The second thing to note is how, while professing their solidarity with the poor, liberals encode culture war with an opposed class message: more often than not, their fight for multicultural tolerance and women’s rights marks the counter-position to the alleged intolerance, fundamentalism, and patriarchal sexism of the “lower classes.” The way to unravel this confusion is to focus on the mediating terms the function of which is to obfuscate the true lines of division. The way “modernization” is used in the recent ideological offensive is exemplary here: first, an abstract opposition is constructed between “modernizers” (those who endorse global capitalism in all its aspects, from economic to cultural) and “traditionalists” (those who resist globalization). Into this category of those-who-resist are then thrown all, from the traditional conservatives and populist Right to the “Old Left” (those who continue to advocate Welfare state, trade unions…). This categorization obviously does comprise an aspect of social reality

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