Identity Politics

[Yonadav]

Billionaires vs the common man..is..what..exactly?  Let's play an elaborate game of Identity Politics Taboo...and explain that without using the term "identity politics"?

Billionaires vs people united by their common economic interests despite their disparate identities.

[The Grand Nudger]

Do you feel as though this doesn't propose two distinct american identities? Mind, I'm not commenting on the validity of the distinction..just wondering how the simple act of distinction doesn't create two competitively valid american identities in competition?

Saying so much as " I'm the kind of person who doesn't see "identity".." is, itself, an identity, is it not, particularly relative those those who -do- see identities.

"Identity politics" gets consistently bad spin....what universe are you living in...? Identity politics is a derogatory slur, in common use...and even in use in this thread...as such.

What the actual fuck am I dealing with here?

[Yonadav]

Do you feel as though this doesn't propose two distinct american identities?  Mind, I'm not commenting on the validity of the distinction..just wondering how the simple act of distinction doesn't create two competitively valid american identities?

It sure does, but that's not what identity politics is. Just because you can ascribe identities to involved parties doesn't make it identity politics. It's identity politics when you care more about the identities of the involved parties than what's at stake. Example: Someone says that they think that something needs to be done about the widening gap between the rich and the poor, but they won't support Bernie Sanders because he is an old white man. Or: I don't care too much about the issues, but I want the next president to be a woman. Or: The next president should be someone that is young.

[The Grand Nudger]

It sure does, but that's not what identity politics is. Just because you can ascribe identities to involved parties doesn't make it identity politics. It's identity politics when you care more about the identities of the involved parties than what's at stake.

So..that's what you think identity politics is , then?   When a person cares more about their identity than whatever's at stake?  

 Example: Someone says that they think that something needs to be done about the widening gap between the rich and the poor, but they won't support Bernie Sanders because he is an old white man. Or: I don't care too much about the issues, but I want the next president to be a woman. Or: The next president should be someone that is young.

Give me an example. Someone who opposed Bernie...because he was an old white man? Someone who, on the basis of their anti-old anti-white policies.....said, fuck a bunch of Bernie.

While we're at it, does it occur to you that this is also alt right propaganda? That people didn't vote for bernie..or opposed bernie..because they were anti-white or anti-old? Was Hitlery a black spring chicken? Can you appreciate how tangled a nutball knot this might seem to some third party, like myself?

Yes...Bernie was the very epitome of identity politics as a populist...populism simply -is- identity politics.....whereas Hitlery didn't actually do or say anything that would grant her that honorific...and yet...?

Over and around it all, Hitlery was sold as an identity politician even though she wasn't, and bernie was the very definition of the same..and the the dem nom won the pop vote. What am I missing? How is it that dems have been so completely turned against the thing that's been working for them?

I mean....... obviously, I'm pretty sure that the wingnuts manufactured that and injected it into your narrative...but since I'm so thoroughly wrong...tell me...how did that happen?

[Anomalocaris]

Identity politics is tautological.  All politics devolve down to the conjuring up, the assignment, or the suppression of, or the appeal to, identity.

The difference lies in which identities the political fractions appeal to, how cynical were the selection of identities to appeal to, how duplicitous are the manners of the appeal, and how ruthless each trampled upon the identities outside its core.

[The Grand Nudger]

Right, that's where I'm at, that's how I see it...but I'm being told otherwise..and..further, that the identity politics of identity politics is not actually identity politics.  

I really don't know how to slice that particular gordian knot. I'm pretty sure that these poor fuckers have been made to feel ashamed by their identity politics..not by libs, but by frothing conservative pieces of shit trying to advance their own identity politics.

[Yonadav]

Here's an example of mindless identity politics:

Comedian Liza Treyger appeared on MSNBC Friday night and crushed the idea that Bernie Sanders should seek the presidency in 2020. Treyger said Sanders should fall back and it is time for him to "fade into the background."

"We saw that with the flipping of the House and everyone voting, everyone's really excited with young, female candidates, especially women of color," Treyger said on 'The Beat' with host Ari Melber.

"I'm sorry guys I’m just sick of old white dudes. Go away," she concluded.

[brewer]

Thank god I don't know who/what I am. 

I feel safe now.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, that does seem to be the prevailing mood of the left.  Tired of what's become a nearly ancient patriarchal hegemony that asserts a particular american identity which is no longer representative of the country.  I have to wonder..so what?  So what if the mood has become sick of old white guys?  They aren't going anywhere.  For now and the forseable future the table of our institutions is set firmly in their favor.  

Though, being "sick of old white guys" doesn't seem to be the sort of identity politics being waged inside the left.  That boils down, to hear it told, more to personal grievances than any disagreement on the issue of being tired of old white men running everything.  To people being made to feel that they aren't "real" liberals if they don't properly virtue signal on an issue that matters little to them.  I can certainly understand that.  

As I can understand the people on the other side who have a tenuous relationship with the only part of our political spectrum that is willing to so much as accept their existence.  Dems have not been consistent in their support, even if they've been consistent in word.  So, when those people hear the rhetoric that was used on the right to delegitimize not only their political position..but their very identity..yet now coming from the left...they get a little leary.

It has the unfortunate distinction of being both valid and offensive as criticism. This has been exploited..and even that I understand. The opposing identity here very literally -is- "old white guys". They clearly feel as though the pitchforks and torches are about to come out (or already are, lol..tune in on the right night and you'll be informed that a literal white genocide is currently under way), even if a sober assessment of facts would tell them, just as the other examples of white grievance do, that this is an irrational fear.

The political motivation, on the left, to assume rightwing rhetoric is difficult to describe as anything other than fear that they will lose some coalition, or lose momentum..in sum, lose an election. This is, after all, what the right has been telling them for so long. They don't want to be, or be seen as, the kind of radical extremists that lose elections. I'm not sure that this fear is any more rational than the fear of the anti-white mob above. The reason that the right is bitching to high heaven about identity politics is because it scares the shit out of them. That should be instructive. The right is telegraphing the thing that they know will tank them by brute force of demographics as the identity politics party of a group soon to be relegated to a status less than their traditional majority - with all the privileges that this confers.

[Anomalocaris]

Here's an example of mindless identity politics:

Comedian Liza Treyger appeared on MSNBC Friday night and crushed the idea that Bernie Sanders should seek the presidency in 2020. Treyger said Sanders should fall back and it is time for him to "fade into the background."

"We saw that with the flipping of the House and everyone voting, everyone's really excited with young, female candidates, especially women of color," Treyger said on 'The Beat' with host Ari Melber.

"I'm sorry guys I’m just sick of old white dudes. Go away," she concluded.

Why is it mindless?

It may be an perceptive and prescient assessment of what would impede the turning out of votes to achieve the desired end.