One important counterpoint. Abortion, which was once the key culture war issue for the right, has exhibited exactly the pattern of political wins combined with cultural losses. The right was gaining ground in public opinion until it started getting political wins. Now they have lost the cultural fight completely and are seeing their politically imposed wins eroded by ballot initiatives and Republican defections (most obviously by Trump).
The only way the right wins the culture war is if they convince younger generations which seems very unlikely to me. They have grown up in a multicultural world in which women have careers and people being gay is not shocking. Abortion has long had a the support of a solid majority of Americans, not just the young.
Last night I my grandson’s middle school b ball game at a public STEAM magnet school. The school is in a very affluent neighborhood in my nc city and is 70% neighborhood kids, 30% bussed in. Both teams, cheerleaders and the crowd were at most 50% white. The minorities were mostly black and Hispanic with some Indian families. It was perfectly normal as it is at my other two grandkids’ public schools— one elementary, one high school.
I know some of the people at the game who are solid Trump supporters yet they don’t think it’s weird that their kids’/grandkids’ schools are so diverse. I think right wing propaganda has made them afraid of minorities in the abstract, not the ones they see every day.
My daughter-in-law who is Czech and has lived in Germany says she never sees that kind of diversity there.
Dan, it's not who's winning the "culture wars", as these frequently nonsensical dust-ups are but a smoke-screen for the REAL war on representative government, that waged by the plutocratic elite, to whom you've referenced. Deregulation, massive wealth transfer - no longer disguised - driven by "tax cuts", and literally buying elections, thanks to Citizens United and zealous gerrymandering, these are the tools for maintaining a chokehold on the democratic process.
Culture-war debating is just mere posturing, a classic missing-the-forest-for-the-trees dodging of who is truly damaging American society. and as long as this broligarchy and its corporate allies have control of the right- wing "populist" propaganda gigaphone, absolutely nothing will change, and indeed will increasingly worsen, bank it.
I don't think the Right has WON the culture war. To me "won" implies a durable/irreversible outcome. I don't think the war is over - unless the Center and Left decide to capitulate/surrender.
I think, however, that the Right has won most of the most recent BATTLES in the culture war. The only significant exception that readily comes to mind is abortion, where statewide referenda on this subject have usually, but not always, produced pro-choice outcomes. I consider those referenda outcomes to be victories for the Center and Left, and certainly amount to losses for the evangelical right.
So, I'm in a wait-and-see mode/mood on the overall Culture War.
Tim Miller from the Bulwark had a good point after visiting Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA whatever. How many lefties or libs would be filling to fly out west four days before Christmas for a political conference? There isn’t a lib equivalent to TPUSA, and could one even exist without infighting destroying it?
Podcasts like Rogans are another good example. Yeah, it’s not explicitly right wing, but he makes no apologies for bringing on Trump or Musk, meanwhile the Call Her Daddy podcast practically did an apology tour before Kamala even came on in the fears of appearing partisan.
The transformation of Twitter into a MAGA platform has played a huge role in the right's culture war success. Before Elon, Twitter was the nerve center of left-liberal activism. The various pressure/cancellation campaigns required a self-reinforcing stream of anger and outrage from major accounts and anonymous nobodies. Once that stream of tweets reached a critical mass, the targets (universities, corporations, etc.) would decide that they had no choice but to give in. Of course, this paradigm was already in decline when Elon bought Twitter. The pendulum that had swung left for nearly a decade was already moving right by 2022. But, post-Elon, activists have lost the perch they used to organize and fight their battles. Anyone browsing the Internet in 2025 would reasonably conclude that the right is winning.
The Right would deny X is now a "MAGA platform". They would say neutral. In the same way, before Musk the Left always denied X was "left-liberal". They would say neutral.
Well at least Elon is starting to de-platfrom these intolerant culture warriors, good riddance, who needs these intolerant self appointed culture arbiters! Yes, if that means the right is winning, I don't want the left wing Twitteresr to win anymore.
