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So it seems since the end of the election that a cadre of people here and elsewhere on the right and, to a certain extent, on the left have blamed the concept of identity politics general for the Democrat's defeat. This also seems to get accompanied by a belief that Idpol has resulted in an overly rigid, politically correct left centered around younger people obsessed with calling everything racist and/or sexist that turned off moderate voters and especially the all important White Working Class Male (tm). We now have people Proclaiming the end of Identity Liberalism, with Conservatives gobbling up that viewpoint too. Now what I don't get here, is how the Democrats recent defeats can really be laid at the feet of Identity Politics. A lot of the talk seems to be barely disguised whinging about kids these days with appeals to a return of a simpler (and non-existent) time when everyone got along and internal identities were suppressed to try and create a more cohesive society. Even leaving that aside It seems as though the election ended being an aggressive proclamation of the importance of the Identity Politics of one group in particular, poorer white Americans. Even talking about the Clinton campaign its strange to me to argue that a fairly centrist wealthy white woman who made lots of overtures to try and reel in moderate conservatives (and was actually fairly successful in doing so) but did a much poorer job in invigorating the various demographic minority groups that form the Democratic base is now being seeing as the very picture of Idpol failure just because she may have used the word 'privilege' during the race a few times. And even still she still won the popular vote clearly. Now, honestly I'm not much of fan of Clinton and much preferred Sanders, but I don't see how Identity Politics really damaged the Democrats on the whole, or leftist movements in general. Surely if we expect to create a unified opposition to right wing movements across the world we need to prove to various marginalized groups that we care and will address the unique issues they might face, even if sometimes they are not simply economic issues? What use is it to us to place the blame on identity politics so much, especially when the opposition can exploit it as much as they want and win as a result? Here's a couple of articles on the issue: ‘Don’t play identity politics!’ The primal scream of the straight white male There's no conflict here khwarezm fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Dec 3, 2016 |
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Dec 3, 2016 17:56
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Torpor posted:Oh, okay. It is like you are attempting to show that identity politics is toxic. What are you going to do to dismantle identity politics? Be realistic and don't just fall back on the standby of 'Full Communism now'.
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Dec 3, 2016 21:46
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Neurolimal posted:It's pretty simple; ignore it, vote for candidates who aren't squeamish about fiscal leftism, don't support primary candidates whos only message is "we're not like Trump!" But you can't ignore it, this is my whole problem with this debate. Its easy to act like identity politics is some demon conjured up by the elite to keep us all divided but that does nothing about the fact that different interest groups (that aren't necessarily defined by class) still exist in society with specific and sometimes exclusive problems. You cannot win an election in the United States or anywhere else without finding a way to mobilize those groups and the horrible truth is that in this point in time Class Consciousness has next to no meaning to the vast majority of the population throughout the western world.
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Dec 3, 2016 21:58
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Neurolimal posted:Then those problems are tackled by the whole, and not ignored. You don't need to create a tribe against other leftists to get this accomplished. Class Consciousness may not exist within Jack Smith of Michigan's vernacular, but he knows that one candidate doesn't give a poo poo about him and the other's a racist conman, so he sits out the election and we lose. That's the path that attempting to oust fiscal leftism in some absurd attempt to solve discrimination without fiscal tools ends in. They can, but they often aren't, in fact the history of leftist movements all around the world shows how difficult it can be to prompt them to take a proactive stance on issues, especially concerning race and gender, that aren't directly related to class. Within those movements you tended to have to have what was identity politics at work to try and force, say, the labour movement in America to try and shed its disdain for nonwhite workers, and they often failed to do so. And getting onto your example of Jack Smith here, what you seem to be saying is what I've been hearing a lot, that Clinton seemed as though she didn't give a poo poo about him and his plight. The thing is that Clinton had that problem across the board with almost all Democrat groups, including racial minorities. I find it very odd that people are choosing this time to bitch about Identity Politics when a major part of the problem that I can see for the Democrats was that they failed to show that they would really engage with the interests of the various identity groups in the US, while Trump was able to do with the largest identity group of them all. And yes, those interests can be primarily economic.
