Identity Politics is a Trojan Horse in Progressive Politics

It is how the 99% gets divided and conquered

It wasn’t that long ago that Occupy and Bernie Sanders supporters saw clearly through the “I’m with her” gender identity politics of Hillary Clinton and called ourselves Progressive rather than Liberals. Liberals were the ones who were OK with giant banks getting bail outs under Obama, and the US waging a proxy war in Syria under Clinton’s watch at the State Department; but get all fired up with righteous rage when someone opines that a Jewish man will make a better president than a white woman not because of his gender but his policy platform. Policies platform such as Green New Deal (which has its problems but is still miles better than what passes as solutions nowadays), and stopping the corporate take-over of the government. They smeared Bernie supporters as “white bros” and smeared Bernie as anti-black.

Now, I’m pissed that identity politics has highjacked the Progressive movement. Earth’s climate is on the verge of collapse with wild fires, heat waves, droughts, and floods happening everywhere; fatalities are piling up in another proxy war in Ukraine; global food and material shortages are getting worse. But righteous indignation is now raging, again, around identity politics. Apparently, “Progressives” think that parents who want control over their pre-pubescent children’s request for gender reassignment are bigots. Matt Taibbi is one of my heroes because he reports unflinchingly about the Goldman Sachs of the world. Now he is being attacked as bigots by self-identifying “progressives” for daring to review the film “What is a Woman?” See Matt Taibbi’s Subtack article for a brief outline.

I want to think that no, these are not progressives but Clinton-liberals posing as such. But I’ve seen enough bona fide progressives who now think also in this way.

Once upon a time, identity politics understood how to integrate race, class, and sexuality, and how to find common ground. I am a gay Asian immigrants to the USA. I wrote my PhD and published academic papers on gay and lesbian identity politics. I am a beneficiary of the equal rights movement. I get why this is important.

But I don’t think that someone who is homophobic should lose their job, be ostracized, and publicly shamed. I don’t think that someone who is racist against Asians should be cancelled. And I don’t think that someone who is anti-immigrant should be de-platformed. Society progresses by convincing others that a change is mutually beneficial, not by threats of censorship and violence.

Differences can sometimes be resolved through good faith dialogue and community mobilization around rational demands, but never through mutual demonization and taking of absolutist positions. Look at the abortion debacle. Each side demonizes the other as either baby murderers or bigots who want to control women’s body. The discourse become more and more polarized and absolute until no sane resolution is possible.

We now have civil war between the right and the left over abortion, and civil wars within the left over gender reassignment. There is a reason these civil wars are getting more numerous and more vicious: the world order is fraying and disintegrating. Global predatory capitalism is tottering from supply shocks and a fragile financial system, fresh water is running out, the climate is locked in for at least 2 degrees of warming, and politicians are either too bought or cowardly to do anything. When the real problems are too big and no one is willing to solve them because that would require tackling the pathologies of predatory capitalism, all that existential angst and anger are channeled towards made-up moral panic that people could at least feel self-righteous over.

Where is the moral outrage over mass extinction — the wonton destruction of God’s creation for profits? Where is the cancelling of politicians for “drill baby drill”, and “bomb bomb bomb”? The choice for moral outrage is telling. By the way, moral outrage as it is often practiced today is simply bullies virtue signaling. It does not seek real solutions, only to demonstrate its moral superiority by punishing those who think differently.

The moderate Christians will hold their nose and vote for Trump because abortion and the Supreme Court. Likewise, the Democratic Party is salivating at making the progressive left hold their nose and vote for their next guy because abortion and the Supreme Court. At this eleventh hour, we will likely be choosing our national leaders not based on their ability to tackle climate, social and economic collapse, but on their stance on abortion. Identity politics has become so corrupted that it is but a Trojan horse in the empty game of political power, smuggling in an issue to get everyone riled up and forget what is really at stake.

Yes, it is common decency to use someone’s preferred pronoun. And yes, parents should be able to decide for their children until they reach adulthood. These are not the best solutions for all situations, but they are good enough for most cases. For the edge cases, we try to first understand the details and then decide on a case by case basis.

Now, Progressive, let’s focus our energy on things that are really important.