[Peace-discuss] Identity politics

Mon Aug 6 15:00:32 UTC 2018

In the wake of the Vietnam war, neoliberalism - turbo-charged capitalism - was a conscious, calculated construction by the US business (see the Powell memo) to counter the “crisis of democracy” - the crisis being that there was too much democracy in the US of the 1970s: it was beginning to cut into the rights of capital to exploit <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crisis_of_Democracy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crisis_of_Democracy>>.

Under the pressure of neoliberalism, pusillanimous American liberals gave up the attempt - that went back to the New Deal - to ameliorate the exploration. But they had a bad conscience about it and looked around for other groups to champion, besides the working class. Thus was born identity politics: liberals championed those discriminated against, rather than the exploited.

Neoliberals cheered, because (as WB Michaels puts it), "opposing discrimination today has no more to do with a left politics than do equally powerful ethical commitments against, say, violence or dishonesty. Why? Because the core of a left politics is its critique of and resistance to capitalism—its commitment to decommodifying education, health care, and housing, and creating a more economically equal society. Neither hostility to discrimination nor the accompanying enthusiasm for diversity makes the slightest contribution to accomplishing any of those goals. Just the opposite, in fact. They function instead to provide inequality with a meritocratic justification: If everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed, there’s no injustice when some people fail.”

Identity politics became a cover for neoliberalism administrations to dispense with the New Deal’s social democracy (until the Sanders campaign revived it). The result was growing and accelerating inequality and the immiseration. of the majority of Americans. Donald Trump became president partly because he was the first major party presidential candidate in 40 years to criticize the policies of neoliberalism - however erratically - white Clinton’s campaign was built around neoliberalism and identity politics (cf. “deplorables”).

—CGE

> On Aug 6, 2018, at 5:59 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> Gay people are human beings, aren't they? Does anyone here dispute that gay people are human beings? 
> 
> If gay people are human beings, and if human beings have rights, then gay people have rights, by virtue of the fact that they are human beings. 
> 
> If we claim that our society is based, among other things, on "Equal justice under law" - this phrase is engraved on the front of the United States Supreme Court <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_justice_under_law> - then if "straight" people have the right to get married to each other and derive legal benefits from that, gay people also have that right.
> 
> If a gay person, or if a straight person who believes that gay people have equal rights by virtue of the fact that they are human beings, advocates that a politician defend the rights of gay people to marry, that person is only doing what we would normally expect people to do in a society which claims to practice "equal justice under law." 
> 
> I have come to strongly dislike the phrase "identity politics." It seems to me to conflate two very different things. One is: advocating for the equal rights and equal participation of people who have been excluded from rights and participation based on identity characteristics. And the other is: doing that at the expense of advocating for economic justice; putting identity politics at the top of the marquee, to the exclusion of highlighting economic justice demands.  
> 
> There's no intrinsic reason why identity politics in the first sense has to be in existential conflict with advocacy for economic justice. Indeed, it seems to me that one of the historic tasks of the Left has always been to integrate the defense of identity rights into an economic justice framework, so that these things will be perceived to be complementary, not contradictory. The world in which I want to live is one in which gay people, even gay people who are not workers, defend the right of workers to organize, both because it is ethically right and because they correctly see the organization of unions as an important way that gay people defend their rights, because unions are defending the right of gay workers to be gay. 
> 
> Rabbi Hillel said:
> 
> "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
> 
> If I am only for myself, what am I?
> 
> If not now, when?"
> 
> On Sun, Aug 5, 2018 at 8:35 PM, e. wayne johnson via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
> It is interesting how RT is so often the voice of truth crying in the wilderness.
> 
> It is also interesting that some of the "identities" are actually 
> mental illnesses and psychopathologies.
> The Canadian Alphabet soup LGBTQRTS123ZOMFGWTF
> is the ridiculous extreme that some of these cultural fads
> have to go to before people get weary of them.
> 
> It is also interesting that what  can be dismissed as simple fad can have such
> far  reaching  negative consequences.
> 
> Fags really do doom nations.  
> 
> 
> >  -------Original Message-------
> >  From: Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>>
> >  To: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net <mailto:peace-discuss at anti-war.net>>
> >  Cc: Brussel, Morton K <brussel at illinois.edu <mailto:brussel at illinois.edu>>
> >  Subject: [Peace-discuss] Identity politics
> >  Sent: Aug 06 '18 02:31
> >  
> >  I fond this a stong analysis, although perhaps the author
> >  overemphasizes the political disorientation of those
> >  promulgating/doing identity politics.
> >  
> >  _HOW IDENTITY POLITICS MAKES THE LEFT LOSE ITS COLLECTIVE IDENTITY_
> >  
> >  HTTPS://WWW.RT.COM/OP-ED/434924-LEFT-POLICY-IDENTITY-DIVIDED/ <https://www.rt.com/OP-ED/434924-LEFT-POLICY-IDENTITY-DIVIDED/>
> >  
> >  -------------------------
> >  _______________________________________________
> >  Peace-discuss mailing list
> >  Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> >  https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss <https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss>
> >  
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss <https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss>
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20180806/a160bf46/attachment-0001.html>