It's extremely problematic to try and find larger cultural and political issues in sports, especially sports popularity. Back after GW Bush was re-elected, NASCAR was the big thing showing conservative sports culture domination. Now it's in what might be terminal decline. UFC is popular with young men because blood sports always have been. At the height of the New Deal, boxing was the second or first most popular sport and I daresay there's no connection between the two. Poor old baseball's World Series ratings blew away the NBA Finals ratings for no other reasons than the popularity/anti-popularity of the Dodgers and Yankees and Shohei Ohtani.
I don't know. On the one hand, over the long haul the left has won the culture wars since 1950. Look at all the changes in social issues--civil rights, privacy, gay marriage, ADA, etc. etc. I don't see any regression on these in the future--some bluster from the right but no real success. The situation reminds me of Reagan's war on LBJ's Great Society, some significant victories for the right will happen, but the country will have moved left.
Long term I wonder about the ivory tower stronghold of the left--how secure will it be. Isn't the defunding of humanities and social science course in some universities (WV?) an omen. As the birth rate declinrd will that lead to a smaller pool of students, assuming perhaps that the children of immigrants are less likely to go to college than succeeding generations?
If true, doesn't that mean closing some colleges and even more of a tier system of education, meaning fewer job opportunities and less financial support from government? Does that mean even more pressure in red states on curriculums?
Yes: the left has totally won the culture wars and when the right claims victory when they unconstitutionally overturn Roe, every election testing the support for choice has gone the Dems way. There is no future for right wingers to continue these culture war tropes, it will just make them look stupid and intolerant. We have moved left!
Very interesting! But the essay is silent on Race, and gender, which strikes me as odd given that the return of explicit racism & racists tropes to our everyday politics. White men have pretty clearly moved right with a very explicit embrace of racism & xenophobia.
American culture moving right might not mean explicit racism as much as not thinking about what we owe to Black people as a society because that was just too hard even for 2020.
"Storming the White House" I am not familiar with but I am familiar with a lot of triumphant whataboutism at the time about how the January 6 rioters were treated with comparative kid gloves.
My line which I have said consistently is that the protesters and allies from 2020 really didn't have a lot of focus. Other than "Stop killing Black people" they did not have a way of pressuring government for a specific step that they wanted as compared to civil rights protesters of the 1960s. Sustained pressure might have pushed a federal police reform bill or the John Lewis Act over the finish line. Organizations such as Black Visions in Minneapolis seemed to be interested in reinventing Black life in the United States from square one.
I also recently was exposed to a paper about AI ethicists talking about their challenges accomplishing anything in their organization. One of them was explaining to engineers very basic things such as how equity was going to be measured. Agreeing generally that equity is a good thing but not knowing when you have attained it is exactly what I am getting at.
Instant reaction is that I was trying to say why I thought "what we owe as a society" was too hard for 2020. We didn't get as much of that as we got "We will enhance our DEI program until people stop paying attention" or "how individual white people can be less racist"
This seems somewhat like apples and oranges. From the perspective of the cultural impact and influence, I am pretty certain that the Right did not, can not, and will not win the "culture war" as they lack the most important ingredient in culture - empathy... However, from the perspective of power and control (over government, institutions, etc.) the answer is a definitive yes even 5 years ago, much more so now with the fact that we just elected a fascist oligarchy.
First, I define the US as center, center right, and far right. The left is barely left. (That pun was actually unintended.) Anyway, I see a lot of the right “gains” as billionaire muscle flexing and $$$ propaganda. Off hand, the “left” wins are women’s rights, abortion, gay rights and marriage, greater environmental protections…all supported by majorities. Right “wins” are almost always brought about by minorities. Even so, it is a good question. As we know, the will of the people is meaningless; worse, an increasing number of people are literally clueless.
Taking "culture" a bit more broadly, a huge cultural shift has been the rise in hostility, extending to hatred, for big corporations. The response to the United Health assassination shows how this has gone beyond a shift in political views about things like anti-trust. Yet corporations have more political power than ever.
