# Identity, politics, and the in-fighting of the left **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 9, 2019, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199 "2019-11-09T10:42:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/61 "2019-11-12T14:17:16Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > And this is why the OP is wrong. I don’t stop being Maori just because I agree with a lot of the issues on the left. I’m not going to compromise who I am for the sake of a pretence of unity. No, that’s why the OP is right. Whether or not you are Maori is irrelevant, and does nothing to establish your position. > [@](#): > > Its not about “the truth or falsehood” of the proposition. Yes, it is about the truth or falsehood of a proposition. That’s all that’s important. > [@](#): > > You are perfectly entitled to disagree with a proposition. But if you disagree with a proposition based on strawman positions and outright fabrications, if you disagree because you refuse to listen to people who are directly affected by that proposition, if you refuse to make an effort to understand what indigenous intellectual property rights are and why they are important to indigenous peoples, then you are disagreeing out of ignorance. I’m not doing any of those things. You are trying to argue based on your identity, which is what the OP said. Your ethnicity doesn’t change anything. Your argument is neither better, nor worse, than if it came from anyone else. That’s something the Left doesn’t seem to get. ‘I’m such-and-such an ethnicity, therefore my argument should receive some kind of special deference’ and then crying racism when it doesn’t happen only works with leftists. People who aren’t spring-loaded to go into allergic guilt reactions when the race card is played don’t care. “How DARE you” doesn’t work well when it is met with “sure, whatever - get back to us when you want to actually debate”. YMMV. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/62 "2019-11-12T14:28:58Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > People who aren’t spring-loaded to go into allergic guilt reactions when the race card is played don’t care. > > Regards, > Shodan Excellent phrasing there. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/63 "2019-11-12T14:30:15Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > No, that’s why the OP is right. Whether or not you are Maori is irrelevant, and does nothing to establish your position.Yes, it is about the truth or falsehood of a proposition. That’s all that’s important. > I’m not doing any of those things. You are trying to argue based on your identity, which is what the OP said. > > Your ethnicity doesn’t change anything. Your argument is neither better, nor worse, than if it came from anyone else. > > That’s something the Left doesn’t seem to get. ‘I’m such-and-such an ethnicity, therefore my argument should receive some kind of special deference’ and then crying racism when it doesn’t happen only works with leftists. People who aren’t spring-loaded to go into allergic guilt reactions when the race card is played don’t care. > > “How DARE you” doesn’t work well when it is met with “sure, whatever - get back to us when you want to actually debate”. > > YMMV. > > Regards, > Shodan As a Hispanic that has encountered prejudice in Arizona, I will have to say that it is not “special deference” but simply to ask for fairness and equal rights. So, sure, whatever - get back to us when you want to actually debate… 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/64 "2019-11-12T17:28:40Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …of course my goal matters. How can it not? Well, because it’s irrelevant to the topic? This is (again) about how to promote goals, which is independent of what the goals are. > [@](#): > > So how does this all fit into your thesis then? My thesis is that I don’t “hurt the cause of the left” when I call a racist a racist, even if that racist doesn’t think they are racist. Do you think I “hurt the cause?” What is “the cause” anyway? It isn’t my job to "diminish intolerance. So why bring that up? How is that relevant? If you want to promote the goal of diminishing racism, calling a racist a racist indeed might not help—which, in your words ‘should be pretty fucking obvious’. You don’t want to promote that goal—which is fine, but irrelevant. But it does matter for the topic of how to promote goals (not, specifically, the goal of diminishing racism—that’s just an example to illustrate the general point that confronting people with their biases may be counterproductive). > [@](#): > > I think it does matter. Because as you’ve said from the beginning, you think I’m part of the problem. I am your cite you said. Now I’m not? Your fighting or not fighting racism isn’t part of the problem, but your fighting me—as in, engaging in counterproductive debate tactics, such as claiming that I’m lying when I state what my values are—is. Not what you do, but how you do it. > [@](#): > > Are you fucking kidding me? They didn’t use to be such a problem? Identity constructions used to be set by your birth, so choosing, constructing an identity indeed wasn’t the same problem it is now. As I put it in the OP: > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I think the basic issue is that we never used to have to think about identity terribly much: who you were was, in the bad old times, largely determined by the circumstances of your birth—the farmer’s son would likely be a farmer himself, and so on. This was, of course, an egregiously unfair and oppressive system, so none of what I’m saying should be interpreted as advocating for a return to it Another attempt to head off the obvious misinterpretation that didn’t land with you, but I’m getting used to that. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > This is just word salad. I’ve read it three times and I still can’t get it to make any sense. I’m repeating, in brief, a couple of claims from the OP: [ul] [li]the social progress that’s been made freeing (some) people (sometimes) from these rigid structures introduces new challenges[/li][LIST] [li]that is, at least some people are, under certain circumstances, more free to choose their own identity than they used to be—there is, for instance, some upward mobility, the farmer’s son no longer is as likely to remain a farmer, and so on[/li][li]this freedom of choice, however, while intrinsically a good thing, can have adverse psychological consequences—the so-called ‘[Paradox of Choice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice)’ [/li][li]hence, the progress that has been made also introduces novel challenges[/li][/ul] [li]I think there are different kinds of identity construction[/li][ul] [li]identity can be constructed by dissociating from or associating with certain groups—‘I am like those, and not like those’[/li][li]this can be due to overt characteristics, like hair color, or due to opinions—‘I am a person who things killing is bad’, for instance[/li][/ul] [li]I think some kinds of identity construction are inherently more vulnerable towards internal tension[/li][ul] [li]those types of identity construction that rely on overt characteristics are hard to doubt[/li][li]none of your fellow gingers, for instance, can doubt whether you’re ginger[/li][li]a hard dividing line allows an easier separation of people into in- and out-group[/li][li]‘people who’ve run a marathon’ have completed a race over 42.195 km; all who haven’t are therefore not in the club[/li][li]but there are groups that are very important to their members, whose membership is defined along less overt, unambiguous characteristics[/li][li]take, for instance, religion: religions often split along disagreements of what the ‘true faith’ exactly entails[/li][li]hence, it becomes harder to say who is and who isn’t part of the club[/li][li]consequently, the claim that one is part of the club becomes harder to evaluate[/li][li]thus, if your identity is based on ‘being part of such-and-such club’ (say, being a member of a certain religion), it is in your interest to draw that dividing line as sharply as possible—exactly define who you’re like, and who you’re not like[/li][li]consequently, people who derive their sense of identity from this kind of group have to do more work to maintain this identification then people who define themselves along overt, indubitable characteristics[/li][li]members of the former kind of group can then disagree about what it means to be a ‘proper’ member of the group, where members of the latter can’t (as easily)[/li][li]hence, interior stresses are a greater danger for those former groups than for the latter[/li][/ul] [/LIST] All of this is, though perhaps not in all this detail, in the OP. > [@](#): > > Give me a fucking break. I haven’t engaged? You are seriously going with that? When I’ve responded to almost every word you’ve written in this thread? You responded to a _misunderstanding_ of almost every word I’ve written in this thread, and so far steadfastly refused to even consider my actual points, no matter how hard I try to make them clear. > [@](#): > > No you actually haven’t. You’ve cited a spat in academia. You’ve pointed out a troll harassing an author. OK, I think at this point, I’ll have to accept that (once again) trying to clarify the relevance of this example isn’t going to do anything. > [@](#): > > If there isn’t any actual in-fighting on the left then that means **the basic reasoning behind your ideas are probably unfounded**. It means you have nothing. Again, as explicitly pointed out in the OP: > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > some voices [have argued](https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/09/how-modern-addiction-identity-politics-has-fractured-left) that the left-wing divisivenes on issues of identity has aided the large-scale shift to the right by alienating the masses. > > **This isn’t what I want to discuss.** It wasn’t what I wanted to discuss then, and it’s not what I want to discuss now. I have really been quite explicit about that. So no. Whether Lilla is right about the infighting on the left isn’t at all relevant; it’s just the thing that got me here. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > I have dismissed every single cite (that I could understand and wasn’t a link to a book) based on the contents of that cite, and not because the author hangs with the “wrong crowd.” > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > Tim Lott is an “old man yelling get off my lawn” who also recently wrote a rather positive article about Jordan Peterson. His article had over 2000 comments, many people disagreeing with him. What’s that other than saying that because he wrote a positive article about Jordan Peterson, his views are to be dismissed? And how, exactly, does an article having 2000 comments mean that it’s talking about something that doesn’t exist? Where all of them just pointing out how he’s wrong? I think this shows there’s lots of discussion on this issue. But again: that’s not actually my point. