Reading Marcello Veneziani’s reflection on the “culture war that never happened,” I found myself wondering whether we need to take his argument one step further. Veneziani argues, following Alain de Benoist, that the progressive left has lost without the conservative right ever truly winning, because neither side has produced the profound cultural transformation that a genuine war of ideas should ultimately leave behind. I find that argument convincing, but perhaps the problem is even more radical than that. Perhaps what we are witnessing is not simply the defeat of one side and the failure of the other to win, but the triumph of something that is gradually replacing politics and even political culture itself: narrative.
In other words, perhaps what we have witnessed was never really a culture war, but an endless war of competing narratives.
The distinction is more than semantic. A genuine culture war should eventually produce a transformation of reality, because when an idea is truly capable of conquering a society, sooner or later it should be reflected in institutions, social behavior, educational models, ideas about family, work, community and human nature. It should leave visible traces in people's everyday lives.
Instead, looking back over the last few decades, what we see above all is an almost endless succession of competing stories: the right describing its struggle against the left, the left describing its resistance to the right, populists portraying themselves as rebels against the elites, sovereignists promising the return of the nation, progressives celebrating the transcendence of old identities, and conservatives calling for a return to tradition.
And while everyone is telling their story, reality simply moves on.
This may be one of the most striking features of our age: we have developed an extraordinary ability to produce interpretations of reality while gradually losing the ability to confront reality without first turning it into a narrative that allows us to feel we are on the right side.
Reality is deeply uncomfortable because it refuses to obey our categories. It does not know left or right. It does not appear on talk shows, use hashtags, or care whether it confirms our beliefs. People continue to be born and die. Families continue to form and fall apart. Human beings continue to grow old. Work is changing under the pressure of technology. Societies are aging. Wars produce consequences that no propaganda can completely control. Markets alter the balance of power. Artificial intelligence is already transforming entire areas of the economy and human knowledge without waiting for politicians to develop a theory about what is happening.
And yet, in the face of all this, we continue to spend most of our time discussing the stories we tell about these phenomena.
That is where what I would call the escape from reality begins.
Narrative as the Great Collective Theater
This is not simply propaganda, which has always existed, nor political manipulation, which is as old as power itself. The contemporary phenomenon is deeper. Today, the representation of reality has become a permanent component of reality itself. We no longer merely experience events; we experience them simultaneously through their media, political and digital representations.
An incident that takes place on the other side of the world can become a global symbol within hours. A word can acquire an importance completely disproportionate to the phenomenon it is supposed to describe. An image can generate millions of reactions before anyone has even had time to understand what actually happened.
Modern society has built a gigantic narrative machine that must operate continuously because its very functioning depends on the constant production of attention. Every day there must be something to discuss, someone to accuse, someone to defend, a new outrage, a new scandal, a new confrontation, a new episode capable of dividing the audience into opposing camps.
And here a question arises that perhaps we should have the courage to ask.
Who benefits from all this?
If we assume, without turning the argument into a conspiracy theory, that there are governing, economic, financial, technological and institutional elites at the top of society whose ability to influence events is vastly greater than that of the average citizen, then we can observe something fairly simple: the wars of narrative rarely reach the point of seriously challenging the deeper structures of power.
And this is the point that interests me.
The Great Video Game Beneath the Elites
We could almost imagine contemporary society as one enormous video game.
Billions of people are playing underneath.
They divide themselves into teams.
They choose their symbols.
They argue.
They insult one another.
They accuse each other of being fascists, communists, globalists, nationalists, woke, anti-woke, progressives, reactionaries, populists, radicals or conservatives.
Every day brings a new match.
A new issue.
A new enemy.
A new emergency.
A new scandal.
And millions of people invest an enormous amount of emotional energy in the game.
But the fundamental question is this: how much does the game actually challenge those who stand above it?
Perhaps very little.
In fact, the opposite may happen.
The more the players are absorbed in fighting one another, the less attention they pay to the rules of the game.
That is a crucial distinction.
Because you can argue endlessly about which team should win without ever asking who built the field, who sets the rules, who controls the infrastructure, who owns the means of communication, who possesses the resources necessary to shape public opinion and, above all, who has the ability to keep playing even when the teams change.
That may be the most sophisticated form of power.
Not preventing conflict.
Allowing conflict, provided that it remains confined within certain boundaries.
The Conflict That Does Not Threaten Power
A genuinely threatened power structure would have reason to fear a culture capable of challenging its underlying assumptions.
But if dissent can be transformed into identity, spectacle, entertainment and media consumption, the problem changes.
The dissident can become a celebrity.
The rebel can become an influencer.
The protester can become a market niche.
Opposition can become a product.
Even rebellion can be monetized.
