700 activist. A conservative black churchgoer might 00:22:24.700 --> 00:22:27.079 not agree with an LGBTQ activist. It's harder 00:22:27.079 --> 00:22:29.079 to get everyone on the same page. It is much 00:22:29.079 --> 00:22:31.579 harder for Democrats to wage a coherent culture 00:22:31.579 --> 00:22:34.839 war because they are trying to herd cats. Republicans 00:22:34.839 --> 00:22:37.859 are marching in formation. So Republicans are 00:22:37.859 --> 00:22:40.500 structurally better equipped to fight these battles. 00:22:40.660 --> 00:22:42.819 Correct. Which is why they often initiate them. 00:22:42.880 --> 00:22:45.140 They have the machinery to keep the message disciplined. 00:22:45.380 --> 00:22:48.180 Let's move into the modern era, the digital age. 00:22:48.650 --> 00:22:50.950 Segment five, how did the Internet change the 00:22:50.950 --> 00:22:53.329 machinery? Well, if the 90s was the declaration 00:22:53.329 --> 00:22:56.089 of war, the Internet was the distribution of 00:22:56.089 --> 00:22:58.130 weapons to everyone. We have to talk about the 00:22:58.130 --> 00:23:00.349 Great Awakening. This is Jonathan Haidt's term. 00:23:00.589 --> 00:23:04.210 Around 2012, we see a massive spike in terms 00:23:04.210 --> 00:23:07.009 like privilege, microaggression, and oppression 00:23:07.009 --> 00:23:10.569 in media usage. Right. This coincided with the 00:23:10.569 --> 00:23:13.390 rise of social media. Young progressives started 00:23:13.390 --> 00:23:15.549 using these platforms to call out injustice. 00:23:16.130 --> 00:23:18.740 Cancel culture. Depending on who you ask, yes. 00:23:18.880 --> 00:23:21.640 It was a new form of activism. And it produced 00:23:21.640 --> 00:23:24.539 a reaction. The own the libs phenomenon. This 00:23:24.539 --> 00:23:26.759 is crucial. Political analyst Nicole Hemmer points 00:23:26.759 --> 00:23:29.420 out that owning the libs became a substitute 00:23:29.420 --> 00:23:32.650 for actual ideology. How so? During the Cold 00:23:32.650 --> 00:23:35.210 War, conservatives had cohesive policy platforms 00:23:35.210 --> 00:23:38.650 about taxes or foreign policy. Today, for many 00:23:38.650 --> 00:23:41.309 online, the platform is the anger of the opponent. 00:23:41.509 --> 00:23:43.390 If the liberals are mad, I must be doing something 00:23:43.390 --> 00:23:46.430 right. Exactly. Anger of the other side is the 00:23:46.430 --> 00:23:48.789 victory condition. It's effective polarization. 00:23:49.029 --> 00:23:52.029 It's based on feelings, not policy. I vote for 00:23:52.029 --> 00:23:54.069 the guy who makes the people I hate scream. And 00:23:54.069 --> 00:23:56.329 pop culture became the battlefield. We have to 00:23:56.329 --> 00:24:00.259 talk about Gamergate. 2014 is a year that lives 00:24:00.259 --> 00:24:02.680 in infamy for Internet historians. I remember 00:24:02.680 --> 00:24:04.920 it happening, and I remember being so confused. 00:24:05.160 --> 00:24:10.420 It was about video game journalism ethics. Ostensibly. 00:24:10.680 --> 00:24:13.359 That was the cover story. Yeah. But really, it 00:24:13.359 --> 00:24:15.400 was a test run for the modern political landscape. 00:24:15.480 --> 00:24:18.319 It was a backlash by a group of mostly young, 00:24:18.500 --> 00:24:22.640 white, male gamers against what they saw as the 00:24:22.640 --> 00:24:24.819 intrusion of feminist and progressive values 00:24:24.819 --> 00:24:27.920 into their hobby. Keep politics out of my games. 00:24:28.259 --> 00:24:31.099 Right. But the reaction was incredibly toxic. 