Culture as a Weapon: Culture Wars in the United States and Egypt

Abstract

This article discusses the phenomenon known as "culture wars" in the United States – an ongoing development that attracted attention in the 1990s and reached its apex during the tenure of former President Donald Trump – and compares it with similar events in Egypt prior to the July 2013 coup. These phenomena pose a great challenge to theories of political culture and the assumption that dominant cultures strongly influence political behaviour. The study concludes that the dynamics of this "cultural" conflict reveal that culture's central role in crafting identity and giving meaning to political and social action also interacts with a variety of potential uses as an instrument of conflict and division. Contrary to Samuel Huntington's argument that cultural differences will delineate the clash of civilizations, the analysis of the cases under study (and, more broadly, of the nature of conflict in today's world) indicates that differences within societies with a common cultural identity can create deeper and more protracted conflicts, and that polarization can drive the parties thereto to enter alliances with actors outside of their cultural setting with whom they are even less compatible. This affirms that cultures are in perpetual transformation, and that transitional experiences (and resistance thereto) may create intense conflict, as happened during the Wars of Religion after the Protestant Reformation in Europe or the American Civil War over the abolition of slavery. Thus, the role of culture does not predetermine the political process, which instead depends on solidarity and apprehension among a culture's constituent groups. Culture itself may be considered the product of conflict and dispute resolution: whether peacefully through adaptation and coexistence or violently through schism (e.g., the American Revolution).