Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Culture War

The culture war in Europe and North America pits cosmopolitan, college-educated, urban voters with liberal views against inward-looking, often lower-information voters in small towns and the countryside who resist change.

  • Spanish Election Gives Power to Separatists

    Pedro Sánchez
    Prime Ministers António Costa of Portugal, Pedro Sánchez of Spain and Stefan Löfven of Sweden attend a meeting of European socialist party leaders in Brussels, October 15, 2020 (PES)

    An election that centered on Spanish identity has handed power to parties from the two regions that most clearly define themselves against it: the Basque Country and Catalonia.

    Neither Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’ left-wing bloc of the Socialist Party and Sumar (Unite), nor a combination of Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s conservative People’s Party and the far-right Vox (Voice), will have a majority in the next Congress, which convenes in August. Basque and Catalan nationalists won enough seats on Sunday to decide who becomes the next prime minister.

    Sánchez holds the best cards despite placing second. He governed with the support of Basque and Catalan parties before. But they may ask for more this time than he is willing to give.

    The odds are against Feijóo. He grew his party from 89 to 136 seats, and claimed victory on Sunday night, but he would need both the anti-regionalist Vox and one of the four regional parties from the Basque Country and Catalonia for a majority. That is an improbable combination. His best hope is that Sánchez will fail too and the country must hold a repeat election next year. (more…)

  • Don’t Turn Cultured Meat into a Culture War

    Hamburgers
    Impossible burgers made from plants (Impossible Foods)

    Reducing dairy and meat consumption is the easiest thing Westerners can do to slow down climate change and improve the lives of animals.

    Livestock farming causes 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. We could quit fossil fuels tomorrow, and animal agriculture would still push us past 1.5˚C of global warming.

    Environmentalists feel guilty about flying, but eating meat and yoghurt every day causes more pollution. And no animals are harmed in building airplanes.

    We should eat more seafood and vegetables anyway. Europeans eat twice as much meat as the rest of the world. Spaniards top the list with 100 kilograms per year, which is about the same as Americans. Nutritionists recommend between a quarter and a third of that.

    Meat is a source of iron, protein and nutrients, like vitamin B12 and zinc. But most can be found in fish and vegetables as well. Eating too much — especially red — meat can cause bowel cancer and raise cholesterol levels, which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. Even carnivores who care little about animals or the environment should give that vegaburger a try for the sake of their own heart.

    (The Good Food Institute has more facts and figures.) (more…)

  • Don’t Tell Europeans to Cut Down on Meat

    Madrid Spain meat market
    Meat for sale in the San Miguel Market of Madrid, Spain, August 22, 2017 (Unsplash/Victor)

    Meat eaters can be thin-skinned.

    In the Netherlands, Wakker Dier, an animal-rights charity, discovered that the previous minister of agriculture, Carola Schouten, vetoed the inclusion of eating less meat in a “what you can do to fight climate change” campaign for fear of upsetting carnivores.

    That such fears are not unfounded is borne out by the experiences of politicians in France and Spain. (more…)

  • Two Visions of France

    Paris France
    Skyline of Paris, France, May 27, 2020 (Unsplash/Nicolas Jehly)

    Two videos, two visions of France.

    The first kicks off Éric Zemmour’s presidential campaign. (Version with English subtitles here.) It’s a France where gangs of dark-skinned men rob elderly women and liberal elites call true patriots racists and xenophobes.

    The second comes from the Elysée Palace and celebrates the “pantheonization” of American-born singer and French Resistance fighter Josephine Baker. It appeals to the best of France: brave, cultured, multiethnic, republican. It’s a vision Emmanuel Macron will want to make his own. (more…)

  • Fuel Tax Is Excuse for Reactionary France to Riot

    Emmanuel Macron
    French president Emmanuel Macron answers questions from reporters in Helsinki, Finland, August 30 (Office of the President of the Republic of Finland/Juhani Kandell)

    Protests against a fuel tax increase in France have morphed into violent demonstrations against the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.

