Reading Vincent Emmanuel's piece in Counterpunch entitled
The Cures and Failure of Identity Politics reminded me of how I woke up to the growing cancer in left policies. I woke up to the issue of identity politics when Obama was running for office. By all merit based measures H. Clinton should have won the presidency. She had the experience that Obama lacked, whether you agreed with her or not. Obama, on strict merit shouldn't have made it past his first primary. Yet millions of people backed Obama because he was black. It was identity over experience. It was the logical conclusion of Race First ideology.
Now coming from a Garveyite such a comment on Race First as an ideology may sound strange. Indeed there is a time and place for Race First programs. There are also times and places where it does no good. Garveyism isn't about Race First as much as it is a nationalist ideology. Nationalism is not predicated on race. To run a nation you need rules and you need to enforce them. Hence Race First is really Race somewhere down the line when you REALLY think on it. Anyway in the liberal (I will no longer refer to any of them as "progressive") side, identity politics has become the religion above all religions. It's absurd notions that only those in a certain identity can speak about that identity or that certain identities, usually the most fringe of them are not only above critique but are to be favoured is starting to wear thin on those who are willing to examine.
I think we’ve all had enough of the bullshit: identity politics has been a curse to leftist movements in the U.S. for far too long. How could anyone argue otherwise?
Yes. Thanks. Welcome to 2006. At least for me anyway.
During the Obama years, leftists were chastised for their critiques, with many, including myself, being accused of racism. Racism, really? I’ve spent the last ten years of my life dedicated to progressive social movements, yet I’m a racist because I think that Barack Obama is an imperialist scumbag? Piss off…
I saw a lot of people who were anti-war and anti-imperialist suddenly become war apologists and imperialists as soon as Obama took office. In fact I was so disgusted by their clear hypocrisy on the matter that I no longer even deal with such persons. And of course we have the idea that one must be racist to disagree with Obama is patently false.
Today, the same is happening in the context of Hillary Clinton’s run for U.S. President. Any and all critiques of Hillary are deemed “sexist” by HRC’s bootlickers.
Because vagina of course.
The best part of the interview was Bertha’s statement that, “If you want to see a revolution, then elect a female president!” Indeed, Bertha may be right: under Thatcher, the U.K. underwent quite a revolution, although not the type of revolution leftists would like to see.
Yes, this is the trope that women can do no harm and that all things wrong in the world are the doing of men. Oh and of course the revolutionaries who don't even know the first thing about hand to hand combat but love to have the state (that they are revoluting against I suppose) use it's monopoly on violence to get what they want.
However, the Curse of Identity Politics isn’t relegated to the electoral sphere: I’ve been told by activists that the U.S. can’t pull out of Afghanistan because women will be treated worse.
Imperialism anyone?
And I’ve been told that because black and brown people overwhelmingly support Democrats, I too should support the “lesser of two evils.”
Black and brown people also kill at astronomical numbers, should he do that too?
When I sat on the board of directors of an national antiwar organization, we talked about meeting ethnic, racial and gender quotas as much as we talked about ending wars and militarism
Because this is what they are about. They are not building anything, they just want to do a numbers game. That is there thing and they aren't even good at math.
In fact, during one strategy retreat in Chicago, we started out each day by exploring what pronouns each of us would prefer to use. Yes, this is what modern activism, for some, has turned into.
Well when you don't have to worry about survival you can spend time on that kind of bullshit. Also when you are supporting bullshit like trans-genderism, you spend time on that kind of bullshit. See in the sane world there are "he" and "she" and persons with medical conditions (physical or mental).
Young women are tired of hearing about the first female U.S. President – they’re interested in policies that will actually help the vast majority of females in the U.S., not bourgeois feminism aimed at the dwindling white middle-class.
Let me translate this for race. Black people are waking up and will get tired of hearing about police brutality- they are interested in policies that will actually help the vast majority of black poor in the US who suffer from epidemic levels of crime. Not college educated wanna be revolutionaries who think anti-white is pro-black and is doing any good.
The real question is: how long are we going to play the identitarian game? In 2020, will we have to go through the same song and dance with a centrist Latino or LGBTQ candidate? I sure hope not.
As long as those in power are too weak to say "no" to these bully groups and deal with them forcefully.
I would argue that the more the identitarians try and play their identitarian games, the more they will lose support and standing in progressive communities
I agree 100%. What drove me to be hostile to feminism was the entire Black Male Privilege nonsense with the cherry on top being the total acceptance of "rape culture - teach men not to rape" bullshit. The more they do this the more people will leave. I'll see them on the other side of the court.
Already, young black activists with Black Lives Matter and various other community organizations are challenging the dominant liberal narrative that having people of color in powerful positions will automatically result in better conditions for people of color.
The BLM group is perhaps the most ill informed group among the identity set. That information has
been known by actual black scholars and nationalists for a long ass time. This is what happens when you let the children take over.
As a result, my black activist friends are not interested in replacing a white police chief with a black police chief.
I'll go out on a limb and say his black friends are not all that informed. If they were they'd be concerned with why there needs to be a police chief in black neighborhoods at all. Once they figured that out, they'd be not very concerned with the police chief at all.
In many ways, the identitarians have already lost the ideological battle. After all, Latinos are being deported in record numbers, African Americans are worse off today than they were prior to Obama taking office, and women are facing unprecedented attacks from religious conservatives.
And here we see that Vincent has not fully come to understand the problem. He still has to think he's "progressive". See Latinos
should be getting deported in record numbers, because Latinos have been entering the country illegally in record numbers. This is what a sovereign nation does: protect it's borders and looks out for the welfare of it's citizens.
I remember a YouTube video posted by some black guy back when Obama was first elected to office. In that video he said that he bets that black folks would be worse off after Obama than before. look, you can't have high levels of illegal (and legal) immigration and improved job prospects for black folks at the same time. You cannot have high levels of illegal and legal immigration and have improved political representation prospects at the same time. You cannot have high levels of illegal and legal immigration of non-English speakers and have increased funding for predominantly black schools. Thinking black folks know this.
And lastly exactly what "unprecedented attacks" have women had by religious conservatives is this guy talking about? Religious conservatives have lost major rights in the past 8 years. Being made to fund birth control they do not agree with. Made to cater weddings of gay couples when they have a moral objection to doing so. Being told by state agencies that they will be fined for calling a man a man and a woman a woman. Schools tossing the constitutional rights of males accused of sexual assault. These are unprecedented alright!
Vincent is beginning to see what is wrong with his chosen ideology but doesn't quite yet understand that it is the ideology that is the problem. Identity politics is but one of the fruits of this ideology. As of this writing vincent is like someone who doesn't like the taste of the apples but thinks it has nothing to do with the tree.
