100% agree. Identity Politics has always been a way for the Democrats to garner support from marginalized communities without actually doing anything for them and without having to challenge private power.
And I think what exposed Identity Politics as a farce was how many of the chief purveyors of it reacted to Bernie Sanders, who was running a class-centered campaign that would've benefited everyone. You cited a few examples and here's a few more.
-Angela Davis came out and said that Bernie Sanders was weak on the issue of racism
-Ta-Nehisi Coates came out and said that Bernie Sanders was weak on the issue of reparations
-Gloria Steinem came out and said that the only reason young women were going to Bernie rallies was to meet boys
-Kimberly Crenshaw came out and said that the real revolution wasn't coming from Bernie Sanders, but from corporations like Amazon marketing themselves to BLM and Pride (yes, she actually said).
Identity Politics is a centrist farce to pretend to be socially progressive without threatening private power.
I didn't know Davis said that, I'd like to hear more of her explanation as to why.
That said, the Crenshaw comment is insane. Stuff like that is why we got Democrats kneeling in kente cloths during BLM, as opposed to moving to combat police violence.
Davis also said "My approach has always been to emphasize independent, more radical politics, but I do think that it is important than Bernie Sanders has been raising issues that otherwise never would have been taken up within the context of the campaign between two major parties" and praised his policy platform. https://www.ebony.com/angela-davis-black-liberation-interview/
In an interview with Democracy Now, Angela Davis said that Bernie's "economic reductionism" prevents him from "speaking about the about the existence of racism, racist violence, state violence" and "his difficulty” in “incorporating an analysis of race into his critique of capitalism, and that’s exactly what we need, what we would have needed."
If you can make sense of that, then explain it because I legitimately don't get it.
I do think those examples are more actual politics than identity politics. I wouldn't consider actual coalition-building through political promise to be identity politics, even if it is focused on one identity (Black people, workers, etc.). But I take your point. That coalition-building should be paramount.
IdPol is a right-wing project. *America First* is IdPol. *MAGA* is IdPol. *Build the Wall* is IdPol. *Israel has a right to defend itself* is IdPol. Putin’s Eurasian fantasy is IdPol. *Lebensraum* is IdPol. The *Thousand Year Reich* is IdPol.
IdPol belongs to the right. That’s why they do it so effectively, and why it erodes coalition. Divide and rule is the beginning, the means, and the end.
The centrists love projecting "identity politics" upon the left because that's what they want us to do: engage in endless, fruitless squabbles over who gets to run the "anthill" instead of expanding the anthill's territory.
Identity politics are by their very nature unsolvable; so if we are bound into them we will never get anything else done.
That's part of their attraction to centrists, at least on the rhetorical level; but we should recognize the futility of pursuing those for the past 50 years, + how it's put us so damn far behind.
Great point. Doing something like dismantling the banks or codifying Roe would end systemic bigotry. But Dems don't do that. They talk about it but never solve it, so it remains a perpetual fundraiser.
This has me thinking about how the problem of gun violence has been handled much the same, making the issue about one thing as a distraction from the things that would actually go a long ways towards reducing gun violence. I'd have to see if I can find it on the Wayback Machine since the site I used to write for doesn't exist anymore, but in 2015 or so I wrote an article titled something like "Democratic Socialism is the Solution to Gun Violence." Democrats only talk about gun control, things like waiting periods, registration, etc., but almost never about policoes that would lead to material improvement of people's lives that would reduce violence of all kinds. It's maddening when you can so clearly see what needs to be done to solve our most pressing problems and none of the people with the power will allow good faith discussion and action to happen.
I didn't find it in the Wayback Machine. I'll poke around my external hard drive and see if I still have the text of it saved. And I will read the Jacobin article!
It depends, though. Native Americans need political support. Trans policies still should be upheld. I think it’s not just the center-left that speaks up on those issues but also the progressives. I wish someone would include animal rights in any of this. That suffering is horrific. But yeah, we should center the working class way more and make that a centerpiece. I got annoyed Kamala only talked about the middle class, many working class people are proud of being where they are and don’t want college degrees and to climb a ladder they aren’t interested in.
