Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.

[chilango]

You, me, him, her.

To me, to you.

 

[elbows]

You could be a bit more authentic

Finally some language that sounds like it belongs in a discussion of id politics Fear not, not convinced the context of it is actually id politics in this case though.

 

[DotCommunist]

well sometimes I read a blog from the kinja family of blogs- two of them I'll mention here. One is The Root and the other is VSB. The comments sections, and often the articles are the absolute worst for wider discussion in a look at wider things- history, for one. Roots isn't bad as it could be. Over in those comment sections you've got people saying things like 'aint no reason a snaggle-toothed white man has to live in a trailer when he could have taken any number of jobs denied to the more capable black man'

to which responses veer along predictable lines such as 'fuck you' and 'bougie POC don't like hearing that some white people have it harder!'

given we haven't descended to that level of debate I think we are doing well.

I musn't judge america based on its internet output. I'm sure they are all normalish people like the rest of us but its a proper lines in the sand thing over there from what I see. No lines. Except the good sort for those who partake.

 

[ManchesterBeth]

unwatch thread.

 

[19force8]

Back to Coventry you go.

Oi, what did the home of The Specials and Two Tone ever do to you?

 

[ViolentPanda]

To wholeheartedly agree with that and never to see any of those traits in myself or anybody I like and agree with would require less self-awareness than I think I possess.

We all have those traits. It's what we do or do not do with them, that is important.

 

[ViolentPanda]

no one who can't give back abuse here, can last long on these political threads.

I don't think many of you keen, academically well read, good marxist posters show any solidarity on this forum.

What is "academically well read" when it's at home? As you've said yourself (in so many words), a lot of people come to socialism through life experience. Reading books that put your experience into perspective is just the icing on the cake - and when I say books, I don't mean Marx etc, I mean modern political biographies, history books etc. At the end of the day though, Socialism is as much about how you see and feel about yourself in our current society, and what you do about it, as it is about that there book-larnin'

 

[ViolentPanda]

To me, to you.

Chuckleism ftw.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Finally some language that sounds like it belongs in a discussion of id politics Fear not, not convinced the context of it is actually id politics in this case though.

To be fair, "being authentic" appears to be an increasing obsession not just among IDpol adherents, but among those coming to politics in general. That the quest for authenticity is often undertaken by people with little link to the authenticity they're seeking, merely adds to the interestingness of the phenomenon.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Is that a dig at me VP?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Is that a dig at me VP?

Why on earth would you think that?

No, it's a dig at people pretending to be something they're not, like (to use a very old and not particularly relevant example) people selling copies of the Socialist Worker always putting on a proley accent.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Why on earth would you think that?

No, it's a dig at people pretending to be something they're not, like (to use a very old and not particularly relevant example) people selling copies of the Socialist Worker always putting on a proley accent.

Sorry if it seemed a paranoid question. I suppose I wondered because your above point built on elbows' point about me using the term 'authentic'. I just thought i'd face it and ask. Not in a looking for a fight kind of way, more in a 'cards on the table' kind of way ITMS.

Fair enough.

 

[elbows]

Why on earth would you think that?

No, it's a dig at people pretending to be something they're not, like (to use a very old and not particularly relevant example) people selling copies of the Socialist Worker always putting on a proley accent.

And one of the motives for doing that involves feeling pressure from class reductionist stuff? Which was one of the reasons id politics came along, but it suffers from its own reductionist tendencies?

I dunno, Im still learning about this stuff but I latched onto the use of the word 'authentic' not to have a go at Rutita but to try to help discover whether this stuff is central to the flaws of these systems, or whether I've got the wrong end of the stick.

 

[ViolentPanda]

And one of the motives for doing that involves feeling pressure from class reductionist stuff? Which was one of the reasons id politics came along, but it suffers from its own reductionist tendencies?

Back in the day, it wasn't about pressure from "class reductionist stuff" (whatever that is), it was about Swappies trying to convince Joe Working Class to buy their arsewipe of a paper.

I dunno, Im still learning about this stuff but I latched onto the use of the word 'authentic' not to have a go at Rutita but to try to help discover whether this stuff is central to the flaws of these systems, or whether I've got the wrong end of the stick.

Thing is, there is no "authenticity". Culturally, everything is an ongoing synthesis or blend of other things, so appeals to authenticity miss the point.

 

[kabbes]

Thing is, there is no "authenticity". Culturally, everything is an ongoing synthesis or blend of other things, so appeals to authenticity miss the point.

