WHY UIGHUR LIVES DON’T MATTER TO YOUNG EUROPEANS.

Yet the global adoption of US causes has a more explicitly political function as well. As James Hunter, the first theorist of the “culture war” has argued, a culture war is also a class war, built around the controversial accumulation of status by educated and urban representatives of cognitive-cultural capitalism. Some form of contest will always occur when industry and agriculture decline, and when higher education swells in response, as there is so much status, and wealth, waiting to be claimed. But American media directs these contests onto battlegrounds of cultural values.

#MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter are essentially memes, and the US culture war provides effective memes around which international members of the progressive classes are able to construct their identity. When a twenty-something European representative of the creative industries attends BLM protests, they are not just explicitly supporting black people but implicitly defining themselves against elements of society associated with parochialism and neophobia. It is an expression of self-image as much as a meaningful protest.

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