Culture wars defend the minority of the opulent from the majority
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ben.debney

If dispassionate debate of ideas is the theoretical means by which policy is formed in liberal democracies, in these increasingly hostile and desperate conditions of late capitalism, culture war has become the reality. By culture war, we mean the polarisation of debate, the ‘Othering’ of opponents, the use of ‘wedge’ issues loaded with any number of unspoken prior assumptions to hijack debates, and the adoption of a permanent victim complex.

The latter in particular is conspicuous for its intimate ties to an associated conspiratorial mentality that sees the world in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and alleges ‘our’ way of life to be under siege from an endless parade of what H.L Mencken once referred to as ‘hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.’ The function of mostly imaginary hobgoblins, he noted, was to provide a means with which rulers might menace the populace, who, thus alarmed, would be ’clamorous to be led to safety.’

To the extent that the ‘Father of the Constitution,’ James Madison, argued during the 1787 Constitutional Convention that the proper role of governments out to be to ‘protect the minority of the opulent against the majority,’ this is consistent with the fundamental (yet typically unspoken) agendas of a class-divided society: domination of the vassals, playing the vassals off against one another using divide-and-conquer techniques to prevent collusion and forestall resistance, ready supply of the proverbial bread and circuses and religion soaking fallibility in guilt and shame for social control.

Read the rest at Counterpunch

Culture war and conspiracism as election strategy
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ben.debney

In this latest Australian election cycle, history repeats itself with increasing intensity as policy debate is relegated to a relic of history in favour of strategies of dissembling, distraction and scapegoating. This is not a new phenomenon, but one that has been emerging over the last two to three decades as parties scramble to resolve the deepening conflicts between the vested interests of their donors and the needs of a world falling further into socio-ecological crisis.

The presence of Katherine Deves as Scott Morrison’s handpicked candidate for the seat of Warringah clearly demonstrates this fact, as well as the latter’s interest in culture war discourse and the ideological construction of deviance as an electoral strategy. Issues like transgender women in sport come under the microscope despite support from Cricket Australia and Netball Australia, who support inclusive policies for the transgender and gender diverse.

In recent years, Australia has been through bushfires, pandemic and floods, but the biggest issue facing the country today, according to this logic, the Liberal candidate for Warringah, and the Prime Minister, is a demographic that constitutes less than 1% of sportspeople. This less than 1% are required to have been receiving hormone therapy for at least a year to offset any potential unfair advantage, and many transgender women who play sport have been receiving therapy for much longer.

Read the rest at Overland

A world of slaves under his eye: totalitarian attacks on reproductive justice
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ben.debney

Reproductive justice has always been a bugbear for reactionaries and totalitarians. A woman who enjoys bodily autonomy and controls her own womb is free of the control of male supremacist hierarchies—those associated with the fundamentalism problematised in the mentalities of official enemies, but warmly embraced when benefitting traditionally privileged classes and the ideological status quo that rationalised the power of propertied white males at home.

The contradictions of pro-life narratives aren’t new: for all their moral pretences, pro-lifers want to get government off people’s backs, and into their wombs. They maintain militant ignorance regarding the lives, right or freedom of the mothers, or the circumstances under which conception takes place. They don’t care about the child once it’s born, especially if it’s working class, female, not white, or wants to live in a world with hope for a future without hereditary class privilege, corporate capture of politics or ecocide. They are raging militarists who support imperialist wars of aggression. They shoot abortion doctors. They’re joyless moralists who suck all the oxygen out of the room; ‘that pro-lifer was hands down the life of the party’ said no-one ever.

We find then that the American Taliban exhibit the same haughty aristocratic attitude as everything they claim to oppose. They justify themselves by arguing the need to speak to others in a language they understand—most conveniently the one they had already decided on. This also appears to be why they need to demonise the left; the project of class society rests on the narrative of a protection racket, scaring the public with what H.L Mencken described as ‘imaginary hobgoblins,’ and then offering safety and token privileges in return for obedience, loyalty and tribute through submission to class and social hierarchies.

Read the rest at Counterpunch