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

[mantaraya]

Apparently identity politics is silly and divisive. According to Ash, oppression is not a competition and the left is eating itself up accommodating to "woke" victimhood. Any quotes that sound like she has been pushing this line of thinking have been taken out of context.

On trans - this is very unlikely to be in anyone's top 3 issues politically so we should all just shut up about it and focus on the real problems (please ignore the fact that Ash has been banging this drum for years). Oh and the reason the left (i.e. Ash) has supported (ridiculous) things like transwomen in women's sports is because there aren't enough trans political organisations leading the way so they're just trying to do the right thing and defend vulnerable trans people. Ahem.

Quite amusing to listen to just for the various attempts at arse covering. I only wish I could have been the interviewer!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2tdUDCkv3oc3kBjN9VkzGI

It seems to be the same in the Arts. Black and Asian people are there, but overwhelmingly Black and Asian people who went to Eton.

Whether in hospitals, schools, refuges sports, prisons or even just the census, trans people were apparently popping up like dandelions and disrupting the day-to-day functioning of institutions through their mere existence. Even just recognising that some people might be trans was enough to invite criticism: "Census trans question under scrutiny for 'confusion'" went one headline in The Times,

No. The criticism was because the original question was unclear and was likely to result in lots of trans people reporting their gender, rather than their sex. Then they changed it and added an new question “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?” only to discover that the highest rate of trans people was where there were high rates of Muslims. Because that correlated with people who weren't as fluent in English and didn't understand the question. I even wonder if some GC types felt they couldn't honestly answer yes to that question. Although personally I'd strip out the word salad and answer what I think it's asking, namely are you trans?

Anyway that's a long winded way of saying please stop making nonsense overemotional arguments. Also there's nothing wrong with wanting to collect accurate data!

'As the book loses steam she goes back to calling people Nazis. Gender critical feminists, Sarkar reckons, are “not a million miles away” from Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy.'

As the crow flies, I suppose. If by 'Rudolf Hess' she means 'the spot where he parachuted into Scotland'.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-13333536

For example, the London Borough of Newham had the highest proportion of people who identified as transgender (1.51%). The area also has one of the highest rates of non-English speakers - 35%, compared to 9% nationally.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3030519849o

Ash Sarkar interviewing Judith Butler? JFC.

This is why the aliens do not talk to us.

Previous interview:
novaramedia.com/2024/03/31/this-ideology-threatens-our-fundamental-freedoms-judith-butler-meets-ash-sarkar/

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/

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

https://archive.ph/oaYO6

A positive review. For balance.

Here's the link to the interview:

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

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.

Only taken her 14 years to realise.

Will she be denounced by comrade Little Owen now

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.

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😄

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.

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.

“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.

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

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.

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.

'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.

'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'.

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.

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.