00:24:32.039 --> 00:24:34.839 Harassment, doxing, death threats against female 00:24:34.839 --> 00:24:37.480 developers and critics. It was a mob. And this 00:24:37.480 --> 00:24:39.359 is where Steve Bannon enters the chat. Steve 00:24:39.359 --> 00:24:41.220 Bannon, who was running Breitbart News at the 00:24:41.220 --> 00:24:43.099 time and would go on to run Donald Trump's campaign, 00:24:43.319 --> 00:24:45.980 looked at Gamergate. And he didn't see a bunch 00:24:45.980 --> 00:24:48.079 of angry kids. He saw a gold mine. He saw an 00:24:48.079 --> 00:24:50.500 army. He literally said, you can come in through 00:24:50.500 --> 00:24:52.859 Gamergate and then get turned on to politics 00:24:52.859 --> 00:24:55.680 and Trump. He realized that these young men felt 00:24:55.680 --> 00:24:57.460 displaced. They felt like their culture was being 00:24:57.460 --> 00:24:59.700 taken away. So he could harness that grievance. 00:24:59.819 --> 00:25:02.039 And weaponize it politically. It's terrifyingly 00:25:02.039 --> 00:25:04.240 brilliant. You take people's passions, their 00:25:04.240 --> 00:25:06.559 movies, their games, their Star Wars, and you 00:25:06.559 --> 00:25:09.059 turn that passion into political rage. And because 00:25:09.059 --> 00:25:11.000 people care more about their hobbies than they 00:25:11.000 --> 00:25:14.339 do about the marginal tax rate. It works. Pop 00:25:14.339 --> 00:25:17.180 culture is the last front. That's why we fight 00:25:17.180 --> 00:25:19.160 about the Little Mermaid or Barbie now. It's 00:25:19.160 --> 00:25:21.900 all part of the war. OK, we've been very U .S. 00:25:21.900 --> 00:25:24.980 centric so far, but as we promised in the intro, 00:25:25.220 --> 00:25:27.980 this is a global disease. Let's look at the global 00:25:27.980 --> 00:25:30.460 fronts. Segment six. Let's start with Australia 00:25:30.460 --> 00:25:33.900 because they have something they explicitly call 00:25:33.900 --> 00:25:36.940 the history wars. I found this fascinating. It 00:25:36.940 --> 00:25:39.140 was a battle between two prime ministers. Yes. 00:25:39.480 --> 00:25:42.740 In the 90s and early 2000s. Paul Keating from 00:25:42.740 --> 00:25:45.440 the Labor Party versus John Howard from the Liberal 00:25:45.440 --> 00:25:48.180 National Coalition. And the battlefield was the 00:25:48.180 --> 00:25:50.099 country's origin story. What was the disagreement? 00:25:50.420 --> 00:25:53.259 Keating wanted to face the dark past. He gave 00:25:53.259 --> 00:25:56.059 the famous Redfern Park speech, admitting that 00:25:56.059 --> 00:25:58.319 white settlers committed murders, stole land, 00:25:58.420 --> 00:26:00.200 and stole children from Aboriginal families. 00:26:00.380 --> 00:26:03.240 He wanted a clear -eyed view of history. Okay. 00:26:03.299 --> 00:26:06.400 And Howard? John Howard pushed back hard. He 00:26:06.400 --> 00:26:10.019 coined the term Black Armband History. He said, 00:26:10.329 --> 00:26:12.410 I don't want Australians wearing a black armband 00:26:12.410 --> 00:26:14.549 of mourning forever. We should be proud of our 00:26:14.549 --> 00:26:17.750 achievements. And he refused to apologize. He 00:26:17.750 --> 00:26:20.269 refused to issue an official apology to the stolen 00:26:20.269 --> 00:26:22.910 generations. He used a phrase that we hear in 00:26:22.910 --> 00:26:25.450 the U .S. all the time now regarding reparations. 00:26:26.829 --> 00:26:29.029 Intergenerational guilt. Right. I didn't do it. 00:26:29.470 --> 00:26:32.069 He argued that current Australians shouldn't 00:26:32.069 --> 00:26:34.029 feel guilty for the sins of their ancestors. 00:26:34.529 --> 00:26:37.569 And this war is still hot in Australia. Extremely. 