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > It isn’t my fault that you keep posting garbage cites. And the reason you keep posting garbage cites is that you came up with a narrative first: and now you are frantically googling for people that agree with the narrative you’ve created. The quality of your cites should give you a clue to the accuracy of your thesis. As I’ve pointed out, I didn’t come up with the narrative first; I read a book that brought it to mind. Yes, that book isn’t accessible to you, and it’s written in a language you (probably) don’t speak, but that still means it’s not true that I have just (for whatever reason) constructed a narrative out of thin air and am now trying to make the facts fit the story. > [@](#): > > Wow. > > I mean, just wow. > > I mean, totally, of course. That Guardian article was 100% correct. If only the left would stop riling the Trump base, if only we stopped calling people racist who didn’t think they were racist, if only we did these two things the systematic mass detention of millions of Uighur’s in China in [Mass Internment Camps](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/23/china-footage-reveals-hundreds-of-blindfolded-and-shackled-prisoners-uighur), that wouldn’t have happened. Silly me. I’ve been doing this all wrong. The forest is on fire. People are doing things aimed at extinguishing it. The fire spreads. Shouldn’t we maybe think about better methods of combating fire before our villages burn? Crime runs rampant in the city. Officials issue measures to cut down on crime—harder punishments, more police presence. Crime increases. Shouldn’t we think about maybe adapting measures used to fight crime? This isn’t blaming the left for the right’s atrocities, and you’re not so simple minded as to genuinely think that’s what I was insinuating. It’s trying to figure out whether the things we do to stop these atrocities are all that we can do, or whether there’s a better way. > [@](#): > > Do you even know what it is you are arguing about now? You keep saying “there are better ways” but the “better ways” you describe sound very wishy washy to me. I haven’t said there are better ways, but that there may be better ways, and I don’t think I’ve really described any. This is—or was intended to be—first and foremost about identifying causes and problems, and only second, in what I had hoped might be constructive discussion, perhaps an attempt at finding ways to overcome them. > [@](#): > > You started poorly. You’ve gotten worse. You first completely misunderstood my point. Now, you at least seem confused. That might be a sign I’m making progress! > [@](#): > > I still don’t know what it is you want to debate. All I’m doing now is responding to the post that you write, hoping I don’t set off the “that isn’t what this thread is about” detector. I have given you a very clear dividing line: if it’s about whether such-and-such a goal is worthy, or valuable, or whether any particular goal suffers from any particular issue, you’re not talking about what I want to talk about. When it’s about how goals are reached, and what identity may or may not have to do with that, then you’re on the right track. It’s essentially the distinction between vehicle and content—or, taking things literally, the distinction between destinations and ways to reach them: Let’s say I introduced this with an example of how it’s quicker to go from Berlin to Munich by train than by car. You response, then, essentially has been that neither do you want to go to Munich, nor are you even in Berlin, and why the hell I dare suggest you go to Munich, and so on. But that’s just missing the point. Even if it’s not actually faster to go to Munich via train doesn’t matter if my intent was to compare both modes of transportation—that just means I’ve picked a bad example. Does any of this help at all? Because I’m really not sure I can keep explaining myself to you; the expected marginal utility is diminishing rather rapidly, I’m afraid, so I don’t think there’ll be terribly much of a point in continuing this if you still don’t see where what you’re talking about and what I’m talking about differ. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/65 "2019-11-12T18:15:25Z")
I certainly agree with the points that OP is making. BTW, I recently read [this opinion, also about “identity-protective cognition”](https://www.vox.com/2014/4/6/5556462/brain-dead-how-politics-makes-us-stupid) and found myself agreeing with it also! But the perspective is quite different from OP’s. I lack the intellect to reconcile these two viewpoints. Some in the thread ask OP for cites that the problem he describes is real. :smack: One need look no further than the responses in the thread for such examples! > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > … But there is something wrong with every candidate! There is nothing wrong with people pointing that out. **And if they decide not to vote whats your problem with that?** You live in a democracy. They have a right not to vote. You don’t have compulsory voting. 😕 I’ve emphasized a key mistake in **Mr. Bear** ’s post. If good guys don’t vote, the bad guys may win again. Rocket science to understand this much? > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > … It looks to me that Danusha V. Goska is exactly the sort of person you are talking about in this thread. I’m an “other” to her. She isn’t a leftist. Maybe its time to rethink your original thesis? The excellent article by Goska is being disrespected. I’ll just quote two brief excerpts: > [@](#): > > I was a graduate student. Female genital mutilation came up in class. I stated, without ornamentation, that it is wrong. > > A fellow graduate student, one who was fully funded and is now a comfortably tenured professor, sneered at me. “You are so intolerant. Clitoredectomy is just another culture’s rite of passage. You Catholics have confirmation.” > > … > Smearing us is not enough. Liberal policies sabotage us. Affirmative action benefits recipients by color, not by income. Even this limited focus fails. In his 2004 Yale University Press study, Thomas Sowell insists that affirmative action helps only wealthier African Americans. Poor blacks do not benefit. In 2009, Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford demonstrated that poor, white Christians are underrepresented on elite college campuses. Leftists add insult to injury. A blue-collar white kid, who feels lost and friendless on the alien terrain of a university campus, a campus he has to leave immediately after class so he can get to his fulltime job at MacDonald’s, must accept that he is a recipient of “white privilege” – if he wants to get good grades in mandatory classes on racism. It doesn’t matter whether Ms. Goska’s arguments are 100% valid. What is 100% certain is that she describes ways that liberals drive citizens to vote for Republicans. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/66 "2019-11-12T19:41:53Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > The excellent article by Goska is being disrespected. I’ll just quote two brief excerpts: > > It doesn’t matter whether Ms. Goska’s arguments are 100% valid. What is 100% certain is that she describes ways that liberals drive citizens to vote for Republicans. Nope, you actually brought to notice why that article should be disrespected even more. Besides being yet another example of [nutpicking](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nutpicking), that is not what the majority of Democrats or liberals go for, and it is unanimously condemned by Democrats and liberals in congress. (conservatives in congress too, for that matter). > **[U.S. House Unanimously Passes Resolution Denouncing Female Genital...](https://www.kff.org/news-summary/u-s-house-unanimously-passes-resolution-denouncing-female-genital-mutilation-calling-for-worldwide-efforts-to-eliminate-practice/)** > > Newsweek: U.S. House passes resolution officially recognizing female genital mutilation as a ‘human rights violation’ “The House of Representatives has passed a bipartisan resolution denouncing the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) and... > [@](#): > > “The House of Representatives has passed a bipartisan resolution denouncing the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) and recognizing it as a human rights violation against women and girls. … In their resolution, which passed unanimously with a 393 to 0 vote ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/67 "2019-11-12T20:10:04Z")
Some more cites to pick apart. [How Identity, Not Issues, Explains the Partisan Divide](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-identity-not-issues-explains-the-partisan-divide/): > [@](#): > > U.S. liberals and conservatives not only disagree on policy issues: they are also increasingly unwilling to live near each other, be friends, or get married to members of the other group. This rejection based on group membership is called affective polarization, meaning that our feelings (affect) are different towards members of our own group compared to outsiders. > > […] > > Nonetheless, we see that Americans are increasingly divided not just on the issues but also on their willingness to socialize across the political aisle. It is normal that society manifests new social cleavages as it heals old ones. However, when identities are fused with policies that have vast, long-term consequences (e.g., war, taxes, or the Paris Agreement), these divisions imperil our ability to select policies based on their expected outcomes. To paraphrase anthropologist John Tooby, forming coalitions around policy questions is disastrous because it pits our modest urge for truth-seeking against our voracious appetite to be good group members. If Americans slide into seeing all policy debates as battles between Us vs. Them, we stop selecting policies based on their actual content. [Why Has America Become So Divided?](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/201809/why-has-america-become-so-divided) > [@](#): > > A 2017 PEW Research Center poll of 5,000 US adults reported that partisan divide over political issues related to racial discrimination, immigration, international diplomacy, and government aid to the needy has indeed widened significantly since the early 1990s.1 There was an average 36% difference of opinion on these issues (up from just 15% in 1994) across party lines — based on those identifying as or “leaning” to either Democrats or Republicans. > > […] > > [A 2012 study] examined political polarization from a different angle — not from how Americans stand on policy issues, but from the perspective of “affect” — how they feel about those on the other side of the political fence. Drawing from survey data spanning several decades, the study found that the feelings of those who affiliate as Democrat or Republican towards members of the opposing party have become increasingly negative since the late '80s. The general pattern of dislike was mirrored by other specific metrics of “social distance” — disapproval of one’s child marrying someone from the opposing party as well as the attribution of negative stereotypes (e.g. close-minded, hypocritical, selfish, mean) to those of the opposing party, both of which have increased sharply since the '60s. Curiously, this “affect polarization” wasn’t so much related to ideology (i.e. where one stood on political issues) as much as partisan identity per se. > > […] > > In Dr. Mason’s examination of political survey data, by far the more potent predictor of social distance was identity-based ideology […] > > Collectively, these results indicate that it’s the social identifying role of ideological affiliation that’s paramount in guiding our negative emotional responses to those on the other side of the political fence. > > […] > > For much of the voting public, political affiliation isn’t so much about the issues as it is about being part of “Team Red” and “Team Blue.” So opposed between “us” and “them,” “liberals become “libtards,” “conservatives” become “fascists,” and the possibility of finding common ground flies out the window. [People don’t vote for what they want. They vote for who they are.