Woke up this morning, bought myself The Sun: The British press stokes the culture war then acts all innocent...
Our survey says... blame the 'wokists'.
One of the British press’ favourite tricks is to report on events or trends without any reference to its own role in framing, promoting, and prolonging them.
The so-called ‘culture war’ is one of the best (worst) examples. The newspapers pick at that scab daily but put on a big show of tactical ignorance when their rhetoric seeps into real life.
In today’s Times, political reporter Eleni Courea presents the results of a “major study” by pollster and old Boris Johnson university pal Frank Lutz under the headline ‘Woke’ culture war is biggest dividing line among voters. She writes:
“Wokeism” and the culture wars are on course to becoming the biggest dividing line in British politics, a prominent pollster has concluded following a major study into voter attitudes.
Frank Luntz, who spent nearly three decades carrying out work for the Republican Party in the US and advised presidents including George W Bush on political language, said that within six to 12 months cultural divisions in Britain would catch up with those in the United States.
“The problem with woke and with cancel culture is that it is never done. The conflict and divisions never end,” he said. “This is not what the people of the UK want — but it’s coming anyway.”
Boy, sounds like Frank is definitely a good faith actor. How could anyone who has spent his career working for the Right be anything else? Courea continues:
Luntz joined the Centre for Policy Studies, a centre-right think tank in London, in May to carry out a study on US-UK democracy and political language. Its findings, which will be published and presented to a cross-party group of MPs this week, contain key lessons for both the Tory and Labour parties, according to Luntz.
When it comes to defining and shaping political language, Luntz has form. In 2009, a report written by Luntz — "The Israel Project's 2009 Global Language Dictionary — marked “not for distribution or publication” was immediately leaked to Newsweek. In it, the pollster recommends that Israeli spokespeople ensure they call Palestinian negotiating points “demands”…
Americans don’t like it when either side makes ‘demands’ on the other. It sounds too strident and uncompromising. Then say ‘Palestinians aren’t content with their own state. Now they are demanding territory inside Israel.’
… and suggests they capitalise on post-9/11 paranoia in the US:
[Talk about] ‘Mass Palestinian immigration.’ Thanks to 9/11 and the continuing threat of terrorism, Americans are particularly afraid of mass immigration of anyone right now. Comparing the challenges facing Americans in dealing with unrestricted immigration and Israel’s situation will be well received.
Luntz was also — though he has since tried to distance himself from the policy — central in persuading the Bush administration to move away from talking about ‘global warming’ in favour of ‘climate change’ which sounds less severe. Yes, we are not boiling the frog, we are merely changing the climate in the pot.
In an interview with PBS’ Frontline show in 2007, Luntz described his work as about exploiting the emotional qualities of language:
It’s all emotion. But there’s nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional … my job is to look for the words that trigger the emotion… We know that words and emotion together are the most powerful force known to mankind.
A good example of Luntz’s manipulative powers is the ‘death tax’ campaign. A profile of James Martin, leader of the Koch brothers-funded 60 Plus Association, explains how the pollster shifted the language around inheritance tax:
Frank Luntz’ polling revealed that 'death tax' sparked voter resentment in a way that 'inheritance tax' and 'estate tax' couldn't match. After all, who wouldn't be opposed to a 'tax on death'? Luntz shared his findings with Republicans and included the phrase in the GOP's Contract with America. Luntz went so far as to recommend in a memo to GOP lawmakers that they stage press conferences 'at your local mortuary' to dramatize the issue.
'I believe this backdrop will clearly resonate with your constituents,' he wrote. 'Death is something the American people understand.' Apparently, he's right. Spurred by Luntz, Republicans have employed the term 'death tax' so aggressively that it has entered the popular lexicon. Nonpartisan venues like newspapers and magazines have begun to use it in a neutral context—a coup for abolitionists like Martin.
What Luntz did with ‘the death tax’ — getting it to move from a right-wing talking point to a ‘neutral’ term used by the media — has also happened with ‘woke’. What was once a specific term about political consciousness which could be traced back to Leadbelly’s rejoinder that “best stay woke, keep their eyes open” at the end of a 1938 recording of his song Scottsboro Boys has been stolen and reshaped into a right-wing slur.
British newspapers now use ‘woke’ and many ugly variants (‘wokeists’, ‘wokerati’, ‘wokeism’ etc. etc.) to mean anything they don’t like that might be considered to stem from calls — I nearly wrote ‘demands’ there, fuck you, Luntz — for social justice. Yet those same papers pretend that the ‘culture war’ is an organic occurrence rather than something caused by political operators like Luntz and the press’ own reporters and columnists.
Not including Courea’s piece today, The Times and Sunday Times have published 15 news reports and columns using the word ‘woke’ in a disparaging way and/or discussing the ‘culture war’. When Times columnist and boy detective, James Marriot wrote in June that “the culture war is running out of steam” his argument clearly didn’t reach his colleagues.
Just as Marriot’s column was balanced on chatter from a think tank — in that case, the Policy Institute at King’s College, London — Luntz’s intervention in the ‘war on woke’ that has been so eagerly leapt on by The Times is backed by a stable of right-wing wonks. Courea writes:
Luntz joined the Centre for Policy Studies, a centre-right think tank in London, in May to carry out a study on US-UK democracy and political language.
Its findings, which will be published and presented to a cross-party group of MPs this week, contain key lessons for both the Tory and Labour parties, according to Luntz.
You’d have to be dreadfully cynical to conclude that the conclusions of Luntz’s exhaustive two-month study into US-UK democracy were pretty much set before he put pen to paper and meat paw to keyboard. Luckily, I am dreadfully cynical and that’s exactly what I think.
