In reality, the thirty years since the fall of the USSR have not been entirely peaceful. There have been real wars but also cultural wars that sometimes feed the first
The wars in the Balkans, in Chechnya, as well as the Russian invasions of Georgia in 2008 first and then of Donbass and Crimea in 2014, were clear signs that the end of the cold war had not brought perpetual peace to Europe. From a global perspective, peace has been even more remote: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen. However, from the Western point of view, focused on an EU in progressive expansion, and from the perspective of a society that overcame the tearing of the iron curtain thanks to the freedom of movement of people and the single community market, the war yes it seemed remote. The bombs on Ukrainian cities, the arrival of refugees in European countries and the economic war with sanctions and gas supply cuts mark a turning point. At the end of 2022, we all know it: the war has returned to Europe.
From the perspective of political sociology, in these last thirty years war has never really been absent from Western societies. It has been a different kind of war, a war waged not with military means, but with words, symbols, values and politics: a culture war. Sociologist James Davison Hunter used the concept of culture war to describe the confrontation within American society over the family, abortion, education, art, or law.1 He identified two camps, one conservative and one another progressive. The conservative position was based on the belief in the transcendent origin of human laws and institutions, therefore not subject to reform according to the will of groups or individuals. The progressive position, on the other hand, considered that these norms and institutions were human creations and subject, therefore, to reforms in accordance with the new cultural and social realities. The two sides disagreed on many issues: abortion, homosexuality, women's rights, sexual mores, prayer in schools, and music. 1968 became the emblematic year of the progressive movement. Since then, many conservatives have felt that they were fighting an uphill battle for their goals. But 50 years later, the balance of power has changed. All over the world we are witnessing a return of right-wing conservative politics, especially in the area of sexual and reproductive rights.
It is important to recognize that the culture wars are not just battles between religion and secularism. The place of religion in the culture wars is more complex. The confrontation between the sets of conservative and progressive visions also takes place within religious communities and gives rise to splits within the different traditions; In these splits, one side embraces the reform and adapts theological teaching to the sign of the times (it makes an aggiornamento, in the language of the Second Vatican Council), and another resists this type of reform and change. Culture wars also lead to unexpected alliances between different denominations and new readjustments of the religious-secular landscape. For example, conservative Catholics may find more common ground with conservative Protestants, Evangelicals, and Orthodox than with progressive and leftist Catholics.
Not all disagreements over morality values and policies amount to a culture war. The current conflicts over morality and values stem from unresolved (and ultimately unresolvable) tensions in the modern condition itself. Sociologist Peter Wagner defines the modern condition as one in which individuals autonomously and collectively determine the rules for organizing their societies: autonomously, because there is no single world view that provides a general frame of reference for all; and, collectively, because norms must be shared.2 Viewed in this way, the modern condition is never stable, but oscillates dynamically between the freedom to set norms autonomously and the discipline of being part of a community. This constitutive tension of modern society is at the base of all modern politics, it is the basic element of democracy. So are culture wars inevitable? No, something more is needed for the common democratic antagonism to become a culture war: polarizing mobilization.
Culture wars are waged by people: individual agents and groups, social movements, NGOs, think tanks, political parties, churches, or lobbies. Their weapons are public discourse and mobilization; its strategic objective is to influence political decision-making. Today, the central conflicts in the culture wars between conservatives and progressives concern issues related to sexuality and gender, the family, bioethics, education, and religious freedom. But those issues have not always been the most important. Other previous conflicts referred to issues such as tobacco control, gambling, fox hunting, bullfighting or the prohibition of alcohol. So if the culture wars don't seem to be defined by something concrete, something fundamental to human identity like sex or upbringing, then what makes an issue morally controversial? Culture wars are conflicts over the identity of society. What becomes the crystallization point of a conflict at a given time and place ultimately depends on the circumstances, but the underlying issue is the issue of the identity of society as a whole. In the context of societies with historically Christian roots, the culture wars are essentially a dispute over whether those societies remain Christian or have definitely moved towards a post-Christian foundation. In such a situation, any position taken on issues such as abortion, family values or gender rights constitutes a position taken in a symbolic and highly polarized dispute: for both sides. The question becomes one for or against, one with us or one against us.