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/people-dont-vote-for-want-they-want-they-vote-for-who-they-are/2018/08/30/fb5b7e44-abd7-11e8-8a0c-70b618c98d3c_story.html) > [@](#): > > The best predictor of ideological animus, the study found, wasn’t a respondent’s opinions or even how strongly she held them, but what label she embraced, conservative or liberal. Mason calls this “identity-based ideology,” as opposed to “issue-based ideology.” Other researchers in political psychology prefer to speak of “affective polarization.” Either formulation is a polite way of saying that political cleavages are not so much “I disagree with your views” as “I hate your stupid face.” You can be an ideologue without ideology. > > […] > > Indeed, while few Americans are still bothered by interracial marriage, recent surveys find that between 30 and 60 percent of people who identify as Democrats or Republicans want their kids to marry in the party. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that identity politics is the only kind of politics we’ve got. > > […] > > Generic remarks about people, in short, encourage you to think of them as a kind, and you’re more likely to accept a generic claim about a group if it’s negative or worrying. (Liberals hate America; conservatives are bigots.) [The Bankruptcy of the American Left](https://www.truthdig.com/articles/bankruptcy-american-left/) > [@](#): > > Resistance to this global cabal of corporate oligarchs must also be supranational. It must build alliances with workers around the globe. It must defy the liberal institutions, including the Democratic Party, which betray workers. It is this betrayal that has given rise to fascist and protofascist movements in Europe and other countries. Donald Trump would never have been elected but for this betrayal. > > […] > > The left, seduced by the culture wars and identity politics, largely ignores the primacy of capitalism and the class struggle. > > […] > > “As the [capitalist] system universalizes and becomes more and more intersectional, we need intersectional resistance,” Derber said. “At the end of the 1960s, when I was getting my own political education, the universalizing dimensions of the left, which was growing in the ’60s, fell apart. The women began to feel their issues were not being addressed. They were treated badly by white males, student leaders. Blacks, Panthers, began to feel the whites could not speak for race issues. They developed separate organizations. The upshot was the left lost its universalizing character. It no longer dealt with the intersection of all these issues within the context of a militarized, capitalist, hegemonic American empire. It treated politics as siloed group identity problems. > > […] > > “The left became a kind of grab bag of discrete, siloed identity movements,” Derber said. “This is very connected to moral purity. You’re concerned about your advancement within the existing system. You’re competing against others within the existing system. Everyone else has privilege. You’re just concerned about getting your fair share.” > > […] > > Derber, like North, argues that the left’s myopic, siloed politics paved the way for right-wing, nativist, protofascist movements around the globe as well as the ascendancy of Trump. > > […] > > “Identity politics is to a large degree a right-wing discourse,” Derber said. “It focuses on tribalism tied in modern times to nationalism, which is always militaristic. When you break the left into these siloed identity politics, which are not contextualized, you easily get into this dogmatic fundamentalism. [Identity Politics](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics) > [@](#): > > For many leftist commentators, in particular, identity politics is something of a bête noire, representing the capitulation to cultural criticism in place of analysis of the material roots of oppression. > > […] > > Identity politics, for these critics, is both factionalizing and depoliticizing, drawing attention away from the ravages of late capitalism toward superstructural cultural accommodations that leave economic structures unchanged. For example, while allowing that both recognition and redistribution have a place in contemporary politics, Nancy Fraser laments the supremacy of perspectives that take injustice to inhere in “cultural” constructions of identity that the people to whom they are attributed want to reject. Such recognition models, she argues, require remedies that “valorize the group’s ‘groupness’ by recognizing its specificity”, thus reifying identities that themselves are products of oppressive structures. [A Conversation with Todd Gitlin](https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript235.html) > [@](#): > > My book is about how it came to pass that the right marched on Washington and took a great deal of it while the left was marching on the English department. My book is about why America is obsessed with its national identity and why so many Americans think that they have a separate identity. It’s about why we have a skewed debate in which the tradition of the left, which is to proclaim the unity of humanity, is a position that is barely on the screen. > > […] > > I think that many people, perhaps most on the left, or at least most who are visible, have gone down a path in which they are obsessed with what differs between them and one – one crowd and another. They are more obsessed with what divides them than what they have in common with the rest of humanity. > > […] > > And the view of the left then was that people are capable of reason, that all people are capable of arriving at some idea of the common interest. Well, today it’s very fashionable, not only in universities, to affirm that only people of the same exact type as you, whatever exactly that means, can think about you and your needs and your history, and so on. [Identity Politics and the Left](http://banmarchive.org.uk/articles/1996%20annual%20lecture.htm) > [@](#): > > Never was the word “community” used more indiscriminately and emptily than in the decades when communities in the sociological sense become hard to find in real life’. [4] Men and women look for groups to which they can belong, certainly and forever, in a world in which all else is moving and shifting, in which nothing else is certain. And they find it in an identity group. Hence the strange paradox, which the brilliant, and incidentally, Caribbean Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson has identified: people choose to belong to an identity group, but ‘it is a choice predicated on the strongly held, intensely conceived belief that the individual has absolutely no choice but to belong to that specific group.’ > > […] > > collective identities are defined negatively; that is to say against others. ‘We’ recognize ourselves as ‘us’ because we are different from ‘Them’. If there were no ‘They’ from whom we are different, we wouldn’t have to ask ourselves who ‘We’ were. Without Outsiders there are no Insiders. In other words, collective identities are based not on what their members have in common—they may have very little in common except not being the ‘Others’. > > […] > > Of course, there are collectivities which are based on objective characteristics which their members have in common, including biological gender or such politically sensitive physical characteristics as skin-colour and so forth. However most collective identities are like shirts rather than skin, namely they are, in theory at least, optional, not inescapable. > > […] > > What has all this to do with the Left? Identity groups were certainly not central to the Left. Basically, the mass social and political movements of the Left, that is, those inspired by the American and French revolutions and socialism, were indeed coalitions or group alliances, but held together not by aims that were specific to the group, but by great, universal causes through which each group believed its particular aims could be realized: democracy, the Republic, socialism, communism or whatever. > > […] > > when the labour movement became narrowed down to nothing but a pressure-group or a sectional movement of industrial workers, as in 1970s Britain, it lost both the capacity to be the potential centre of a general people’s mobilization and the general hope of the future. Militant ‘economist’ trade unionism antagonized the people not directly involved in it to such an extent that it gave Thatcherite Toryism its most convincing argument—and the justification for turning the traditional ‘one-nation’ Tory Party into a force for waging militant class-war. What is more, this proletarian identity politics not only isolated the working class, but also split it by setting groups of workers against each other. > > […] > > So what does identity politics have to do with the Left? Let me state firmly what should not need restating. The political project of the Left is universalist: it is for all human beings. However we interpret the words, it isn’t liberty for shareholders or blacks, but for everybody. […] And identity politics is essentially not for everybody but for the members of a specific group only. > > […] > > That is why the Left cannot base itself on identity politics. It has a wider agenda. > > […] > > the common interest of Irish, Italian, Jewish and black Americans in the Democratic Party did not derive from their particular ethnicities, even though realistic politicians paid their respects to these. What united them was the hunger for equality and social justice, and a programme believed capable of advancing both. > > […] > > But this is just what so many on the Left have forgotten, as they dive head first into the deep waters of identity politics. Since the 1970s there has been a tendency—an increasing tendency’ to see the Left essentially as a coalition of minority groups and interests: of race, gender, sexual or other cultural preferences and lifestyles, even of economic minorities such as the old getting-your-hands-dirty, industrial working class have now become. This is understandable enough, but it is dangerous, not least because winning majorities is not the same as adding up minorities. > > […] > > forcing people to take on one, and only one, identity divides them from each other. It therefore isolates these minorities. > > […] > > Today both the Right and to the Left are saddled with identity politics. Unfortunately, the danger of disintegrating into a pure alliance of minorities is unusually great on the Left because the decline of the great universalist slogans of the Enlightenment, which were essentially slogans of the Left, leaves it without any obvious way of formulating a common interest across sectional boundaries. Do I agree with all of the above? Do I even think all of it is reasonable? Hardly. But I do think that, reading things like the above, the impression that yes, identity politics is a significant factor in the current political climate, and yes, it is troublesome in particular for the left, isn’t that unreasonable. It may still be wrong—but I don’t think that can be demonstrated by dismissing all of that as ‘opinion’ or ‘perception’. At some point, if lots of people perceive something, one should begin to wonder whether it might not just be, in fact, there. