These culture wars have three main root causes: A revolution in values, globalization, and neoliberalism, Saarts continued in a commentary for Vikerraadio.

Once again a wave of culture wars has had to be tuned into in the Estonian public space. Discussions over a single segment on ETV and the remarks of the chief of the public broadcaster's supervisory board refuse to die down. Why do we have such heated debates about such topics, and where do the roots of the culture wars lie?

The term "Culture war" (Estonian: Kultuurisõda) is a fairly recent anglicism imported into Estonian. It is actually not the most successful Estonian rendering, because "culture" in this context, and in the anglosphere, refers primarily to values and attitudes, not to culture in the broader sense and as we usually understand it in Estonia. A more accurate translation would perhaps be "Value wars."

The concept itself actually dates back to 19th-century Germany, when a stand-off developed between the new, predominantly secular German state, and the Church. The core of that culture struggle, the Kulturkampf, was precisely the question of what role the church might play in education and in public life more broadly.

Later, the culture wars began returning and with greater force to the Western world in the late 1960s, with the turbulent year 1968 and its many student protests serving as a watershed. This ended in disappointment for many young activists and forced them to rethink the entire left-wing movement — this time through a more values- and culture-based lens, distancing themselves from the classical Marxist doctrine of class struggle.

In a broad sense, culture wars in the Western world have three main root causes: A revolution of values, globalization, and neoliberalism. First, the values revolution and the backlash to it: Social scientists have observed that since the 1970s, so-called post-materialist values have begun gradually propagating, especially among younger generations. These stress tolerance towards minorities and different lifestyles; to accept racial and ethnic diversity in society, to elevate the quality of democracy and aspects of participation, and a concern about the planet's future and its ecological environment. In other words, they can also be seen as liberal and progressive values.

However, the rise of these values has not always sat well with society as a whole, and since the 1980s there has been a strong backlash against the advance of these progressive values. For more conservative people, this "anything-goes" attitude and the gradual erosion of traditional ways of life and value systems have never been acceptable. As a result, in the Western world, culture-war fronts have seen a kind of ping-pong effect: At times, liberals have been more successful in imposing their agenda, then follows a conservative backlash, followed by a new wave of liberalization, and so on. Neither side has achieved definitive dominance. The fight has, however, become increasingly vicious and polarized, especially after the powerful rise of right-wing populist parties from the 2010s onwards.

The second root cause of culture wars lies in globalization. Immigration and the spread of global ideas and values all seem, to many more conservative citizens, to undermine the traditional value framework and cultural milieu in which they have been accustomed to living. Naturally, many right-wing politicians themselves work hard to deepen this sense of threat, and to create a narrative that unless something is done, nation-states and distinctive national cultures will soon disappear. At the same time many liberals accustomed to the new social diversity, fail to grasp what the issue is at all and can come to sermonize to society about tolerance in a tone almost as if delivered from a pulpit — further deepening the angry confrontation.

The third aspect to understanding the culture wars is tied rather to the economy. Specifically, for several decades now, neoliberalism has been the dominant ideology in the Western world — a worldview which states we can attain the best economic outcomes when we let markets operate freely and limit state intervention so far as is possible.

In light of this worldview, governments have increasingly stepped back from economic and fiscal policy, handing it over to the global markets, central banks and international organizations (such as the EU and IMF). Nature, however, abhors a vacuum, and as compensation, politicians have begun focusing more and more on non-economic topics — one of whose biggest vote winners seems again to be the battleground of the culture wars.

The culture wars reached Estonia, as well as the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, much later than they did in the West. In the 1990s and 2000s, we had instead to deal with the post-communist transition and the accompanying difficulties and tensions, as well as with the Russian question.

The starter pistol for the culture wars in Estonia was the adoption of the Cohabitation Act of 2014. Since then, the battlefield of the values wars has run sometimes lukewarm, sometimes quite hot, but it has never fully cooled down, and neither is any cooling to be expected, as culture wars are an inherent part of life in the 21st century, just as class conflict was a hallmark of the last century.
In short, any absence of culture wars would be an anomaly, and passionate debates in this field are the new norm.

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