Published on November 5, 2024 at 12:02 p.m. / Modified on November 5, 2024 at 12:07.
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In the United States, the “culture wars” refer to the profound debates that have agitated American society since the 1960s and the various liberation movements for civil rights, feminism, gay rights, including anti-war movements.
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Politically, Republicans have always seized on these issues to mobilize and galvanize their base.
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At the dawn of this presidential election, these cultural issues seem to have reached their peak.
Abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, public education, diversity. Are the culture wars ultimately all people argue about on social media? From the virtual to the real, in the United States, these questions of “culture wars” – the term of which was popularized by the sociologist James Davison Hunter in the early 1990s – have, since the secularization of the State, always animated life political and used for mobilization purposes. Until 2024, a moment when this political life itself became the incarnation: questions of race, identity, women’s rights have never been so present since a billionaire – always white and elderly – angry at the establishment confronts a black woman of South Asian origin and natural heir to the Biden administration.
The Democrats have taken up these issues, often considered the prerogative of Republicans, on their own, making women’s rights their main focus. The Grand Old Party is fighting back on another divisive issue. Nearly $20 million was invested in an anti-trans ad: «Kamala is a president for they/them. Donald Trump is a president for you»declaims the ad. Andrew Hartman, professor of history at Illinois State University and author of the book A War for the Soul of America. A History of the Culture Wars (“A War for the Soul of America. A History of the Culture Wars”), deciphers for Time these dynamics which, at the dawn of the presidential election, seem to have reached their peak.
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