There is no such thing as "middle class." There's just the working class, which includes those who have been duped by the owning class into seeing themselves as separate. It's yet another arbitrary classification used to divide us to protect the interests of the owners. The made-up middle class is the ruler's shield.
These are all working class. The distinction isn't about skill or training or education or salary, it's whether you depend on income from a job for your survival vs whether you control resources and access to resources society depends on depend on and make money (a form of power) from the labor and/or money of others and have their power to hire and fire, house or evict, etc. The vast majority of us are working class and we need to see ourselves as such.
Many people see themselves as middle class. Would you tell them they’re wrong, that they’re really working class? Also, if you’re highly trained, like a lawyer or doctor, then isn’t your expertise a resource you can now sell on the open market, like you would a plot of land?
Whatever we call “middle class,” it’s a bad term I think for democrats but I did specify non-college-degree working class…trades, where u use your hands, have been feeling shafted and rightly so
We are ALL being shafted. A nurse, doctor, teacher, lawyer, or accountant who doesn't work is likely, in some amount of time, to find themself in just as precarious a situation as the Uber driver, the construction laborer, and the fast food worker. Therefore, they are working class.
As the social safety net has been shredded, disability, public health, social housing, etc. defunded and the agencies left to rot, we are all made more precarious.
I have a college degree and "earned my living" contracting for the Department of Energy, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, and Harvard Business Publishing, but I came to understand I was always working class. Once you cease to be profitable and useful to the rulers, they'll leave you for dead whether you empty bed pans or develop the leadership of Fortune 5000 companies. I know this, because I ceased to be useful and profitable to the rulers myself. I was always working class.
Those who see themselves as middle class need to know the reason for the imposition of this construct on us and to recognize its role in upholding unjust, unstable, and unsustainable economic power structures.
The difference is of course that doctors, teachers, lawyers and accountants are often the pointy end of the shaft being delivered to the working class.
These people are a subset of petit-bourgeoise best described as PMC.
Until the "American left" is courageous enough to do an actual class analysis before opening its collective yap about "class", the liberals will win until they are replaced by some new version of the right.
Oh I know, I've written about "the PMC," who I have little love for.
There isn't really a "left" in the U.S., not holding official political power, in any case. Even Bernie would be practically center-right in much of Europe. The Democrats are a center right party, so the U.S. basically gets to pick between the center right and the far right.
"Based on these statements, you would think the Democratic National Committee is a group of vulnerable , powerless politicians, endlessly bullied left by the woke mob."
Establishment democrats have become part of the mob in that they have enacted both federal and state level policies that capitulate to loud, far-left interest groups: from Biden's executive orders that provide funding for gender affirming care to the Title 9 changes to state level policies that reduce the consequences of property crime to opening the border... I could go on.
You're also forgetting a hugely important aspect of why people like Hilary Clinton took those positions against Sanders: it was at the beginning of the great awokening, and the idea of systemic racism and other related ideas were really starting to take hold in the public consciousness. Clinton and politicians like her wanted to be woke in the good sense, so they shifted what were the otherwise more centrist, popular policies of prior politicians like Obama and Bill Clinton. It was the beginning of the aforementioned far-left interest groups' sway over the democratic party that continued into the aforementioned policies.
The last point I'd make is that while your more simple definition of identity politics isn't entirely wrong, it is not fully addressing the claims of more sophisticated arguments against left wing identity politics, such as Yascha Mounk's the identity trap or Wesley Yang's successor ideology (to name a couple).
"Ask any trans person if they’d rather have accessible gender-affirming healthcare or a President with He/Him in his bio."
Lol ok I just read to the end and now I see that you, too, are pretty woke. So we're unlikely to have a reasonable disagreement. If this is what you think, you haven't asked enough trans people - you've only asked the activists and their enablers, which is part of the problem.
Why? Because I did still read the entire article and don't believe there's any evidence I misunderstood your argument.
I think this sentence pretty much sums up your core claim: “Centrist Democrats have used identity politics to browbeat the left for so long that they forgot they’re the ones who promoted hollow platitudes in place of progressive policy.”
