Democrats have weaponized Identity Politics against progressives
I have no use for Identity Politics because it precludes solidarity, and solidarity is the only thing that will ever win against the extreme wealth inequality that is poisoning this country.
Now I have another reason to oppose Identity Politics: the cynical use of it by establishment Democrats against the progressive grassroots.
Since at least the 2016 election, centrist Democrats have had a ready tool to fend off left-wing challenges.
Make an honest criticism of Hillary Clinton’s record — whether on war, criminal justice reform, trade agreements, or campaign finance — and they’d decry it as sexist or conflate it with online misogyny. Express distrust in Clinton, and they’d chalk it up to latent sexism — even if the critics were avowed feminists.
...This line of attack continued into 2017, when similar claims were used to deflect substantive criticisms of potential presidential candidates. Skeptics of Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Deval Patrick — three establishment Democrats floated as 2020 contenders who also happen to be black — were told they were simply motivated by bigotry, to the point where some critics were blithely misidentified as white men. In the words of Briahna Joy Gray, liberal discourse became “a world in which personal identity [is] shorthand for ‘progress’ … and ‘white man’ [is] an epithet.”
This much is not news. Identity Politics is used to silence progressives. You probably already knew that.
However, now there is a twist: Identity Politics is used selectively.
Here’s the thing: Russia conspiracies aside, it’s perfectly fair for liberals and centrists to oppose Manning. When they went after the nascent candidate, they weren’t motivated by transphobia or misogyny, but by a deeply misguided impulse to defend the national security state and a desire to see Ben Cardin, who shares more of their political values, retain his seat.Yet at the same time, it’s a wholesale reversal from the rhetoric many of these figures have been employing up until now.
Manning’s case is far from the only one. Take Nebraska’s second district. Kara Eastman, a forty-five-year-old woman, is running on a platform calling for a higher minimum wage, Medicare for All, increased taxes on the rich, and a halt to the Keystone XL pipeline. Her Democratic primary opponent is Brad Ashford, a sixty-eight-year old white, male, former Republican who supported the TPP, wants to cut taxes and regulations, and, unlike Eastman, supports some abortion restrictions. Ashford has not only received the vocal backing of one Michigan congresswoman, he’s already receiving institutional support from the Democratic Party.
Or look at Paula Swearengin, a forty-three-year-old female environmental activist running for Senate in West Virginia who supports Medicare for All, free college, criminal justice reform, and a total ban on private campaign donations. She’s running to unseat Joe Manchin, who is not only a seventy-year-old white man, but, more pertinently, Donald Trump’s “liaison with the Democrats” — a man who votes with the president 58 percent of the time and describes himself as “pro-life.” Democrats aren’t exactly tripping over themselves to endorse Swearengin, while liberal groups are hesitant to back her. This includes Democracy for America, which says she hasn’t raised “the kinds of resources it would take to win.”
Such episodes should put to rest any question about whether the weaponization of this narrow version of “identity politics” against the Left is a principled crusade, or just a tactic cynically wielded to fend off policy-based criticism. But in truth, we’ve known the answer for awhile.
The article goes on to list several more examples, but one example it overlooks is Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
El-Sayed is being attacked by the Democratic establishment with the racist tool of "Birtherism".
To hear El-Sayed’s campaign and his backers tell it, establishment Democrats are pushing a whisper campaign about El-Sayed’s eligibility out of a combination of genuine prejudice; fear that El-Sayed’s Muslim and Arab heritage would hurt him against a Republican in November; and contempt for El-Sayed’s left-leaning policy positions and maverick campaign style.
“The nightmare scenario here is that the strongest candidate ― with real progressive values and new ideas ― gets kneecapped by a racist, insider smear campaign, only to have the insiders’ pick lose in the general election,” Adam Joseph, communications director for El-Sayed’s campaign, said in a statement that inverted the “nightmare scenario” imagined by an anonymous Democrat in the Bridge article.
Identity Politics doesn't work against conservatives. In fact, IP actually motivates them.
IP's purpose, as it is used today, exists to prevent real progressive change.