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Dec 3, 2016 22:19
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Woozy posted:What the gently caress are you talking about? At worst, liberal capitalism has historically been no better than communism on acceptance of LGBT people, and in fact where Western nations have progressed culturally on this question beyond their left counterparts, such development is almost always wielded rhetorically in defense of murder, atrocity, and imperialism, as you now do--see Israel's pathetic invocation of this argument in defense of their own barbarity or the now fashionable line on Castro among American liberals. Arguments to the contrary generally trade in the kind of glib de-contextualization of world history that informs moral panic over the Soviet prison system or any other "human rights" abuses laid at the feet of left political ideology. So yes, repeating bourgeois lies and Nazi propaganda about the Soviets to score points in defense of elite domination of LGBT politics definitely amounts to anti-communism. This post is loving garbage and crystallizes basically every problem of the hard left engaging in utterly pointless apologetics that only serve to alienate it from most of the population.
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Dec 4, 2016 15:58
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Higsian posted:I keep seeing this but it rings really hollow to me. Leftest movements haven't been especially resistant to issues of race and gender, people have historically been resistant to them. Many left movements excluded those things to be sure, but it's not like they did so in opposition to a right supporting those issues. The economic left has not been a good ally of social movements, but it has been the closest ally. The fates of social justice and class justice are stuck together whether they like it or not. Either side can suck up to power to be the highest slave, but the only real ally either will get is the other. Like I'm finding this conversation very frustrating because it feels to me that a lot of people saying that Idpol is just a bourgeois distraction or whatever are just fantasizing about a world where its not an issue. The problem is that it is an issue, seemingly more so than ever, and I doubt it will ever be gotten rid of, if people expect to create a unified, powerful leftist movement in America or anywhere else they will need to take it seriously. As much as I loved Bernie Sanders I think his campaign showed fairly well that there must be positive engagement with identity politics among leftists if they expect to win the support of the populace, and that can't just be boiled down too economics all the time. quote:The Democrats deliberately abandoned labour right when they perceived social justice had real power behind it. They could have concluded that they needed to spread the message of social justice within the working class, or link the two more thoroughly in the minds of working class voters, but instead decided they'd drop one demographic for the other. If they hadn't driven a rift between labour and social justice the two would have been an unstoppable coalition. Weird coincidence that. Now working class whites get to decide between a party that hates them because they're working class and a party that hates them because they're working class whites. Working class minorities are also hosed of course but they've never had a party that genuinely cared about them I don't think. I have no intention of defending the Democrats, frankly I must admit I found terrific schadenfreude on the night of the election seeing some very irritating, rigid and smug centrist types being forced to eat some humble pie when it became apparent that a campaign based entirely on 'look at the bad man!' was not nearly enough. But at the same time I find some of this rethoric ridiculous, nobody could argue with a straight face that the Democratic party genuinely hated people just because they were a 'Working Class White'. The narrative that the Democrats put all their eggs in the Idpol basket doesn't make much sense to me, they seemed to have practically nothing planned to meet the needs of any of the identity groups in the Democratic camp, and had historically been extremely lax about doing anything other than taking them for granted. Huge Deportation of Latino immigrants? Practically no progress made in combating police violence or incarceration rates against young black people? Prolonging the ridiculous drug war? Barely touching Americas dodgy welfare system? Allowing the Republicans to continue Gerrymandering and enforcing voter ID laws that made it more difficult for racial minorities to make their voices heard? All represented by a rich white woman who was part of an administration that helped gut Welfare and imprison young men? I guess there were some things like gay marriage (and even there the Democratic leadership was extremely lethargic about doing anything until it was clear that the vast majority of the country was in favor of it), but on the whole this is what it looks like when a party decides that Social Justice is the way to go? Jesus Christ, look I absolutely agree that the Democrats dropped the ball on putting any kind of emphasis on economic issues until it was too late, but if they were the party of Social Justice and identity politics instead they put the minimum amount of possible effort to hold onto that title.