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/68 "2019-11-12T20:54:54Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Do I agree with all of the above? Do I even think all of it is reasonable? Hardly. But I do think that, reading things like the above, the impression that yes, identity politics is a significant factor in the current political climate, and yes, it is troublesome in particular for the left, isn’t that unreasonable. It may still be wrong—but I don’t think that can be demonstrated by dismissing all of that as ‘opinion’ or ‘perception’. At some point, if lots of people perceive something, one should begin to wonder whether it might not just be, in fact, there. I will have to think that you are wrong in the levels of the infighting; as noted already, I think that the evidence shows that while there is some, that infighting is not huge. As for the cites here, first I noticed that the early cites are about the phenomenon, not a specific criticism of the left or the right; but second, then you cited an article that talked about class struggle and Corporate capitalism, “which uses identity politics, multiculturalism and racial justice to masquerade as politics”, in essence, it sounds like a Marxist disparaging the American Left… and it does: > **[The Bankruptcy of the American Left](https://www.truthdig.com/articles/bankruptcy-american-left/)** > > As long as liberals allow themselves to be divided by identity politics and the culture wars, they will be under the heel of a rapacious corporate capitalism. > [@](#): > > The left, seduced by the culture wars and identity politics, largely ignores the primacy of capitalism and the class struggle. But it then finishes with this: > [@](#): > > Derber, like North, argues that the left’s myopic, siloed politics paved the way for right-wing, nativist, protofascist movements around the globe as well as the ascendancy of Trump. > > “When you bring politics down to simply about helping your group get a piece of the pie, you lose that systemic analysis,” he said. “You’re fragmented. You don’t have natural connections or solidarity with other groups. You don’t see the larger systemic context. By saying I want, as a gay person, to fight in the military, in a funny way you’re legitimating the American empire. If you were living in Nazi Germany, would you say I want the right of a gay person to fight in combat with the Nazi soldiers?” > > “I don’t want to say we should eliminate all identity politics,” he said. “But any identity politics has to be done within the framework of understanding the larger political economy. That’s been stripped away and erased. Even on the left, you cannot find a deep conversation about capitalism and militarized capitalism. It’s just been erased. That’s why Trump came in. He unified a kind of very powerful right-wing identity politics built around nationalism, militarism and the exceptionalism of the American empire.” > > “Identity politics is to a large degree a right-wing discourse,” Derber said. “It focuses on tribalism tied in modern times to nationalism, which is always militaristic. When you break the left into these siloed identity politics, which are not contextualized, you easily get into this dogmatic fundamentalism. The identity politics of the left reproduces the worse sociopathic features of the system as a whole. It’s scary.” > > “How much of the left,” he asked, “is reproducing what we are seeing in the society that we’re fighting?” Well, “You tell me it’s the institution Well, you know You better free you mind instead But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow” Just a note that you seem to fall for the conservative idea that Democrats or Liberals in America are communists, as noted, those are out there, but not given much attention as it is on the fringes of what one could call the left in the USA. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/69 "2019-11-12T23:16:15Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > No, that’s why the OP is right. Whether or not you are Maori is irrelevant, and does nothing to establish your position. …being Maori, in context, is relevant. It does everything to establish my position. > [@](#): > > Yes, it is about the truth or falsehood of a proposition. That’s all that’s important. "Understanding is a three edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.” JMS. > [@](#): > > I’m not doing any of those things. You are trying to argue based on your identity, which is what the OP said. Sure you are. And you double down on that in this very post. > [@](#): > > Your ethnicity doesn’t change anything. Your argument is neither better, nor worse, than if it came from anyone else. But we haven’t heard your argument, and you haven’t heard mine. > [@](#): > > That’s something the Left doesn’t seem to get. Who is this “left” you are talking about? > [@](#): > > ‘I’m such-and-such an ethnicity, therefore my argument should receive some kind of special deference’ and then crying racism when it doesn’t happen only works with leftists. Yah see, this right here is a strawman. I haven’t requested “special deference.” I haven’t gone “crying racism” to anyone. I don’t even consider myself a “leftist.” > [@](#): > > People who aren’t spring-loaded to go into allergic guilt reactions when the race card is played don’t care. We all know you don’t care about us Shodan. > [@](#): > > “How DARE you” doesn’t work well when it is met with “sure, whatever - get back to us when you want to actually debate”. Its remarkable how you’ve managed to create an entirely new narrative out of a conversation that happened a few days ago. **I’m here to debate** if you want. That was what I explicitly said. The OP doesn’t want to have that debate. They have said that explicitly over and over again. Do you want that debate or do you want to continue your snide insinuations? Where do you want to start? ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/70 "2019-11-12T23:31:04Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > 😕 I’ve emphasized a key mistake in **Mr. Bear** ’s post. If good guys don’t vote, the bad guys may win again. Rocket science to understand this much? …this isn’t a mistake. It certainly isn’t a \*\*key \*\*mistake. It doesn’t take rocket science to understand that. > [@](#): > > The excellent article by Goska is being disrespected. I’ll just quote two brief excerpts: > > It doesn’t matter whether Ms. Goska’s arguments are 100% valid. What is 100% certain is that she describes ways that liberals drive citizens to vote for Republicans. The article by Goska deserved to be disrespected. It was a load of fucking tosh. Those two examples you cite? Firstly, the opinion that “clitoredectomy is just another culture’s rite of passage” is not a mainstream “leftest” position. The left are not out marching in the streets in the defense of clitoredectomy." This has nothing to do with the left. It has everything to do with 1) an idiot fellow graduate student and 2) the idiot who was writing the article. As for the second: what was it about that complete mishmash of talking points makes you think that it drives citizens to vote Republican? Was it a black man criticizing what many would regard as a “liberal institution?” Do you honestly think that makes any sense at all? ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/71 "2019-11-13T00:37:02Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Well, because it’s irrelevant to the topic? This is (again) about how to promote goals, which is independent of what the goals are. …its relevant because you keep bringing up goals! > [@](#): > > If you want to promote the goal of diminishing racism, calling a racist a racist indeed might not help—which, in your words ‘should be pretty fucking obvious’. You don’t want to promote that goal—which is fine, but irrelevant. But it does matter for the topic of how to promote goals (not, specifically, the goal of diminishing racism—that’s just an example to illustrate the general point that confronting people with their biases may be counterproductive). You are locked into a binary paradigm. I think calling racists racist often helps. It can promote your goal of diminishing racism. It doesn’t matter if that person doesn’t think they are racist. There is no point in coddling a racist. > [@](#): > > Your fighting or not fighting racism isn’t part of the problem, but your fighting me—as in, engaging in counterproductive debate tactics, such as claiming that I’m lying when I state what my values are—is. Not what you do, but how you do it. “Claiming you are lying” is against the rules of this forum **and I haven’t done that**. **You haven’t stated what your values are. You have refused to answer those questions.** These are debate forums. **We debate here**. If the act of debate in a forum dedicated to debate is what you consider problematic then we’ve got a great big huge problem here. We may as well shut the forums down and go home. > [@](#): > > Identity constructions used to be set by your birth, Cite? > [@](#): > > so choosing, **constructing an identity** indeed wasn’t the same problem it is now. As I put it in the OP: What do you mean by “constructing an identity?” > [@](#): > > Another attempt to head off the obvious misinterpretation that didn’t land with you, but I’m getting used to that. This is an awfully Western centric version of history. Lets take a black man, stolen from his homeland, locked in chains, taken against his will to the other side of the world, whipped and dying in a ditch. Do you think that man identified himself as his job, the way you think the famer’s son would? > [@](#): > > I’m repeating, in brief, a couple of claims from the OP: > [ul] > [li]the social progress that’s been made freeing (some) people (sometimes) from these rigid structures introduces new challenges[/li][LIST] > [li]that is, at least some people are, under certain circumstances, more free to choose their own identity than they used to be—there is, for instance, some upward mobility, the farmer’s son no longer is as likely to remain a farmer, and so on[/li] Why do you think that people “choose” their identity? > [@](#): > > [li]this freedom of choice, however, while intrinsically a good thing, can have adverse psychological consequences—the so-called ‘[Paradox of Choice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice)’ [/li][li]hence, the progress that has been made also introduces novel challenges[/li][/ul] > [li]I think there are different kinds of identity construction[/li][ul] > [li]identity can be constructed by dissociating from or associating with certain groups—‘I am like those, and not like those’[/li][li]this can be due to overt characteristics, like hair color, or due to opinions—‘I am a person who things killing is bad’, for instance[/li][/ul] > [li]I think some kinds of identity construction are inherently more vulnerable towards internal tension[/li][ul] > [li]those types of