Comments
Six progressive insurgents outraising establishment candidates
DCCC don't want them
The DNC is a dead
man walking. That said,
they still are very dangerous,
out to destroy the progressive wing
of the party.
And, the only way I see beating them - the DNC -
is to financially support the Top 10 (decent chance of winning) prog candidates every two years until "we" (progressives) become the majority wing of the party. With momentum that shouldn't take more than 5 or six election cycles, ten or 12 years, but if it takes 20 years it takes 20 years. Just keep pounding progressive candidates down their throats until they choke.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Frankly...
We don't have that kind of time. If we can't take back the DP by (at dead-latest) 2024, we're far better off coordinating a mass-walkout and forming a new party - I've thought for years about how the disaffected of both parties should be working on a coordinated "mitosis" so as to put an end to the duopoly.
Just as important as changing the DP is changing the PUBLIC CULTURE. People seem to be forgetting, en masse, what was common knowledge and basic morality as recently as 3 years ago. It's like the strictly-illusory ontological "paradigm shift" that most people bought into after 9/11 (I can proudly say I never did for a second), except SO MUCH WORSE.
My entirely serious recommendation would be to shut down and ban Twitter (and possibly Facebook); all those sites really do is take the worst pitfalls of normal human psychology and amplify it a millionfold.
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!
I'll be watching to see how this plays out locally.
In my district, AZ-02, there are five Democrats running. The Republican incumbent, Martha McSally, has quit the House to run for Senate. The national party seems to favor Ann Kirkpatrick who is on the DCCC's Red to Blue list. She will not come out for Medicare-for-All and is the only one of the five candidates to play the RussiaRussia card. How, for example, will they smear Mary Matiella, a Hispanic female and a strong progressive who has all the correct positions and the endorsement of Raul Grijalva ?
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
Ann Kirkpatrick
In other words, she's still a Rethug at heart but pulled a Hillary and registered D.
On climate, she speaks with forked tongue:
source
I don't know, but were I thee, I'd watch carefully for it, as it's coming.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Ann's a carpet-bagger too.
She moved down here from Northern AZ just to run in CD-2, presumably because the Party considers her reliably "centrist" and has promised their support.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
Class Warfare Is The Solution
I'm gonna start checking in to local meetings of the Democratic Socialists and The Green Party in L.A.
I just signed up for text updates to The Poor People's Campaign:
Rev. Barber: America needs a new Poor People’s Campaign
https://thinkprogress.org/rev-barber-why-america-needs-a-new-poor-people...
[edit] The L.A. Democratic Socialist website has this cool link to a David Harvey article in the
BuddhistSocialist magazine Roar:https://roarmag.org/magazine/david-harvey-consolidating-power/
[edit to my edit] Oops. I got this magazine confused with Lion's Roar:
https://www.lionsroar.com/lionsroarmagazine/
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Of course.
This is just the Democratic faction of the Capitalist Party doing what it always does: Gaslighting the working class while usurping genuine movements through 'intersectionalism' in order to keep the working class fighting amongst themselves while the Capitalists continue to rob all of us blind.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Here it is at work in Michigan
I don't know if this guy in Michigan is a progressive or not.
I know this guy is. At least he is running on Bernie's agenda. He has 5 mil and is running a super bowl ad. Given that he's American Indian, don't know how this brown man will fare either.
In Michigan Governor’s Race: Indian American Shri Thanedar Touts Science Career in First Campaign Ad
Then there is the female. Detroit Dems don't like her. I don't know if it is because she is female, white, or insufficiently DETROIT enough.
Detroit Dems seek alternative to Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan governor race
This is pretty much the entire Democratic field. There is zero bench in this state. Incompetence and neglect have pretty well destroyed the Democratic Party in Michigan. So if these people screw it up enough, we'll have the Jesus loving homophobe and crook, Bill Schuette.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I think brown dirt will not stick at the brown man Thanedar
and he will not suffer any harm by whatever kind of brownish stuff other Democrats would throw at him. Won't work.
