Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
I don't regard the rights revolution of the 20th century as an identity politics movement. Traditional conservatism treated people differently based on their gender, race, and sexual orientation. The post-war liberal movement was a move towards regarding people people as individuals, and challenging the notion that citizens should be treated as members of groups. Gay marriage was the last barrier knocked down by liberalism, the last case of institutional treatment of individuals differently based on immutable group identity.
The identity politics of the left today is a fundamentally different and fundamentally illiberal movement. It rests of the credo that systemic inequality and oppression are so systemic and so intransigent that treating people as individuals is ineffective. That the Western Patriarchy has fostered such a powerful hierarchy that even without formal barriers its privileges are impossible to overcome. So it's hopeless to rely on liberalism.
The ideologues driving the bus of identarian leftist politics were never liberal to begin with. Much of the rest of the left, captured by tribalism or going along complacently out of vague feelings of guilt or compassion, have abandoned liberalism without even realizing it.
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But it was the left that created identity politics? "Traditional conservatism treated people differently based on their gender, race, and sexual orientation" but it was the liberals who were/are the problem? Now the liberals have taken it too far? Not buying it. Not when conservatives continue to defend their white privilege by blaming minorities for ever ill the nation faces. That is just a different form of identity politics, but just as crass and obnoxious.
Every time I hear from an evangelical or see their ichthys proudly displayed it is clear indication that identity politics is alive and well on the conservative side of the aisle as well. So let's stop with this garbage about one side being invested and responsible for identity politics, as both sides use it. One side is overt about it and puts it out there in plain English for all to understand. The other side uses dog whistle language and iconography to make the identity appeals to their consumers. Both play in the same sandbox. One is just better at burying their turds.