will there ever be a time where we're allowed to treat a large, immensely influential school of politics as a legitimate target of interest and criticism?
The distinction between the hard left and identity politics goes back a little further than the authors you cite. From 1848: "The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole."
A lot of social justice as we know it is just the over-prioritization of the high-school-level personal grievances of the culture class (with ranked tiers of priority within that class itself).
One of my most eye-opening experiences was seeing how, even at the height of the Floyd-era BLM online wave, there were legitimized discussions about whether certain black male victims should be marched for if they said things like how they didn't find dark-skinned women attractive. Undoubtedly a shitty thing to say (and to be critiqued on another day), but the fact that anger over such a remark ought to potentially trump something like protesting police violence was astonishing to see.
Funny thing about woke people, especially those who work in media, is that they hate center-left people MORE than conservative people. That much is obvious by now. They hate people who agree with them 70% of the time more than those people all the way in the other camp.
And I want nothing to do with a movement that is so mean, scoldy, and contemptuous of normies.
The identity politics left doesn’t seem to be able to conceive that they are doing the capitalist devil’s bidding. As Yglesias points out helping poor people is pretty popular. And if you help poor people that disproportionately helps Black people as they are poor at much higher rates than the general population. But if you couch it in racialized language support plummets.
If I was a rich guy who didn’t want my taxes raised to help poor people what I’d do is try to convince the left to use racialized language.
Are those on the racialized left open to the possibility that they are being played?
A decade ago, I had a little blog that talked about some topics in social justice, with left-based critiques, and received exactly this kind of response you are talking about: "The people saying these things are just Tumblr teenagers and dumb Redditors, why care?"
At the time, I said what I felt: that it seemed these teenagers (and the cultural zeitgeist from which they drew their opinions) were the vanguard of a new movement that would be much more than fringe online people, especially if people didn't take seriously any criticism of its obvious flaws and excesses.
Now, family bonds and long friendships are impacted by these "terminally online" debates. It's become the stuff of real life. Theory has collided with praxis and still, plenty of people assert that "touching grass" is the one correct solution to the excesses of the social justice movement.
Add to your reading list 2 left critiques of identity politics: "The Trouble With Diversity" by Walter Benn Micheals, and "No Politics but Class Politics" by Adolph Reed Jr. and Walter Benn Micheals.
I really can't stand Beauchamp, but I'm not sure he meant "center-left" derisively. I'm actually surprised he didn't follow the usual playbook and pretend that every who objects to wokery is "right-wing."
Here's a shimmer of hope: Teens are starting to think woke is lame, and are beginning to treat it with the irony and dark humour they do with all topics that Visa, the Military and HR departments are fond of. My teacher wife told me the other day that kids are starting to call each other the f-word again (not fuck). They are "bi" but only ironically. This is at a school where the elite's kids go.
I guess this should be the most obvious and predictable thing to happen. It always does. Has anyone else noticed this among their kids?
I've said what I'm about to say before, more or less, in the comments of this same blog, but it bears repeating. There's something in the current liberal-and-left ("""left""") character that deplores action. The social justice movement is an enormously successful one if measured by widespread acceptance; this year is the first in many that corporate pride has seen widespread pushback making national headlines, the POTUS says things like "systemic racism" and "LGBTQ." In terms of material gains, we all know it's piles of fluffy nothing, but it terms of Facebook letting you customize your pronouns, it's an unmitigated victory. This feels like progress, and it feels like righteousness, if you're intellectually sort of lazy and looking for the bubbly comforts of yas-queen liberalism and have never given Libya any more thought than someone making stickers of Ruth Bader Ginsberg told you to. I think in many ways this intense antipathy to action, and this intense embrace of institutions being "on our side," explains (if not justifies) the bizarre cognitive dissonance you're discussing here. I guess given the choice, people will choose to argue what is comforting and asks little of them, even intellectually, even when it is obviously not true. I don't know that I'm coherent here, and I don't think I have a clear point. The frustration is endless, the grievances more so, and material gains are nothing. Idk man.
Social Justice Politics, as I think you are using it, is focused on prioritizing the importance of racial and gender identity in our culture and our politics.
