Gertrude Himmelfarb: a prophet of the culture war

The culture war has colonised political discourse in Western countries. We argue about the supposed racial undertones of American Eagle ads, or the cancellation of celebrities for rude behaviour, or gender-neutral toilets. It all seems so superficial and so divisive at the same time

Of course, the seemingly trivial can be profoundly significant. As essayists Diana Trilling and Joan Didion often discovered, seemingly small issues can sometimes point to much larger ones. But that isn’t what is happening today. The issues dominating our political discourse are significant only insofar as they serve the interests of our cultural elites.

This is why the work of American intellectual historian Gertrude Himmelfarb (1922-2019), also known as Bea Kristol, is so important. She warned of the growing conflict between a liberal, ‘progressive’ elite and the people, and she did so decades ago. A titan of conservative thought, Himmelfarb wrote in her 1999 work, One Nation, Two Cultures:

‘In every civilised society… there have always been two different schemes or systems of morality at the same time; of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or… the loose system. The former is generally admired and revered by the common people; the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted by what are called people of fashion.’

These days, on the battleground of our shared media space, ‘the people of fashion’ – that is, our cultural elites – have the upper hand.

In her 2024 book, Minority Rule, identitarian activist Ash Sarkar claims that giving certain, seemingly trivial culture-war issues priority (while conspicuously ignoring others) is how the media elite exercise power.

This implies that the culture wars are an orchestrated distraction. But for our elites, they are more than that. Advocating for gender-neutral toilets or criticising the supposed racial undertones of a jeans ad is not a distraction – it is a way to assert one’s higher moral status. They used to demonstrate their superiority to vast swathes of the populace through their luxury consumption. Now they do so through their ‘luxury beliefs’. These are the status symbols of our professional, managerial elites. They prefer emblems and narratives to material objects, BLM bumper stickers to new Rolex watches.

Patrick Buchanan may have popularised the term ‘culture wars’ in his infamous Republican National Convention speech in 1992. But Gertrude Himmelfarb was already writing in depth about the culture war by then. She noted how a new cultural elite had begun centering their understanding of morality around ideas like ‘authenticity’, ‘self-expression’ and ‘inclusivity’. These nebulous concepts, she argued, functioned more as performance than genuine principle. Social status was becoming inextricably linked to attending the right protests, using the right language and supporting the right causes.

Himmelfarb understood the concept of virtue-signalling decades before it was even conceived as such. She also understood the detrimental effect these new moral fads had on those without ‘elite’ status. Indeed, Himmelfarb would have had a field day with the BLM mantra, ‘defund the police’ – a slogan parroted by smug suburban elites at the expense of the disadvantaged people who would have to live with its consequences.

Of course, the working classes are rapidly losing interest in being preached at. According to a New York Times analysis last year, ‘voters in core urban counties shifted the most toward [Donald] Trump’. In this regard, the decision of Team Trump to brand Kamala Harris as being ‘for they / them’ instead of for the voters, hit a sweet spot. Trump was exposing the political and cultural elites’ estrangement from the majority of voters. Time and time again, progressive policies, from open borders to trans rights, have proven hugely detrimental to middle- and working-class people. They really do rule for they / them, and not the people.

Himmelfarb, too, recognised the divisive and disastrous impact of ‘progressive’ policymaking. Flinging open the borders, she said, is deeply destabilising. It suppresses wages, disrupts services and upturns family life, and it does so largely in working-class towns. Those championing high levels of immigration from their leafy, homogenous neighbourhoods are largely insulated from its effects. For them, it really is a luxury belief.

If she were still alive today, Himmelfarb would take interest not only in how far the culture war has progressed as a result of technology, but also how many of its core tenets remain unchanged. If we are to have any hope of moving beyond today’s impasse, Himmelfarb’s remains an essential voice.

Peter Ungar is a councillor in Budapest and a member of the the Hungarian Green Party.