And so a person can spend ten hours a day denouncing the system while simultaneously feeding, through their own outrage, the very system they claim to oppose.
It is an extraordinary paradox.
But perhaps this is precisely what makes narrative so powerful: it can absorb even its own opposition.
There is no need to eliminate the enemy if you can turn the enemy into part of the show.
Right Against Left: An Endless Match
From this perspective, the permanent confrontation between right and left takes on a different meaning.
This does not mean that the right and left are identical. They are not, and their differences can be significant.
But we should ask how often those differences actually translate into a different distribution of real power.
Because if every political alternation produces a new narrative while leaving the fundamental economic, technological and financial structures of society largely intact, then citizens may experience themselves as living through permanent conflict while, at a higher level, continuity remains far stronger than change.
The protagonists change.
Governments change.
Words change.
Election campaigns change.
But the game continues.
And perhaps that continuity is the real phenomenon we should be studying.
Narrative Has a Political Function
Narrative does not merely exist to persuade.
It can also distract.
It occupies mental space.
It transforms structural problems into identity conflicts.
If a society is constantly occupied with arguing over which group is morally superior to another, it may have less time to ask who actually owns wealth, who controls technological infrastructure, who sets economic standards, who has access to strategic information and who can influence decisions that affect everyone.
The mechanism becomes remarkably simple.
I give you an enemy.
You focus on the enemy.
Meanwhile, the structure of power remains in the background.
There does not even have to be a single central command. And that may be the most interesting aspect of all. A system can produce this result without anyone having consciously designed every step. Interests can converge spontaneously. The media need attention. Social platforms need engagement. Politicians need votes. Markets need consumption. Users need to feel that they belong to something.
In the end, everyone can contribute to the construction of the same gigantic narrative machine without anyone necessarily being its director.
The Most Extraordinary Thing Is That the Game Can Be Enjoyable
And perhaps that is precisely why it works so well.
The political and cultural game does not necessarily harm those who participate in it.
In fact, it can be entertaining.
It can provide identity.
It can provide friends and enemies.
It can provide a sense of purpose.
It can allow someone to feel like a fighter without actually being required to change their life.
You can fight a culture war from your phone, comfortably sitting on your sofa.
You can destroy governments, ideologies and political systems with a post.
You can denounce the elites while continuing to live inside the same platforms, markets and technological infrastructures that those elites help control or influence.
It is an extraordinarily engaging activity.
But precisely for that reason, it may be harmless to those who actually occupy the top of the system.
The player believes they are fighting.
The system simply records another match.
The Real Problem Is Not Leaving the Game, but Seeing the Game
Perhaps the first form of emancipation does not even consist in choosing the right team.
It consists in understanding that there is a game.
Because as long as we keep asking whether we should side with the right or the left, with progressives or conservatives, with one camp or the other, we remain trapped within the logic of confrontation.
The questions should become different.
Who sets the rules?
Which structures remain unchanged when governments change?
Which forms of power remain independent of electoral alternation?
Which transformations take place regardless of which party wins?
And above all: what are the issues we are encouraged to debate, and what are the issues we rarely debate at all?
That may be a far more interesting question than the usual question of who won an election.
And in the End, There Is Reality
Because however sophisticated the game becomes, it eventually encounters a limit.
Reality.
We can construct infinite narratives, but we cannot prevent people from growing old. We can create ever-new identities, but we cannot eliminate the human need for belonging and love. We can promise almost unlimited technological progress, but we cannot abolish the physical limits of nature. We can talk about politics for hours, but we cannot transform an economy that does not work or a society that can no longer reproduce itself simply by changing the words we use.
And above all, we can argue endlessly about who should govern, but we cannot indefinitely avoid asking who actually holds power.
Perhaps this is the great escape from reality of our time: we have turned politics into a video game in which millions of people engage in furious battles without realizing that the fundamental question is no longer which team will win, but who designed the field and who continues to make the rules.
I do not know whether there is a single control room, nor do I believe that we need to imagine one.
But I do know that concentrated power exists, that elites exist, that organized interests exist, and that the distribution of power does not automatically coincide with the distribution of electoral support.
That is precisely why we should stop, at least for a moment, looking only at the spectacle taking place on the stage.
We should look behind the stage.
Because perhaps the greatest victory of narrative is not that it has convinced us that one particular story is true.
It is that it has convinced us that the story we are watching is the whole of reality.
And while we choose our team, argue with the opposing team and convince ourselves that we are taking part in some great historical struggle, someone may simply be continuing to run the theater.
Perhaps the real culture war never began.
Something far more effective began instead: a great narrative video game in which the players fight one another while power remains outside the arena.
And perhaps the first truly revolutionary act is not to choose a different team.
It is to stop playing for long enough to finally see who built the game.