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Dec 4, 2016 16:33
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Someone linked a tweet in one of the election threads from some Democrat (I'm pretty sure at least) who did explicitly state that he wanted to punish white (working class) people because they were never going to come around to his way of thinking anyway, or something to that effect. Not that this is representative of the party as a whole, but it's a pretty terrible message for even a small part of the party to send. A tweet. That hardly means anything. And I presume its been deleted now for being completely terrible. Who was this guy even? Did he have anything approaching prominent standing in the Party? Because it sounds like this is the sort of thing that gets blown up and trotted out by people who sincerely think that the Democrats hate white people to justify voting for a white Nationalist. Which again calls into question whether or not Identity politics has been somehow weakened by this election when it seems that identity politics for white people is even more ascendant than usual. Following on from that, I can imagine its extremely frustrating for that guy or other people, especially minorities, to be now be told that the problem that the Democratic party had was that it put too much emphasis on identity politics (and it put barely any emphasis on identity politics), since it seems that a perception that their issues are getting any kind of national airtime results in the one of the worst examples of racist, sexist regression getting elected into the highest office of the land by scared white people. In that light I can imagine a lot of people are prepared to say 'gently caress that and gently caress you' when their issues have been loudly rebuffed by a white majority in the crudest way in decades.
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Dec 4, 2016 18:42
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Neurolimal posted:The frustration is understandable. So long as they are willing to calm down and further examine the causes further.  quote:A beloved friend felt the same way at first, but came around to the idea that the problem was not the airtime of minority causes, but the abandonment of allies for some perceived reason (either to ensure their issues take priority, or a prideful attempt to assert their individual power). You see, a problem I have here is that increasingly the onus seems to be on minority groups to make room for the white majority who seem to be allowed to abandon minority groups when it suits them, but will go for a racist con-man when they feel abandoned. The question I asked at the very start of this thread, why are identity politics so bad? has not been sufficiently answered, I can trawl through Reddit, Facebook, 4chan and here in Somethingawful and identity politics is horrible boogeyman that lost Liberals the election but nobody seems to have been able to enunciate what Liberal Idpol actually does to victimize White people in the real world, and nobody talks about how Trump's election was its own, and sadly predictable, form of identity politics for white people. The worst thing the Democrats did, and I really do believe this, was abandon economic leftism, but Identity Politics does not intrinsically exclude that and in fact is critical in trying to build a coherent alliance among disparate groups on the left and show that needs will be met.
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Dec 4, 2016 19:43
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Like I said, not representative, though I kinda wonder if a portion of the whole "Demographics are destiny" crowd might not harbor similar feelings. quote:The Democratic party seems/seemed to put a lot of emphasis on identity politics, with an emphasis on politics. Less "Let's help people", more "We're so gonna win this election you guys, just look at the number of Hispanics!" To a point, but then it reminds of the way Black people used to be a major part of the Republican camp, which spent a lot of time coasting off its efforts during the Civil War and Reconstruction period. The problem was that they didn't really do anything to actually meet the current needs of that constituency and banked on being the only game in town for African American's considering how racist the Democratic party was. That complacency helped result in a change around the time of the New Deal. Now I'm not saying I expect racial minorities to vote Republican next election, I'm trying to say that Democrats have been complacent with lots of the groups that make up their coalition ATM, and that I think that's at odds with the idea that they've bought all into Idpol since that would mean actually doing stuff to advance the needs of those communities rather than just lazily pointing at the other guys ranting about Muslims and Immigrants and saying 'Yeah we probably haven't really achieved much lately but he's the only alternative'.
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Dec 4, 2016 20:11
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:Identity politics is problematic at its simplest because it divides people up into groups of us vs. them and encourages people to think in those ways, and people who get rapped up into us vs. them have a really hard time during elections arguing why we all need to come together and support something. Thank you for the Reason.com link, tagline 'Free minds and Free marke... *shoots self*'. Yet again we are back to this problem of white people claiming to be alienated because Democrats did not put their problems at the forefront. Its not even identity politics that's at fault under that basis, if anything it was the lack of consideration of the democrats for white identity politics. khwarezm fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 03:09
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Sethex posted:I guess when it comes to the idpol types there is a clear hate on for economically progressive politicians and a complete lack of acknowledgement of how the system and the media (through Bernie blackout) sabotaged the primaries for anyone other than Hillary. quote:I think this conclusion is confirmed by 17 pages of idpol folks throwing around 'cishet' an 'white str8' ironically. 'Idpol folks'.