    This weekend alone, 260 rioters were arrested in Paris, where cars were set ablaze and stores looted. A woman was killed in Marseille when a protester threw a tear gas canister through the window of her home.

    The so-called Yellow Vests movement, named after the fluorescent safety vests French motorists are required to keep in their cars, started in opposition to higher taxes on diesel and gasoline. The increases are meant to help France meets its climate goals.

    Diesel tax would rise 6.5 cents per liter, gasoline tax 2.9 cents. Leonid Bershidsky of Bloomberg calculates that the average motorist would end up paying €13 more per month. Hardly worth setting Paris on fire for.

    The movement isn’t really about taxes then. It is that they have become a symbol for reactionaries who feel Macron has ignored them. (more…)

  • Macron, Salvini Represent Opposite Sides in Europe’s Culture War

    Emmanuel Macron
    French president Emmanuel Macron makes a speech in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, April 17 (European Parliament/Mathieu Cugnot)

    Politico has a good story about how France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Matteo Salvini represent opposite sides in what I — per Andrew Sullivan — call .

    Macron is a former investment banker who styles himself as a liberal champion of the European Union. Salvini, the leader of Italy’s far-right League party, has emerged as Europe’s leading nationalist — one who has pledged to bring the European project to a crashing halt.

    Both are building transnational coalitions to contest the 2019 European Parliament elections. (more…)

  • Gun and Immigration Debates Entrench Tribal Divisions in United States

    United States Capitol Washington
    Skyline of Washington DC at night (Shutterstock)

    Ronald Brownstein writes in The Atlantic that Republicans in his country have become a “coalition of restoration”: older, blue-collar, evangelical and non-urban whites most uneasy about the tectonic cultural and economic forces reshaping American life. Republican lawmakers represent those areas with the most guns and the fewest immigrants.

    Democrats, by contrast, rely on a heavily urbanized “coalition of transformation”: minorities, millennials and college-educated and secular white voters, especially women. Democratic voters have fewer guns and live in places with more immigrants.

    We can see a similar divide in Europe. On the one hand, inward-looking, typically lower-educated voters living in small towns and the countryside; on the other, cosmopolitan college graduates living in the big cities. (more…)

  • Europe’s Blue-Red Culture War Comes to Czech Republic

    Prague Czech Republic
    View of Prague, Czech Republic from the Charles Bridge (Unsplash/Jay Dantinne)

    Europe’s blue-red culture war has come to the Czech Republic, writes Jan Rovny at the London School of Economics’ EUROPP blog.

    This weekend’s presidential election pitted the incumbent Miloš Zeman, “a self-styled representative of the common folk,” against the centrist, pro-European Jiří Drahoš.

    The outcome — Zeman prevailed with 51 percent support — suggests that Czech politics have taken another step closer to Hungary and Poland.

    This will revolve around a deepening, identity-infused contest between traditionalists touting their newfound patriotism and cosmopolitans seeking to maintain the country’s westward orientation.

    (more…)

  • Nationalist Right and Identitarian Left Feed Off Each Other

    Dalibor Rohac of the American Enterprise Institute argues in The American Interest that two intolerant communities have emerged in Western democracies:

    1. A nationalist right, whose overarching ambition is to return ethnic homogeneity and reverse the decline of status enjoyed by whites.
    2. An identitarian left, whose goal is to rectify the injustices caused by the historic domination of white heterosexual men.

    We don’t have to accept a moral equivalence between the two to see that they have things in common.

    Nor does either side need to be in the majority (neither is) to pose a danger to our democracy. (more…)

  • Brexit Has Divided Generations in United Kingdom

    London England demonstration
    Pro-European march in London, England, March 25, 2017 (Sgoldswo)

    George Eaton argues in Britain’s New Statesman that age has replaced class as the nation’s best predictor of voting intentions.

    Middle-class support for Labour and working-class support for the Conservatives rose in the last election. At the same time, the left attracted almost two-thirds of the youth vote and the right the support of almost two in three pensioners.