00:26:37.950 --> 00:26:42.369 Just recently, in 2023, they had the voice referendum, 00:26:42.609 --> 00:26:45.650 a vote to give indigenous people a constitutional 00:26:45.650 --> 00:26:49.009 voice in parliament. It failed. Wow. And the 00:26:49.009 --> 00:26:51.609 rhetoric around it was pure culture war. We're 00:26:51.609 --> 00:26:53.450 also seeing a backlash against welcome to country 00:26:53.450 --> 00:26:55.869 ceremonies, which are like land acknowledgments. 00:26:55.970 --> 00:26:58.130 And in Australia, climate change is part of this 00:26:58.130 --> 00:27:00.890 too, right? Oh, hugely. In Australia, accepting 00:27:00.890 --> 00:27:02.869 climate science is seen by the right as a sign 00:27:02.869 --> 00:27:05.500 of being a city elite. It's a badge of identity 00:27:05.500 --> 00:27:08.039 to deny it. It's not about the thermometer. It's 00:27:08.039 --> 00:27:10.519 about whose team you were on. Let's hop to Europe. 00:27:10.599 --> 00:27:12.700 What does the culture war look like there? In 00:27:12.700 --> 00:27:15.660 Europe, it's often about memory laws. Meaning 00:27:15.660 --> 00:27:18.019 the government legislating how you remember history? 00:27:18.440 --> 00:27:21.980 Yes. Look at Poland. The Law and Justice Party. 00:27:22.359 --> 00:27:25.759 P .S. passed laws that effectively criminalized 00:27:25.759 --> 00:27:28.700 the phrase Polish death camps. Right. They wanted 00:27:28.700 --> 00:27:31.119 to ensure the narrative was that Poland was solely 00:27:31.119 --> 00:27:33.980 a victim of Nazi Germany, never a collaborator. 00:27:34.059 --> 00:27:36.319 Even though history is messy and there were collaborators. 00:27:36.440 --> 00:27:39.599 Correct. But the state wants a clean nationalist 00:27:39.599 --> 00:27:42.599 narrative. We were the hero's victims. And we 00:27:42.599 --> 00:27:45.720 see this with statues, too. Statues are flashpoints 00:27:45.720 --> 00:27:48.359 everywhere. In the U .K., you had the statue 00:27:48.359 --> 00:27:51.000 of slave trader Edward Colston thrown into the 00:27:51.000 --> 00:27:54.319 harbor. In Poland, in Ukraine, they are tearing 00:27:54.319 --> 00:27:56.900 down Soviet war memorials. Which is complicated, 00:27:57.140 --> 00:27:59.079 right, because the Soviets drove out the Nazi. 00:27:59.319 --> 00:28:02.119 Exactly. Some older generations see those statues 00:28:02.119 --> 00:28:04.839 as symbols of liberation from Hitler, but younger 00:28:04.839 --> 00:28:07.400 nationalists see them as symbols of Soviet oppression. 00:28:07.680 --> 00:28:10.299 A different kind of occupation. Yes. In Ukraine, 00:28:10.440 --> 00:28:13.660 de -Russification is in full swing renaming streets, 00:28:13.880 --> 00:28:16.240 removing Lenin. It's a war over public space. 00:28:16.460 --> 00:28:18.500 Who gets to stand at the town square? Who owns 00:28:18.500 --> 00:28:21.359 the past owns the future. It's true. Even in 00:28:21.359 --> 00:28:23.759 Vienna recently, they rejected a monument to 00:28:23.759 --> 00:28:27.019 a Polish king, Jan Sobieski, who saved Vienna 00:28:27.019 --> 00:28:31.339 from the Ottomans in 1683. Why? He's a hero in 00:28:31.339 --> 00:28:33.920 Vienna, isn't he? It was. But the city government 00:28:33.920 --> 00:28:35.900 feared that putting up a statue of a Christian 00:28:35.900 --> 00:28:38.799 king fighting the Turks would be used to incite 00:28:38.799 --> 00:28:41.079 Islamophobia and anti -Turkish sentiment today. 00:28:41.240 --> 00:28:43.819 So history is held hostage by current politics. 