You define identity politics as, more or less, pretending to help a particular identity group without actually doing so—like Hilary Clinton’s hot sauce comment. You argue that identity politics has lost its meaning over time and now is used to tar leftists. You don’t think that identity politics actually comes from the progressive left (or their interest groups), rather you argue that identity politics is a tool of the establishment democrats against the progressive left in an effort to get voters to choose the more “conservative option.” You think centrists in particular wave their pride flags (and so forth) to cover up "a platform of imperialism and capitalism.” You believe this problem extends beyond politics, which is why you bring in the REI example.
That’s pretty much your argument. But it’s weak, for the reasons I gave.
You’re redefining identity politics as the messaging rather than the policies but they’re both aspects of the same thing. When people put pronouns in their bios they’re making a claim about reality that implies certain policy positions.
That's my point. They're "implying" they'll support policies that help marginalized groups but seldom do. It's Nancy Pelosi kneeling in a kente cloth. It IMPLIES she would aid police reform but never did. That's identity politics. The implication of change without the substance.
100% agree. Identity Politics has always been a way for the Democrats to garner support from marginalized communities without actually doing anything for them and without having to challenge private power.
And I think what exposed Identity Politics as a farce was how many of the chief purveyors of it reacted to Bernie Sanders, who was running a class-centered campaign that would've benefited everyone. You cited a few examples and here's a few more.
-Angela Davis came out and said that Bernie Sanders was weak on the issue of racism
-Ta-Nehisi Coates came out and said that Bernie Sanders was weak on the issue of reparations
-Gloria Steinem came out and said that the only reason young women were going to Bernie rallies was to meet boys
-Kimberly Crenshaw came out and said that the real revolution wasn't coming from Bernie Sanders, but from corporations like Amazon marketing themselves to BLM and Pride (yes, she actually said).
Identity Politics is a centrist farce to pretend to be socially progressive without threatening private power.
I didn't know Davis said that, I'd like to hear more of her explanation as to why.
That said, the Crenshaw comment is insane. Stuff like that is why we got Democrats kneeling in kente cloths during BLM, as opposed to moving to combat police violence.
Davis also said "My approach has always been to emphasize independent, more radical politics, but I do think that it is important than Bernie Sanders has been raising issues that otherwise never would have been taken up within the context of the campaign between two major parties" and praised his policy platform. https://www.ebony.com/angela-davis-black-liberation-interview/
In an interview with Democracy Now, Angela Davis said that Bernie's "economic reductionism" prevents him from "speaking about the about the existence of racism, racist violence, state violence" and "his difficulty” in “incorporating an analysis of race into his critique of capitalism, and that’s exactly what we need, what we would have needed."
If you can make sense of that, then explain it because I legitimately don't get it.
I agree. Deliverism and universalism ought to be the cornerstones of the left’s strategy as a whole.
As an aside, I recall reading a couple of articles by a Princeton and a Berkeley historian (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/17/identity-politics-history-mark-lilla-215607/ and https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/16/17242748/identity-politics-racial-justice-democratic-party-lilla-traub-trump) stating that identity politics shouldn’t be done away with because coalition-building helped Truman win re-election in 1948, and that the Party and Black labor leaders were in a dialectic that at first came from the bottom up.
I’m also reminded of the alliance of Mexican and Filipino grape pickers that resulted in the United Farm Workers (https://globalnation.inquirer.net/103659/delano-manongs-the-story-cesar-chavez-the-movie-ignored), which made UFW founder Dolores Huerta’s endorsements of Clinton, Biden and Harris a little jarring, but that’s the nature of labor leaders and their variety, I guess.
I do think those examples are more actual politics than identity politics. I wouldn't consider actual coalition-building through political promise to be identity politics, even if it is focused on one identity (Black people, workers, etc.). But I take your point. That coalition-building should be paramount.
demorats have been at odds with We the People for 25 years
https://inthesetimes.com/article/democratic-party-elites-harris-trump-loss
IdPol is a right-wing project. *America First* is IdPol. *MAGA* is IdPol. *Build the Wall* is IdPol. *Israel has a right to defend itself* is IdPol. Putin’s Eurasian fantasy is IdPol. *Lebensraum* is IdPol. The *Thousand Year Reich* is IdPol.
IdPol belongs to the right. That’s why they do it so effectively, and why it erodes coalition. Divide and rule is the beginning, the means, and the end.
