This is particularly dangerous when there is no vividly defined unified and unifying policy for change, rendering a rightwing version of wokeness sharper and more compelling. In Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump, the academic Asad Haider identifies the power of this missing universalism, one that is “created and recreated in the act of insurgency” against a system in which there are interlocking oppressions but only one common enemy. The power of identity politics doesn’t lie in balkanisation – in carving up society into special interest groups in conflict with one other – but in precisely what its contemporary adoption seeks to prevent: the recognition that the common enemy is the way in which society itself is designed.
In short, the universal problem facing people of all identities in the US and the UK is hostility to those who lack capital in all it forms.
OK. Socialist call to arms. Dispossess the bourgeoisie. Do more and harder.
It’s far more straightforward to blame an abstract “wokeness” than to reckon with the fact that Harris ran a broadly right-of-centre campaign and still lost.
We do more and harder when we’re looking at the majority being far over to the right of us. So much so that even the losing candidate was far to the right of us. But racing left will win it next time, no, really.
The power of identity politics doesn’t lie in balkanisation – in carving up society into special interest groups in conflict with one other…
Lol. That’s exactly what identity politics is.
So identity politics is a GOOD thing, eh? All Lefties are simplistic morons, yes? Or haven’t I grasped the nuances of the argument?
The Harris campaign itself (from Joe dropping out to the Election) might have been “broadly right-of-centre” but what kept coming up was this was a façade, both in terms of her previous statements on video since the 2020 primaries and the fact that she said “she would change nothing from the current Biden approach” (far left).
Leopards don’t change their spots and everyone knew that regardless of what they campaigned upon, they would govern as left wing as Biden had and probably more so.
She was such a left wing nut job that even Trump was preferable.
Yet they somehow think that more of the same will win them the Whitehouse in 2028?
You’ve got to admit their commitment to their own delusion.
What is ultimately sad, indeed tragic, about Leftoost thinking is the delusion that they are not in control and if only they were, everything would be wonderful.
So the fact that Obama failed to enavt any real policies was the fault of Big Business or that Hillary failing was diwn to Russian intereference and so on. They claim to fight a rearguard action against Big Oil, who oppose their farcical belief in Climate Change. They arecalways the underdogs even when winning.
The fact that the left have been In Charge of the Anglosphere ( 1945-1979 and since 1997 in UK, 1992 in USA and at various times in Aus, NZ and Can ) as well as large chunks of Europe since the War, evades them. Their victory has been near complete. All institutions, political parties, education systems , even the military, think in their chosen manner. There is the occasional divergemce eg support for Israel, but we see that as being very conditional these days.
This rule is now being viewed ad oppressive – they have bevome the establishment and to newer generations they need to be done away with.
Thus we have support for the AfD, Wilders, Reform, Liga in Italy and so on.
The Left cannot see the authoritarian dystopia that they have created and thus are puzzled when people wish to shake off limits to personal liberty or over onerous taxation or regularion. Theyvsee this as false consciousness : why would anyone want to reject the comforting authority of theur masters ?
Trump is a very very strange man and yet I’m looking forward to his inauguration on January 20th as I see this as move towards the return to global sanity. Reconciling those two positions shows how bad things currently are.
Too much vodka last night Otto?
Trying to decode your spelling was like working with Enigma.
“No… wokeness didn’t lose, people still love massive Sudanese immigration…”
They should call her column Taqiyya Sunrise.
Harris didn’t run a “broadly right of centre” campaign, that’s another whopper like Mohammed’s magic space horse.
Kamala ran on:
* Muh vagina
* Muh diversity (black or Indian, depending on what audience she was talking to)
* Trump is Hitler
It was 100% pure, distilled woke. The Bud Light of presidential campaigns.
The summary in Nesquik’s para 2 has nothing to do with the drivel in para 1. Perhaps the guardian subs should report to Tim for a beating unless they’re all on strike.
One of the universal problems (particularly in The Guardian, but also elsewhere) in the US and UK is the hostility of the left to those who have capital in all its forms that they have earned (Polly is exempt because she inherited hers)
“the common enemy is the way in which society itself is designed.”
Designing society is an exclusively lefty obsession. The lesson of history is that they are not very good at it.
Normal people just do their best to get on with one another. And put up with the locally good enough result. But, cultures don’t necessarily travel well.
JG
LoL
I was just waxing lurical.
OttoK @ 10.26, “I was just waxing lurical”.
If you had posted the comment in question at 9.20 pm I could have believed you were waxing paralytical…….
“In short, the universal problem facing people of all identities in the US and the UK is hostility to those who lack capital in all it forms.”
I mean, if the theory is that all DEI problems boil down to not being sufficiently communist, I’m not sure why the left’s practice is Identity Politics. It seems counterintuitive to parade ever more marginal, frequently abrasive, and more-often-than-palatable hysterical, or downright dangerous individuals through the public consciousness. Just redistribute harder, as our host suggests.
Nothing makes lefty economic policy unattractive quite like showing the sort of people the money often actually goes to.
Actually, that stuff is just a load of meaningless intellectuo-babble. I used to be dead impressed with it when I was in my teens and early 20s because it sounded as if these achingly clever people actually knew the secrets of how the world works. I now know, of course, that they know jack shit.
