Should the Left move away from identity politics if they hope to fight illiberalism?

The notion of “identity politics” is really an attempt by the right to discredit responses to injustices.

The Left knows the militarized police force is dangerous, and particularly dangerous for black people. When people speak up against that, the right claims it is “people using the race card”; when black people respond with “Black Lives Matter”, the right calls it identity politics and asks, “don’t all lives matter”, purposefully misssing the point.

The right knows it is outnumbered, so it focuses on dividing the left.

There’s no denying that identity politics have taken a front-line position in Left wing ideology in the West at this time.

You can stop right there, there’s plenty of denying that dishonest nonsense.

“Identity politics” is the conservative buzz phrase for white people whining about losing their privileges. It’s the visceral negative reaction they have to other people gaining equal opportunities.

“Identity politics” is clueless privileged people crying, “Why do women and minorities have to be so controversial? White men aren’t all controversial about things.”

Which, hilariously, is in fact identity politics. Conservatives are the most tribal of all.

When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression

I think I’d like to address this:

“Thus there is an increased cultural relativism, and a shying away from Enlightenment values like humanism, liberalism, science and reason, which are now framed as oppressive/bourgeois/masculine.”

First of all Liberalism includes ideas of equality, about race and gender, as well as many other ways our freedom is limited by power structures based on who we are, where we live and how we choose to live our lives. For individuals to be free we have to consider cultural relativism to an extent, we most definitely have to address how and why some people are given more freedom while others are oppressed, and we have to examine the systems by which this is allowed to occur.

Humanism is also about human freedom and the above arguments are applicable to this as well.

I studied post-modernism in college, including the french, and I never came across anything that indicated science and reason were the domain of the masculine or the oppressor, elitists maybe.

The idea that the values of Liberalism are contradictory to identity politics is false. It’s very easy to argue that modern Liberalism must include identity politics for the simple fact that race, gender, etc. can severely limit our freedoms.

I’d say the people who feel alienated by these facts have no idea how much individuals can be limited simply by who they are and where they come from. White feminists don’t realize that gender oppression in communities of color are inherently different than what they experience. Black men do not get that they have more earning power than white women. Gay men don’t realize that lesbians have to deal with a whole different set of stereotypes and thus react differently discrimination. On top of all that, issues are compounded when we have intersections of identities.

I think the real issue is that people try to compare injustices or they attempt to justify the oppression of one category of people while they believe that another group of people are oppressed. And let’s not forget that those who hold the power hold on to it with an iron grasp and will never willingly give any up, and they think they would be doing so if they admit that certain groups of people do not have the same opportunities they have. Even those who profess to be liberals.

When I read this question, before I even clicked on the link, I said to myself that this article has to be written by a white person. I was right.

Wow. I never write this much.

Thing is your concept is bordering on Vichy France, with the Nazi sympathizers. Trying to explain why it is okay to be a right winger because it feels good, no matter who is hurt/killed in France

Why should the Left move anywhere? Push your politics wherever you are, and vote for whoever you like, and call yourself whatever you want.

@tinyfaery I’m glad you wrote that much because it was a great response. :)

While I understand that “identity politics” is used pejoratively (that somehow, focusing on identity is always counterproductive and unhealthy), I was not trying to imply that it is inherently a negative thing. Just that it can used counterproductively to foster tribalism and division.

So don’t call it “identity politics” if you don’t want to, but I think it’s fair to say that identity is a major player in current politics. That includes for those on the right, which the article does mention (though perhaps not enough).

The article also brings up a position brought forth by students at Middlebury College, that science has been used to justify racism/sexism/homophobia, etc. Absolutely true. But it’s also been used to disprove those things. It just took a while…not sure if that’s reason to discount science (if that’s even what the students were really doing).

Identity politics is definitely a pejorative and misleading term. Minorities do not ask for special privileges. They are asking for equality. To extend denied rights to minorities is not showing favor to them. It is just allowing them to be treated like everyone else.

Honestly, I have no problem with the term identity politics. It’s a fitting term.

Imagine if trump didn’t do identity politics by not demonizing undocumented immigrants…

There was no need for him to do it except to score political points by stirring up hate, the only way he knows how to win…immoral application of “identity politics.”

Looks like just another in a crop of academic “liberals” who adopt anti-left arguments originally made by reactionaries and actual fascists, and who paint left-wing thought as something other than what it really is.

Practically no one on the left knows what postmodernism is or what it means. Maybe she needs to get out of her bubble.

The left is still overwhelmingly rooted in economics, and concerned with material well-being of the poor, and of working people.

That many leftists think a movement of social and economic equality should be free of xenophobia, of nationalism, and of misogyny, and should be inclusive of historically marginalised groups—does not mean identity politics trumps everything else, or that they’ve been somehow influenced by Foucault and Derrida. Practically no one gives a shit.

The whole article is like a better cited and more sophisticated version of the crap Jordon Peterson says and writes.