identity construction that rely on overt characteristics are hard to doubt[/li][li]none of your fellow gingers, for instance, can doubt whether you’re ginger[/li][li]a hard dividing line allows an easier separation of people into in- and out-group[/li][li]‘people who’ve run a marathon’ have completed a race over 42.195 km; all who haven’t are therefore not in the club[/li][li]but there are groups that are very important to their members, whose membership is defined along less overt, unambiguous characteristics[/li][li]take, for instance, religion: religions often split along disagreements of what the ‘true faith’ exactly entails[/li][li]hence, it becomes harder to say who is and who isn’t part of the club[/li][li]consequently, the claim that one is part of the club becomes harder to evaluate[/li][li]thus, if your identity is based on ‘being part of such-and-such club’ (say, being a member of a certain religion), it is in your interest to draw that dividing line as sharply as possible—exactly define who you’re like, and who you’re not like[/li][li]consequently, people who derive their sense of identity from this kind of group have to do more work to maintain this identification then people who define themselves along overt, indubitable characteristics[/li][li]members of the former kind of group can then disagree about what it means to be a ‘proper’ member of the group, where members of the latter can’t (as easily)[/li][li]hence, interior stresses are a greater danger for those former groups than for the latter[/li][/ul] > [/LIST] > > All of this is, though perhaps not in all this detail, in the OP. This can all be summarised into a single, concise sentence: “Life is hard.” You are making this more complicated than it is in reality. You are overthinking this to the point of absurdity. > [@](#): > > You responded to a _misunderstanding_ of almost every word I’ve written in this thread, and so far steadfastly refused to even consider my actual points, no matter how hard I try to make them clear. Nope. You don’t have a clear idea of what it is your point actually is. You are struggling to articulate it, and you compensate by writing more and more words. And when I respond to the words you’ve actually written, you pivot and put all the blame for any “misunderstanding” on me. I have engaged you. To say otherwise is willfully misleading. > [@](#): > > OK, I think at this point, I’ll have to accept that (once again) trying to clarify the relevance of this example isn’t going to do anything. Did you cite any other examples? > [@](#): > > Again, as explicitly pointed out in the OP: > It wasn’t what I wanted to discuss then, and it’s not what I want to discuss now. I have really been quite explicit about that. So no. Whether Lilla is right about the infighting on the left isn’t at all relevant; it’s just the thing that got me here. If she is wrong: then what is this thread all about then? > [@](#): > > What’s that other than saying that because he wrote a positive article about Jordan Peterson, his views are to be dismissed? You missed the bit about “an old man yelling get off my lawn” That was the actual critique of the article. It was a rant. You could have linked to a rant in the pit and it would probably have had more substance to it than that ridiculous article you cited. > [@](#): > > And how, exactly, does an article having 2000 comments mean that it’s talking about **something that doesn’t exist**? Where all of them just pointing out how he’s wrong? What something doesn’t exist what? And you can look at the comments yourself. Many agreed with it. Many didn’t. It was a comments section! It generated a lot of responses, that’s all I was pointing out. You’ve already been caught posting links to articles that you hadn’t even read that you claim back up your position. I’m actually reading the cites that you post. So don’t criticize me for how I’ve treated your cites. > [@](#): > > As I’ve pointed out, I didn’t come up with the narrative first; I read a book that brought it to mind. Yes, that book isn’t accessible to you, and it’s written in a language you (probably) don’t speak, but that still means it’s not true that I have just (for whatever reason) constructed a narrative out of thin air and am now trying to make the facts fit the story. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > What caused it? Probably by people writing articles like the ones you’ve cited that have convinced people like you that “the perception is reality”, prompting you to write evidence-free-rants here in Great Debates that prompts other people similarly convinced to nod-their-heads-in-agreement. That’s how a “feedback loop” works. I get how it all started. You read a book. Then formed a narrative. Now you are trying to back up that narrative. And failing miserably. > [@](#): > > The forest is on fire. People are doing things aimed at extinguishing it. The fire spreads. Shouldn’t we maybe think about better methods of combating fire before our villages burn? You aren’t advocating “better methods of combating fire.” You are standing in front of the firefighters while they are dragging tankers of water uphill to get to the fire. And as they are ready to start putting water onto the fire you interrupt them to say “Excuse me, but there might be a better way to put the fire out. Have you thought about maybe low-expansion foams such as AFFF, have an expansion rate less than 20 times are low-viscosity, mobile, and can quickly cover large areas?” And when the firefighter says “that’s all very well and nice, but can you please get out of the way so we can fight the fire” you get all offended and you walk off in a huff. Then you start a thread on the straightdope dot com complaining that “those firefighters **were so rude.** They make me not want to support firefighters at all. And they were using water. There are better methods of combating fire before our villages burn. Lets not discuss those though, because I don’t actually have any better ideas, but those firefighters should be able to come up with something.” > [@](#): > > Crime runs rampant in the city. Officials issue measures to cut down on crime—harder punishments, more police presence. Crime increases. Shouldn’t we think about maybe adapting measures used to fight crime? White supremacy is running rampant. [This guy](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/12/20961458/stephen-miller-white-supremacist-anti-immigrant-emails-breitbart-southern-poverty-law-center) is in charge of the United States immigration policy. He has set up concentration camps. They are disappearing people. How is anything that you’ve suggested in this thread going to deal with this? > [@](#): > > This isn’t blaming the left for the right’s atrocities, and you’re not so simple minded as to genuinely think that’s what I was insinuating. It’s trying to figure out whether the things we do to stop these atrocities are all that we can do, or whether there’s a better way. Do you know what isn’t going to fix any of this? Criticizing infighting. Because infighting is often about people arguing if **there is a better way to do things**. What is it do you think the fighting is about? > [@](#): > > I haven’t said there are better ways, but that there may be better ways, and I don’t think I’ve really described any. Yeah, its just empty rhetoric. You think infighting is hurting the cause, when those that are fighting are just trying to figure out better ways to do things. At least they are doing something about it. > [@](#): > > This is—or was intended to be—first and foremost about identifying causes and problems, and only second, in what I had hoped might be constructive discussion, perhaps an attempt at finding ways to overcome them. The “causes” and “problems” are specific to each and every single case of infighting you see. But you don’t want to discuss specifics. So how do you expect go have constructive discussion when all you can do is talk in generalities? A stoush over transgender issues will be about very specific things. Another infight about race and racism will be about something else. A global approach can’t and won’t fix this. > [@](#): > > You first completely misunderstood my point. Now, you at least seem confused. That might be a sign I’m making progress! Not at all. > [@](#): > > I have given you a very clear dividing line: if it’s about whether such-and-such a goal is worthy, or valuable, or whether any particular goal suffers from any particular issue, you’re not talking about what I want to talk about. Except we can’t actually get to the crux of what you want to talk about unless we actually start to get to specifics. As you’ve ruled out discussion on specifics you aren’t ever going to get a resolution. > [@](#): > > When it’s about how goals are reached, and what identity may or may not have to do with that, then you’re on the right track. Goals are **topic specific**. We can’t talk about general goals, like “diminishing racism” without delving into the specifics. > [@](#): > > It’s essentially the distinction between vehicle and content—or, taking things literally, the distinction between destinations and ways to reach them: Let’s say I introduced this with an example of how it’s quicker to go from Berlin to Munich by train than by car. You response, then, essentially has been that neither do you want to go to Munich, nor are you even in Berlin, and why the hell I dare suggest you go to Munich, and so on. But that’s just missing the point. Even if it’s not actually faster to go to Munich via train doesn’t matter if my intent was to compare both modes of transportation—that just means I’ve picked a bad example. Yeah, this is simply a bad analogy, not analogous to our discussion at all. > [@](#): > > Does any of this help at all? Nope. > [@](#): > > Because I’m really not sure I can keep explaining myself to you; the expected marginal utility is diminishing rather rapidly, I’m afraid, so I don’t think there’ll be terribly much of a point in continuing this if you still don’t see where what you’re talking about and what I’m talking about differ. You can drop out any time you like. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/72 "2019-11-13T04:42:31Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Some more cites to pick apart. > > [How Identity, Not Issues, Explains the Partisan Divide](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-identity-not-issues-explains-the-partisan-divide/): …President Trump is the current face of the Republican Party. It makes perfect sense to me that people who oppose Trump would not want to live near each other, be friends, or get married to members of the other group. Could you marry a Trump supporter? Could you be friends with someone who supports a regime that includes this [guy](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/12/politics/stephen-miller-leaked-emails/index.html)? > [@](#): > > [Why Has America Become So Divided?](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/201809/why-has-america-become-so-divided) That article includes an entire section on Russia, and its influence on the last election. But the article doesn’t go far enough. You completely ignore it in you summary. I think you need to go back and read it again. > [@](#): > > [People don’t vote for what they want. They vote for who they are.