Ash Sarkar on the News Agents - the backpedaling continues...

i'm always behind on reading my NS subscription. but I skimmed through last week's earlier, and there was an interview with AS. I didn't bother reading it cos I've already read enough about her shtick lately I think. But it made me get this week's edition off the doormat to see if there were any coruscating responses to her. but only one, saying, isn't she great, and this is the voice on the Left that young people need to be listening to.

Yeah, right...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/05/politics-about-class-not-identity-are-better-for-the-young-adults-i-teach
Letters in response to Ash Sarkar’s article in the Graun the other day.
The first one is very perceptive, I thought.

I'm sure someone who was clever enough could do a further meta-analysis incorporating Spiked's own world-view as another layer to the onion alongside Sarkar's and the Guardian's. And I suppose there's a Venn diagram that could be constructed. I scratch my chinny chin when pundits look to praise The Sun, though. or handwave away concerns about oligarchs, big business, etc. But Ash is an easy target, she really does open herself up to ridicule. The Guardian review is schoolboy tripe, to my eyes. But apparently the author is an historian and lecturer, so what do I know? Anil surely cannot see what the rest of us see, that he and AS are the two peas in a pod ("I'm a Marxist too" 😀), equally ripe for satire.

This is the Guardian review Brendan O'Neill references

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/feb/20/minority-rule-adventures-in-the-culture-war-by-ash-sarkar-identity

It genuinely uses the phrase 'lower orders'! To be fair to AS, it doesn't seem to be used by her although the review reads like it's using her words. I've copied it, jic they change it.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/04/ash-sarkars-class-war/

Excellent from Brendan O Neill

"kids in pit towns"

You'd think someone who describes herself as a "literal communist" might describe the concept of them as being working class wouldn't you?😂

They don't need to be told it when they are suffering from the biggest disadvantage possible in terms of succeeding in life, i.e., being poor, and yet they can see there are no DEI-style schemes and programmes designed to get their foot in the door.

I've scrolled through several excerpts of her book in the articles above and she really is a crap writer. She starts a point and drifts around, conflating topics and never reaching a conclusion. Compare it to pieces written by Kath Stock or Julie Bindel and there is no comparison.
I really think it is because she's trying to excuse the inexcusable and so it all reads like word jelly.

'The retreat into subjective experience primes us for the politics of resentment, competitive grievance and weaponised victimhood. While the personal is political, the self is a dead-end if what you want is social change. It’s worth remembering the lesson of Narcissus: being too interested in your own reflection will kill you.'

As one of the reviews said, AS seems to use 'we' when she really means 'me'.

'The weakening of collective politics is no accident; it’s by design.'

When large numbers of other viewpoints are winning over hers, how is that not 'collective politics'? What she means by 'collective' is 'correct', isn't it?

'Other users are our rivals. We’re competing with each other for followers, clout, status and a central position in the public conversation.'

Not all of us, Ash.

It's almost as if we all have varying experiences, so willingness to listen to others does not go amiss. Old fashioned feminists or Marxists who understood class might have got that.

It takes the combined brains of the Western graduate progressive class to turn intersectionality into a game of Magic The Gathering.

What happened to the patronising 'You are more privileged than a poor Black person living in a pit town so you still have White privilege'? Because the progressive Left have definitely used that argument, frequently when asked to explain that point.

She probably does but she has been doing the social media noise her entire career!

“no one is actually preaching to kids in pit towns that they’ve got white privilege” says Ash.

No one is saying that explicitly, but that’s certainly the message that’s being received, hence Sam Fender’s comment.

I don't think she is saying the same thing though.

It's a mixture of 'nut picking' - pretending that extreme opinions that get lots of engagement on social media are representative - and taking aim at the same old targets.

When she says "instead of striving for liberation from discrimination and material oppression, we just want to inflate the visibility value that’s attached to suffering." I think she very much includes women campaigning for single sex rape crisis centres.

And yet so many people don't seem to have taken this from their understanding of Intersectionality. Instead they've decided it means they have to take everyone into their cause.

That's what makes intersectionality valuable- it gets all this, it accepts that 'privilege' varies according to circumstances, we're not just one-dimensional 'Black' or 'working class' or 'disabled' or 'White' or 'women' etc., all the various aspects of who we are have different significance in different contexts.
'Life's rich tapestry' as a PP said😄

Bloody hell does she have absolutely no self awareness? She's written a book saying exactly the same thing people have been saying for ages about ID politics, except they were saying it about her, and her fellow 'Progressive' travellers.

Competing in the attention economy incentivises us to turn molehills into mountains, and the cult of lived experience makes it hard to question proclamations of victimhood. The “I” has taken over identity politics: instead of striving for liberation from discrimination and material oppression, we just want to inflate the visibility value that’s attached to suffering. The retreat into subjective experience primes us for the politics of resentment, competitive grievance and weaponised victimhood. While the personal is political, the self is a dead-end if what you want is social change. It’s worth remembering the lesson of Narcissus: being too interested in your own reflection will kill you.

Really Ash, So why have you only come to this realisation now that you aren't being asked onto Question Time as much?

Now she's actually written a book and newspaper articles about it, as if its her own unique and sudden revelation in order to make a load of cash out of saying what she was busy slagging other people off for.

Only taken her 14 years to realise.

Will she be denounced by comrade Little Owen now

From that article

"or David Baddiel accusing an Arab-Australian poet of having erased and trampled on Jesus’ Jewishness for saying he looks like family, modern identity politics has set a comically low threshold for harm."

Got to get a dig at a man who talks about anti-semitism.

She can't help herself.

Ash back-pedalling in today’s Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/03/identity-politics-the-left-the-right-liberation-victimhood

Here's the link to the interview:

https://archive.ph/oaYO6

A positive review. For balance.

Sorry, I meant to say, that seems quite a lot of money to listen to two people punt their books.

SevenTEEN pounds?! Good christ. I'd rather put a stick blender in my ear.

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/judith-butler-whos-afraid-of-gender/