Tim
Not being too critical but at an ‘all you can eat buffet’ it’s like you’ve forgotten the foie gras. This is a BEAUTY:
As a starting point, it is worth looking at Kamala Harris’s campaign rather than the assumptions about it. In reality, she seemed to avoid any focus on identity and “wokeness”. She didn’t make much of her race, or even her gender, choosing instead to ground her identity in her background as a middle-class person raised in a rental household by a hardworking mother.
She couldn’t string a sentence together without an autocue. I discerned no clear message from her campaign other than she was an Affirmative action hire and you should vote for her on that basis.
Her position on race softened from when she was running in 2019: she previously backed “some form” of reparations but did not stake out a position as part of her bid.
Your suggestion that slavery reparations would have won her the vote suggests heavy consumption of psychedelic drugs
Trump wanted Harris “to say something to turn off white voters. She was wise not to take the bait,” wrote the author Keith Boykin. She was hardline on immigration,
Despite having allowed in a new Belgium during her tenure. The void was between reality and perception.
keen to show that she is a gun owner (memorably telling Oprah Winfrey: “If someone breaks into my house they’re getting shot”).
Yes – running on a gun control agenda would have made the difference in the Mid West and rural counties.
And she was evasive on gender-affirming care for transgender Americans.
She failed to back child molestation sufficiently and that was the cause of her loss.
Items a level of delusion that is hard to believe isn’t vaguely satirical. Obviously the Left has overwhelming control of all institutions private and public in the U.K. but you do think their rule cannot endure indefinitely as it runs contrary to underlying human nature.
5 minutes before the US election: “abortion-crazed women, trannies and brown people are going to Turn the Page on mean old Trump, heh!”
5 minutes after women and brown people helped reelect Donald Trump: “noooooo wokeshit is still popular you guys…”
VP – well said.
Kamala was the most extreme leftwing presidential candidate the Democratic Party has ever ran. If she had “won”, the whole country would’ve been transformed into California: an authoritarian woke shithole without any borders or functioning criminal justice system, but with taxpayer funded sex changes for criminals and illegal immigrants.
The Taqiyya Whisperer is trying to gaslight people.
Failed on the first hurdle. Society *ISN’T* designed.
But of course, they think it is, and it should be, and by them. This is just Intelligent Design applied to human society, and should be shown to be just as much a crock as it is.
I got as far as “created and recreated”. When any academic uses that phrase, I know enough to give up immediately and read something more useful.
She didn’t make much of her race, or even her gender
ROFL
Over at The Times there are scores of Commenters losing their minds because Musk has said something critical of the UK government – how very dare he, not being a UK citizen! And in the very next breath pointing out that he’s friends with Trump who is the embodiment of EEVUUUUL (and probably the reincarnation of AH). “But it’s different when we do it!”
Chris – The FT is also seething about Mr Musk lol. These suppurating fannies thought they were going to celebrate his arrest and imprisonment.
The Times: Elon Musk has said the British public has “had enough of a tyrannical police state” as a petition calling for a general election passes two million signatures.
This is undeniably true.
The campaign, started by the publican Michael Westwood on Wednesday, has been signed by those who believe “the current Labour government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead-up to the last election”
Also true. Two Tier and his gang lied their way into political office, and should be removed and then prosecuted as the criminals they are.
Musk’s feud with the government took off over the summer when three children were stabbed to death in Southport, leading to riots across the country. He spread inaccurate claims about the government’s response and accused Starmer of running a “two-tier” justice system
We do have a two tier justice system where our amazingly nonce-friendly judiciary seeks to punish white English people for things the CPS would never prosecute other groups for.
African Man Correct. Let’s hope President Trump shows no mercy to Two Tier and his gay little band. The Sniggerers are soon going to be screaming.
‘Right of center’ now includes gender transition, unlimited abortion, unlimited immigration, and price controls?
Aga – ‘Right of center’ now includes gender transition, unlimited abortion, unlimited immigration, and price controls?
They prefer to be known as “The Conservatives”.
>choosing instead to ground her identity in her background as a middle-class person raised in a rental household by a hardworking mother.
Ignoring, of course, that she was actually the child of two doctorates, raised by a mother with a professional academic career, in a wealthy city, and went to an expensive college.
>Trump wanted Harris “to say something to turn off white voters. She was wise not to take the bait,” wrote the author Keith Boykin. She was hardline on immigration,
Except . . . she wasn’t. She said she’d have changed nothing that Biden did and during her tenure where the *only* thing in her VP portfolio was the border she . . . did nothing.
>keen to show that she is a gun owner (memorably telling Oprah Winfrey: “If someone breaks into my house they’re getting shot”).
By her state-supplied bodyguard team. Which the rest of us don’t get. That she had a ‘Glock’ means nothing and actually tells real gun owners that she’s making things up – she doesn’t own ‘a Glock’, its just the only gun brand she knows.
Two Tier and his gang lied their way into political office, and should be removed and then prosecuted as the criminals they are.
The problem with your proposal, Steve, is that we’d be left with no unjailed politicians at all. Actually, perhaps’ that not a problem after all.