A bit more complex with billionaires since Repubs like Musk and Trump. But public hostility to billlionaires in general has probably never been higher.
Americans idolize billionaires, influencers and reality tv stars - but hate the people who are doing slightly better than them in their own neighbourhood. Double that hate if those people are recent immigrants. How dare they do better than me? I was born here/deserve it more - the billionaire is too abstract to hate
The problem is with how the question is stated - it’s very possible for a person to think that in general it’s bad we have billionaires - but still idolize Elon Musk or DJT - those two ideas are not contradictory - it’s like that songs in the movie Spirited says, “feed the hate because hate is strong” (great Christmas movie btw) - unless they hate billionaires more than they do their successful neighbour we’ll continue to get election results like this one. Sorry I really wish I could believe there is a change coming, I just don’t see it.
Republicans declared war on all nonpartisan institutions that could put a check on their power and describe any positions those institutions take that don't line up with their own as leftist capture.
Correct, and the results of this "total war" is multiple fronts where the right has gained ground culturally.
We all know about the bro Rogan podcast sphere. Higher education has been successfully flagged for decades now and young men are lagging in terms of admissions and attendance in college now. The cultural civilizing effect of college was already barely a third of the country and now it's waning among men. Not good.
And don't sleep on the commentary around tv/movies/games up and down youtube.
You have figures like nerdrotic and critical drinker whose entire modern careers rest on trashing woke disney/star wars/Hollywood. And bitching about dei (i.e. too many blacks on their screen or women with too much strength). Gaming has so many popular figures that just get sucked into the anti gay anti trans trends in games. Anti trans is the most potent force and honestly I think game devs need to regroup and stop swatting the wasp hive by putting attention on that.
Review bombing of television and movies and games because of some perceived agrievement from right wing perspectives is widespread.
I think the right has won in these spaces because liberals are not as animated to defend things with the same fervor.
I suppose it might be because I am generally left-leaning, and unsurprisingly, distraught about the state of my union lately, but I just have to laugh at the thought that the "cancel culture" left has any real political clout.
All of the hyperbole and histrionics in these comments aside, when it comes to realpolitik and what is clearly the explicit express will of the people, yes, the right has won the culture war. And it seems to be making strides on a number of fronts globally. We can all feel it in the wake of the election on any side and in the earnestly rational middle.
The Democratic Party, especially its progressives, listened to the far-left for far too long, and adopted all their stupid ideas, and that's why they lost. Running fiscal deficits doesn't matter! Orwellian DEI in the workplace, CRT in schools, Trans-everything in sports, schools, workplaces, prisons, the NYT "reporting" on the USA being created for no other reason than to hold slaves, the Free Palestine cult being coddled, admired, promoted, and the never ending obsequiousness when dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its many terrorist proxy armies. The culture war has been that of the left to lose, and the progressive left has never stopped far-leftists from making things worse.
I'm now waiting for "Adult Attracted Minor" to become a thing in progressive circles, and from there the Democratic Party, just as the academic far-left has been trying hard to change "pedophile" to "Minor Attracted Adult" (rather than minor-rape attracted adult). When progressives start policing their own language as the academic far-left cult does, and inject these two abhorrent terms into their mouths as the dogmatically approved alternative, then you'll know who has won the culture war inside the Democratic Party, and you'll have an answer to why someone like Trump is yet again president.
The Republicans have successfully converted political power into a capacity to cow cultural institutions (corporations, mass media, universities) into submission. But that hasn't had the effect on the culture that they have hoped for. Culture isn't driven by college presidents but by the people who make it, which overwhelmingly means those with high education. And the loss of this group by Republicans has only accelerated.
One important counterpoint. Abortion, which was once the key culture war issue for the right, has exhibited exactly the pattern of political wins combined with cultural losses. The right was gaining ground in public opinion until it started getting political wins. Now they have lost the cultural fight completely and are seeing their politically imposed wins eroded by ballot initiatives and Republican defections (most obviously by Trump).