The polarizing dispute does not stop at the national level. EU countries have accepted the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. In Europe, changes in national legal frameworks often occur through the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. For better and for worse, national politics is intertwined with supranational politics. In such a context, the culture wars become global. And groups waging culture wars go global too: they develop transnational links and a political agenda that no longer targets only national politics, but supranational political institutions (the EU, the Council of Europe, the UN). It is important to note that both the progressive and the conservative movements have this impulse beyond the State. From the perspective of progressive groups, it is less surprising: progressive movements, such as LGBT groups, often face a position of marginalization and discrimination within their societies. Therefore, they hopefully appeal to supranational courts, the EU and the international human rights regime. Conservative groups, on the other hand, tend to claim that they defend a national culture. But despite focusing on the national, too, conservatives globalize the culture wars. They establish connections between countries, religions and language borders and create a common political language.
A good example of the globalization of culture wars by conservatives is the Spanish NGO CitizenGo, created in 2013 by Ignacio Arsuaga, founder and director of the anti-abortion NGO Hazte Oír. CitizenGo is an online campaign platform that manages multiple websites in different languages: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Polish, Croatian, Hungarian, Dutch and Slovak. The Russian-language site was shut down in spring 2022, presumably to hide the group's connection to Russian partners after the invasion of Ukraine. The campaigns address different issues: abortion, same-sex marriage, transgender rights, reproductive rights, religious freedom. The platform publishes two types of articles and petitions: those that are translated and published on all websites; and those that only exist in one language and are geared towards a specific national context. The CitizenGo platform combines transnational and national content, and actively introduces national content into the transnational arena (and vice versa) by translating and disseminating campaigns across borders and linguistic contexts. A recent investigative report examines CitizenGo's role in Africa and its links to Russia.3 CitizenGo is an excellent example of a conservative Catholic national NGO becoming transnational and transdenominational, targeting conservative Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals and Orthodox.
In fact, Russia has become one of the main drivers of the global culture wars.4 Putin's Russia has portrayed itself as a global defender of “traditional values” and has promoted a conservative agenda in its foreign policy and in the sphere of politics. national. The 2012 ban on information on LGBT issues (the Law Against Homosexual Propaganda) was primarily intended to restrict freedom of expression within Russia, but it earned that country a reputation as a defender of family values, the admiration of conservatives in the West and emulation by Hungary, which adopted a similar law. The Russian Orthodox Church has tuned into a discourse of traditional values that is indistinguishable from the moral conservatism of American evangelicals or conservative Catholics. Russian Orthodox operatives denounce the existence of a foreign “LGBT ideology”, organize protest rallies in favor of the traditional family and link up with transnational networks such as CitizenGo. The culture war discourse has become a powerful ideological framework for political and religious leaders to navigate the path of post-communist transition: communism was bad, but liberalism – such is the message of central and eastern European conservatives and Russia – is not an alternative. Thirty years after the end of the cold war, the global culture wars create new divisions.
Such wars have also become a pretext for the invasion of Ukraine. Patriarch Cyril cited "homosexual parades" to justify the war. In a sermon (2 / III / 2022), he said: “Today in the Donbass there is a rejection of the supposed values offered by those who claim world power. Today we are facing a test of loyalty to that new world order, a kind of pass to that happy world, the world of unbridled consumerism, the world of false freedom. The proof is simple and at the same time terrible: it is a homosexual pride parade. The requests made to many to organize a homosexual parade are proof of their loyalty to the new world order. The argument was: Russia had to invade and bomb Ukraine to save Ukrainians from falling for Western values.