00:28:43.839 --> 00:28:47.640 Always. Now, the most disturbing global example 00:28:47.640 --> 00:28:50.380 on our stack, I think, is Africa. Because this 00:28:50.380 --> 00:28:52.380 isn't just organic conflict. This looks like 00:28:52.380 --> 00:28:54.920 an export. Political scientist Constance G. Anthony 00:28:54.920 --> 00:28:58.319 calls it neocolonialism. That's a heavy word. 00:28:58.420 --> 00:29:00.740 How does she justify that? She argues that the 00:29:00.740 --> 00:29:03.619 U .S., specifically U .S. conservatives, exported 00:29:03.619 --> 00:29:06.799 their culture war to Africa. Ow. Money and strings 00:29:06.799 --> 00:29:08.779 attached to aid. Under the Bush administration, 00:29:09.140 --> 00:29:12.000 HIV is relief. PEPFAR was often tied to evangelical 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:14.359 leadership and abstinence -only programs. Okay. 00:29:14.640 --> 00:29:17.180 Then, under Obama, aid was sometimes tied to 00:29:17.180 --> 00:29:20.180 LGBTQ tolerance. So African nations became a 00:29:20.180 --> 00:29:22.700 proxy battlefield for American policy fights. 00:29:23.019 --> 00:29:25.819 Yes. And the result has been intense polarization. 00:29:26.880 --> 00:29:29.299 Zambian scholars argue that American religious 00:29:29.299 --> 00:29:31.599 conservatives, feeling like they were losing 00:29:31.599 --> 00:29:34.140 the battle on gay marriage in the U .S., poured 00:29:34.140 --> 00:29:36.799 resources into Africa to hold the line there. 00:29:37.049 --> 00:29:38.829 So they are fighting the war in Uganda because 00:29:38.829 --> 00:29:41.750 they lost in New York. Essentially. And they 00:29:41.750 --> 00:29:44.750 frame it as resisting a Western gay agenda, which 00:29:44.750 --> 00:29:46.970 is deeply ironic because the anti -gay rhetoric 00:29:46.970 --> 00:29:48.869 is often imported from the Western Christian 00:29:48.869 --> 00:29:51.990 right. It's a hall of mirrors. It is. And now 00:29:51.990 --> 00:29:55.329 we see disinformation flooding West Africa. Kuminon 00:29:55.329 --> 00:29:58.390 theories, anti -vax conspiracies, studies show 00:29:58.390 --> 00:30:00.950 this is being pushed by American, French, and 00:30:00.950 --> 00:30:03.849 pro -Russian actors. So a guy in Nigeria is reading 00:30:03.849 --> 00:30:06.309 QAnon theories that were invented to influence 00:30:06.309 --> 00:30:09.109 a swing voter in Michigan. It's a globalized 00:30:09.109 --> 00:30:11.150 marketplace of outrage. OK, bring it back to 00:30:11.150 --> 00:30:13.890 the present day. Segment seven. What is on the 00:30:13.890 --> 00:30:16.289 laundry list right now? If we look at the map 00:30:16.289 --> 00:30:18.329 today, where are the fires burning? It's a rapid 00:30:18.329 --> 00:30:20.970 fire list. Gender and sexuality are number one. 00:30:21.230 --> 00:30:24.910 Trans rights, drag queens, story hours. The term 00:30:24.910 --> 00:30:27.910 groomer has been weaponized to conflate education 00:30:27.910 --> 00:30:30.589 with abuse. Then education. Critical race theory. 00:30:31.509 --> 00:30:34.849 Book bans or expurgation, as some are calling 00:30:34.849 --> 00:30:37.349 it. The homeschooling movement, which is about 00:30:37.349 --> 00:30:39.769 withdrawing from the corrupt public system. And 00:30:39.769 --> 00:30:42.049 public health. We can't ignore what happened 00:30:42.049 --> 00:30:45.309 during COVID. The mask. The mask became the ultimate 00:30:45.309 --> 00:30:48.009 culture war symbol. Oh, yeah. It ceased to be 00:30:48.009 --> 00:30:50.970 a piece of fabric to stop a virus. It became 00:30:50.970 --> 00:30:53.549 a uniform. If you wore it, you were a liberal 00:30:53.549 --> 00:30:56.220 sheep. If you didn't, you were a selfish conservative. 