That's a good counterpoint.
The only way the right wins the culture war is if they convince younger generations which seems very unlikely to me. They have grown up in a multicultural world in which women have careers and people being gay is not shocking. Abortion has long had a the support of a solid majority of Americans, not just the young.
Last night I my grandson’s middle school b ball game at a public STEAM magnet school. The school is in a very affluent neighborhood in my nc city and is 70% neighborhood kids, 30% bussed in. Both teams, cheerleaders and the crowd were at most 50% white. The minorities were mostly black and Hispanic with some Indian families. It was perfectly normal as it is at my other two grandkids’ public schools— one elementary, one high school.
I know some of the people at the game who are solid Trump supporters yet they don’t think it’s weird that their kids’/grandkids’ schools are so diverse. I think right wing propaganda has made them afraid of minorities in the abstract, not the ones they see every day.
My daughter-in-law who is Czech and has lived in Germany says she never sees that kind of diversity there.
Dan, it's not who's winning the "culture wars", as these frequently nonsensical dust-ups are but a smoke-screen for the REAL war on representative government, that waged by the plutocratic elite, to whom you've referenced. Deregulation, massive wealth transfer - no longer disguised - driven by "tax cuts", and literally buying elections, thanks to Citizens United and zealous gerrymandering, these are the tools for maintaining a chokehold on the democratic process.
Culture-war debating is just mere posturing, a classic missing-the-forest-for-the-trees dodging of who is truly damaging American society. and as long as this broligarchy and its corporate allies have control of the right- wing "populist" propaganda gigaphone, absolutely nothing will change, and indeed will increasingly worsen, bank it.
I don't think the Right has WON the culture war. To me "won" implies a durable/irreversible outcome. I don't think the war is over - unless the Center and Left decide to capitulate/surrender.
I think, however, that the Right has won most of the most recent BATTLES in the culture war. The only significant exception that readily comes to mind is abortion, where statewide referenda on this subject have usually, but not always, produced pro-choice outcomes. I consider those referenda outcomes to be victories for the Center and Left, and certainly amount to losses for the evangelical right.
So, I'm in a wait-and-see mode/mood on the overall Culture War.
Tim Miller from the Bulwark had a good point after visiting Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA whatever. How many lefties or libs would be filling to fly out west four days before Christmas for a political conference? There isn’t a lib equivalent to TPUSA, and could one even exist without infighting destroying it?
Podcasts like Rogans are another good example. Yeah, it’s not explicitly right wing, but he makes no apologies for bringing on Trump or Musk, meanwhile the Call Her Daddy podcast practically did an apology tour before Kamala even came on in the fears of appearing partisan.
It’s a good thing I’m not talking about “the media” then 🤦🏽♂️
The transformation of Twitter into a MAGA platform has played a huge role in the right's culture war success. Before Elon, Twitter was the nerve center of left-liberal activism. The various pressure/cancellation campaigns required a self-reinforcing stream of anger and outrage from major accounts and anonymous nobodies. Once that stream of tweets reached a critical mass, the targets (universities, corporations, etc.) would decide that they had no choice but to give in. Of course, this paradigm was already in decline when Elon bought Twitter. The pendulum that had swung left for nearly a decade was already moving right by 2022. But, post-Elon, activists have lost the perch they used to organize and fight their battles. Anyone browsing the Internet in 2025 would reasonably conclude that the right is winning.
The Right would deny X is now a "MAGA platform". They would say neutral. In the same way, before Musk the Left always denied X was "left-liberal". They would say neutral.
Well at least Elon is starting to de-platfrom these intolerant culture warriors, good riddance, who needs these intolerant self appointed culture arbiters! Yes, if that means the right is winning, I don't want the left wing Twitteresr to win anymore.
Google: "Has X canceled anyone?" Answer: "No, X has not canceled anyone."
