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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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It was as I got older that I came to understand that what they really meant was something more like "the United States has no culture worthy of consideration". The more I think about it, the more I think it is this distinction that the modern culture war is really being fought over.

This is yet another word that is lost in translation. Like James Lindsay said, progressives/wokies share your vocabulary, but not your dictionary. The words have different meanings for them, often in deliberate ways if confusing the normies*. The same goes for the word culture. It is the usual grift: white and colonial culture is privileged and oppressive, and only through careful self-study and self-criticism can you awoke to these systemic power imbalances, and enrich yourself with other ways of knowing of oppressed cultures.

This is common word in these circles that masks agitation and indoctrination. This valence of the world culture is used when it comes to terms like cultural appropriation, LGBT culture, cultural competence etc. It is related to whole field of Cultural Studies pioneered by British Marxists in 50ies and 60ies, which only builds up on Gramscian theory of cultural hegemony.

*Note: some of these are on par with let's say 4Chan level of trolling. As and example of this, take the family friendly tag when it comes to trans and queer adjacent events like Drag Queen story hour etc. This is a wordplay on fact, that historically these people were estranged from their biological families and were adopted by their "community" a new queer group/family, like the ones described by Kath Weston and many others even in 80s and early 90s. Other examples are now notorious such as Diversity and Equity or even "belonging" etc.