Identity politics sees itself as the inheritor of the civil rights and feminist movements, ensuring that marginalized groups are treated equally in society through the removal of unjust barriers and biases. However, instead of recognizing that this has largely been achieved, identity politics has mutated into an extremist obsession with group identity, believing attributes such as race, gender and sexuality are so overwhelmingly important, that people are no longer individuals but merely avatars of their group.
Identity politics then simplistically stereotypes each identity group as either a victim group or a privileged group. A victim identity entitles you to special treatment, a privileged identity permits you to be punished.[1]
This reductionist view of individuals insists that people accept being defined by their identity group and that they stick to the accepted script, the narrative of victimhood or privilege that pertains to their group.[2] Anyone who thinks that the identity politics-defined context does not apply to them is guilty of false consciousness, apparently unable to know their own mind.[3]
Identity politics has its roots in Marxian social theory. Once Marxists believed that a person’s worldview was a product of their economic condition – now cultural Marxists believe that identity is the determinative factor.[4] Marx essentially created the template of identity politics with his notion that human society consists of a zero-sum contest for power between the oppressor and the oppressed. The stunning complexity of society is reduced to power struggles between identity groups.[5]
Ironically, in treating individuals as mere pawns in a power game, the great inclusive movement has proved itself as exclusive and oppressive as they come.[6] To the activists claiming to represent the victim groups, the value of the group is that they remain victims so that the activists can use them to pursue money, status, power, etc. This is normally achieved through the use of rhetoric and misdirection. For example, of course black lives matter, as do all lives, but the Black Lives Matter organization uses this slogan to provide cover for its anti-institutional Marxist narrative which will harm rather than improve black lives. While on the other side of the identity group coin, white supremacist organizations use the otherwise unobjectionable slogan of white lives matter to pursue a racist agenda.
If identity politics is the substantive part of this mutant ideology, the compliance and enforcement arm is the system of thought control or censorship we nowadays term political correctness.[7] Political correctness may have started out as the encouragement of polite respect for minorities and the inclusion of more-diverse perspectives.[8] Now it is the weapon of choice in the pursuit of control over ideas and the narrative, limiting what people can say and write. And the result is that subjective feelings of offendedness from the anointed victim groups now determine the limits of debates.[9] Even worse, the supposed offence is usually an emotional fraud.[10] The politically correct police are not at all offended, it’s simply a tactic used to exercise power over others. They are bullies using the camouflage of compassion to push other people around.
Furthermore, political correctness involves the display of cheap virtue through virtue signaling. It is a moral pose that costs nothing and hence is not real virtue, but garners the applause of the crowd which is the reward their egos are seeking.[11] The conceit of moral superiority also approves of their doing to others what they would hate being done to themselves and the condemnation of historical figures in light of present-day standards without any understanding of those figures’ lives as a whole or the historical age in which they lived.
As individuals, we are all much more than our identity group characteristics of race, gender and sexuality. To judge people on identity group characteristics is the essence of what prejudice really is. To think that you know what individuals think and how they should think on the basis of their identity group denies people their unique individual identity and dehumanizes them.[12]
At the core of our liberal democracy is the understanding that we are all equal before the law because we all share a common humanity. Universal rules secure dignity, and being bound by the same institutions in the same way is an expression of collective solidarity.[13] Indeed, the antidote to historical oppression has been access to and expansion of our liberal democratic institutions. These institutions recognize that we are entitled to a fair go, but not a special go.[14] Identity politics directly undermines this equality by seeking to legitimize double standards – different rules for different groups of people.[15]
Every individual should be judged according to their talent, effort, actions and the content of their character (i.e. on merit) and not on the basis of group attributes they cannot control.
Identity politics and its handmaid, political correctness, are the corruption of justice under the guise of compassion. Like socialism, it is just another power-seeking crony system.
Sources
[1] “Identity politics is the enemy of equality” by Matthew Lesh, Spiked, 3 May 2016, http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/identity-politics-is-the-enemy-of-equality/18313#.W2BSxvZuJPY
[2],[7] “Baldwin: how my Left is killing civilisation”, Andrew Bolt Blog, Sun Herald, 18 September 2016
[3],[13] “How Identity Politics Divides Us” by Andrew Bushnell and Daniel Wild, IPA Review, October 2017, https://ipa.org.au/ipa-today/identity-politics-divides-us
[4] John Roskam, email to members of the Institute of Public Affairs, 25 August 2017
[5] “The Future of History” by Bella D’Abrera, IPA Review, December 2017, https://ipa.org.au/ipa-review-articles/the-future-of-history
[6] “The Rise of Identity Politics” by Elle Hardy, IPA Review, August 2016, https://ipa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/archive/The_Rise_of_Identity_Politics.pdf
[8] “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic, September 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
[9] “No-offence culture of American campuses hurts Australia too” by Janet Albrechtsen, The Weekend Australian, 2 November 2016
[10] “Millennials aren’t taking offence. They’re hunting for victims” by Lionel Shriver, The Spectator USA, 30 August 2018, https://spectator.us/2018/08/millennials-arent-taking-offence-theyre-hunting-victims/
[11] “I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me” by Barrett Wilson, Quillette, 14 July 2018, https://quillette.com/2018/07/14/i-was-the-mob-until-the-mob-came-for-me/
[12] The Rubin Report, “Identity Politics Must Come to an End”, 15 November 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtDYS6w7ArY
[14] “For and Against the Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous People” by Gary Johns, Quadrant, July-August 2017, https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2017/07/constitutional-recognition-indigenous-peoples/
[15] “The Threat of Identity Politics” by Darcy Allen, IPA Review, October 2017, https://darcyallendotnet.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/ipa-review-693-darcy-allen-the-threat-of-identity-politics.pdf
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Policy Statement – Identity Politics is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.