The Liberals response to TRAs shows why Brexit/Trump won

OMFG, if ONLY we could have no-platformed the bloody Leavers with half the effectiveness the TRAs manage, we wouldn't be in this mess. As it happens, I've never seen a single Leave voter bloody silenced anywhere.

thecatfromjapan Any mention of George Soros sets off the alarm for me now.

One of the key priorities for Soros' Open Society Foundation is subjective gender identity. This is not about lizards, it's about doing some basic research on the Foundation's website.

Look at this document:
www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/communities-against-hate-front-line-organizations-20170313.pdf
It lists US$390,000 to trans ors, from just one income stream.

Look at this document laying out the plan to get subjective gender identity in schools in 2015:
www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/lgr_trans-children-youth-20151120.pdf
Note especially the deployment of 'anti-bullying' discourse which has since been mobilized very effectively in UK. Note also how the objection that girls won't want boys in their toilets is strategically addressed.

Am I allowed to confess that the addition of letters to LGBTQ+ makes me smile a little? Or does that make me both bad and twee?

I'm OK with it, though. And I think the ideal should be people with nuanced social and political identities coming together to work for specific goals but not feeling coerced into going along with others - which might be against their interests - because they have to sacrifice part of their identity to be in a (relatively unnuanced) political group.

That's the ideal. I suspect it very rarely feels so simple and unacrimonious.

The trouble with identity politics is that it can feel absolutely psychologically devastating when conflicts arise.

I suppose I can see that e.g. the gay movement has gone from LGB when I was young to LGBT to LGBTQ and now the alphabet soup that means basically anyone.
Feminism was just feminism, then radical/liberal now intersectional, Marxist, ecofeminism, all the way to anything a woman does is feminism.

When they say the Left, I interpreted that as politics to reduce inequality rather than individualistic politics (the Right). Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick though. I'm politically interested but not educated :)

I don't think I agree with that, Quentin. I think it's very polemical and not so nuanced.

It seems to hearken back to an idealised Golden Age, where Leftie politics were unified - but I remember that time as one in which Leftie = white and male and centred on economic/class politics. Anything else was a 'distraction' from The Cause. If you weren't a white male, it didn't feel terribly outward looking.

The 'fractures' were 'distractions' like feminism, anti-racist movements, gay rights movements, calling on the Left for recognition.

Take feminism as a for instance. Did feminism mean that women stopped working for the Labour Party? Did that particular fracturing mean that women became more inward looking, unable to make connections or call for solidarity? Or did women go on doing a lot of the work in the Party, alongside working for feminism? Do women who identify as feminist still manage to put in the hours working for refugee rights, and working in food banks, etc? I think they do.

Anyway, that's my tuppence worth, Quentin. It's certainly an article to get people talking.

I've posted this on a few threads but noones discussed it with me yet, maybe this will be the thread....
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/09/how-modern-addiction-identity-politics-has-fractured-left%3famp
"Identity politics on the left was at first about large classes of people – African Americans, women, gays – seeking to redress major historical wrongs by mobilising and then working through our political institutions to secure their rights. By the 1980s, it had given way to a pseudo-politics of self-regard and increasingly narrow, exclusionary self-definition that is now cultivated in our colleges and universities."
"The main result has been to turn young people back on to themselves, rather than turning them outward towards the wider world they share with others. It has left them unprepared to think about the common good in non-identity terms and what must be done practically to secure it – especially the hard and unglamorous task of persuading people very different from themselves to join a common effort. Every advance of liberal identity consciousness has marked a retreat of effective liberal political consciousness."

Any mention of George Soros sets off the alarm for me now. I immediately wonder if I'm reading the posts of 'EU-Lizards-elite-whatever new nonsense I can come up with' bots. I'm thinking the link with the Trans debate is a something I didn't see coming. Genuinely innovative.

Well, the Angry People, who hated Liberals making them feel stupid (a narrative I question, frankly) seem to have what they wanted with regard to Brexit, anyway. Which the government's own figures now suggest will impact most strongly in the North East (16% hit to GDP there with a No Deal scenario), 20% price rises across the board, and an £80 billion hit to public finances. That's quite a bill for hurt feelings.

Frankly, I think the whole narrative of "I voted Leave because the Remainers made me do it" is utter bollocks. I hear it repeated on MN all the time, but I have yet to see a MNer actually say that's why she voted Leave. It would, of course, be genuinely silly to vote for such economic devastation for whole regions of the UK for those regions.

