Don't be deceived, this is not world war woke: The international situation is not an extension of the culture war
I’m writing this as Russia invades Ukraine, but I’m not talking about the invasion. I’m talking about the international tensions that will follow it, or more specifically, how the media will try to frame these tensions. I worry that the following framing is going to get pushed on us by a brain dead media:
"This is Cold War mark II, but it's not about communism- it's about wokeness! On one side we have America, Europe and friends who think Putin needs to check his white privilege! If you don't support the US in this conflict you're a white nationalist! On the other side we have le epic based rare Pepe nationalists Russia and China. If you don't support them your kids will have pronouns and identify as 47 different genders!"
I’ve already seen fragments of this framing, mostly on Twitter, and I anticipate it’s going to come out in force over the next year or so. I want to be clear that this framing is bullshit. Nonetheless they’ll try to sell it to us, because the media loves culture war and really, at this point, it’s all they know.
There may be the tiniest grain of truth in the claim that emerging global tension is a about different ideas of nation and nationalism, but that doesn’t make this The Culture War MK II, International Edition. At certain points some of the international actors involved might even end up pretending that this is what is going on. It may have some real sway in some places- I’m told by a Brazilian colleague that Brazil’s condemnation of Russia was rather tepid due to close links between Bolsonaro and Putin. Nonetheless, this framing is 98% bullshit. This is about wealth, power and fear, not genderless bathrooms.
Thus far what I have said has been non-partisan. I think intelligent people of all orientations, from liberals to nationalists, could agree with it. My next point goes out to the political left. If I am correct, and the media does try to sell this to us as “““world-war woke”””, then it has never been more urgent to challenge this bullshit framing of politics as all about culture war. It’s a political spectacle distracting us from the obscene wealth and power and, even if it’s a cliché to say, dividing the working class.