The culture wars and politics now.

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2019

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Philip Dodd is joined by Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds, the commentator David Goodhart, the writer and campaigner Beatrix Campbell, and the academic Maya Goodfellow, author of Hostile Environment - How Immigrants Became Scapegoats, to reflect on the role of culture and identity in politics in Europe and post election Britain.

Have the so-called culture wars consumed traditional politics? Are debates about race, nation, values and belonging injecting a much-needed dimension to traditional left-right democracy, or are they distracting from essential socio-economic concerns? Are the culture wars a feature of the left, the right, or both? You can find other discussions on the culture wars and identity on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jngzt.

Producer: Eliane Glaser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm
0:32.9	Philip Dodd. This is the Arts and Ideas podcast with a conversation about whether the culture was of
0:38.9	Eaton politics. It's coming up after this short message. Hi, I'm Alistair Sook and I want to tell you
0:46.2	about the way I see it, a brand new podcast from BBC Radio 3. It's a 30-part series in which
0:52.8	we're throwing open the collection at MoMA,
0:55.2	the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to some of the sharpest creative minds of our time.
1:00.9	We'll be speaking to comedian Steve Martin, writer Roxanne Gay, musician Steve Reich, and many,
1:07.6	many more. I'll be your guide throughout the series, so join me as I explore one of the greatest collections of modern art in the world.
1:16.2	If you'd like to hear more, just search for The Way I See It on BBC Sounds.
1:22.3	Hello, if war is the continuation of politics by other means, there may be politics has in its turn simply become an occasion to engage in the culture wars that rage across Europe and the US.
1:38.3	The recent election in Poland was certainly fought largely on the terrain of culture. And the 2016 US election
1:46.6	had more than a fair share of cultural battles, from Donald Trump's treatment of women
1:52.3	to Larry Clinton's despising of the deplorables. And this isn't to mention last week's UK election,
2:00.2	which some postmortems claimed was won and was a lost around Brexit, with its issues of patriotism, belonging, class and race.
2:10.5	I want everybody who comes here and makes their lives here to be and to feel British.
2:17.3	That's the most important thing. and to learn English. So in this
2:21.1	programme we ask, have the culture was simply taken over politics? Later we'll bring into the
2:27.6	conversation David Goodhart, writer, commentator and head of the demography, immigration and integration unit at the think-tank policy exchange,
2:38.1	author and campaigner Beatrix Campbell, and writer and academic Mya Goodfellow, author of hostile environment,
2:45.2	how immigrants became scapegoats.
	...

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