An extract from Jeremy Sammut’s excellent column on identity politics in The Australian.
Like fleas on a dog, the basic
thrust and distilled essence of identity politics is about finding,
mining and exploiting grievance. Convincing people who never thought of
themselves as a victim, that they are indeed, a victim. It’s about
creating, exploiting and servicing the newly acquired constituency then
moving on to the next target group.
That at its core, is the raison d’être of the left.
READ ON….
“….The rise of identity politics
can be explained in part by the malign influence of universities that
have embraced postmodern theory in recent decades.
We now have at least one generation
of tertiary-educated Australians who have been politicised, and are
deeply invested in the identity politics notion that certain groups in
society remain the perpetual victims of bigotry and prejudice at the
hands of the dominant culture — despite the enormous social changes that
make a nonsense of this theory.
Nevertheless, identity politics is
integral to the “intellectual left” sense of identity and status as an
enlightened class, which not only supposedly possesses superior insight
into how society marginalises assorted victim groups but whose members
consider themselves morally superior to what they view as the great
unwashed, bigoted “ordinary Australians”.
This is why the identity warriors
invest so much time and effort finding and backing causes and issues
that can validate their identity and status — whether by demanding
changes to marriage, or by demanding changes to statues of colonial
explorers and governors.
Identity politics is really about
the politics of moral embarrassment. It is, therefore, ultimately a
primitive way of conducting politics.
For all its modern trappings of
relativism and non-judgmentalism, identity politics represents a
reversion to the shame culture of traditional societies, whereby
dissenters face exclusion from the tribe — from the charmed circle of
approved progressive opinion — for transgressing politically incorrect
taboos.
The way alternative opinions are
thereby silenced makes identity politics not only a threat to free
speech and democracy but also to the true Enlightenment traditions of
rational inquiry and debate.
Yet the notion that the so-called
“deplorables” are bigoted oppressors who deserve to have their privilege
checked, including their right to freedom of speech, thought and
conscience, in the name of promoting equality and diversity, is wearing
thin.
Those who are sick of being told
they don’t know how to treat others decently, and are tired of being
lectured and hectored by their so-called betters, are the people who
voted for Donald Trump, for Brexit and, locally, for One Nation. The
growing political revolt against political correctness is a warning that
the identity warriors should be careful what they wish for lest this
lead to the ultimate paradox.
Because of its intolerance towards
so-called “intolerants”, identity politics risks becoming a disastrously
self-fulfilling prophecy, which will end up fostering ever deeper
political and social divisions over issues of race, gender and
sexuality…” Identity politics takes us back to the shame culture of the past