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Dec 5, 2016 15:52
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Pedro De Heredia posted:It probably has less meaning than Hillary's catastrophic general election loss. As has been said, under any sane electoral system Clinton, poo poo or not (and she was poo poo), would have won. In any event Sanders didn't beat her and as much as people are loath to admit that was largely because he had trouble portraying himself as attuned to the interests of the identity groups that made up the Democratic electorate. Bemoaning identity politics is pointless, it is an integral part of politics in America and everywhere else.
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Dec 5, 2016 16:22
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Pedro De Heredia posted:1. It's not really helpful to look at what happened and say 'well, if things were different she would have won anyway'. She lost states Democrats hadn't lost in decades; there's no 'buts' to that. She performed terribly. Just to be clear, yet again, I'm not saying that Democrats shouldn't try to regain those states, or that they didn't turn a blind to their problems, or that there aren't serious concerns for poor white people living there and elsewhere. I'm saying that it's illuminating that the consistent undervaluing of the minority voters (voter suppression played a huge part in this outcome but we haven't heard much about that) has not been talked about much while people act like identity politics that tends to be concerned with such issues are somehow the problem. quote:2. She performed this way against a moron. She lost against a party whose obituaries were already written. quote:3. Let's say we agree with the premise that Sanders lost because he wasn't 'attuned to the interests of the identity groups that made up the Democratic electorate'. If Clinton was, then that means that the interests of the identity groups that comprise the Democratic electorate are such that they elect a candidate capable of losing a bunch of Democratic leaning states and lose an election against a moron. This is ridiculous, you are basically repeating the same kind of drivel that the Shillbots trotted out in the months between the Primaries and the actual election but from a different direction. There is no problem with the candidate, its the voters. If only they would shut up and vote for who they were meant to then this would all be a lot easier. What's the next step, continue denigrating identity politics and signal to Minorities that the interests of white people in the midwest take priority, and be shocked if they offer any kind of blowback? Sanders didn't do well with Racial minorities, by a long shot. Its just the way it is. Considering that they make up most of the Democratic electorate at this point you cannot ignore them and that means you will have to engage with identity politics on their terms if the economic left expects to gain ground again.
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Dec 5, 2016 17:22
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Pedro De Heredia posted:I'm not saying it means nothing. But just as pointing out the popular vote is important, it's also important to point out that she lost a lot of states that Democrats had done well in recently. It's also important to point out that her popular vote advantage is, afaik, lower than Obama's in the two elections he did win. It is also worth pointing out that Trump was a candidate with a lot of weaknesses. Here's my problem with your entire post. You seem to have taken my whole post as a spirited defense of Clinton, for like the fourth time I am have no intention of defending her as a person or her lovely campaign. But I will mention that she won the popular vote, and I will mention that she won the nomination on the votes of minorities, because these are facts that need to be recognized by people scoffing at the concept of identity politics going forward. The basic problem is that when the choice was offered, Clinton or Sanders, Sanders proved to be a much more unpopular choice among most racial minorities in the country, especially African-Americans. It sucks sure, but I was hoping that would enough of a lesson towards people that you can't batter away at Economics to the exclusion of all else. Instead you don't seem to see the problem that somehow Clinton became the candidate for minorities, even though that makes no sense at all, and when Sanders was her opponent minorities mostly seemed to agree with that. You bemoan the Democratic Primary selection process, but as far as I'm concerned if a candidate who trying to run on a populist platform can't be, well, populist enough to outplay the stale career politician in a popularity contest then they've some serious problems that need to be addressed. The fact that he did worse than Clinton with minorities, significantly, is honestly pretty bad. Its silly to put down Clinton's problems to some overplaying of Identity Politics, she was a weak candidate regardless who is widely regarded as fake, bought out by corporate interests, entitled, corrupt, underhanded and even incompetent. She's been the target of absurd amounts of right-wing hatred for decades and that stuck harder than her supporters wanted to admit. It was ridiculous that she was the Democratic candidate at all considering her previous loss in 2008 and the weaknesses she had that everybody's known about for years and years. She didn't have anything approaching the charisma of either Bill or Obama, she was always going to find it very hard to win the election and the complacency that infected her campaign by the end only sealed the deal. Also, I'm not calling you a racist, but over the last year I can't help but perceive a certain amount of frustration directed at the various racial groups who mostly passed over Sanders as being rubes led astray by idpol, and that they are voting against their own interests. I don't think that will do anybody any favors and it needs to stop. The election almost made the division worse, since discussion about class in America still seems to be centered on the White working class specifically and their concerns, with little mention of, say the Black or Hispanic working class. Now again I'm not saying that White workers should be demonized and their concerns are real, but I feel that we really need to make absolutely clear that Economic justice really is for everybody and Social Justice won't be ignored or else the left is going to have difficulty gaining traction against the likes of Trump.
