Study: To US Papers, ‘Identity Politics’ Is Mostly a Way to Sneer at the Left
Study: To US Papers, ‘Identity Politics’ Is Mostly a Way to Sneer at the Left
A FAIR study of US newspapers found the overwhelming majority of times the vague term “identity politics” was mentioned, it was referring to Democrats and the left.
Funny. As a European political scientist, when I think of identity politics the first thing that comes to mind is nativism, right wing populists, and all those people crying out in public about outgroups who are not like themselves.
We always had trans people. They didn't politicize themselves - there's not many enough of them that they could have even if they wanted to. They became politicized by a group of people who chose to identify themselves in opposition to them. The same goes for immigrants, gays, whatever. We vote less according to economy, and more according to identity.
The only way the Republican party is allowed to exist in it's current form is through identity politics. Women not wanting to go thorough with unwanted pregnancies is *not* identity politics. It's more a matter of fucking survival. A bunch of conservative couch fucking male shitheads who want to limit women's ability to decide over their own bodies on the basis of their own hypocritical set of beliefs, however, very much is about identity politics.
And then trans people wanting to simply be allowed to live their lives in peace has also become a matter of identity politics, as their very existence has become politicized. But that's a development driven by right wing nut jobs, not by the left who (at its best, at least) wants to focus on economic issues while guaranteeing human rights as a mattet of common sense and decency.
Pretending that the political left are the ones pushing squishy identity politics while the right are focusing on hard economics and traditional politics is just plain wrong, and portraying it this way is yet another failure of the American media.
/rant
I could say this the long way but I’ll say it the short way - as an American it’s completely obvious that it’s taken on this label because demographics other than old, rich, white men are now at the table. It’s always been identity politics. It’s the only kind of “politics” there have ever been.
Identity politics is perhaps the worst element of our politics, regardless of which side of the spectrum you subscribe to. It's made it much, much easier to divide people and get them to oppose each other rather than focusing their ire on the real problem: the wealthy and their insatiable greed.
Dylan's Only a Pawn in Their Game is a song about identity politics that holds up pretty well I find.
Of course it's used as an attack on the Left, the phrase is the political equivalent of calling someone "ethnic". It's white-male normativity by the owner class.
"Genteel" white men controlling all political power and wealth is normal politics, but other people being involved is identity politics.
If your peace of mind is based on the lie that everything is already fine, anyone disturbing your peace by reminding you it's not fine for them is perceived as an aggressor against that peace of mind. The problem is cowardice.
Well we wouldn't want the pesky proles to be united by class instead of divided by race/gender/orientation. Daddy needs another yacht.