Thread by @docrussjackson

A THREAD about what the culture war is *really* all about, and what the very effective overall strategy of the Right in Britain, America & beyond has been since Steve Bannon’s ideas became widely disseminated with the help of US Libertarian billionaires.

It’s also a THREAD about why the Left may well be losing the culture war, and how we might have to adapt our strategy.

In the 1980s, academics suggested that words have more consequences than we previously thought: that the habitual use of particular words not only described the world, but framed it in particular ways, giving rise to thinking about & understanding the world in particular ways.

This ideas became more widely understood & widely accepted, & British society was gradually persuaded by the Left not to use grotesquely prejudiced pejoratives to describe Black, Chinese, Gay or Asian people or women – so ni**er, P*ki, bu**er & b*tch largely disappeared.

Consequently, society made significant steps towards a more civilized and more humane society.

The backlash from the Right was to call this process “political correctness”, & it was widely & relentlessly derided & demonized in the press & by right-wing politicians & pundits.

In the 90s/early twentieth century, we made more progress: eg opposition to gay marriage all but collapsed & progress was made on creating a more equal society by making ethnic minority people more visible in senior roles, sports & TV, & taking measures to reduce discrimination.

The Stephen Lawrence case made it crystal clear that institutional & structural racism were real, & had tragic even barbaric effects.

Society recognised & overwhelmingly accepted that the London MET police was institutionally racist.

Since the 1980s, in terms of the gap between the rich & poor in Britain, society has been getting steadily more unequal, with devastating consequences for many.

Almost everyone now appreciates that this gap has spiraled out of control to the detriment of the majority.

9/11 was a tragedy, but the actions of a handful of extremists resulted in attacks on & demonization of Muslims across the western world.

This was manifested in distorted newspaper stories, the return of the far-right, increased racism & the mainstreaming of racist ideology.

Since 2009, the wealth of Britain’s 1,000 richest people has increased by around half a trillion pounds, while ideological austerity resulting from the greed & irresponsibility of the catastrophically deregulated financial sector, meant essential public services were slashed.

Homelessness & poverty have increased dramatically, whole communities all but destroyed, children go hungry, life-expectancy is falling for the first time since the war, & low-paid insecure jobs have replaced well-paid permanent jobs.

The generic phrase given to the process of campaigning for policies & measures to tackle racism, homophobia, misogyny & other forms of irrational prejudice, & reducing grotesque inequality & improving the conditions & lives of society’s most vulnerable is ‘social justice’.

The contemporary backlash from the Right is to call this process “woke”.

The point here is that in Britain - for 300 years - it has been the Left who have always pushed for improvement of social conditions, who have taken seriously & challenged inequality & prejudice.

It has always been the Left who have stood up to successive waves of grotesque prejudice: against Oswald Mosely & his Blackshirts; against Nick Griffin & the BNP; against the National Front and the English Defence League; against the worst excesses of Nigel Farage and UKIP;

against the grotesque tabloid press which for two decades has been demonizing & scapegoating migrants & Muslims; & now against an intolerant hard-right Government of sociopathic liars and charlatans, which has overseen 118,000 deaths in the last year alone.

The Right’s strategy has for a long time been to attack the STRENGTHS of the Left – & this is arguably the key strength of Steve Bannon’s strategy, now disseminated across the entire Right establishment, including their media outlets & the political establishment.

So when you hear the words “woke”, “social justice warrior” or “virtue-signaller”, or you hear absurd allegations of racism against life-long anti-racists, see them for what they really are: the Right, somewhat ironically mobilising those linguistic insights I described earlier.

The Right are desperately trying to deflect from the rising conditions of inequality & prejudice that THEY, THEIR MEDIA, & and THEIR POLICIES have given rise to, by making innovations in framing & language use.

There is an entire billionaire-funded industry dedicated to undermining the Left, and it will NEVER stop.

They have the wealth & resources to own or fund the press, think tanks, institutions, charities, magazines, radio channels, tv news channels, & political parties.

And what they try to do - all day every day - is to meet two objectives:

1) to justify grotesque inequality
2) to demonize the Left and anyone else criticising, challenging or exposing their exploitation, opportunism & barbarism.

The Right insist on “the market place of ideas” & the right to hold views that others may find offensive – even as they demonize & try to 'cancel' eg, anti-colonialist discourse & Critical Race Theory: they've even banned the debating of anti-capitalist ideas in our schools!

They disingenuously claim that “free speech is under threat” in our universities from “woke students” & “Leftists academics”, that “deplatforming” & “cancel culture” are rife & are a threat to "common sense" democracy & even civilization itself.

Yet a recent study revealed that a review of 10,000 speaker events found that just six had been cancelled: four lacked the required paperwork, one was a fraudster recruiting for a pyramid scheme, & the other was Corbyn, whose rally was simply moved to a larger venue off-campus.

HOWEVER, there is another side to this, which imho the Left MUST recognise, accept & confront.

If Brexit has taught the Left anything, it is that personal attacks, intolerance of opposing views, calling out, & demonization MUST be reserved for context-specific utterances.

When a far-right activist says that British born second generation Muslims should “f*ck off home”, or a football fan makes monkey chants at black footballers – fill your boots, call them out, & throw the book at them. Most people on the Right won't disagree with you.

BUT if someone voted for Brexit, criticizes Meghan Markle, believes mass migration may have negative consequences, or believes men cannot become female, instantly, loudly & publicly shaming these people by describing them as “bigots”, “racists” or “transphobes”, is a BIG mistake.

Similarly, when an academic uses their hard-won rights of academic freedom to make an unpalatable claim that some people find offensive, over the years, a robust system for debating ideas has evolved within academia.

This system ensures that that ideas are peer-reviewed, robustly challenged, & if invalid, are left to wither. Simply screaming “bigot” at academics doing their job, or actively trying to get them sacked feeds & strengthens the narrative of an ‘intolerant authoritarian woke Left’.

Imho THIS is why the “woke authoritarian Left” narrative has gained so much traction, why the Left IS losing the culture war, why many of the accusations stick, & partly why millions of voters increasingly see the Left as at best a joke, & at worst a dangerous authoritarian cult.

When David Starkey went on Newsnight after the 2011 riots to say that “white culture had become black”, & when he recently shared his views with Darren Grimes about there being “so many damn blacks”, he was rightly & almost universally condemned for his racist language.

So there ARE cases where people saying awful things ARE widely condemned, & all decent people of whatever political persuasion are rightly appalled by such outbursts.

I of course appreciate it's often a fine line, & one that can be difficult to judge, & which I struggle with.

There is ALWAYS a danger that ‘charismatic’ (in the eyes of some) people saying awful things will gain traction – Oswald Mosley, Nick Griffin, Katie Hopkins & Boris Johnson are all examples – & we all have a duty to remain vigilant & expose their lies, prejudices, & hypocrisy.

But as we are now acutely aware, democracy is very fragile.

Hardly anyone alive today was alive when Hitler was & we must always be on our guard about creeping fascism, rising populist nationalism, and any of the other ideas that resulted in the #Holocaust.

But we also must be cognisant of our own role in fueling the so-called 'culture war' – because, like the everlasting battles against prejudice, exploitation, poverty, & grotesque inequality of wealth & opportunity, it’s a war we must keep fighting, & never lose.