Written by Jack Scott

The term culture wars has a long conservative pedigree. From Von Bismarck’s attempts to Prussianise the new German empire, to Pat Buchanan’s 1992 call to wage a  culture war on the increasingly out of touch American elites. A call now taken up by a new generation of conservative commentators and activists. Yet even as the left descends further and further into insanity and the right rallies more and more against nonsense such as men getting pregnant, or banning all cars, we still find ourselves continually losing the culture war. There are a myriad of reasons for this, from institutional capture, to foreign espionage, to plan misfortune and poor decision making. However one of the critical weaknesses we’ve ignored is the very culture we claim to be fighting over. 

Certainly there’s now a cottage industry of professional bemoaners, giving their same stump speech whenever another franchise falls to the woke-corporate machine. Always wishing to return to the good old days of the early 2000s, when leftwing propaganda came packaged in enjoyable movies and every second character wasn’t a diversity hires self-insert OC. Whatever services they might do as entertainers however, I do not believe that a seven hour takedown of The Last Jedi has done anything to slow the disintegration of western institutions. By the same token when conservatives do make positive comments on culture such as National Review’s list of best conservative movies or another by The Strand Review it reveals a confused idea of what conservatism is. Not concerned with the deeper spirit of culture. Conservatives have for too long been content to claim anything that has a superficial resemblance to one of their imagined conservative golden ages, or co-opt an already popular piece merely because it has some perceived message of individualism or anti-statism.

There will of course be many readers who agree with my criticism up to this point and will attempt to point out that, ‘although this may have been true in the past, conservatives today are making culture’. This is unfortunately false. Like all good falsehoods it does contain a grain of truth, but the overall conclusion of complacency and sameness is still damning. It is true that conservatives make great films that not only offer an aesthetic vision of better times but a deep commentary of the follies of the modern world. Even the writers for con-inc can still have an occasional moment of lucidity as both the National and Strand Review lists contain Whit Stillman’s masterful Metropolitan(1990). These are however the exception, and too often conservative films find themselves buried and forgotten. Their creators spitting into the hurricane that is the leftist cultural machine. It’s not just that conservatives don’t make good films( as leftists claim) or that the disproportionate influence of the left prevents conservatives from making films(as the right claims). Instead any new conservative film has to contend with an army of leftist critics firmly ensconced in prestige positions and ready to subvert any rightwing culture that cannot be simply dismissed. Certainly this has been the fate of the classics, as scholars attempt to make Shakespeares a feminist, or Achilles a homosexual.

To counteract the left, and begin to actually create a conservative culture with which to fight a war over. The right cannot continue to rely on commentators, mere describers of the way the left is moving the world. Instead it needs to get out onto the field of culture and seize it back from the left. It needs artists to provide the material on which a new cannon can be erected. It needs publishers and printers, to make our art available for all to see, without fear of cancellation or destruction. Finally the right needs a class of critics, people who not only talk about art from a rightwing perspective but who can bring to the surface the depth and beauty of conservative classics both ancient and modern.