Haaretz Unmasks the True Character of "Identity Politics"
A word of caution: I had a bit of trouble reading this article, as it kept getting 'stuck'. I have no idea why; I had to close it, then go back to it from my history a few times before I could reach the bottom. As the cool kids say, YRMV.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-identity-politics-is-not-so-bla...
This is kind of an editorial footnote derail, but: With regard to the Japanese kid's sushi protest, he might have been being a pickle-brained nationalist, but I could nearly as soon believe he was just using "cultural appropriation" as a mischievous excuse to protest what was in all likelihood crappy McSushi, which I can actually get behind. After all, the American (and probably elsewhere) "well gol'dern, anyone could do THAT" approach to sushi is an insult to REAL sushi chefs, who have to train and study their asses off for years and years before they're fit to serve a single nigiri. More than a few things are, and should stay, the province of an elite - not of money or muscle or blood or social skills, but of taste, vision, intellect, skill, and talent. The Japanese cultural commitment to optimum excellence in all things great and small is something that the whole world could learn from, and I doubt that the glories of Golden-Age Silicon Valley (where and when I had the tremendous good fortune to grow up) owes any less than a lot to the cultural values of the area's dominant ethnic group.
Getting back on track:
Note where Haaretz (recognized as very left-wing, for what it's worth) recognizes "identity politics" for exactly what I've recognized it to be: Not "far left" in any way shape or form, but the right-wing of a different culture. THEY, one could easily argue, are the real "alt-right". Let's call neo-Nazis what they are, and put that shoe on someone it fits better. It's like that famous sound-bite from Campaign-2000 John McCain, back when his 'maverick card' still had charge to it, when he said ''Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell on the right.'' Actually, here's a great article on that bit and more from back then, read it yourself: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/29/us/2000-campaign-arizona-senator-mcca....
Regardless, McCain was making an obvious mistake here ("casual racism", or just lazy thinking and sloppy language?): Why would either Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton be deemed "on the left"? Because they're black? So what? I'm not as sure about Sharpton, and I don't know what their economic, environmental, or foreign policy positions would be (heck, even the Third Reich had some comparatively sensible economic policies and environmental laws, and could be downright progressive with regard to animal rights, which is kind of bizarre when you think about it - and downright miraculous was that even Hitler and Stalin honored the post-WWI ban on gas weapons in combat), but last time I checked, Farrakhan is authoritarian, nationalist, racist, sexist, homophobic, ultra-religious, conformist, and xenophobic. Just like the Taliban, Hirohito's Japan, or Winston Churchill, he is the far right of a different culture, and his stated enmity toward other cultures' far rights does NOT automatically make him "left".
I've long said that that's the real difference between a liberal and a conservative:
Take 2 archconservatives from totally different cultures, lock them up in a small but comfortable room with reasonable amenities and no windows, keep them in there for about 48 hours, and when you come back to let them out they'll both be quite dead.
Do the same with 2 genuine liberals, and they won't even need to share so much as a language; they'll find ways to coexist and learn about each other. Lock them up together as strangers, and in 48 hours, you will let them out as friends.
What's going on now feels like Animal Farm; hopefully, it will end like Scooby-Doo.
Comments
uh, oh, I just made a comment in gjohnsit's article
and hadn't read your article yet. Because I think the haaretz article you posted and what you wrote about here in your article (apologies I couldn't yet bring myself to read it carefully to the end, I am so shit tired of all the identity, racism, sexism crap) and what I said in my crap comment are related.
If you could give me an answer to my last question in my comment, I would be delighted.
Why me, if I may ask?
Not that I mind giving it a shot - but I'm not sure I know the answer. I'm not sure I agree with the premise. Free speech and equality are supposed to SYNERGIZE with one another, not be antagonistic.
For several years, I began warming up to the idea of hate speech laws - I looked up at Canada, wondered what made it so much better than America when they're so similar in so many ways, and hit on that as the most prominent difference I could think of.
More recently, however, I've almost entirely backpedaled, having seen what I, personally, had never seen before, namely people who would and could use such laws for Evil. As Dr. King famously said, "nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity".
We already have some idea of what American hate speech law would look like, in the form of website moderation policies. A lot of the times it works as intended, but people can also be condemned based on misunderstandings, and the past few years especially, it can be heavily and unfairly influenced by the squeaky-wheel winds of moral panic politics, silencing truth, vilifying respectable opinions, and validating liars, bullies, and (worst of all) false narratives rather than fighting them. Twitter, so I've heard, is notoriously arbitrary, partial, and sometimes just downright silly; have you heard of the time they permanently banned a Japanese user for posting a death threat...against a mosquito? Meanwhile, The King of Covfefe is still free to play unlimited rounds of North Korean Nuclear Roulette. When he leaves the White House (be it in an ambulance, handcuffs, or something else), Kim Jong-Un may be in line for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Maybe if America had passed hate speech laws decades before now, it would have worked - but any such legislation today would be a totalitarian nightmare (as if it weren't already bad enough). It's also occurred to me that maybe it's not that Canada is better than the US because hate speech laws work, but that hate speech laws work because Canada is better than the US.