It's extremely problematic to try and find larger cultural and political issues in sports, especially sports popularity. Back after GW Bush was re-elected, NASCAR was the big thing showing conservative sports culture domination. Now it's in what might be terminal decline. UFC is popular with young men because blood sports always have been. At the height of the New Deal, boxing was the second or first most popular sport and I daresay there's no connection between the two. Poor old baseball's World Series ratings blew away the NBA Finals ratings for no other reasons than the popularity/anti-popularity of the Dodgers and Yankees and Shohei Ohtani.
UFC will never succeed unless they introduce girls and mud😆
I don't know. On the one hand, over the long haul the left has won the culture wars since 1950. Look at all the changes in social issues--civil rights, privacy, gay marriage, ADA, etc. etc. I don't see any regression on these in the future--some bluster from the right but no real success. The situation reminds me of Reagan's war on LBJ's Great Society, some significant victories for the right will happen, but the country will have moved left.
Long term I wonder about the ivory tower stronghold of the left--how secure will it be. Isn't the defunding of humanities and social science course in some universities (WV?) an omen. As the birth rate declinrd will that lead to a smaller pool of students, assuming perhaps that the children of immigrants are less likely to go to college than succeeding generations?
If true, doesn't that mean closing some colleges and even more of a tier system of education, meaning fewer job opportunities and less financial support from government? Does that mean even more pressure in red states on curriculums?
Yes: the left has totally won the culture wars and when the right claims victory when they unconstitutionally overturn Roe, every election testing the support for choice has gone the Dems way. There is no future for right wingers to continue these culture war tropes, it will just make them look stupid and intolerant. We have moved left!
Very interesting! But the essay is silent on Race, and gender, which strikes me as odd given that the return of explicit racism & racists tropes to our everyday politics. White men have pretty clearly moved right with a very explicit embrace of racism & xenophobia.
American culture moving right might not mean explicit racism as much as not thinking about what we owe to Black people as a society because that was just too hard even for 2020.
"Storming the White House" I am not familiar with but I am familiar with a lot of triumphant whataboutism at the time about how the January 6 rioters were treated with comparative kid gloves.
My line which I have said consistently is that the protesters and allies from 2020 really didn't have a lot of focus. Other than "Stop killing Black people" they did not have a way of pressuring government for a specific step that they wanted as compared to civil rights protesters of the 1960s. Sustained pressure might have pushed a federal police reform bill or the John Lewis Act over the finish line. Organizations such as Black Visions in Minneapolis seemed to be interested in reinventing Black life in the United States from square one.
I also recently was exposed to a paper about AI ethicists talking about their challenges accomplishing anything in their organization. One of them was explaining to engineers very basic things such as how equity was going to be measured. Agreeing generally that equity is a good thing but not knowing when you have attained it is exactly what I am getting at.
Instant reaction is that I was trying to say why I thought "what we owe as a society" was too hard for 2020. We didn't get as much of that as we got "We will enhance our DEI program until people stop paying attention" or "how individual white people can be less racist"
This seems somewhat like apples and oranges. From the perspective of the cultural impact and influence, I am pretty certain that the Right did not, can not, and will not win the "culture war" as they lack the most important ingredient in culture - empathy... However, from the perspective of power and control (over government, institutions, etc.) the answer is a definitive yes even 5 years ago, much more so now with the fact that we just elected a fascist oligarchy.
Exactly, voters will react to the REAL illiberal force...the oligarchs.
First, I define the US as center, center right, and far right. The left is barely left. (That pun was actually unintended.) Anyway, I see a lot of the right “gains” as billionaire muscle flexing and $$$ propaganda. Off hand, the “left” wins are women’s rights, abortion, gay rights and marriage, greater environmental protections…all supported by majorities. Right “wins” are almost always brought about by minorities. Even so, it is a good question. As we know, the will of the people is meaningless; worse, an increasing number of people are literally clueless.
Taking "culture" a bit more broadly, a huge cultural shift has been the rise in hostility, extending to hatred, for big corporations. The response to the United Health assassination shows how this has gone beyond a shift in political views about things like anti-trust. Yet corporations have more political power than ever.
