Identity politics

Identity politics (divide and rule)
Interest of	• Michael Rectenwald • Linda Thomas-Greenfield
Sectional olitical approach often used by the powerful to divide and rule.

Identity politics is a term that describes a political approach wherein people of a particular gender, religion, race, social background, class or other identifying factors, develop political agendas that are based upon theoretical interlocking systems of oppression that may affect their lives and come from their various identities.

The grievances are often genuine, but given that this approach does not pose a challenge to their power, the Powers That Be have given this political approach substantial funding through non-profit foundations and coverage in commercially-controlled media

Identity politics leads to absurdities like presenting as progress that "the military industrial complex is now run by women"

Since identity politics do not challenge power structures, supporting aspects of it is also an easy way for rich and powerful people to appear enlightened and progressive.

The deep state networks have put substantial efforts into recruiting new leadership cadre from "minorities", through Young Leaders programs and other promotions, at least for the front jobs as politicians.

History

Historian Eric Hobsbawm explained its origins: We have become so used to terms like ‘collective identity’, ‘identity groups, ‘identity politics’, or, for that matter ‘ethnicity’, that it is hard to remember how recently they have surfaced as part of the current vocabulary, or jargon, of political discourse. For instance, if you look at the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, which was published in 1968—that is to say written in the middle 1960s—you will find no entry under identity except one about psychosocial identity, by Erik Erikson, who was concerned chiefly with such things as the so-called ‘identity crisis’ of adolescents who are trying to discover what they are, and a general piece on voters’ identification. And as for ethnicity, in the Oxford English Dictionary of the early 1970s it still occurs only as a rare word indicating ‘heathendom and heathen superstition’ and documented by quotations from the eighteenth century.

"In short, we are dealing with terms and concepts which really come into use only in the 1960s. Their emergence is most easily followed in the USA, partly because it has always been a society unusually interested in monitoring its social and psychological temperature, blood-pressure and other symptoms, and mainly because the most obvious form of identity politics—but not the only one—namely ethnicity, has always been central to American politics since it became a country of mass immigration from all parts of Europe.

Quotes

Michael Parenti on Identity Politics

“Seizing upon anything but class, U.S. leftists today have developed an array of identity groups centering around ethnic, gender, cultural, and life-style issues. These groups treat their respective grievances as something apart from class struggle, and have almost nothing to say about the increasingly harsh politico-economic class injustices perpetrated against us all”
Michael Parenti (1997) 

“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. Women had glass ceilings. Same with blacks. Same with gays.”
Charles Derber (2018) 

 

Examples

Page name	Description
"Social Justice Warrior"	An enemy image which appears to be part of the effort to support the ongoing project to criminalize free speech.
"White guilt"	a part of Racism.
BBC/100 Women/2020	The 100 women recognised by the BBC in 2020.
BBC/100 Women/2021	The 100 women recognised by the BBC in 2021.
BBC/100 Women/2022	The 100 women recognised by the BBC in 2022.
Cancel culture	A part of Censorship
Political correctness	a term.
Social justice
Virtue signalling	a part of Censorship
Woke	a part of Censorship

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
ACLU	“Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties. They protect the most vulnerable, people with disabilities and fragile immune systems, children too young to be vaccinated, and communities of color hit hard by the disease.”		2021
Joy Reid	“Essentially, she made public her own vaccine deliberation, which according to trusted friends is a better way to describe vaccine hesitancy, which by the way is not the same thing as refusal. By doing, Nicki also used her social media platform and her 22 million Twitter followers to cast doubt on the vaccine to a heavily Black audience”	Joy Reid	14 September 2021
Woke	“I’m increasingly embarrassed to be a white male these days with what I see other white males say”	John Brennan	March 2021

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Afghanistan is not about you	Article	19 August 2021	Ella Whelan	Neocon MPs are concerned about the Afghanistan/2021 withdraw. The only problem is that they only care about themselves, and thereby show us the narcissism of Western intervention.
Document:Labour has ignored its voters – it is now paying the price	Article	24 June 2021	Paddy Hannam	George Galloway speaks to Spiked Online about the problems faced by the Labour Party, and his campaign in the 2021 Batley and Spen by-election
Document:The tyranny of woke capitalism	Article	25 June 2021	Frank Furedi	What is "woke capitalism"? It is a form of corporate virtue signalling.
Document:Why the military-industrial complex went woke	Article	5 March 2021	Paddy Hannam	What is the Military industrial complex doing? They are engaged in a woke propaganda campaign as part of a rebranding of the war industry for the new generation.

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