Identity politics

[Bowlofbabelfish]

Not a TAAT, more a question that I want to ask but don’t want to derail another thread.

Identity politics. It’s a problem - a big one. It’s childish, immature and divides societies.

How has this predominance of identity politics arisen?

How can it be solved in a peaceful and positive way? I’m thinking of past incidences and all seem to involve some sort of unpleasant national disaster or war which brought people together. That’s not an ideal solution. So what is?

How can we move away from this identity politics type scenario (peacefully without damaging societal upheaval, war or natural disaster ) and coexist a bit better?

I'm not a royalist by any means but I had a v nostalgic feeling on Saturday that the country felt united for once and how long it had been since I'd last felt that, think it was the Olympics which was 6 years ago! There doesn't seem to be much that unites us at the moment, Brexit, income inequality, millenials vs babyboomers etc. Things like Twitter, Facebook and the proliferation of so many TV channels mean we're all at risk of living in our own little bubbles where our own world views are reinforced. We seem to be losing the art of empathy and listening to each other too. It's all a v dangerous mix and I don't know what the solution is. It's not just the UK either, it's a worldwide phenomenon. Was shocked to read today that in Sweden, the Gvt has sent a leaflet to everyone's homes advising them how to prepare for war!

Just seen this tweet from Tim Farron at the Oxford Union

"I argue that the poison in our national life is identity politics. ‘This is who I am: you accept me on all my terms, or else you commit violence against me.’ Identity politics is insidious, irrational, and leads to decisions that threaten our liberty."

twitter.com/OxfordUnion/status/998647034126241792

It’s hard to see the difference between the left and the right nowadays. Increasingly it seems to be deciding against whom and in what way they discriminate, which is not what the left should be about. My automatic Labour vote is now in question, and the question is who else can I vote for?

The idea of Corbyn's Labour as hard left is a strange one. The party is still triangulating on the basis of deserving and undeserving - see its manifesto calculation that it could get away with redistribution to students but not to benefits claimants or low income mothers. So it gave 4x the money to the former than it did to the latter. No party interested in genuine economic marginalisation would have done that.

The comments under Tim Farron's tweet are interesting.

@R0wantrees

Yes! Just reading those, the ones crying that he's a "straight white man" kind of illustrate his point for him

Hot - for me the issues are separate and the importance I allocate to them is personal.

Economic issues, which labour have moved back to attlee labour on (from more right than thatcher under Blair) have up until now been more important to me than the other equalities issues that I believe they are getting very wrong.

That’s enough for my membership and my vote at the moment.

Left wing/right wing has always been almost exclusively about economic issues.

I do wonder what will happen now with a variety of social issues being attached to left and right.

Yy Lang - it’s laughable to think corbyn’s labour (or corbyn) is ‘hard left’.

I also dismay at how often ‘communism’ and ‘totalitarianism’ are conflated...

Was shocked to read today that in Sweden, the Gvt has sent a leaflet to everyone's homes advising them how to prepare for war! shock

I’ll check my mailbox at lunch :) we had something like that a while back and we regularly get ‘don’t worry about the jets! Just practicing!’ Leaflets through. There’s also plans to bring conscription back (dh was one of the last years before they got rid of it so he’s done his year in the military) and an extra unit announced on Gotland (island in the Baltic.)

Don’t forget we’ve had Russian subs in the archipelago here.

Mind you they have to come through Finland first and those guys are hardcore - didn’t work out so well for the Russians last time they tried ;)

(I’m not aligned with communism though BTW)

If labour were more closely connected to the WC (which is one of the aims of corbyn) they would be less vulnerable to this identity politics bullshit IMO.

It’s just a very difficult situation trying to sort out blair’s legacy.

One of Blair’s legacies IS this identity politics bullshit IMO. It’s the shift to (as MY calls it re trans) the ‘thin aspects’ of politics as a whole.

Urgh no fan of Blair here. Tax credits for example. Great for the families that are helped by them but it creates and props up a system where private companies pay shit sub-living standard wages and get topped up by the taxpayer. A direct drain from the public purse to the private. Ditto PFI.

Isn't it rooted in Thatcherism? 'There's no such thing as society' etc.

Yy Blair built on what thatcher started hence being more rightwing than thatcher. After that the tories moved further right than blair.

Now there is a pervasive attitude amongst the ‘politics is about winning’ lot in labour that moving to the right on economics = winning = progress.... 🙄

This is the context in which what Lang correctly says re ‘acceptable groups’ in the recent manifesto happened. Trying to find a compromise between between the ‘winning elections’ establishment and the class politics membership.

You will be roundly humiliated by this lot if you allude to holding the belief that it isn’t a win at all if you have just moved to the right.

It has happened to me more times than I can count. You say it to one person and then get rounded on by the entire room of ‘activists’ who all tell you ‘it’s our entire lives we know better than you’.

Tax credits for example. Great for the families that are helped by them but it creates and props up a system where private companies pay shit sub-living standard wages and get topped up by the taxpayer. A direct drain from the public purse to the private.

There's a lot in common with the Conservative policy under Thatcher selling council housing policies and the subsequent housing benefit payments to private landlords.

Why is identity politics so appealing, and who does it appeal to?

It seems rooted in entitlement, whats in it for me; whereas at least class politics makes us more aware of each other, and our position and role within a larger structure.

IMO it is individualism rather than entitlement.

Class politics is also about entitlement. Individualism is about an entirely different kind of entitlement.

Why is identity politics so appealing, and who does it appeal to?

Because it’s easy. It requires no thought, no soul searching, and discovery. You can just TELL people ‘you’re an oppressed group/superior group and all these other people are the enemy.’

So I’d say it appeals to people who want to control. People who want to push single issue agendas and people who cannot, or will not, think too deeply.

Class politics is inherently about balancing the needs of individuals across groups. Individualistic entitlement is about entitlement to privileged treatment for yourself and the people you are interested in and fuck everyone else.

Identity politics is a busted flush at this point, with flaws too numerous to mention, but perhaps its greatest is that it is trivially hi-jacked by all manner of bad actors who revel in a kind of victimhood culture, the principal aim of which is raising their own moral status.

That's not to say it's all nonsense, or that there aren't real victims out there, or that certain groups don't suffer from systemic disadvantages.

But identity politics as a lens to understand, or as a means to combat it, is worse than useless - it's counterproductive.

The politics of identity vs identity politics....

We should not throw out the politics of identity it is identity politics that needs to go, but more than that; this extreme individualism