Culture wars

Italy is a fairly recent country. The Kingdom of Italy was founded only in 1861, bringing various groups of Italic peoples together . As the country was being formed Massimo d’Azeglio, prime Minister of Sardinia and one of the chief architects of the country’s formation was believed to have said ‘We have made Italy, now we must make Italians!’

To make its citizens believe in and support the new country, it was necessary to get people to buy into the concept of Italy and create an Italian culture. It is clear then that the country came before the culture. Cultures existed before unification and continue to do so today. Even though people may think of themselves as Italian there are still cultural differences between the regions. The people of Sicily have a difference in their approach to life from those in Rome or Milan.

Despite d’Azeglio’s attempts there is not one all consuming Italian culture.

England is a much older country, perhaps approaching a thousand years old. There has been plenty of time to create a sense of Englishness yet there are wide cultural variations among its population. I can assure you that the people of my home county, while having many things in common, do not share the culture of the people of our capital city. There is not a single English culture and there is absolutely not a single British culture.

This is why I get upset when the prospect of culture wars is raised. I cannot put it better than Wikipedia: A culture war is a form of cultural conflict (metaphorical war) between different social groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology upon mainstream society, or upon the other. In political usage, culture war is a metaphor for “hot-button” politics about values and ideologies, realized with intentionally adversarial social narratives meant to provoke political polarization among the mainstream of society.

So called culture wars are fabricated entirely as a political tool, designed to divide people. It is just another example of othering. They are not like us as they have a different culture.

The job of a politician is to bring society together, not to divide it. Those who believe that culture wars are the way forward do not share my culture. They are proof positive that a single countrywide culture does not exist. Don’t fall for it!