Meanings of guiding culture in English

Often, politicians are nothing but a loyal reflection of their milieu, their culture, their society and their times (zeitgeist and leitkultur).

But nowhere has the argument about nationhood and a leading culture (Leitkultur) been more fiercely debated than in Germany.

Still, every crop of serial killers mirrors and reifies the pathologies of the milieu, the depravity of the Zeitgeist, and the malignancies of the Leitkultur.