The centrists love projecting "identity politics" upon the left because that's what they want us to do: engage in endless, fruitless squabbles over who gets to run the "anthill" instead of expanding the anthill's territory.
Identity politics are by their very nature unsolvable; so if we are bound into them we will never get anything else done.
That's part of their attraction to centrists, at least on the rhetorical level; but we should recognize the futility of pursuing those for the past 50 years, + how it's put us so damn far behind.
Great point. Doing something like dismantling the banks or codifying Roe would end systemic bigotry. But Dems don't do that. They talk about it but never solve it, so it remains a perpetual fundraiser.
I’d go even further back than 2016 - Hillary first tried it in 2008 but it didn’t work.
https://www.salon.com/2008/04/14/obama_supporters/
It is ironic they tried the "Bernie Bros" line in 2008, failed, and then ran it back in 2016.
Thanks for sharing, Joe.
I invite you to read this. https://www.planetcritical.com/p/cyber-security-experts-warn-election-hacked
Thanks! I'll check it out.
This has me thinking about how the problem of gun violence has been handled much the same, making the issue about one thing as a distraction from the things that would actually go a long ways towards reducing gun violence. I'd have to see if I can find it on the Wayback Machine since the site I used to write for doesn't exist anymore, but in 2015 or so I wrote an article titled something like "Democratic Socialism is the Solution to Gun Violence." Democrats only talk about gun control, things like waiting periods, registration, etc., but almost never about policoes that would lead to material improvement of people's lives that would reduce violence of all kinds. It's maddening when you can so clearly see what needs to be done to solve our most pressing problems and none of the people with the power will allow good faith discussion and action to happen.
Oh interesting! It sounds a lot like the piece Danny Katch wrote in Jacobin a few years back. I'd love to read yours if you can find it.
https://jacobin.com/2020/01/gun-violence-socialist-approach-firearms-michael-bloomberg
I didn't find it in the Wayback Machine. I'll poke around my external hard drive and see if I still have the text of it saved. And I will read the Jacobin article!
It depends, though. Native Americans need political support. Trans policies still should be upheld. I think it’s not just the center-left that speaks up on those issues but also the progressives. I wish someone would include animal rights in any of this. That suffering is horrific. But yeah, we should center the working class way more and make that a centerpiece. I got annoyed Kamala only talked about the middle class, many working class people are proud of being where they are and don’t want college degrees and to climb a ladder they aren’t interested in.
Which trans policies should be upheld?
I’m with you if that’s feasible or whatever.
Ok, well, that’s not how these people see themselves
Also, a small family store owner is totally different than the owner of Walmart
There is no such thing as "middle class." There's just the working class, which includes those who have been duped by the owning class into seeing themselves as separate. It's yet another arbitrary classification used to divide us to protect the interests of the owners. The made-up middle class is the ruler's shield.
Oh ok. But there are professions, nurses, doctors, teachers, lawyers, accountants, etc that require higher education…it’s not all buying and selling
These are all working class. The distinction isn't about skill or training or education or salary, it's whether you depend on income from a job for your survival vs whether you control resources and access to resources society depends on depend on and make money (a form of power) from the labor and/or money of others and have their power to hire and fire, house or evict, etc. The vast majority of us are working class and we need to see ourselves as such.
Many people see themselves as middle class. Would you tell them they’re wrong, that they’re really working class? Also, if you’re highly trained, like a lawyer or doctor, then isn’t your expertise a resource you can now sell on the open market, like you would a plot of land?
Yeah, down with the rich
Whatever we call “middle class,” it’s a bad term I think for democrats but I did specify non-college-degree working class…trades, where u use your hands, have been feeling shafted and rightly so
We are ALL being shafted. A nurse, doctor, teacher, lawyer, or accountant who doesn't work is likely, in some amount of time, to find themself in just as precarious a situation as the Uber driver, the construction laborer, and the fast food worker. Therefore, they are working class.
As the social safety net has been shredded, disability, public health, social housing, etc. defunded and the agencies left to rot, we are all made more precarious.