There is an authenticity to one’s own self, though. To one’s preferences and interests. Authenticity of spirit as distinct from a Blairite sincerity.

 

[ViolentPanda]

There is an authenticity to one’s own self, though. To one’s preferences and interests. Authenticity of spirit as distinct from a Blairite sincerity.

What you're talking about is better-known as "being true to yourself", though. It's an ideal, rather than a self-promoting or self-enriching affectation (which is what much pretence to cultural "authenticity" is). There was a much-mocked start-up proposal mentioned on the Brixton forum 2-3 years ago - A Caribbean restaurant owned/run by a white man whose claim to authenticity was that he'd watched his parents' Jamaican cook prepare the dishes he was going to sell, so the dishes were - or so he deemed - "authentic", and not at all an act of cultural appropriation.

 

[Jonti]

talking of cultural appropriation, top this (10000 singing Beethoven Ode an die Freude)

 

[Brainaddict]

Didn't know where to put this, so I thought I'd share here a fun example of Twitter Outrage Overdrive:

 

[redsquirrel]

Caught Naomi Klein on Desert Island Disks yesterday. Not only did she use the phrase "white working class", but also argued that there she didn't believe in a "universal we". Another example of where this stuff leads to.

----
As an aside, I've not read her stuff and while I didn't think her a communist I at least thought there was something there, but fuck me she's fucking wet, and empty.

 

[rekil]

Caught Naomi Klein on Desert Island Disks yesterday. Not only did she use the phrase "white working class", but also argued that there she didn't believe in a "universal we". Another example of where this stuff leads to.

----
As an aside, I've not read her stuff and while I didn't think her a communist I at least thought there was something there, but fuck me she's fucking wet, and empty.

She was critical of identity politics in the olden days. From chapter 5 of No Logo.

For a generation that grew up mediated, transforming the world through pop culture was second nature. The problem was that these fixations began to transform us in the process. Over time, campus identity politics became so consumed by personal politics that they all but eclipsed the rest of the world. The slogan “the personal is political” came to replace the economic as political and, in the end, the political as political as well. The more importance we placed on representation issues, the more central a role they seemed to elbow for themselves in our lives — perhaps because, in the absence of more tangible political goals, any movement that is about fighting for better social mirrors is going to eventually fall victim to its own narcissism.

The need for greater diversity — the rallying cry of my university years — is now not only accepted by the culture industries, it is the mantra of global capital. And identity politics, as they were practiced in the nineties, weren’t a threat, they were a gold mine. “This revolution,” writes cultural critic Richard Goldstein in The Village Voice, “turned out to be the savior of late capitalism.” And just in time, too.

Patriarchy Gets Funky by Naomi Klein

 

[redsquirrel]

Well could be the format of the program I guess, hardly conducive to in depth political discussion, but she was rubbish.

 

[MrSpikey]

Oi, what did the home of The Specials and Two Tone ever do to you?

Blatant Two Tone Policing.

 

[Sunset Tree]

She was critical of identity politics in the olden days. From chapter 5 of No Logo.





Patriarchy Gets Funky by Naomi Klein

No logo was one of those books everyone read back in the day. If you were a student or into politics or whatever. You still see copies kicking about in charity shops quite a bit. I wonder how well it would go down nowadays with the typical 'political' student?

Would it be fair to say that in the late 90s and 00s even the middle class student politics types were preoccupied with issues external to themselves, be it globalisation or anti-imperialism or environmental issues (just thinking about swampy and the motorway protests)? Whereas nowadays the focus is on... themselves? Their rights and identities as individuals.

Probably a simplification but it feels like that to me.

 

[brixtonscot]

This may have been posted before , on the historical development of "identity politics" in USA
Identity Crisis - Viewpoint Magazine

 

[J Ed]

This is great.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle | Cornel West

The disagreement between Coates and me is clear: any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class, gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously misleading. So it is with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ worldview.

Coates rightly highlights the vicious legacy of white supremacy – past and present. He sees it everywhere and ever reminds us of its plundering effects. Unfortunately, he hardly keeps track of our fightback, and never connects this ugly legacy to the predatory capitalist practices, imperial policies (of war, occupation, detention, assassination) or the black elite’s refusal to confront poverty, patriarchy or transphobia.

In short, Coates fetishizes white supremacy. He makes it almighty, magical and unremovable. What concerns me is his narrative of “defiance”. For Coates, defiance is narrowly aesthetic – a personal commitment to writing with no connection to collective action. It generates crocodile tears of neoliberals who have no intention of sharing power or giving up privilege.