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/people-dont-vote-for-want-they-want-they-vote-for-who-they-are/2018/08/30/fb5b7e44-abd7-11e8-8a0c-70b618c98d3c_story.html) The complete and utter normalisation of what has happened to the Republican Party is exemplified by that article. There is literally a white supremacist in charge of immigration policy at the White House and almost nobody in the Republican Party can give a fuck. This is about identity: but not in the way you think. You are witnessing the resurgence of white supremacy, and it is happening right under your nose. They wear red caps and they yell “SEND THEM HOME.” I don’t seek common ground with these people. And we don’t have time to “convert them to our side.” There are more of us than them. If you fight voter suppression, if you marginalise the message and put pressure on the distribution points of propaganda, you will be able to kick them out of power then strengthen the democracy so they can’t steal power again. But this is the wrong point in history to worry about “the divide.” > [@](#): > > [The Bankruptcy of the American Left]([https://ww](https://ww) [w.truthdig.com/articles/bankruptcy-american-left/](http://w.truthdig.com/articles/bankruptcy-american-left/)) WARNING: Don’t click on that site. It got blocked by my firewall with the warning “An attempt to evade and bypass security filters was detected.” I intentionally broke the link on the quote. Just a hint: random googling can lead you to bad places on the internet. > [@](#): > > [Identity Politics](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics) That’s a pretty full on academic paper. You’ve cherry picked a very small portion of it. What is it, do you think, the paper was trying to say? [A Conversation with Todd Gitlin](https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript235.html) “My book is about how it came to pass that the right marched on Washington and took a great deal of it while the left was marching on the English department.” Wow. Sounds like a book based on a strawman. “I think that many people, perhaps most on the left, or at least most who are visible, have gone down a path in which they are obsessed with what differs between them and one – one crowd and another.” Like how the Federal government of the United States of America has been hijacked by a transnational crime syndicate? > [@](#): > > [Identity Politics and the Left](http://banmarchive.org.uk/articles/1996%20annual%20lecture.htm) “That is why the Left cannot base itself on identity politics. It has a wider agenda.” Fuck that. Saying the monolithic left “cannot base itself on identity politics” is literally identity politics. And “the left’s” wider agenda should prioritize anything else, no matter what that “anything else” happens to be. > [@](#): > > Do I agree with all of the above? Do I even think all of it is reasonable? Hardly. But I do think that, reading things like the above, the impression that yes, **identity politics is a significant factor in the current political climate,** Its a bunch of academics pontificating. I wouldn’t take any of it seriously. > [@](#): > > and yes, it is troublesome in particular for the left, isn’t that unreasonable. Well: isn’t \*\*that \*\*what you wanted to discuss? I don’t think its troublesome for the left at all. I think the claim it is troublesome for the left is very unreasonable. We’ve already established the perception is out there. What I wanted cites on was for your claim that this is troublesome. > [@](#): > > It may still be wrong—but I don’t think that can be demonstrated by dismissing all of that as ‘opinion’ or ‘perception’. But it is all opinion and perception. Are you going to bring anything else to the table? > [@](#): > > At some point, if lots of people perceive something, one should begin to wonder whether it might not just be, in fact, there. There are a lot of people in America that perceive that the American Government was responsible for 9/11. There are a lot of people in America who perceive that Pizza shops were being used as a front for child sex rings. You can wonder about these things all you like. But at some stage you have to start investigating them to see if there is in fact something there. So far all you have been able to prove is that there are a lot of people who perceive something. Now its time for you to prove that what they perceive is firstly real, and secondly troublesome. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/73 "2019-11-13T05:12:07Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Just a note that you seem to fall for the conservative idea that Democrats or Liberals in America are communists The Democrats! Communists? Ha! Would that they were. No, I was just trying to include a bit of a spectrum. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/74 "2019-11-13T11:43:03Z")
This thread got long, so sorry if I missed anything, but I don’t think **Banquet Bear** replied to this point, and IMO it’s kind of crucial to the topic: > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > You didn’t, though. You straight up led with the insinuation that what I had claimed were important issues to me, actually aren’t. Now, why would you do that? The idea I’ve been proposing in this thread has an easy answer: if I were to hold these things important, we’d be aligned on that point. This is a threat to you, because you perceive me, rightly or wrongly, as critical. Hence, your immediate reaction is to try to push me out of your in-group, into the role of other. Because then what I have to say becomes much easier to handle: I’m just one of ‘them’, not one of ‘us’ failing to get with, and hence endangering, the program. > > Again, that may be the wrong way of looking at it; but nothing in the rest of your responses so far has done anything to dispel that impression. As best I can see, this refers to this reply [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21964961&postcount=8](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21964961&postcount=8) and in particular (my bold): > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > > > Thus, while the members of the right can stand unified by virtue of their overt characteristics, the left endlessly self-criticizes, ruptures and fractures, thus often hurting the (what I believe to be) worthy causes they are devoted to, ceding dialectical ground to those actually opposed to these causes—in the extreme, merely replacing arbitrary distinctions of race, gender etc. with arbitrary distinctions of who genders correctly, who is opposed to cultural appropriation in the right way, etc. **Just to be clear, I think these are important issues,** but we should strive to unify along them, rather than use them just as a convenient yardstick to tell ally from other. > > Nope. I don’t think that you do. If you thought they were important issues you wouldn’t dismiss them with the wave of your hand. **Banquet Bear** , I gather that you do NOT agree with **Half Man Half Wit** ’s explanation (“This is a threat to you…”), so what then? You think his post had an ulterior motive? “This is why you should support issues important to me while those important to you get ignored” sort of thing? Or something else entirely? ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/75 "2019-11-13T11:55:04Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …its relevant because you keep bringing up goals! Yes, goal **s** , but not any specific goal in particular. If you want to discuss whether it’s faster to go by train or by car, even though each journey is taken to reach a specific destination, what that destination is matters only on a secondary level, at best. You can argue things like, while trains don’t have traffic jams, cars can take an alternate route, which is more difficult for trains, and so on—whether one wants to go to Munich or Hamburg isn’t immediately relevant. Yet that seems all you want to talk about. > [@](#): > > You are locked into a binary paradigm. I think calling racists racist often helps. I’m not saying that it never does. But, as you noted should be ‘pretty fucking obvious’, it can also be counterproductive. So one might want to find a better strategy, at least in some cases, and one might want to find out which those cases are. > [@](#): > > “Claiming you are lying” is against the rules of this forum **and I haven’t done that**. **You haven’t stated what your values are. You have refused to answer those questions.** These are debate forums. **We debate here**. I said (bolding added): > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Thus, while the members of the right can stand unified by virtue of their overt characteristics, the left endlessly self-criticizes, ruptures and fractures, thus often hurting the **(what I believe to be) worthy causes** they are devoted to, ceding dialectical ground to those actually opposed to these causes—in the extreme, merely replacing arbitrary distinctions of race, gender etc. with arbitrary distinctions of who genders correctly, who is opposed to cultural appropriation in the right way, etc. Just to be clear, **I think these are important issues** , To which you replied: > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > Nope. I don’t think that you do. What’s that if not a claim that I knowingly said something false? I. e. that I lied? Do you believe I’m just confused about my values? That I just think I think these are important issues, but don’t actually think so? > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > Cite? Are you seriously disputing that there’s, on average, more social mobility today than there used to be, at least in large parts of the world? While I’m aware I’m just encouraging your on-the-spot-ing of the debate, here’s another google hit for you to dismiss as ‘just opinion’: [ > [@](#): > > I looked at historical mobility rates, again using occupations of fathers and sons, which were collected from marriage registers, from marriage records – 10,000 marriage records between the 1830s and 1914. And what analysis of those data showed was that there was a trend – I mean high rates of inequality, high rates of occupational status intergenerationally but there was a trend towards more mobility and that more mobility was both absolute and relative, so it was a question of changes in the occupational structure but also slightly fairer chances between different classes. ]([https://www.open.edu/openlearn/society/politics-policy-people/sociology/social-mobility-historically-and-now](https://www.open.edu/openlearn/society/politics-policy-people/sociology/social-mobility-historically-and-now)) > [@](#): > > What do you mean by “constructing an identity?” This seems close enough: [ > [@](#): > > “A person’s identity is defined as the totality of one’s self-construal, in which how one construes oneself in the present expresses the continuity between how one construes oneself as one was in the past and how one construes oneself as one aspires to be in the future”; this allows for definitions of aspects of identity, such as: “One’s ethnic identity is defined as that part of the totality of one’s self-construal made up of those dimensions that express the continuity between one’s construal of past ancestry and one’s future aspirations in relation to ethnicity” ]([Identity (social science) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_(social_science))) > [@](#): > > This is an awfully