00:30:56.559 --> 00:30:58.299 I remember the governor of North Dakota, Doug 00:30:58.299 --> 00:31:00.819 Burgum, literally begging people to stop making 00:31:00.819 --> 00:31:03.380 masks a senseless culture war issue. He was almost 00:31:03.380 --> 00:31:06.099 crying. And it didn't work. Because once the 00:31:06.099 --> 00:31:08.359 machine decides something is a symbol, logic 00:31:08.359 --> 00:31:11.059 leaves the room. This feeds into what the sources 00:31:11.059 --> 00:31:14.559 call the feedback loop. Right. A 2023 study showed 00:31:14.559 --> 00:31:16.859 that disinformation actors know we are primed 00:31:16.859 --> 00:31:19.339 to fight. So they intentionally toss in polarizing 00:31:19.339 --> 00:31:23.039 claims, fake stories, exaggerated outrage, because 00:31:23.039 --> 00:31:25.400 they know we will pick them up. We use the lies 00:31:25.400 --> 00:31:28.819 as rhetorical ammunition. Exactly. We parrot 00:31:28.819 --> 00:31:30.720 the disinformation because it helps us win the 00:31:30.720 --> 00:31:33.200 argument. The utility of the lie is more important 00:31:33.200 --> 00:31:36.180 than the truth of the lie. That is grim. It is. 00:31:36.380 --> 00:31:39.299 But recognizing it is the first step. So let's 00:31:39.299 --> 00:31:41.000 try to land this plane. We've been on a journey. 00:31:41.359 --> 00:31:44.220 Bismarck's Prussia, the Roaring Twenties, the 00:31:44.220 --> 00:31:48.160 Cold War vacuum, Gamergate. The global export 00:31:48.160 --> 00:31:51.339 to Africa, it's a massive, sprawling beast. It 00:31:51.339 --> 00:31:54.200 is. But if we synthesize all of this, if we try 00:31:54.200 --> 00:31:56.920 to find the so what, what is the takeaway for 00:31:56.920 --> 00:31:59.640 the listener? For me, the takeaway is that culture 00:31:59.640 --> 00:32:01.980 war is rarely just about the issue on the surface. 00:32:02.180 --> 00:32:05.220 It is a political technology. It is a tool used 00:32:05.220 --> 00:32:08.220 to create in -groups and out -groups. When policy 00:32:08.220 --> 00:32:10.619 differences aren't enough to unite a base or 00:32:10.619 --> 00:32:13.099 when the world gets too complex, you manufacture 00:32:13.099 --> 00:32:15.619 a cultural threat. It's about identity. It's 00:32:15.619 --> 00:32:17.980 about saying, I am this kind of person and that 00:32:17.980 --> 00:32:20.359 person over there is an existential threat to 00:32:20.359 --> 00:32:22.319 my way of life. And in a world of information 00:32:22.319 --> 00:32:25.259 overload, that binary friend versus enemy is 00:32:25.259 --> 00:32:27.519 a very comforting way to organize the world. 00:32:27.930 --> 00:32:30.230 It's simpler than dealing with complex tax codes 00:32:30.230 --> 00:32:32.529 or health care tradeoffs. It feels good to be 00:32:32.529 --> 00:32:35.569 a soldier in a righteous war. So here is the 00:32:35.569 --> 00:32:37.930 provocative final thought for our listeners to 00:32:37.930 --> 00:32:40.509 mull over today. We've established that this 00:32:40.509 --> 00:32:43.369 is a machine. It's driven by elites, amplified 00:32:43.369 --> 00:32:45.849 by algorithms and funded by special interests. 00:32:46.049 --> 00:32:49.250 Right. So if the culture war is a tool used to 00:32:49.250 --> 00:32:53.180 consolidate. power or attention? At what point 00:32:53.180 --> 00:32:55.579 does participating in it stop being a defense 00:32:55.579 --> 00:32:58.339 of your values and start being just a manipulation 00:32:58.339 --> 00:33:01.660 of your identity? That is the question. Are you 00:33:01.660 --> 00:33:04.220 fighting for what you believe in? Or are you 00:33:04.220 --> 00:33:06.240 just a foot soldier in someone else's strategy 00:33:06.240 --> 00:33:08.440 game? Next time you see that outrage bait in 00:33:08.440 --> 00:33:10.500 your feed, maybe pause. Look for the strings. 00:33:10.720 --> 00:33:13.160 Look for the culture cams. Stay skeptical. Thank 00:33:13.160 --> 00:33:15.619 you for listening to The Deep Dive. Stay curious, 00:33:15.660 --> 00:33:18.039 stay critical, and we'll see you next time. Goodbye.