Here's what we DO need: In the US, news media are allowed to lie. FOX News went to the Supreme Court to secure that "right". THAT cannot stand. If it's billed as a news source, it must be forbidden to lie, and legally bound to adhere to proper journalistic rigor in all things.
With regards to the threats they're presently (in many cases, quite needlessly) facing, the issues of equality and of free speech are best kept separate from each other. Democracy only works if people are smart and independent-minded. Everyone is entitled to a voice - but not necessarily an equal one - and anyone who has nothing to say but "megadittoes" or "amen" or whatever other equivalent obviously has no use for free speech, and allowing them to have it is like allowing one person multiple votes. Minds matter, not bodies. If you've got 60 people who all think alike, 4 people who all think alike, and 20,000 people who all think alike, do the arithmetic: I count 3 people.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
FOX News never reached the US Supreme Court
I don't think they got beyond the Florida Appeals Court, and that only because the plaintiffs ran out of time, energy, and most importantly MONEY.
So while a lot of people think it's "the law of the land" that news media are allowed to lie with impunity, it is so only by default.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
That's worth knowing!
Someone ought to try setting a precedent the other direction!
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
When they're spitting out government propaganda
I suppose they're covered under Obama's 'legalizing' of US government's use of propaganda against the US public? This argument making them officially State propaganda organs? Are there still 'truth in advertising' laws in the US, to make them advertise this fact, or am I just being silly?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Great essay and commentary, thanks
As you find, essentially it boils down to the evil gaining control in warping any law or anything else to hand to evil purpose, whereas those seeking good at least try to achieve good according to their own lights.
Commonsense is always required and it's a damn shame that it's been so carefully made uncommon in politics and among those influential groups where it's most essential - and wherever else the ruthlessly evil have infiltrated in their power-seeking maneuvers.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
But you answered a lot with this comment, thank you
I agree, just don't know how you can prove that someone lies, when the info is within the secretive national security apparatus, who can tell you whatever and nobody knows what is a lie and what is not. At least not the average mama and papa.
As you may know Germany has hate speech laws - they are called 'incitement to hate' laws. We have also the obligation to register our residency with the local governmental entities and when we move, we have to register that we moved away and then we register again when we move within a new location in Germany. If you move overseas or within Europe, you just have to keep your papers that you told them you moved away but have not tell them where you moved to. I remember that these two legislative measures in Germany have always irritated American readers. They considered that as something like remnants of our fascist or totalitarian times in the past.
German hate speech laws have now be related and will be enforced to online hate speech laws.
And there is a debate about them:
German opposition calls for abolition of online hate speech law
So, this issue is in my consciousness since 1994, when I first used the www and read about the different pov about hate speech laws.
I have to admit that I don't think that these laws up til now have had a negative effect on German democratic procedures with regards to elections or freedom of speech rights. I was way more fearful to speak my mind (and haven't for at least 27 years) within the United States than I ever was in Germany. But as I was not inside Germany for over 35 years I just might not be knowledgeable enough about it anymore. So in my mind I can't put together my feelings of fear of speaking up politically in the US and my feelings of not fearing to speak up politically in Germany, especially as our hate speech laws and residency registration requirements seem to indicate that it should be the other way around.
I asked you because in your article you linked to the Haaretz article and you said:
That was a bit difficult for me to understand. 'The right-wing of a different culture'. I am not quite sure why freedom of speech and equality of human beings should be dependent on their culture. So I tried to figure out what you meant by that. You said the two rights should SYNERGIZE with each other and not be antagonistic. Just because the two rights should have equal weight, doesn't mean they are antagonistic, right?
How can something that should SYNERGIZE with each other, not end up being dependent of each other?
Definition according to google:
I also don't understand what you mean by this:
Minds do matter, bodies too, and whoever it was who said "Mens sana in corpore sano" (is a Latin phrase, usually translated as "a healthy mind in a healthy body") indicates that both are interlinked (which I believe to be true). And it might be conceivable that to never speak out what you think and not to talk at all is unhealthy and makes you sick and that therefore it would make you a less equal person than those who are not fearful of speaking up. As to your arithmetic, it doesn't seem to add up. Or may be my math teacher hasn't taught me the "correct math"?
As to free speech. There are so many different kinds of speech. The unspoken words of thoughts, they are still free and nobody can prove your thoughts right or wrong, as long as you have not voiced them, which doesn't mean you don't have your "a voice in and of your mind". Then there is free speech, as in person to persons spoken words. Then there is free speech in written form of books or printed articles. Now there is free speech in digital format online.
Do you think they can all be covered with the same 'hate speech laws' or don't need any legislative control as to not manipulate the masses?
A famous book has apparently manipulated massively the masses of the German people almost hundred years ago, imagine that guy had the online platforms available to him of our times? Would you stay calm about it? Or get upset? Or would you let the fights go on uncontrolled, because it's just all "in the digital format" and doesn't hurt any bodies? It still does hurt quite some minds, I think, and because mind and body is linked, I am getting huge nagging questions in my mind about hate speech laws.