I have a college degree and "earned my living" contracting for the Department of Energy, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, and Harvard Business Publishing, but I came to understand I was always working class. Once you cease to be profitable and useful to the rulers, they'll leave you for dead whether you empty bed pans or develop the leadership of Fortune 5000 companies. I know this, because I ceased to be useful and profitable to the rulers myself. I was always working class.
Those who see themselves as middle class need to know the reason for the imposition of this construct on us and to recognize its role in upholding unjust, unstable, and unsustainable economic power structures.
The difference is of course that doctors, teachers, lawyers and accountants are often the pointy end of the shaft being delivered to the working class.
These people are a subset of petit-bourgeoise best described as PMC.
Until the "American left" is courageous enough to do an actual class analysis before opening its collective yap about "class", the liberals will win until they are replaced by some new version of the right.
Oh I know, I've written about "the PMC," who I have little love for.
There isn't really a "left" in the U.S., not holding official political power, in any case. Even Bernie would be practically center-right in much of Europe. The Democrats are a center right party, so the U.S. basically gets to pick between the center right and the far right.
Thanks Joe. This is the perfect response to a post from Yasha Mounk that was posted in a group I'm in.
Good luck! Groups can always be tough, lol.
The Democratic Party isn't a political party. It's a giant moneylaundering operation which uses identity politics as an advertising trick.
🙄
"Based on these statements, you would think the Democratic National Committee is a group of vulnerable , powerless politicians, endlessly bullied left by the woke mob."
Establishment democrats have become part of the mob in that they have enacted both federal and state level policies that capitulate to loud, far-left interest groups: from Biden's executive orders that provide funding for gender affirming care to the Title 9 changes to state level policies that reduce the consequences of property crime to opening the border... I could go on.
You're also forgetting a hugely important aspect of why people like Hilary Clinton took those positions against Sanders: it was at the beginning of the great awokening, and the idea of systemic racism and other related ideas were really starting to take hold in the public consciousness. Clinton and politicians like her wanted to be woke in the good sense, so they shifted what were the otherwise more centrist, popular policies of prior politicians like Obama and Bill Clinton. It was the beginning of the aforementioned far-left interest groups' sway over the democratic party that continued into the aforementioned policies.
The last point I'd make is that while your more simple definition of identity politics isn't entirely wrong, it is not fully addressing the claims of more sophisticated arguments against left wing identity politics, such as Yascha Mounk's the identity trap or Wesley Yang's successor ideology (to name a couple).
"Ask any trans person if they’d rather have accessible gender-affirming healthcare or a President with He/Him in his bio."
Lol ok I just read to the end and now I see that you, too, are pretty woke. So we're unlikely to have a reasonable disagreement. If this is what you think, you haven't asked enough trans people - you've only asked the activists and their enablers, which is part of the problem.
Why should I engage with someone who can't even read an entire article before commenting on it?
Why? Because I did still read the entire article and don't believe there's any evidence I misunderstood your argument.
I think this sentence pretty much sums up your core claim: “Centrist Democrats have used identity politics to browbeat the left for so long that they forgot they’re the ones who promoted hollow platitudes in place of progressive policy.”
You define identity politics as, more or less, pretending to help a particular identity group without actually doing so—like Hilary Clinton’s hot sauce comment. You argue that identity politics has lost its meaning over time and now is used to tar leftists. You don’t think that identity politics actually comes from the progressive left (or their interest groups), rather you argue that identity politics is a tool of the establishment democrats against the progressive left in an effort to get voters to choose the more “conservative option.” You think centrists in particular wave their pride flags (and so forth) to cover up "a platform of imperialism and capitalism.” You believe this problem extends beyond politics, which is why you bring in the REI example.
That’s pretty much your argument. But it’s weak, for the reasons I gave.
You’re redefining identity politics as the messaging rather than the policies but they’re both aspects of the same thing. When people put pronouns in their bios they’re making a claim about reality that implies certain policy positions.
That's my point. They're "implying" they'll support policies that help marginalized groups but seldom do. It's Nancy Pelosi kneeling in a kente cloth. It IMPLIES she would aid police reform but never did. That's identity politics. The implication of change without the substance.
You are being disingenuous for implying hot sauce is a black thing. It’s a Latino thing you snob!
Bloody hell..