Shift from Inclusion To Exclusion in Identity Politics
Discussion
Michel Bauwens:
Written during March 2021.
The first waves of identity politics were clearly marked by a drive for inclusion in mainstream society. The workers movement, representing the majority of the population in the newly industrializing countries of the 18th cy., aimed for a place in the ‘bourgeois democracy’ which only gave votes to propertied men, and as it turned socialist, wanted the legal rights to become full social rights. The same logic happened with feminism, with a first wave that aimed for legal rights (18th cy upwards until the 1960s) and the second wave that aimed to make these rights socially concrete (after the 60s).
These are movements of the excluded, that see privilege, and want to overcome it, expanding the opportunity to participate in economic, social and democratic life. The duality that they see is real and they want to overcome it.
But the duality, which can include understandable resentment and hatred, can also transform into an ideology of hatred, which is no longer based on wanting to be included, but wants to install a new hierarchy, excluding the former political adversaries. This is what happened with the Stalinists and how they treated the kulak, independent farmers, or how the Chinese Cultural Revolution targeted everyone who did not want to go along, or Pol Pot going after intellectuals with glasses with capital punishment..
The same is now happening with the new wave of identity politics which started with the rise of social media in the 2010s, and it is happening in overdrive. The politics became exclusionary. In the racial movements, the bestseller of Di Angelo states unequivocally that white people are racist because of their skin colour, regardless of intent of behavior, while Kendi is very clear that any disagreement with the simple and untrue statement that every difference in social outcome is the result of racism, is racism, thereby not just outlawing complex inquiries about social causation, but also any debate on these issues. Whereas the older emancipatory movements fought against systems of oppression, not individual oppressors, the new suppressive movements target individuals as oppressors. The proposals emanating from these movements, aim at dividing the population in groups, in a new hierarchy based on biological markers; these markers would determine access to resources; and social life would be segregated, with separate meetings and rituals for the different groups. In the new allyship, this condition is explicitly theorized as subordination of the majority to the activists of the minority. In queer theory, its all about ‘centering the marginalized’. It is no longer about co-existence of minorities with majorities, it is about centering the minorities, with the majority models cast in explicitly negative lights, driven to the margins. It’s good to be queer with five additional intersectional points, it’s not good to be a heteronormative cisgendered white male. Being mainstream is now the anti-choice, and redemption means moving away from your birth condition, by declaring your political allegiances to those speaking for the marginalized, and preferably, changing your bodily characteristics away from the evil norm. This racial and gender-based scapegoating is matched by a politisation of group identity. Being black does not longer mean having a dark skin, but means agreeing with identity politics, otherwise you are ‘not really black’. In Evergreen State College, next to the slave-talk of ‘we need white bodies’ (as sacrifices to the police) that was normalized; food, water and seats were reserved for people according to their skin colour, and many BIPOC people were told ‘they were not dark enough to talk’. Asians and hispanics are now seen as white-adjacent, when their politics do not match the desirable viewpoints.
By aiming for the new social order, they are also explicitly aiming their anger against the representatives of the earlier progressive movements. The hate of the old civil rights leaders is palpable and explicit and was often expressed by BLM activists. There is absolutely no continuity between the old and new movements, they are in fact, diametrically opposed in their values.
In this shift, what is also clear is that the new identity politics wants to undo all that were considered civil rights advances.
The very concept of “Women” has become an unspeakable category, because it hurts the feelings of a very small minority. We now must speak of ‘people who menstruate’, and JK Rowling has learned that it is now considered transphobic to disagree with this; breastfeeding is taboo and must be chestfeeding, and on and on. Traditional feminists have become the primary target of silencing campaigns, closely followed by representatives of the older class-centric left, while conservatives have been existing mainstream institutions in a steady manner, willingly or unwillingly. Half or more of Americans, and this includes the workers at the NYT, no longer feel they are free to speak their mind, for fear of the consequences. Old statues and books must be filtered out of the historical memory, hence they show that another world once existed, with different norms. History is on trial for showing a multitude of possibilities, rather than just the one that must become the norm.
Identitarian minorities, hierarchized in the new intersectional ranking, do not want a place in a common and equal order, they want to be at the head of a new order, which marginalizes the majorities. It is therefore a very explicit anti-democratic doctrine. And we know it is also a very explicit illiberal doctrine, because differences of opinion have to be ‘called out’, and ‘confessions’ are required. Dissident thought needs to be deplatformed, workers with divergent views need to be expelled, and their lives and income destroyed. Calling for more peaceful dialogue across political divides, as the actress Gina Carrano tried to do, is the most egregious sin, and brands you for political and career destruction. Actors must from now on not just know how to act, but must have the ‘right’ opinion as well.
We know that politically, this fear of this marginalization by majority populations has been the second driving force of the victories of the political right (driven firstly by the fear of the effects of globalization and migration on livelihoods), but new research suggests it is becoming the primary reason for voting to conservative parties.
Nowhere are the exaggerations more visible than in the field of sexuality. Amongst transwomen, there are those we are familiar with, who feel they were born in a body that didn’t match their felt identity, and who go through great lengths to adapt through surgical and hormonal treatments.
But the queer theory that self-identification is the primary factor to determine gender identity, even if the choice is momentarily only, has led to a wave of physically untransformed transwomen (for all purposes, they would appear as males to outsiders), calling themselves lesbian, going to lesbian fora, and demanding sex, while declaring a refusal to acquiesce to be transphobic. In the most negative interpretation, this could be seen as institutionalizing a new rape culture. Individual and collective lesbians, who do not go along with these demands, have been removed from social media as transphobes. This is course why the new identity politics are a double whammy: the problem is not that a fraction of the population is into racial and gender scapegoating, the problem is that we have an oligarchic and neoliberal management class who are not just going along with these demands, but are massively financing and promoting it. However, the targets are shifting, if originally a korean journalist could say that ‘she wished white people would stop breathing’ while another called for “never trusting white gay men”, it is now the epitome of sixties activism that is targeted, and the free sexual choice of partners. Radical lesbians have become the center of the most recent attacks.
Identity politics is, that should be clear, an essentially reactionary movement, its revolution aiming for a restoration of hierarchy, for a destruction of complex personhood outside of group identity, and the polar opposite of a movement offering radically transformative solutions that could create human prosperity in harmony with the web of life. It infantilizes its adherents, goes back to 19th cy racial ideologies, and is essentially about asking daddy for more desserts. It's a guilt-therapy for the many lost souls who can no longer imagine a positive future.
There is no commoning if there are no peers: independent persons who can freely construct a complex contributory identity through their chosen engagements for common good projects.
More information
Know that, if you are targeted for your dissenting opinions, you are no longer alone.
The following organizations are dedicated to protecting the free speech of those who oppose the illiberal trends:
Counterweight, with Helen Pluckrose
- Equiano Project
- Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, USA
- Foundation for Individual Rights in Education , USA
- Free Speech Union, UK
- Heterodox Academy, with Jonathan Haidt, USA
- New Discourses, with James Lindsay
- Social Justice Reformation, depository