Fergus Finlay: Dark force of intolerance is growing under the label of ‘culture wars’ 

The existential threat of climate change hangs over us, but we are also damaged by ugly old hatreds with a trendy new name

Abortion-rights activists protest during a rally in Washington, Saturday, July 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

My generation has a lot to answer for. We’ve built a world full of contradictions; a world that has more poverty and more wealth, more abundance and more hunger, more beauty and more horror, more science and more ignorance, than any previous time in history.

Every generation before mine, in Ireland at least, was born and raised with more chances than the previous one. We could take advantage of a brighter future than our parents enjoyed. We should have repaid that gift by ensuring that our children and grandchildren grew into even better opportunities.

We didn’t, though. In many ways, these current generations — my children and my grandchildren — are the first to inherit a world that their parents have made worse.

It applies in all sorts of ways — the failure to build an adequate number of houses, for instance, was almost unthinkable for most of the last century. The enormous breakthrough to free second-level education in the 1960s has never been properly built on. What was seen only a few short years ago as the life-changing potential of the internet and then social media has become coarsened and corrupted.

Over and above all that hangs the existential threat of climate change. Our self-indulgence has come close to destroying our planet, and the generations following us will have to carry huge burdens if they are to slow climate change down, let alone reverse it.

They don’t have a huge amount to thank us for, do they? We’ll have to thank them if they can find the talent and the skills to undo some of the damage we’ve done.

Other things will come right too, eventually. The current inflationary spiral will level out — after a lot of pain and damage has been inflicted. The war in Ukraine will end eventually, after enormous suffering.

Growing intolerance

But there is another challenge building, and it’s slowly beginning to loom over the world like a black cloud. It, too, will have to be confronted in its time by the new generation.

It’s the re-emerging rise of intolerance, beginning to eat like a cancer at the heart of democracy in different parts of the world. It has many forms and takes many shapes. At its core though, and we’ve seen it before, is hate.

Politics used to be differentiated on the basis of class. In a democracy, it took the form of parties from the left and right defining themselves on their view of the value of labour. Arguing about the role of capital, the difference between rights and responsibilities. The practice of politics always found its strength in its ability to represent people and interests, and elections were always fought about the struggle to increase your side’s representation.

Little by little, traditional forms of politics began to be shaped by single issues. Gender issues and the search for greater equality dominated our politics for a long time. Now the environment dominates everything, and will continue to do so, more and more, until that major crisis is confronted effectively.

New name for old hatred

In the middle of all this, there’s a new phenomenon — or rather, an old phenomenon with a trendy new name. ‘Culture wars’, it’s called. As this phenomenon takes new roots, hatred of “the other” will grow.

There have always been divisions in societies about cultural issues. They’ve been caused by religion, by human insecurities, and sometimes fomented by politics. They’ve tended, especially in democratic societies, to be alleviated by a spirit of community and tolerance — a sense of live and let live.

Right now, though, you can see several different ways in which the architects of culture wars are using them to exacerbate and cement a deep polarisation. Culture wars were used to secure Brexit, and to elect Donald Trump (and to try to overthrow the election he lost).

There are clear signs that intolerance is growing in Ireland too. The other day, there was a news story on Newstalk’s social media about the Pride march, and particularly about the fear felt by many trans people. It’s not hard to find — and what’s revealing, and stomach-churning, is the range and type of comments underneath the piece. From mocking and cruel to sinister, the level of intolerance that the story sparked was frightening.

That’s social media, of course. Sure what else would you expect, says you?

But if you’re following the British Conservative Party's leadership election, you’ll notice that the candidates are falling over each other to prove how intolerant they are. 

Ask any of them if they’re ashamed of Britain’s appalling racist approach to immigration, and they’ll double down in their contempt for people fleeing oppression, or just wanting to make better lives for themselves.

The contenders for the leadership of the British Tory party are ostensibly from 'diverse' backgrounds. But even those of African or Asian descent would round up and deport people like their own forebears. Picture: Jonathan Hordle/ITV

By the time you read this there are likely to be four candidates left in the field. One of them has Nigerian parents who came to Britain to make better lives for themselves and for her (and succeeded). Another has a Kenyan father and a Tanzanian mother. 

If either of them becomes prime minister, they are committed to rounding up immigrants (legal or otherwise) from Tanzania, Kenya, and Nigeria, among other places, and putting them on a plane to Rwanda.

Both of these candidates must have experienced racism in their lives. Both must know the corrosive damage it does. 

Both have signed up to the most racist immigration policy a British government has ever devised. These two powerful people may actually believe in this racist approach. 

If they don’t, they’re afraid to question it because the expression of an anti-racist principle could do them in. That’s the power of culture wars.

These attitudes are beginning to reach a crescendo in the US, where abortion has been turned into an even more vicious battleground than it was in the past.

Since the hand-picked Supreme Court struck down the federal right of a woman to secure a legal abortion anywhere in the US, the country has divided in a quite terrifying fashion.

Now women are being advised that if they want to cross a state line to secure an abortion, they should leave their phones and computers at home, because attempts will be made to prosecute them using phone data. Several states are preparing to replace the pre-existing abortion regime with laws that prevent abortion even on the grounds of incest or rape. A doctor who performed a medical termination for a 10-year-old girl who had been raped is now herself under threat.

These may seem like random examples, and perhaps you might think that individually they don’t amount to much. I have to tell you, I believe there is a dark force of intolerance growing in the world that will, if it’s not checked, end up subjugating people and rolling back hard-won rights.

Culture wars, at heart, are about asserting dominance in the world we live in, they’re about reasserting a dominance that was lost. Dominance on grounds of colour, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation.

Moves towards greater equality in the last half-century are going to be rolled back, inch by inch, unless we call it out for what it is, and start rediscovering our commitment to democracy to fight against it.

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