    Young people have long been more progressive than their elders, but this wide an age gap is unusual. (more…)

  • New Social Compact: Deregulation and Universal Basic Income

    Madison Square Park New York
    View of Madison Square Park in Manhattan, New York (Unsplash/Daryan Shamkhali)

    I believe that to shrink the culture gap in Western democracies — between generally well-educated “globalists” and those who feel left behind — we need a new social compact.

    The twentieth century’s was built on strong trade unions, lifetime employment and health and pension benefits tied to salaried jobs. The economy, and people’s expectations, have changed in such a way that this is no longer sustainable. But we haven’t come up with a replacement yet.

    The American Enterprise Institute’s Dalibor Rohac may be onto something. He calls for a “grand bargain”: serious deregulation coupled with the introduction of a universal basic income. (more…)

  • Brexit Has Become the Totem of Britain’s Culture War

    British parliament London
    Westminster Palace in London, England at night, December 21, 2011 (Ben Sutherland)

    Why have not more British people changed their minds about leaving the EU now that it turns out the promises of the “leave” campaign are not being met?

    Sebastian Payne argues in the Financial Times that it’s because Brexit has become the totem of the island’s culture war. (more…)

  • An Old Conflict in New Form

    I used to think that the rise of far-right populism, the crisis of social democracy and growing divides along class and educational lines were creating a new political reality in the West.

    In a 2016 report for the consultancy Wikistrat, I argued that the political spectrum was shifting from left-right to cosmopolitan-nationalist.

    Others made similar observations:

    • Andrew Sullivan observed in 2014 that America’s blue-red culture war had come to Europe: “Blue Europe is internationalist, globalized, metrosexual, secular, modern, multicultural. Red Europe is noninterventionist, patriotic, more traditional, more sympathetic to faith, more comfortable in a homogeneous society.”
    • Stephan Shakespeare, a British pollsters, argued a year later that people were either “drawbridge up” or “drawbridge down”.
    • The Economist characterized the divide as between open and closed: “Welcome immigrants or keep them out? Open up to foreign trade or protect domestic industries? Embrace cultural change or resist it?”
    • David Goodhart divided people into “anywheres” — mobile and open-minded — and “somewheres” — attached to country, community and family.

    I still think this is broadly correct, but now I wonder how new this split really is. (more…)

  • Europeans Can Be Sorted Into Six Tribes

    Europeans can be sorted into six “tribes”, argues Chatham House based on a survey of public opinion in ten different countries:

    1. Hesitant Europeans: The largest group (36 percent), they sit in the middle on many issues but tend to vote center-right. They are ambivalent about the EU and worry about high immigration.
    2. Contented Europeans: Often young, socially liberal and unperturbed about immigration, this group (23 percent) is happy with the way things are. They want neither a federal Europe nor disintegration. Many young Central Europeans fall in this category.
    3. EU Rejecters: Feel the EU is undemocratic and are angry that politicians aren’t doing enough to stop immigration. This group (14 percent) is disproportionately rural and overrepresented in Austria and the United Kingdom.
    4. Frustrated Pro-Europeans: Want closer EU integration driven by “progressive values” but don’t themselves feel the benefits of membership. Relatively many Belgians, French and Italians are in this group (9 percent).
    5. Austerity Rebels: Want a looser, “more democratic” EU, but — unlike EU Rejecters — do believe wealthy member states should help out the poor. This group (9 percent) is generally middle-aged, possibly unemployed and likely to live in Greece or Italy.
    6. Federalists: Highly educated, wealthier and more likely to be urban than the other tribes, this group (8 percent) dreams of a United States of Europe. (more…)

  • It’s Not the Economy, Stupid!

    Donald Trump
    Donald Trump gives a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, February 27, 2015 (Gage Skidmore)

    The votes for Brexit, European populism and Donald Trump weren’t working-class revolts.

    Ta-Nehisi Coates and Adam Serwer have argued that mostly-white elites are drawn to the “economic anxiety” thesis because it absolves them of responsibility for more intractable problems, like racism, xenophobia and self-delusions about both.

    If nativists are motivated by stagnating wages, then there are policy solutions for bringing them back into the mainstream.

    But what if their grievances aren’t so concrete? (more…)