He is more Indian than American and he is a science and entrepreneurial 'dreamer come through' kind of guy, whose roots are in the poverty of one of
shitholethe greatest brown country there is.If he wins I want to see if he is as true a progressive as he claims. If he would run for Presidency I wouldn't so sure to trust him. But as governor he seems alright. Keep us updated.
https://www.euronews.com/live
you bet mimi
The proof is in the pudding.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
The corporate wing of the Inauthentic Opposition Party has one
and only one mission in life: sideline and co-opt any and all progressive movement.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020
Don't mess with Joe Manchkin!
He might be a blue dog democrat, but he's our blue dog democrat! One member of ToP says it's better for us to have a few blue dogs even if they vote with the republicans most of the time because they give us the majority. WTF? How does that even work?
The selective identity politics should show people that it's just another game that democrats play, but people are so blinded by the DP they can't see that they're being played.
There was a front page diary today about how the republicans are letting the payday loan lenders take advantage of poor people, but not one mention of how many democrats voted for it. This is called selective blindness.
Birtherism fron the democrats. You can't make this shit up.
TOP is so full of it.
If they vote Republican, might as well be a real one. Jones is as bad as the pedophile.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
It started with Bernie, and now they are addicted to it.
Democrats think they found the winning formula: a person with legit creds in the universe of identities but a corporatist and as in the case of Obama and Hillary, pushing a neocon war and foreign policy agenda. Kamala Harris is looking like the front runner, and she is even adopting the tactic of sounding like a progressive on certain hot issues.
Have not seen it where I live is fairly liberal but also loyal democrats so no need to topple them.
Bingo
I've asked people to tell me the difference between Bush and Obama when it comes to foreign policy. Get this. Obama didn't start any wars like Bush did. Plus he was better for the economy because the economic meltdown happened during his tenure and Obama righted the economy. Well except that income inequality got much worse during his tenure because he only helped his friends and let Main Street drown. Oh and there's his deporting more people than any other president. Other than that, I can see their point.
Kampala can tell us that she's for single payer, stopping the wars and prison reform, but will anyone believe her?
I sometimes wonder how skillfully the deep state
is using Identity Issues to manipulate and divide the country. Identities are embedded in your being, they can't be changed and it seems to me it's the most successful tool to break, control, manipulate and divide people over their identity and use it in any shape or form. It's not only a democratic tool. It's done all over the human landscape.
https://www.euronews.com/live
old, old tool
Divide et impera was ancient when phrased in that language (Latin), much less anything spoken by children as a first language today!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Being called a sexist, misogynist...
when voting for Jill Stein, really got me puzzled.
Those Dems,.. you've got to love their pretzel logic.
In other words, all the Dems want are good, safe, neolib 'identities'
No one else should apply.
(Edited)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Actually a lot of them proudly claim that they are centrists
None of this weak progressive identity, proud centrists like their buddies Barry and Hillary. Pretzel logic is an understatement.
Ironically enough, it was the left...
...that created identity politics back in the late '60s; I was present at the birth and can unfortunately attest to it. This actually almost made some sense at first, but in spite of a series of rather amazing faceplants early on (anyone remember the SLA?), as well as absolutely countless WTF lesser moments of mind-numbing stupidity over the years, it's managed to stumble onward as some sort of central rallying concept ever since.
Now the big problem is that both major factions of the plutocracy have figured out how easily it can be co-opted. The right-wing kleptocratic neoliberals have successfully used it to hold together their electoral base, now more of a with-us-or-against-us tribe than a normal political party. And their sort-of-opponents in the corporate neoliberal Democratic Party, after blatantly telling the entire working class to go to hell in 2016, use it as a bludgeon not only to isolate and silence anyone who wants to point fingers at the oligarchs, but also to lure back everybody on the lower end of the social justice ladder, with hollow, at-least-we're-not-those-people promises and pseudo-empathizing.
As some guy once said, what is to be done? Or as some other guy a bit more recently said, what are we gonna do? A real Left now has the very difficult job of undoing a half-century of bullshit (while still dealing with the reality of that social justice ladder), and making a genuine anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist mass movement. Can it be done? Beats me, but I'm not seeing an alternative.