Following the Maidan revolt in 2014, Russian propaganda has portrayed Ukraine as "pro-homosexual." That consideration was related to Ukraine's aspiration to join the EU, an institution that is based on treaties and legal instruments binding on all member states and on candidate countries . Among these instruments is Directive 2000/78/CE, which establishes a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation. This directive establishes the prohibition of direct or indirect discrimination based on religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. Therefore, Ukraine's Europeanist aspiration included the approval of that community directive, which prohibits discrimination against homosexual people at work. The directive does not impose an obligation to hold gay parades (there is no such law in the EU). Despite this, the directive was highly controversial in Ukraine. In 2015, the visa exemption for Ukrainian citizens to enter the EU was made conditional on the approval of Directive 2000/78/EC. Most parties in Parliament initially opposed ratification, with the Conservatives arguing that it would lead to the legalization of same-sex marriage. The law was only accepted after the third reading. Ukraine is also among the countries that have not ratified the Istanbul Convention against Domestic Violence, which was controversial due to the gender concept used in the document. The Ukrainian population is mostly skeptical when it comes to granting rights to homosexual people. Polls show that only 14% of the population supports these explicit rights.
Thus, Patriarch Cyril not only repeats a stereotype that has become commonplace in the Russian media, but intentionally exaggerates, demonizes and misrepresents a real debate in Ukrainian politics. In Russian discourse, Russia represents: traditionalism, religion, heterosexuality, population growth and, paradoxically, democracy. It is claimed that Europe represents liberal values, secularism, homosexuality, demographic decline and, instead of democracy, a homosexual lobby. In other words, Russian propaganda has created a geography of values where Ukraine's orientation towards the EU is a path to damnation and where the only salvation lies in the East, alongside Russia. Russian justifications for the war present Ukraine as a battlefield on which two incompatible value systems collide: Russia and the West. The image is powerful and overwhelming. But it is wrong: Ukrainian society is not only characterized by many of the traditional values that Russia wants to uphold, it also tries to combine them with a democratic political identity.
The caricature of the West and Western values spread by the Russian media and the words of the Orthodox patriarch are not specifically Russian. The same views are expressed by the right in the West. Many conservative Christians in the West are not comfortable with advances in individual rights and liberties that call into question gender roles and established canons of morality. However, it is likely that only a few think that moral conflicts must be fought with arms.
The cultural wars between progressive and conservative values have dominated the world political landscape for many years, especially in the US. The division and political contestation between a progressive, individualistic and therefore more heterogeneous vision of society and an interpretation of the A conservative, communal and traditionalist society in religious terms is a reality in all contemporary democratic societies. In the last decade, Russia has managed to be identified as a defender of conservatism. The political right in Italy, Spain, Hungary, Germany, Austria and France have recognized Russia's role in this area and some have come into direct contact with the Russian Orthodox Church to promote their ideas about the traditionalist family. In other words, Russia has acquired a place and a role in the world culture wars.
Conflicts and tensions between progressive and conservative values are a reality in contemporary societies, which are secular, mobile and (also due to immigration) increasingly heterogeneous. Value conflicts are normal in such circumstances, and democratic institutions are there to balance them. Balancing is not easy and it is not always possible. Any democratic balance is precarious. It requires resilience and high levels of tolerance from citizens, because it does not allow for maximalist solutions. Russia, on the other hand, represses the pluralism of opinions and offers a model of authoritarian, culturally homogeneous and dictatorial political power. She introduces herself as the other from Europe. The European political right has been attracted, at least in part, by that image. The war in Ukraine may change the fascination with Russia as the defender of Christian Europe against liberal values. As divisions over values and freedoms in contemporary societies will continue to test the democratic order, Russia's attack on Ukraine should serve as a warning that culture wars can turn into real wars.
Kristina Stoeckl is Professor of Sociology at the University of Innsbruck (Austria).
