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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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Gaza as the omnicause. Many words have been spilled about this already

Where can I read these words? I simply don't see why Gaza would have anything to do with women's (perceived) rights.

I came across the idea of the omnicause from Matthew Yglesias, but I think he was popularising a term coined by other centre-left figures with more experience at the sharp end of intra-left turf battles.

From a mistake theory perspective, the omnicause is the mistake common on the activist left of taking everything bad in the world, lumping it together, calling it "patriarchy" or "capitalism" or something similar, and defining your activism as opposing the lump. When the Israel-Palestine conflict is in the news, the lump is "Zionism".

From a conflict theory perspective, the omnicause is the result of all professional left-wing NGOs adjusting their positioning to attract funding from the same small number of funders. Right-wing conflict theorists tend to suspect the relevant funders are George Soros and other European financiers with large noses, centre-left conflict theorists are pretty sure that it is the Ford and Hewlett foundations (and they would know).

The link between feminist causes in the US and the Israel-Palestine conflict in the minds of omnicause activists is that real progress (as defined by the activist left) on both can only be made if the lump is defeated, and military defeat of Israel by Hamas would take a lump out of the lump. This is as stupid as it sounds, which is why I subscribe to the mistake theory on this point.

Sufficient words have been spilled that you can just google "omnicause" to find them.

The link between feminist causes in the US and the Israel-Palestine conflict in the minds of omnicause activists is that real progress (as defined by the activist left) on both can only be made if the lump is defeated, and military defeat of Israel by Hamas would take a lump out of the lump. This is as stupid as it sounds, which is why I subscribe to the mistake theory on this point.

I would not underestimate this. There is a perfectly valid theory from liberation standpoint; that nobody is truly free unless the least free is liberated. If it produces seeming logical contradiction, then this is perfect as it means we need to do more Marxist work to align Marxist Theory and Praxis. Being able to hold contradictory opinions is a feature of Marxism, this is how you perform dialectic - you resolve the contradiction by abolishing the concepts and create something new and better. It is akin to dissolving the question. We may not see how such a reconciliation can look like now, but we have faith that such a solution exists if we try hard enough.

You for instance see it with feminists vs trans issues exemplified with simple "what is a woman" question. The true liberation will happen only if we abolish the gender binary completely. We did not manage it yet, but we are getting there. It is very similar to how the old school Marxists thought that capitalism and its opposite the socialism will eventually transform into true communism. The same for lets say how dictatorship of proletariat is only transitional period before bourgeoisie and proletariat will be "reconciled" by completely abolishing class as a concept and entering classless society. Again, nobody knows precisely how to do it, you need to do the work, that is the point.

It may all seem stupid and contradictory and all that. But for some reason these conspiracy theories are very resilient and they lived 150+ years already. They are internally coherent and people can believe them. You just need to understand the idea behind these concepts including the "lump theory" you describe, the crux of the leftist conspiracy theory that explains everything. I many times argued that leftism is where true conspiracy theories live, where "serious" people and respected academics can believe in conspiracies that deliberately oppress victims and create oppressive "systems" of - capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, colonialism etc. James Lindsay was more eloquent in his speech in EU parliament about it.

In fact with colonialism it is straightforward as it uses the same word. Colonizers are oppressors, colonized are the oppressed the evil system that colonizers create and perpetuate to keep their privilege is called colonialism, and the solution is to decolonize everything until we reach "Equity" - the ultimate "Social Justice" akin to communism. The same goes for leftist feminist theory where men oppress women via patriarchy and we need to dismantle the patriarchy to achieve social justice etc. It is all the same omnicause but in a more metalevel of intersectionality. So yes, decolonization and dismantling of patriarchy are related concepts, they both must proceed in order to establish true Equity and Social Justice. Don't know how, but we must believe such a progress is possible through proper work. And if it fails, it just means that true Social Justice was never tried.