That the Centre for Policy Studies — co-founded by Margaret Thatcher in 1974 — is led by Times columnist Robert Colville explains how the findings of Luntz’s as-yet-unpublished report are being trailed by the paper. It’s also unsurprising that a think tank and pressure group led by Colville, who was a co-writer of the last Conservative Party manifesto, would produce research that argues Labour’s only chance of electoral success is to be more like the Tories.
Courea’s report in The Times continues:
Asked for his advice to Starmer [Luntz] said that Labour should place greater emphasis on issues of security and safety, which are a top priority for voters, and avoid calling for higher taxes on individuals or businesses because the public think they too will be affected. He stressed that racial inequality was the number one priority for Labour supporters but not one voter group, and that those most concerned with “woke” issues were Labour-supporting women in their late 20s and early 30s.
Translation: Suck up to the rich, ignore young voters in cities, treat your existing supporters like dog mess, and endear yourself to racists as much as possible.
The way polls are constructed, surveys are conducted, and data is presented matters a great deal. Luntz does not have a good track record on that front.
Way back in 1997, the American Association for Public Opinion Research — of which Luntz was not a member — criticised him for refusing to release his polling data to support his claims. He said he had not done so “because of client confidentiality”. In 2000, he was censured by the National Council for Public Polls “for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the [2000] Republican convention”.
In an interview with Salon that year, Luntz admitted that he cherry-picks results and defended the practice, comparing himself to a lawyer:
But what about AAPOR’s claim that when you make results public, you owe it to people to release all the data. “I don’t agree,” [Luntz] says. “Say you poll on an environmental issue, and on eight of the 10 questions the numbers are in your favour. Why release the other two? It’s like being a lawyer … This is my case, and these are the strong arguments and these are the weak ones. You go with your strongest case.”
There are a few problems with this analogy. First, pollsters aren’t lawyers; they are (in theory) researchers, and are treated by journalists as such. Second, in a trial there are prosecutors and defense lawyers, and everyone is working off the same page. There is an established pool of evidence that either side can argue over. What Luntz proposes is a trial in which a lawyer makes his case with no opposition, and no opportunity for a jury to consider the source.
In that context, consider the following ‘findings’ highlighted by Courea’s report in today’s Times:
Some 81 per cent of Tory voters agreed that the UK was a nation of “equality and freedom”, while 19 per cent said it was “institutionally racist and discriminatory nation”. Among Labour voters 52 per cent agreed with the former and 48 per cent with the latter.
According to his findings, 40 per cent of all voters believe cancel culture enforces a “thought and speech police ‘’ that can ruin lives, while 25 per cent think it is a good thing because if you say something sexist or racist you should “face the consequences”.
What’s missing are the questions that Luntz asked to produce these results. How did he frame them and what questions went unanswered? We’ll likely never know because that’s not what Luntz is about. He’s a propagandist wrapped in a stolen lab coat, a shifty political operator leaning on selective statistics to back up the distorting and divisive slogans he peddles.
Of course, that delights The Times because it is fighting the culture war daily and any additional ammunition is welcome, no matter how it was created. The paper is no less reactionary than its tabloid sibling The Sun; it’s simply in possession of a more expensive dictionary and an inflated opinion of itself.
Last month, Kelvin MacKenzie — a man with so many axes to grind you could mistake him for a medieval armourer — claimed in The Spectator that The Sun, his former fiefdom, had ‘banned’ the word ‘woke’:
A couple of weeks ago Ally Ross, the longtime TV critic at the Sun, was summoned to the managing editor’s office. Such confrontations normally involve expenses…
This conversation with Ally was not about money. It was much more serious. It was solemnly explained to him that he had used the word ‘woke’ in his column — and it had been decreed on high that ‘woke’ was synonymous with racial injustice. So, from now on, columnists should not use the word in a disparaging manner in the Sun.
The Sun replied with a lengthy statement which included the assurance that it was as obsessed with ‘wokery’ as it has ever been:
It is complete nonsense to say that the word 'woke' has been banned from the Sun. No such conversations have taken place — with Ally Ross or anyone on the paper. We cover 'woke' stories on the front page regularly, including today, and we use the word throughout the paper and in leader columns.
It has since introduced a special logo (“The Sun’s Wokiepedia1”) to highlight its ‘war on woke’ stories. Kelvin should be delighted.
Rupert Murdoch has been fighting the ‘culture war’ since before the phrase existed. It’s what his newspapers exist to do. They are vehicles for his personal political peccadillos as much as they are a means of protecting and promoting particular politicians he supports.
Where we get ‘culture war’ stories now, we used to get ‘PC gone mad’ and ‘Brussels eurocrats banning our bananas’. It’s the same old shit with a slightly new spin. The underlying aim remains the same: Divide and conquer.
Accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Australia Day Foundation in January 2021, Murdoch said:
For those of us in media, there is a real challenge to confront. A wave of censorship that seeks to silence conversation, to stifle debate and ultimately stop individuals and societies from realising their potential.
This rigidly enforced conformity, aided and abetted by so-called social media, is a straitjacket on sensibility. Too many people have fought too hard in too many places for freedom of speech to be suppressed by this awful woke orthodoxy.
News UK’s constant arguments in favour of not freedom of speech but the freedom of right-wing speech come from the top. No one tells those columnists what to write though. They don’t have to; everyone knows what Rupert thinks and what he wants to read. And Luntz’s ‘results’ will be music to his ears.
A pun that it appears to have stolen from far-right Twitter goomba James Lindsay.