If the culture war is real, then who are we meant to be fighting?

Perhaps it’s time to admit that we really are, and always have been, at war with Eurasia, writes Holly Baxter

Razor-sharp observation of human interaction doesn’t necessarily imply empathy (Getty)

Is the culture war real and, if so, who’s fighting who? Once upon a time, every right-leaning edgelord on the internet believed “social justice warriors” were fighting a war against anyone and everyone, attacking people who didn’t toe the woke line relentlessly while also defending themselves loudly against imagined grievances. And even as a bleeding-heart socialist, I’d happily admit that some of these keyboard soldiers went too far. There was the time a scientist broke down in tears while apologising for wearing a shirt with half-naked women on it, for example. Was it a stupid fashion choice in the workplace? Yes. Did he deserve eviscerating to the extent that he cried on national television? I think few of us would agree the punishment fits the crime.

Twitter pile-ons that turned into career-ending consequences have existed pretty much since the microblogging site began. They were the subject of Jon Ronson’s phenomenally successful book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. They happen in the Hollywood celebrity world, the literature world, the journalism world, and the furry kink world. But the reality is that these pile-ons are as common on the right as they are on the left, and that perhaps is the reason why we’ll have to admit that we really are, and always have been, at war with Eurasia.

As the head of an opinion desk, I have a little more front-line experience of this type of human behaviour than most. In early 2020, I spent two long evenings on a phone call with a writer who wrote for Voices admitting to breaking one state’s lockdown because of a family emergency. She was torn apart online by people who believed the right things – that if you can, you should stay at home during a pandemic; that social responsibility is paramount when a deadly virus is circulating and there are no vaccines or treatments – but became downright cruel while exercising those beliefs. Similarly, I have seen a writer reduced to tears for advocating for the male contraceptive pill (something that now seems within scientific sight). And every year, I get a predictable surge of detractors on Twitter who want to let me know how much they hate an article I wrote seven years ago about why we need an International Men’s Day about as much as we need a White History Month (an opinion I still maintain, but guess what – it doesn’t even matter! Because there is an International Men’s Day and it’s on 19 November). Usually, of course, they don’t just let me know they hate the article; they want to let me know that they hate me personally, because I’m “a bitch,” “a feminazi,” or “a dumbass”.