When he honestly asks: “How do you defy a power that insists on claiming you?”, the answer should be clear: they claim you because you are silent on what is a threat to their order (especially Wall Street and war). You defy them when you threaten that order.

...


Coates praises Obama as a “deeply moral human being” while remaining silent on the 563 drone strikes, the assassination of US citizens with no trial, the 26,171 bombs dropped on five Muslim-majority countries in 2016 and the 550 Palestinian children killed with US supported planes in 51 days, etc. He calls Obama “one of the greatest presidents in American history,” who for “eight years ... walked on ice and never fell.”

It is clear that his narrow racial tribalism and myopic political neoliberalism has no place for keeping track of Wall Street greed, US imperial crimes or black elite indifference to poverty. For example, there is no serious attention to the plight of the most vulnerable in our community, the LGBT people who are disproportionately affected by violence, poverty, neglect and disrespect.

 

[butchersapron]

This is great.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle | Cornel West

The Fields sisters do a really good job last week (on jacobin radio here ) on the assumptions and politics behind his and others white primordialism/whiteness/afro-pessimism approach and the identarian and old-school racist tropes that it has to rely on - and of course they extend this to modern liberal anti-racism/'race first left' and tie it to the evacuation of politics, of a politics of class from that anti-racism. Well worth the listen - despite the wobbly start where the host gets the central idea of their Racecraft book (racism produces race) the wrong way round.

 

[Sasaferrato]

What is "academically well read" when it's at home? As you've said yourself (in so many words), a lot of people come to socialism through life experience. Reading books that put your experience into perspective is just the icing on the cake - and when I say books, I don't mean Marx etc, I mean modern political biographies, history books etc. At the end of the day though, Socialism is as much about how you see and feel about yourself in our current society, and what you do about it, as it is about that there book-larnin'

.
I have decided that it was wrong to post this. It disclosed information that should never have been disclosed.

Matthew 6:1

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven."

 

[JimW]

...
The left make me so angry. So many do absolutely nothing concrete for their fellow man, and think wringing their hands is a positive contribution.

I'm a right winger, the opposite of most on the board. I do not like blowing my own trumpet but, on Christmas Day I'll be spending time in an Edinburgh Church assisting their efforts to help the homeless. We have given our pensions for December to the local food-bank and the children's toy appeal. (about £300.00)...

One concrete thing you did was spend a lifetime voting for policies that made more people homeless. So fuck off.

 

[The39thStep]

I haven't read all of this thread, which is 44 pages of largely pointless navel gazing.

Socialism is airy fairy bullshit, espoused by people who have far too much time on their hands, it has never worked as a political process anywhere, not in the long term. Even the Scandinavians are being forced to recognise that their socialist political model is no longer sustainable.


Tell me, how many of the population have read Das Kapital, outside of the privileged classes?

Identity politics? Give me strength.

If the amount of time spent spouting bullshit on this behemoth of a thread, had been spent physically helping those in society in greatest need, it would actually have achieved something.

The left make me so angry. So many do absolutely nothing concrete for their fellow man, and think wringing their hands is a positive contribution.

I'm a right winger, the opposite of most on the board. I do not like blowing my own trumpet but, on Christmas Day I'll be spending time in an Edinburgh Church assisting their efforts to help the homeless. We have given our pensions for December to the local food-bank and the children's toy appeal. (about £300.00)

I gave £300.00 to my son in law, because he is my grandson's father, and he has been ill. He didn't have heating, and his electricity was about to die. This to a man who on three separate occasions threatened to kill me.

We give between 5 and 10% of our income each year to charity. (As I've just retired, we need to see how much income we will have, then set a figure.)

As I said, I don't like blowing my own trumpet, and nothing like this will never be posted by me again.

If your identity is socialist, then ante up and prove it, in a tangible manner.

Rant over. Sorry.

Thats all well and good but if capitalism is so sustainable , non bullshit, and so good for people who are time hungry etc then why are you having to donate all this time and money to these causes for people in need? At least those on the left want to try and eradicate the causes of homelessness, poverty , fuel poverty etc. There a long history of Tory philanthropy which I admire and would encourage but surely the question is why so many are in need and what could be done to reduce and eventually eliminate these problems ?

 

[The39thStep]

The twitter banning of a lot of right wing groups including Generation Identity reminded me as to how identity politics absolutley fits the right wing like a glove.