As for the Trans debate, I think it is far more nuanced than a Lib Fem/Rad Fem split, or a conservative/Liberal split. It's fascinating to see an OP trying to forge the analogy between pro-Trans progressives and Remainers. A somewhat unlikely analogy, I'd say.

George Soros is a Holocaust survivor, someone who is keen on human rights, and a multi-billionaire. It is possible his support for trans people is something that he thinks is the right thing to do. Even if he's misguided.

BTW (sorry, have a mo while it's in the oven), someone mentioned George Soros above.

Soros' Open Society Foundations has had a Women's Rights Program for years.

www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/programs/women-s-rights-program
The past several years have seen women’s rights set back by the global economic crisis, the rise of religious fundamentalism, and a surge in political conservatism. Increasingly, women all over the world are denied access to power, resources, information, and basic rights. The Women’s Rights Program works to improve the lives of women by advancing women’s rights, equality, and participation in decision making, particularly in places where the forces rolling back these rights are most severe.

Through grant making, advocacy, capacity and coalition building, and organizing meetings and exchanges, we support efforts to strengthen access to justice, protect women’s sexual and reproductive rights, and promote economic advancement.

He is deeply hated by some on the right by this. Surprise surprise.

I don't know what the claim about Soros funding TRAs is about. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there's some trans stuff in the Foundations' health programs or rights programs (especially considering what happens to trans people in some countries). But he's given millions over the years to actively promoting women's rights internationally, so doesn't seem the most likely person to be funding TRAs as a deliberate attack on women.

Well absolutely. It's not that they're pro trans people. They're just pro Russia, and this is a convenient wedge for them to drive.

@PerkingFaintly how ironic considering being gay in Russia lands you jail. And with all their "anti homosexual" laws you would think they would on the side of binary genders

SeaChanges, I don't which specific named billionaires crome is referring to, but there's Russian government money going into this too.

I have to do dinner, and may not be able to get back to this tonight, but will try to dig out refs tomorrow.

Naomi Klein's articulation of disaster opportunism made a big impact on me, thecatfromjapan, and I now notice it in a lot of arenas.

And if you don't get a natural disaster, make your own.

In particular, we keep hearing about "disruptive" technology and business practices. Ie break down existing structures, chuck as many chips in the air as you can, in the hope that well-placed (often well-funded and powerful) bodies can seize as many of the chips as possible on the way down.

Sometimes a disruption can be, say, WWI and the bodies seizing benefit from it are women, who get the vote; or WWII, and the country getting universal healthcare.

Sometimes the disruption is Uber claiming it's not a taxi company, so regulation doesn't apply to it, and it can therefore undercut rivals who obey the regulations.

Sometimes it's Facebook claiming it isn't a news organisation, and therefore laws about political advertising don't apply to it, making it vulnerable to being used as platform by the Internet Research Agency, ie Russian troll-house.

@cromeyellow0 who are the other billionaires bankrolling trans activist and how do you know that they are? I'm curious as I've been totally perplexed by the money going into this

I think there is some truth in what the OP says.

One example is "basket of deplorables". I absolutely cringed when I heard that I wondered how many votes that was going to cost Hillary Clinton.

I'm finding what you have to say about destabilisation fascinating, Perking.

the way some left wingers dismiss the views of others in a different light

Is that a tenent of being left wing though? I would argue that’s an issue on all side street.

Brexit was not a landslide

Neither did Trump win by a landslide

So I would not be complacent or naive about “the left”, or “liberals”.

Theresa May made that mistake and lost a huge majority as a result.

(I can dig out some material on the Mercer project later, if anyone's interested. Might be wandering a off-topic for this thread, though.)

Yes, I'd agree wholeheartedly that the Transactivism splits other groupings very effectively.

That's why it's so attractive for disruptivists - who may have no interest either way regarding actual transsexual people, or may be actively antipathetic to trans rights but find the subject a useful vehicle.

I disagree that Bannon has any qualms about destabilizing identities though. There's his core group – white, male-centred, Christian-ish – to be validated and upheld; then there's The Others. Details for The Others are unimportant except where they can be used as weaknesses to divide and undermine the enemy.

(I say Bannon, but I mean the alt-right project as backed by Mercer.)

I think it’s more complex than that but there is certainly some truth in it.

Being on a different side of this issue has made me think about the way some left wingers dismiss the views of others in a different light.