Wiktionary

culture war

English

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Etymology

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Calque of German Kulturkampf.

Noun

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culture war (plural culture wars)

  1. (rare) A political struggle for control over cultural institutions.
  2. (often in the plural) Conflict between different ideological groups, especially political conflict for cultural dominance between liberals and conservatives in the United States.
    • 1999, Nick Gillespie, “All Culture, All the Time”, in Reason:
      Little wonder, then, that stories about the “culture wars” have been burning up the pages of newspapers, magazines, and intellectual journals for the past few years: There’s so much more to fight about these days.
    • 2015, Chris Lehmann, “The Candidates”, in London Review of Books, volume 37, number 12:
      Bush’s other accomplishments in office include […] prolonging the life of the severely brain-damaged Terri Schiavo in a cynical bid to burnish his culture wars résumé.
    • 2016 March 11, Jennifer Coates, “I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.”, in Medium‎[1]:
      I am thirteen years old. The internet has arrived and I have learned with some relief that there is, at least for now, a condition called Gender Identity Disorder. I do not know that in the next decade there will be waged culture wars over what is the best thing to call me — nor that they will happen on this very internet.
    • 2019 August 15, Charlie Warzel, “How an Online Mob Created a Playbook for a Culture War”, in New York Times‎[2]:
      This false premise of video game industry collusion spiraled into an online culture war, ensnaring female gaming critics like Anita Sarkeesian and other designers like Brianna Wu who would suffer months of relentless abuse on and offline.
    • 2023 May 16, Peter Walker, quoting Michael Gove, “Michael Gove says Tories will not win election with culture wars”, in The Guardian‎[3], →ISSN:
      Conservatives need to recognise that elections are won on economics and public services rather than culture wars, Michael Gove has said in what will be seen as a rebuke to Suella Braverman.
    • 2023 October 18, Christian Wolmar, “The back of a fag packet used for unworkable rail plans”, in RAIL, number 994, page 44:
      Ignoring the fact that there was a big swing anyway, and that the Tory majority went down to fewer than 500 votes, the Conservatives now seem to be basing their entire election strategy for the forthcoming General Election on breaking the former consensus on net zero and turning the environment debate into one big culture war.

Usage notes

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  • Mostly used to refer to conflict in the 1980s onward, with the 1960s regarded as a different generation.

Translations

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See also

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Further reading

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