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Dec 6, 2016 07:12
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Mr. Belding posted:Oh what the gently caress is that poo poo. Of course black baby boomers didn't vote for Sanders. Boomers don't do anything right, ever, regardless of race (some of the older and fatter ones are starting to, though). Bizarre rant about Black Boomers aside, Sanders may have started on the back foot but opened with quite a splash in Iowa and New Hampshire. He just could not get through in the south. He also wasn't really able to make up for his shortcomings by the time of states like California when his name and positions were much better known.
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Dec 6, 2016 07:27
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Trump Tutelage what do you think of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_Graves_Protection_and_Repatriation_Act
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Dec 6, 2016 23:55
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Pharohman777 posted:The tarring of 'white men' as being uniquely evil because of what american minorities and natives experienced at the hands of european settlers is an idea that infuriates any person who has any sort of grasp on where the african slaves came from in africa, or the origins of the word slave. Holy gently caress, I didn't think there'd be a post as blatant as this.
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Dec 6, 2016 23:59
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So people know, I literally am Irish and a student of Irish history with quite a bit of knowledge of American history too and I have to say the oppression of the Irish in Ireland or America really is categorically different from the oppression of Black people in America.
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Dec 7, 2016 00:03
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Sethex posted:Yep, and the oppression of poles/much of eastern europe during ww2 is worse than any oppression in segregation America. I think you know full well when people post the kind of garbage that Pharaohman did its invariably whataboutist jackassary to try and get minority groups to shut up and stop voicing grievances that make white people squirm. But thank you Sethex, you really are showing up how above idpol you are by perfectly playing into the put-upon white person idpol that starts with 'why don't we ever hear about Irish slaves?!'
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Dec 7, 2016 01:27
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Sethex posted:I take issue with grouping whites into a single category in the dumb narrative adopted by the American left. White people exist as a collective category in the sense that they aren't beholden to many of the limitations that racial minorities have to face in the west. 'White privilege', even if most people hate admitting it, is a real thing that exists. And no, that doesn't mean that poor white people don't face a lot of crushing problems, or that their plight hasn't gotten worse in recent years. In the meantime you seem to be quick to condescend to black people who adopted Islam and bark at me for pointing out an obvious dog-whistle when it appears. You do a good job represented the sort of person that prompted me to make this thread honestly. I'm not collectively using Idpol as an insult, but I think it would be pretty drat obvious that not all identity politics is equally valid, you have said as much comparing black nationalism to white nationalism in America. khwarezm fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 01:53
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Sethex posted:I said black nationalism was especially valid and explained why better than anything you have cared to mention, in my comparison I even claimed that white nationalism/pride is ridiculous. I'm not misrepresenting your views, I was pointing out that you seem to agree with me that different identity politics, in this case Black nationalism compared to White nationalism, aren't equally valid or destructive.
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Dec 7, 2016 02:17
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