94Ha Viewpoint
Trump’s success in winning the presidency of the United States again is due to complex factors, but some of them reflect the turning point of the American “culture war” and the resurgence of conservative forces, which is a major trend worth noting. Since the United States is still the world’s top power and the leader of the Western world, Trump’s second term will have a profound impact on Western society and the world. From a historical perspective, the current “culture war” in the United States and even Western society, although the theoretical discourse and the opposing camps have changed, is essentially a continuation of the Cold War period. The two irreconcilable ideologies of communism, which represents the advocacy of collectivism, and capitalism, which represents respect for individual freedom, are incomparable.
Western Marxist scholars who advocate communism have been forced to find new political legitimacy and legitimacy since the tyranny of Soviet dictator Stalin was ruthlessly exposed. The slogan of “Long March through the system” proposed by German socialist student activist Dutschke in the 1960s is regarded as a descendant of the “cultural hegemony” theory of Gramsci, the founder of the Italian Communist Party. Simply put, it advocates the realization of the communist revolutionary ideal by infiltrating and parasitizing the capitalist power system. This ideological revolutionary movement started in the field of education, by continuously cultivating generations of elites who believe in the concept of social justice, and then gradually implementing the revolutionary ideals after they gradually gain institutional power, including government, media, cultural circles and large enterprises.
Data show that American higher education institutions have rapidly shifted to the left in recent years. A survey by the Institute of Higher Education in the United States in 2017 found that 60% of university professors considered themselves to be leftists or extreme leftists. This ratio is higher in the humanities and social sciences, and is even worse today. Therefore, the more educated Americans are, the more they tend to support the Democratic Party politically. In Washington, the capital where this group is concentrated, 90.3% of voters (nearly 300,000 people) voted for Harris of the Democratic Party in the 2024 presidential election. Although the Republican elites are different from the Democratic Party in specific policies, they are actually similar in basic concepts. This is why Trump, as a political novice, can subvert and take over the Republican Party as an outsider to the system with the help of grassroots power, and vigorously purge left-leaning officials within the system at the beginning of his second term.
It must be said that Trump’s vote share increased in almost all constituencies across the country, thanks to the Biden administration’s missteps in major livelihood areas. Open borders have led to a large influx of illegal immigrants, undermining public order, and the authorities’ generous financial allocations to illegal immigrants exceed the care for veterans or vulnerable citizen groups. Extreme green policies have pushed up oil prices and inflation, causing widespread dissatisfaction. Biden’s indulgence of the radical social and cultural agenda of the Democratic Party’s far-left forces has also helped Trump to gather opposition forces.
During the four years of the Biden administration, the Democratic Party’s far-left forces pushed the progressive agenda to the extreme, encouraging sexual minority ideology in elementary schools and instigating children to undergo sex reassignment surgery despite parental opposition; in the workplace, including the military, in the name of diversity and equality (DEI), discriminating against white men, subverting the spirit of meritocracy, and using public opinion pressure to force companies to adopt similar employment standards. Many large companies have cancelled DEI departments and policies after Trump won. Trump also ordered the federal government to do so on his first day in office. The Democratic Party lost a large number of votes from young people, blacks and Latino men in the presidential election, showing that the extreme left line that constantly emphasizes racial and gender politics has caused disgust and resistance from a considerable number of Americans. Another executive order by Trump, emphasizing that the federal government only recognizes two genders, men and women, is a formal declaration of war on “woke culture”.
The so-called “woke culture” is that the Western extreme left has deduced the traditional Marxist theory of capitalists oppressing the proletariat into an abstract opposition between oppressors and victims, and then specifically implemented it as white men oppressing other groups, and systematically discriminating against white men in various policies under the banner of fairness and justice. Therefore, conservatives who emphasize patriotism and the American spirit describe their opponents as globalist elites who want to destroy Western civilization and conspire to organize a world government, so they open borders to welcome illegal immigrants. Musk, the world’s richest man, supports the extreme right-wing British Reform Party and the German Alternative for Germany, which is to determine that the British and German institutional elites are implementing desovereignization policies that subvert Western civilization.
The conservative line, marked by Trump’s strong return, has a considerable public opinion base based on the election results. Judging from his performance after taking office, Trump seems to have a sense of urgency. He may think that he is correcting the chaos in American politics, but he may also go too far and allow the restless far right to use anti-immigrant sentiment to provoke racial and religious confrontation, create greater social divisions, and trigger a backlash from the progressive camp in the United States and Europe; after all, years of operation have given the left a strong institutional strength, especially in the intellectual and media circles. This means that the cultural war within the Western world will further intensify and influence the world situation in the next four years.
Unlike general political differences, cultural wars involve ideology and identity, and there is limited room for compromise. In particular, the issues of racism and religious confrontation will inevitably feel the spillover effect for a diverse society like Singapore in the Internet age. Trump’s China policy during his first term has made some Chinese Americans feel uneasy at some implementation levels. His Middle East policy has also aroused strong religious hostility in some American communities. How Trump promotes his cultural war agenda is bound to affect global geopolitics and subsequent developments, and therefore deserves attention from all walks of life.