And is not the relation of rights to free speech only therefore related to culture, because in each culture of a geographical and ethnic entity, it's just something different, which gets on the nerves of those diverse PTB in those groups. It gets so much on their nerves that they all tend to want those free speaking folks to be hidden, oppressed, regulated, manipulated and controlled? I wouldn't go on the streets to demonstrate against fake Sushi, but I could get a little upset, if I hear about fake salami beef sausage with all kind of other toxic shit in it, just not beef.
It's just a question I struggle with for a long time. I can't make up my mind about it. Therefore I asked you. Your article indicated you have thought about it a lot. And I thank you for answering and writing your article including all the links.
Peace.
We're thinking very differently
Suffice to say, I think these are mostly "meta-" issues with few if any worthwhile answers. There are no correct answers in politics, but there are in policy; the explanation for the causes of the problems, and the solutions, lie in other directions than the ones you seem to be going in - and those directions may not be where you think they are.
I, for one, would be more concerned with nurturing rational thought, celebrating intellectualism and framing stupidity as a MORAL failure (quite the contrast to what's been en vogue recently), restoring the global rule of law and the moral precedents set at Nuremburg (GEORGE W BUSH ET AL ARE THIEVES, WAR CRIMINALS, AND MASS MURDERERS WHO SHATTERED AMERICA'S MORAL COMPASS AND RAPED A GENERATION, AND MUST BE SENT TO THE HAGUE! NEVER LET THAT GO!), and going forward, cultivating a globalist, futurist worldview and heroic individualism rather than group identity, which I've come to deem the root of most human Evil.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
well, I don't think we think differently, but let
me read and think about what you said and give me some time to understand your words.I have the feeling you try to read something into my words, which I don't understand is in there.
Whatever that means ...
I do agree with the rest you said and don't understand where you read in my comment that I would disagree with them. (relating to the Nuremberg trials and morality)
Well, I guess here is the point where I hesitate to believe in your worldview and heroic individualism meme.
Let's leave it at that. I don't think I can make myself clear, nor can I read your clearly.
Sorry for that. I tried. No offense.
@mimiI do agree with the
I never meant to say you did, save perhaps that I was saying the answers lie in concrete agenda items and historical precedent rather than hypothetical scenarios and completely abstract concepts.
As for thinking differently, the fact that we're speaking so differently is direct evidence of that - and, of course, there's no way you'd know this, but you're talking with someone who, even more than most people, is damn-near DEFINED by how differently I think from others.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Personally, I'm all for freedom of speech
but slander and libel of population groups perceived as vulnerable because they are, with the intention or result of promoting discrimination and/or violence, must be addressed. A society which allows these slanders and incited abuses to be normalized can obviously never want to achieve justice or democracy - and it was the only way Germany had of cleaning fascism out of the general society after WW2. Let the psychopathic hate and plot dreamt-of atrocities against others in their own private corners where they at least cannot affect the perceptions of the whole and freely insult, abuse and terrorize the innocent people targeted whenever of any of these can be cornered by a mob given license to do so.
Obviously, I'm not talking about legal consequences for every disturbed idiot on the internet who says something along the line of women should be beaten/raped freely, Black/1st Nations/people of any shade should be shot/beaten/imprisoned/enslaved, all Jewish people should be gassed, whatever, just that they should not be publicly trying to enlist others into gangs more likely to act on whatever sick (and still illegal at this point, as is slander and libel, must I add?) agenda in mobs or to affect legislation 'legalizing' whatever harm against whichever groups they wish to subjugate, abuse or eliminate. 'Stand Your Ground' laws (as long as the shooter is White and the victim's of Colour and caught Walking While Black or some such heinous crime,) as one example of the latter case.
Any real civilization protects all equally against all predators, and if we do not - at long last - begin to discourage, control and hold accountable all would-be predators at all levels we cannot survive.
Harper, among so many other protections, did away with Canadian hate speech protections; since then we've had to petition to stop a rape advocate from a speaking tour here, to keep Stormfront out and I don't ATM recall what else.
There's enough ugliness out there without letting the psychopathic pathologize society and attack individuals among designated groups by 'normalizing' the idea that it's OK for some with any self-perceived advantage, to slander, rape, use, terrorize, hurt or kill others just because they themselves are a certain skin colour/are bigger and physically stronger/have erections with no place to put them and get off on fear/pain/humiliating others/have weapons/financially/legally can and that they should be able to get away with it whenever they feel like it because these people don't matter to them, legislators or to segments within a pathologized society except as somehow deservingly-so victims.
Not to mention that if vulnerable people from any population group cannot safely walk the streets because society has been convinced that they should not be protected from at-will harassment and abuse by 'their betters', then nobody can. As we have been so appallingly seeing in America all along.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Here's what's key
What we'd likely get down here, if we enacted hate speech laws now, is something that only applies to SOME groups, leaves others defenseless (or even targeted), and only a comparatively small menu of groups would be acknowledged as important, or even recognized as existing, and of course, you have to BE a group identity; unique, internally-powered individuals and cultures-of-one have been declared "a myth".
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
In the end
anything that divides us, weakens us. We shouldn't be doing our enemies job for them.
I owe you a bundle of extra recs...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.