A bit more complex with billionaires since Repubs like Musk and Trump. But public hostility to billlionaires in general has probably never been higher.
Americans idolize billionaires, influencers and reality tv stars - but hate the people who are doing slightly better than them in their own neighbourhood. Double that hate if those people are recent immigrants. How dare they do better than me? I was born here/deserve it more - the billionaire is too abstract to hate
Some evidence from Pew, suggesting admiration for billionaires is an old-person thing. 50 per cent of 18-29 in2021 saying billionaires are bad for US
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/07/28/americans-views-about-billionaires-have-grown-somewhat-more-negative-since-2020/
The problem is with how the question is stated - it’s very possible for a person to think that in general it’s bad we have billionaires - but still idolize Elon Musk or DJT - those two ideas are not contradictory - it’s like that songs in the movie Spirited says, “feed the hate because hate is strong” (great Christmas movie btw) - unless they hate billionaires more than they do their successful neighbour we’ll continue to get election results like this one. Sorry I really wish I could believe there is a change coming, I just don’t see it.
Republicans declared war on all nonpartisan institutions that could put a check on their power and describe any positions those institutions take that don't line up with their own as leftist capture.
Correct, and the results of this "total war" is multiple fronts where the right has gained ground culturally.
We all know about the bro Rogan podcast sphere. Higher education has been successfully flagged for decades now and young men are lagging in terms of admissions and attendance in college now. The cultural civilizing effect of college was already barely a third of the country and now it's waning among men. Not good.
And don't sleep on the commentary around tv/movies/games up and down youtube.
You have figures like nerdrotic and critical drinker whose entire modern careers rest on trashing woke disney/star wars/Hollywood. And bitching about dei (i.e. too many blacks on their screen or women with too much strength). Gaming has so many popular figures that just get sucked into the anti gay anti trans trends in games. Anti trans is the most potent force and honestly I think game devs need to regroup and stop swatting the wasp hive by putting attention on that.
Review bombing of television and movies and games because of some perceived agrievement from right wing perspectives is widespread.
I think the right has won in these spaces because liberals are not as animated to defend things with the same fervor.
I suppose it might be because I am generally left-leaning, and unsurprisingly, distraught about the state of my union lately, but I just have to laugh at the thought that the "cancel culture" left has any real political clout.
All of the hyperbole and histrionics in these comments aside, when it comes to realpolitik and what is clearly the explicit express will of the people, yes, the right has won the culture war. And it seems to be making strides on a number of fronts globally. We can all feel it in the wake of the election on any side and in the earnestly rational middle.
The Democratic Party, especially its progressives, listened to the far-left for far too long, and adopted all their stupid ideas, and that's why they lost. Running fiscal deficits doesn't matter! Orwellian DEI in the workplace, CRT in schools, Trans-everything in sports, schools, workplaces, prisons, the NYT "reporting" on the USA being created for no other reason than to hold slaves, the Free Palestine cult being coddled, admired, promoted, and the never ending obsequiousness when dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its many terrorist proxy armies. The culture war has been that of the left to lose, and the progressive left has never stopped far-leftists from making things worse.
I'm now waiting for "Adult Attracted Minor" to become a thing in progressive circles, and from there the Democratic Party, just as the academic far-left has been trying hard to change "pedophile" to "Minor Attracted Adult" (rather than minor-rape attracted adult). When progressives start policing their own language as the academic far-left cult does, and inject these two abhorrent terms into their mouths as the dogmatically approved alternative, then you'll know who has won the culture war inside the Democratic Party, and you'll have an answer to why someone like Trump is yet again president.
The Republicans have successfully converted political power into a capacity to cow cultural institutions (corporations, mass media, universities) into submission. But that hasn't had the effect on the culture that they have hoped for. Culture isn't driven by college presidents but by the people who make it, which overwhelmingly means those with high education. And the loss of this group by Republicans has only accelerated.