Western centric version of history. OK, that’s a fair point. I’m not as educated as I should be about history from a non-Western centric point of view. But, for better or worse, Western societies are the major determinators of the current geopolitical climate, so it makes sense to focus on them. > [@](#): > > Why do you think that people “choose” their identity? Because we associate with some groups, and not others, hold some opinions and reject others. Are you claiming we’re not self-determined in that at all? That all of our opinions and associations are just effects of our environment? > [@](#): > > This can all be summarised into a single, concise sentence: “Life is hard.” Pretty much everything can, if you’re willing to gloss over the details. But that’s not gonna help. > [@](#): > > Nope. You don’t have a clear idea of what it is your point actually is. You are struggling to articulate it, and you compensate by writing more and more words. You seem to require many words to appreciate what I’ve previously clearly enunciated in few, as in all the many, many posts trying to explain the words “this isn’t what I want to discuss” from my OP. If you just hadn’t insisted on coming back again and again to what I explicitly disavowed as a topic, then I could’ve saved myself writing lots and lots of words. > [@](#): > > And when I respond to the words you’ve actually written, you pivot and put all the blame for any “misunderstanding” on me. What I wrote there was an attempt to explain a sentence that you had difficulties with. I did got into grueling detail, but only because you keep trying to drag this discussion back to issues it’s not about, and hence, I’m by now somewhat desperate to make clear why they don’t matter. > [@](#): > > I have engaged you. To say otherwise is willfully misleading. I acknowledge that that’s what you think you have done. Hence, me spending all that time trying to explain how you’re actually attacking a strawman. > [@](#): > > Did you cite any other examples? Again, the example was for the purpose of explanation, not intended as a cite. I wanted to use it to help clarify the distinction between arguing about goals and arguing about ways to achieve goals to you; and yes, I have proposed many other examples, from football to travel, to try and do so. > [@](#): > > If she is wrong: then what is this thread all about then? And once again, I can only point you to the OP, where I stated that Lilla’s issue isn’t what I want to discuss, hence, his being wrong or right is just incidental to my topic. But do you actually have any cause to believe what Lilla claims isn’t happening? So far, you’ve dismissed all of my cites, without offering up anything of your own. I think I’ve conclusively demonstrated that a sizeable amount of people see an issue with infighting on the left, and consider identity politics to be at the root of this. Do you have anything to bolster your summary dismissal? All you’ve given me so far is one opinion, one perception, namely, yours. > [@](#): > > You missed the bit about “an old man yelling get off my lawn” That was the actual critique of the article. _That’s_ supposed to be a critique? Sorry, yes, then I indeed missed it, as usually, critiques tend to try and dismiss points raised and arguments made, not limit themselves to an ageist appeal. > [@](#): > > What something doesn’t exist what? And you can look at the comments yourself. Many agreed with it. The in-fighting on the left that the article describes. Things like, [ > [@](#): > > My stance on these issues makes some people in my “tribe” very angry. It is the anger of the pure believer towards the apostate. ]([If leftwingers like me are condemned as rightwing, then what’s left? | Tim Lott | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/11/mainstream-left-silencing-sympathetic-voices)) You’ve been claiming there’s no such thing. Well, I guess after having complied with your cries of ‘cite’ for so long, it’s time for you to offer up some of your own—because otherwise, we’re having your opinion pitted against the opinions and experiences of all the people I’ve cited. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > You’ve already been caught posting links to articles that you hadn’t even read that you claim back up your position. I didn’t pay enough attention to that, yes. At the time, I’d still been hoping that we could resolve this matter quickly, and return to the actual topics. Ah! The innocence of youth. > [@](#): > > I get how it all started. You read a book. Then formed a narrative. Now you are trying to back up that narrative. So think about somebody reading the pieces I’ve been posting so far. Do you think it’s unreasonable for that hypothetical person to form the impression that there’s infighting along issues of identity on the left? What would you point them to to remedy this, as you contend, false impression? Because what I’m seeing is lots of people along the spectrum of left-wing issues denouncing the problems they see, and have personally experienced. I take them at their word, because I have no reason not to, and it matches my own experience (and apparently, that of others in this thread). All you’ve done, so far, is to dismiss this as opinion of people too old, or too sympathetic to the wrong causes, to have a meaningful opinion. So there’s my evidence, what prompted me to form the beliefs. Where’s yours? > [@](#): > > You aren’t advocating “better methods of combating fire.” You are standing in front of the firefighters while they are dragging tankers of water uphill to get to the fire. And as they are ready to start putting water onto the fire you interrupt them to say “Excuse me, but there might be a better way to put the fire out. Have you thought about maybe low-expansion foams such as AFFF, have an expansion rate less than 20 times are low-viscosity, mobile, and can quickly cover large areas?” Ah, there it is, again. Either I get with the program fighting the fire, or I need to shut up, no criticism allowed. That’s exactly the sort of unhelpful ‘furthering’ of a cause I’ve been talking about. > [@](#): > > And when the firefighter says “that’s all very well and nice, but can you please get out of the way so we can fight the fire” you get all offended and you walk off in a huff. Then you start a thread on the straightdope dot com complaining that “those firefighters **were so rude.** They make me not want to support firefighters at all. And they were using water. There are better methods of combating fire before our villages burn. Lets not discuss those though, because I don’t actually have any better ideas, but those firefighters should be able to come up with something.” So what you’re saying is, I explicitly got out of the way to a neutral place to let the firefighters do their thing, tried to encourage debate on whether there might be better ways for that, listed where I thought things were problematic, pointed to how other people thought these things were problematic, didn’t pretend I have all the answers—and I’m not even allowed to do _that_? > [@](#): > > Do you know what isn’t going to fix any of this? Criticizing infighting. Because infighting is often about people arguing if **there is a better way to do things**. > > Yeah, its just empty rhetoric. You think infighting is hurting the cause, when those that are fighting are just trying to figure out better ways to do things. OK, so we’ve gone from ‘there’s no infighting going on’ to ‘some people perceive there to be infighting’ to ‘OK, there’s infighting, but that’s a good thing’. Who says we’re not making progress here? > [@](#): > > The “causes” and “problems” are specific to each and every single case of infighting you see. Why would that be the case? There’s such a thing as human nature, at least in broad strokes. Why can’t that be relevant to the issue of infighting in general? > [@](#): > > But you don’t want to discuss specifics. So how do you expect go have constructive discussion when all you can do is talk in generalities? Because if we can make progress on the general issues, we can adapt that solution to each specific instance, whereas if we try and attack each issue as if it existed in a vacuum entirely removed from the general elements of discourse, human nature, and so on, we’ll just get overwhelmed and not make any progress at all. It might be that this won’t work, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try; and beyond bald assertions, you haven’t yet made any argument to that effect. > [@](#): > > A stoush over transgender issues will be about very specific things. Another infight about race and racism will be about something else. A global approach can’t and won’t fix this. If infighting is in general due to clashing group allegiances, finding out how to address this will aid each of those cases. Again, you haven’t provided any indication as to why that shouldn’t be possible. > [@](#): > > Except we can’t actually get to the crux of what you want to talk about unless we actually start to get to specifics. As you’ve ruled out discussion on specifics you aren’t ever going to get a resolution. Again, trying to block a discussion about the generally fastest way to go from A to B by pointing to the damage to the tracks between Berlin and Munich just isn’t the right angle of attack. > [@](#): > > Goals are **topic specific**. We can’t talk about general goals, like “diminishing racism” without delving into the specifics . Yes, they are. Which is why I’ve been ad nauseam trying to point out that _this isn’t about any specific goals per se, but about how to approach goals_. > [@](#): > > Yeah, this is simply a bad analogy, not analogous to our discussion at all. OK, what salient differences do you see? You’re just making bald pronouncements without any argument to actually back them up (when you can be bothered to comment beyond a ‘LOL’ at all). > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …President Trump is the current face of the Republican Party. It makes perfect sense to me that people who oppose Trump would not want to live near each other, be friends, or get married to members of the other group. Could you marry a Trump supporter? Could you be friends with someone who supports a regime that includes this [guy](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/12/politics/stephen-miller-leaked-emails/index.html)? Except as the cite shows, it’s not actually the difference in opinion on the issues, but the group allegiances themselves that create the split. That is, it’s not that these people don’t want to have their children marry one another because one side supports an abhorrent White Supremacist, but because they’re Democrats, and the others are Republicans. > [@](#): > > That article includes an entire section on Russia, and its influence on the last election. But the article doesn’t go far enough. You completely ignore it in you summary. I think you need to go back and read it again. Why do you think that’s relevant? Unless you want to claim that all of these ‘opinions’ (many of which explicitly cite academic research) are all just deluded by Russian trolls on facebook, whether there’s Russian meddling doesn’t seem to have any great importance on the topic. > [@](#): > > The complete and utter normalisation of what has happened to the Republican Party is exemplified by that article. There is literally a white