[Peace-discuss] Paul Street on Neoliberal Identity Politics (excerpt)

[Carl G. Estabrook]

An important selection from Paul Street’s latest on Counterpunch.org. Thanks, David.  —CGE


> On May 24, 2017, at 10:26 AM, David Green via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> Concerned about the downward pressure that African and Mexican immigrants can have on wages and union bargaining power in your local labor market?
> Well, NIP sneers, that just shows what a nativist, white-nationalist FOX News-watching racist you are.
> Never mind local employers’ gleeful exploitation of immigrant labor as a low-wage and working class-dividing windfall – or your own efforts to fight for immigrant rights and the inclusion of immigrants in struggles for improved working and living conditions.
> Worried about how the influx of rich students from China is helping inflate college and university tuition costs, helping price working-class U.S. kids out of higher education in the U.S.? Find the conspicuous consumption and single-minded business orientation of many of these Chinese students distasteful?
> NIP thinks that just shows that you are a racist nativist who secretly wants to bring back the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
> Never mind how much you have written, said, and/or done about and against the ruthless, neo-Dickensian exploitation of the Chinese proletariat – the source of the wealth that makes it possible for upper-echelon Chinese families to send their only children to U.S. universities.
> Dare to note that the massive influx of women into the U.S. job market during and since the 1970s has helped the employer class suppress hourly wages and contributed to a crisis in working class family life?
> NIP says that shows what a male chauvinist you are.  You obviously believe that “a woman’s place is in the home.” You must be a sexist who wants to roll back the clock on women’s rights
> Never mind your own longstanding support of gender equality within and beyond the workplace.
> Worried about recent data showing that white U.S. working class males are undergoing an historic decline in their life expectancy thanks to the collapse of the job market for working class men in the neoliberal era?
> That shows NIP that you are a white sexist who only cares about white men.
> Never mind your long opposition to sexism, racism, nativism, and other evils.
> Find it less than surprising that many working class and rural whites react poorly to the phrase “Black Lives Matter” given the fact that they have been told that their lives don’t matter by neoliberal capitalism over the last four-plus decades?
> That just shows that you are a racist who doesn’t understand the special oppression experienced by people of color.
> Never mind your long record of denouncing and opposing racism and your defense of the phrase “Black lives matter.”
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