The art of culture war

Gwern Gwynfil

Sun Tzu was a 6th century BCE Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher, and author of the ‘Art of War’. As curious as it sounds, his teachings still hold many lessons for campaigners, culture warriors and leaders today.

Underlying much of Sun Tzu’s strategic thinking is an ethos of allowing your opponents to find their own way to defeat. ‘He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight’. Unfortunately, it seems that most of those who would align themselves against the wailings of the populist right have not yet read Sun Tzu.

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Choosing the Field of Battle

Controlling and choosing the ground upon which to fight certainly confers huge advantages.

Unassailable higher ground, fortified and defensive locations, a natural redoubt, will all add to the chance of victory. This is also true of cultural battles.

But the populists seem to be being given free rein to make these choices.

Why on earth have trans rights issues become synonymous with toilets? Women’s toilets too.

You would never know from this particular culture war battlefield that women transitioning to men consistently outnumber men becoming women by over two to one. Of course, women becoming men don’t suit the populist narrative so they are ignored to make way for ‘hot button’ selective issues which can be amplified to fit a certain narrative.

Those who would oppose such misinformation and misleading portrayals are often sucked in by this, engaging directly on narrow terms set by those who stand to benefit from them. Thus the battlefield is set to favour the populist.

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‘Balk the enemy’s power, force him to reveal himself’

Nothing enrages a populist more than being ignored. They thrive upon the engagement and proliferation of debate and fierce argument around the issues they identify as having the right mix of emotional triggers, with enough basis in reality, so that they can construct a vaguely ‘factual’ argument to underscore the emotive response they seek.

Rarely, if ever, will this withstand real scrutiny, facts and data but it can be enough to convince on a shallow reading.

Ignoring such forays forces them to escalate. Inevitably, the more they escalate the weaker their argument becomes, they become desperate in their pursuit of triggers, using ever more lurid and isolated examples to trigger a response.

Make no mistake, it is those arrayed in opposition that they seek to trigger, not their supporters. For populists, it is vocal opposition that validates them and gives them credence and relevance. They have understood Sun Tzu in ways that those who would stand in opposition have not.

‘If your opponent is of choleric temper, irritate them’

The way to ‘win’ the culture wars is to disengage from them directly in every sense. Allow the opposition to scream and shout into a void until they are hoarse and tired. It is only engagement that gives them fuel and power.

Let me take a recent example of allowing the populists and culture warriors to win without even bringing them to the field of battle. An illustration of how they have understood Sun Tzu’s Art of War whilst those arrayed against them have yet to learn these lessons.

‘Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war and then seek to win’

 In early November, groups campaigning on behalf of Palestine and pressing for peace in Gaza, staged a statue based protest in Cardiff. Their target was the statue of David Lloyd George. They had been drawn into framing legitimate aspirations for peace in the Middle East around a campaign to remove a statue of Wales’ only UK Prime Minister.

This gesture campaigning playing entirely into the hands of the populist culture warriors – it is easy to portray those who attack statues as narrow and blinkered.

Nation’s own Martin Shipton responded to the event with a balanced piece on Lloyd George, his mixed record and fallibility but also his position within his time and drawing attention to some of his more valuable contributions as well as his failures.

The organiser of the protest subsequently responded with a long, rambling polemic, taking a clearly one-sided view of David Lloyd George.

There are valid criticisms of Lloyd George and of Empire in that essay but they are a little lost in what becomes a diatribe, dare I say, a rant, against a dead man from a very different and now relatively distant era. There is no living memory of Lloyd George as PM.

From the very beginning, by choosing to fight a statue, the peace campaign message on behalf of Palestine was destined to be utterly lost in engagement with irrelevant arguments. The people suffering in Gaza don’t care about David Lloyd George or his statue (very few people do), this battlefield will never further any discussion or debate about the need for a ceasefire, for peace and for rebuilding.

The populist warriors did not even need to enter the fray as the battle was lost before it had begun.

‘The Supreme Art of War is to Subdue the Enemy Without Fighting’

Let us imagine a different approach to enlisting a statue in the cause of peace. Wales has an immensely long and rich history of campaigning for peace at a global level.

There is a statue of Henry Richard, the ‘apostle for peace’, on the square in my home town of Tregaron.

The Temple of Peace is in Cardiff.

Shortly after David Lloyd George’s time as Prime Minister of the UK and Empire came to an end, hundreds of thousands of Welsh women were signing the incredible Women’s Peace Petition.

A direct line can be drawn from Henry Richard, with his lifetime of shuttle diplomacy across the length and breadth of Europe, to the creation of the League of Nations and, subsequently, the United Nations. The Temple of Peace, peace petitions and a persistent Welsh voice advocating for peace has played its part in this process for more than a century and a half.

With such a deep and lasting national tradition of campaigning for peace available in Wales, being sucked into a battle about a long dead politician demonstrates an immense lack of tactical awareness. Why allow the internecine culture wars of our age to dictate the battlefield when there is no need to do so?

Positive Contemporary Campaigning

Imagine 350 people gathered as a flash mob at the feet of Henry Richard in Tregaron, drone footage of a packed market town square, stirring speeches highlighting the horror and injustice of war, all embedded in a cultural memory of campaigning for peace - these are the unassailable heights campaigners should seek.

This time the battle is won before it has begun, with affirmation and actions that drive attention and amplify the message. There is no room for culture war as you already possess all of the higher ground.

Patience, Young Grasshopper

Whenever the temptation arises to engage with populists on a field of their choosing remember, ‘if you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by’.