supremacist in charge of immigration policy at the White House and almost nobody in the Republican Party can give a fuck. This is about identity: but not in the way you think. You are witnessing the resurgence of white supremacy, and it is happening right under your nose. Agreed. But that doesn’t happen in a vacuum. What are the causes? How could an ostensibly mature democracy such as America fail to the extent of allowing somebody like Trump to be elected? How could, in Germany, the AfD, many of whose members espouse openly fascist and racist positions, become the second strongest party in some states? > [@](#): > > WARNING: Don’t click on that site. It got blocked by my firewall with the warning “An attempt to evade and bypass security filters was detected.” I intentionally broke the link on the quote. Just a hint: random googling can lead you to bad places on the internet. I think the problem is just that there’s a cookie that has the ‘secure’ flag missing, which causes it to be transmitted over and unsecure (http instead of https) channel. The website comes back as ‘clean’ on Google’s [VirusTotal.com](http://VirusTotal.com). > [@](#): > > That’s a pretty full on academic paper. You’ve cherry picked a very small portion of it. What is it, do you think, the paper was trying to say? It’s an encyclopedia article, the purpose of which is to review the current state of identity politics and its reception in academia/philosophy (as it’s from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Hence, I think that its contention that for some critics, identity politics is both ‘factionalizing and depoliticizing’ is highly significant. > [@](#): > > Like how the Federal government of the United States of America has been hijacked by a transnational crime syndicate? In what way is that supposed to be relevant? > [@](#): > > Its a bunch of academics pontificating. I wouldn’t take any of it seriously. Well, I’m shocked of course, but you didn’t exactly offer much in the way of rebuttal; so pardon me if I take the pontification of a bunch of academics over yours. If I see an elephant in the room, and you claim there isn’t one, well, I may be mistaken. If I see one, and Alice sees one, and Bob sees one, and Charlie sees one, then well, your insistence that that’s ‘all just opinion’ kinda starts loosing persuasive force. > [@](#): > > Well: isn’t \*\*that \*\*what you wanted to discuss? I don’t think its troublesome for the left at all. I think the claim it is troublesome for the left is very unreasonable. And do you have any reason for why it’s not, or am I just to take your opinion? > [@](#): > > We’ve already established the perception is out there. What I wanted cites on was for your claim that this is troublesome. My cites included several experts making this claim, but they were just ‘some academics pontificating’. Apparently, either there’s a vast conspiracy, promulgated by deeply embedded plants on the left, to make it seem like people on the left perceive the left to be hampered by in-fighting, or those people are all just subject to the same collective delusion, or they’re just writing about this because—well, there were some more inches to fill? Seriously, why do you think these people wrote the articles I linked to? Intentional deception? Are they all themselves deceived? Is it just the Russian trolls? At some point, if enough people are crying ‘fire’, it becomes reasonable to suppose that there’s actually something burning. > [@](#): > > There are a lot of people in America that perceive that the American Government was responsible for 9/11. And it’s important to engage them, and to rebut them. You’re doing neither, however: you’re just insisting I take your opinion for fact, while simultaneously disallowing everything I bring forth. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/76 "2019-11-13T13:05:01Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > If good guys don’t vote, the bad guys may win again. Rocket science to understand this much? > > …this isn’t a mistake. It certainly isn’t a \*\*key \*\*mistake. It doesn’t take rocket science to understand that. I’m having trouble guessing what you mean here. One needs to study rocket science to figure out that it’s not good when the bad guys win elections? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/77 "2019-11-13T13:36:06Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > This thread got long, so sorry if I missed anything, but I don’t think **Banquet Bear** replied to this point, and IMO it’s kind of crucial to the topic: > > As best I can see, this refers to this reply [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21964961&postcount=8](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21964961&postcount=8) and in particular (my bold): > > **Banquet Bear** , I gather that you do NOT agree with **Half Man Half Wit** ’s explanation (“This is a threat to you…”), so what then? You think his post had an ulterior motive? “This is why you should support issues important to me while those important to you get ignored” sort of thing? Or something else entirely? …I’ve made it clear that I think that statements like this “\*\* This is a threat to you, because you perceive me, rightly or wrongly, as critical.\*\* Hence, your immediate reaction is **to try to push me out of your in-group** , into the **role of other**. Because then what I have to say becomes much easier to handle: **I’m just one of 'them** ’, not one of ‘us’ failing to get with, and hence endangering, the program” are absolutely ridiculous: especially in regards to me. I’ve defended people like Starving Artist and Clothalump on these boards, people who are “not in my in-group”. I didn’t cast them into the role of “other.” And I haven’t done that in this thread either. I mean a threat? I’ve been on these boards since 2002. This isn’t exactly my first debate. If those issues were really important to **Half Man Half Wit** then they wouldn’t have been waved away in the manner they were. The bit you didn’t bold: > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Thus, while the members of the right can stand unified by virtue of their overt characteristics, the left endlessly self-criticizes, ruptures and fractures, thus often hurting the (what I believe to be) worthy causes they are devoted to, ceding dialectical ground to those actually opposed to these causes—in the extreme, merely replacing arbitrary distinctions of race, gender etc. with arbitrary distinctions of who genders correctly, who is opposed to cultural appropriation in the right way, etc. **Just to be clear, I think these are important issues, but we should strive to unify along them** , rather than use them just as a convenient yardstick to tell ally from other. You can’t claim that you think arbitrary distinctions of who genders correctly, or who is opposed to cultural appropriation are important, and then in the very same breath say “but you should strive to unify along them rather than use them just as a convenient yardstick to tell ally from other.” That’s insulting, thats hurtful, it shows lack of compassion, it shows zero understanding of the communities where these issues are important. There is nothing at all **convenient** about taking an unpopular position on something. When I talk about cultural appropriation on these boards I get attacked from both “the left” and “the right.” I don’t speak out about it expecting to find ally. That isn’t how it works. Just mention the word “cultural appropriation” and its a dog-whistle. Expecting marginalised peoples to “unify”, to conform, to compromise, for the sake of the “greater good” does nothing to protect or defend those marginalised people. Don’t ask us to do that. Don’t pretend you know better than us what needs to be done to protect ourselves. This entire premise, “that infighting hurts the left”, is designed to shut our voices down. There is no objective evidence that this is true. Its all projection, conjecture, and yes, pontification from academics. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/78 "2019-11-13T13:38:52Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I’m having trouble guessing what you mean here. One needs to study rocket science to figure out that it’s not good when the bad guys win elections? 😕 …I’m having trouble guessing what you mean here. Could you not read what I wrote? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/79 "2019-11-13T13:55:10Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …I’m having trouble guessing what you mean here. Could you not read what I wrote? 😕 What sort of word game are you trying to play? OP identifies problems which causes people to vote against their own interests and the interests of the general welfare. Or not to vote at all. Surely little imagination is needed to understand that important recent electoral outcomes, for whatever reasons — voter apathy, disinformation, mistaken prejudices, etc. — do not match what citizens want. And you wrote: > [@](#): > > And if they decide not to vote whats your problem with that? You live in a democracy. They have a right not to vote. You don’t have compulsory voting. Neither OP nor I implied that the U.S. had compulsory voting. But people who might improve electoral outcomes do not vote at all. You ask “What’s the problem with that?” The problem with that is that the wrong people get elected. I can only guess what your point is. I’ll guess that, in your view, the outcome of a “free” election is, by definition, optimal — it is what the electorate (assisted by those not voting at all) votes for. If Daffy Duck wins the election, then the people want Daffy Duck, so democracy has been properly served. Is that your point? ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199/80 "2019-11-13T14:08:17Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > What sort of word game are you trying to play? …what sort of word game are you trying to play? > [@](#): > > OP identifies problems which causes people to vote against their own interests and the interests of the general welfare. No they didn’t. > [@](#): > > Or not to vote at all. Which they are perfectly entitled to do. > [@](#): > > Surely little imagination is needed to understand that important recent electoral outcomes, for whatever reasons — voter apathy, disinformation, mistaken prejudices, etc. — do not match what citizens want. What is it that citizens want? > [@](#): > > Neither OP nor I implied that the U.S. had compulsory voting. But people who might improve electoral outcomes do not vote at all. You ask “What’s the problem with that?” The problem with that is that the wrong people get elected. “Wrong” is subjective. > [@](#): > > I can only guess what your point is. I would have thought my point was pretty crystal clear. > [@](#): > > I’ll guess that, in your view, the outcome of a “free” election is, by definition, optimal — it is what the electorate (assisted by those not voting at all) votes for. If Daffy Duck wins the election, then the people want Daffy Duck, so democracy has been properly served. Is that your point? That wasn’t my point at all. But if Daffy Duck wins the election, then the people want Daffy Duck, so democracy has been properly served, yes? I mean, that’s kinda how democracy works? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identity-politics-and-the-in-fighting-of-the-left/843199.md?page=5)