I think trying to make these identities a consideration rather than a dispositive guiding light is crucial to battling the DeSantis-like reaction, which I believe is more harmful than anything positive accomplished by the Social Justice movement in the last few years.
Something I wrote before: now that the Soviet Union is gone, and People Of Influence And Authority no longer have to toss the masses a bone or two, they would much prefer that we dissipate our energy on dreary arguments about cultural appropriation and how many LGTBQXYZPDQ can dance on the head of a pin, endless and endlessly performative struggle sessions, rather than raise questions about how the economic pie is sliced.
Put another way - to paraphrase Chris Hedges - elites will gladly discuss race, they will decry gender inequality most piteously, they will demonstrate a touching sensitivity to the rights of sexual and gender minorities so oppressed that they have not been discovered yet. Those same elites will not readily discuss economic class.
Or, in the negative formulation - if businesses were to stop opposing unionization of their workers, the result would be a transfer of wealth, of concrete material benefits, to brown and black and yellow and white working class people greater than all the allyship statements ever penned, all the diversity committees ever instituted, all the preferred pronoun tags ever attached to a corporate email.
I think asking, "are we overly concerned about wokeness?" is totally valid, what is infuriating is, "wokeness is not the problem and anyone who has concerns about overreach is a bad person trying to deflect from the Real Problem". Adam Davidson does this too. Appreciate you calling out this behavior.
The distinction between the hard left and identity politics goes back a little further than the authors you cite. From 1848: "The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole."
A lot of social justice as we know it is just the over-prioritization of the high-school-level personal grievances of the culture class (with ranked tiers of priority within that class itself).
One of my most eye-opening experiences was seeing how, even at the height of the Floyd-era BLM online wave, there were legitimized discussions about whether certain black male victims should be marched for if they said things like how they didn't find dark-skinned women attractive. Undoubtedly a shitty thing to say (and to be critiqued on another day), but the fact that anger over such a remark ought to potentially trump something like protesting police violence was astonishing to see.
Funny thing about woke people, especially those who work in media, is that they hate center-left people MORE than conservative people. That much is obvious by now. They hate people who agree with them 70% of the time more than those people all the way in the other camp.
And I want nothing to do with a movement that is so mean, scoldy, and contemptuous of normies.
The identity politics left doesn’t seem to be able to conceive that they are doing the capitalist devil’s bidding. As Yglesias points out helping poor people is pretty popular. And if you help poor people that disproportionately helps Black people as they are poor at much higher rates than the general population. But if you couch it in racialized language support plummets.
If I was a rich guy who didn’t want my taxes raised to help poor people what I’d do is try to convince the left to use racialized language.
Are those on the racialized left open to the possibility that they are being played?
A decade ago, I had a little blog that talked about some topics in social justice, with left-based critiques, and received exactly this kind of response you are talking about: "The people saying these things are just Tumblr teenagers and dumb Redditors, why care?"
At the time, I said what I felt: that it seemed these teenagers (and the cultural zeitgeist from which they drew their opinions) were the vanguard of a new movement that would be much more than fringe online people, especially if people didn't take seriously any criticism of its obvious flaws and excesses.
Now, family bonds and long friendships are impacted by these "terminally online" debates. It's become the stuff of real life. Theory has collided with praxis and still, plenty of people assert that "touching grass" is the one correct solution to the excesses of the social justice movement.
Add to your reading list 2 left critiques of identity politics: "The Trouble With Diversity" by Walter Benn Micheals, and "No Politics but Class Politics" by Adolph Reed Jr. and Walter Benn Micheals.
Making a performance is usually not serious.
I really can't stand Beauchamp, but I'm not sure he meant "center-left" derisively. I'm actually surprised he didn't follow the usual playbook and pretend that every who objects to wokery is "right-wing."
Here's a shimmer of hope: Teens are starting to think woke is lame, and are beginning to treat it with the irony and dark humour they do with all topics that Visa, the Military and HR departments are fond of. My teacher wife told me the other day that kids are starting to call each other the f-word again (not fuck). They are "bi" but only ironically. This is at a school where the elite's kids go.
I guess this should be the most obvious and predictable thing to happen. It always does. Has anyone else noticed this among their kids?
I don’t think that socialism necessarily privileges the collective over the individual. Consider forms of libertarian socialism a la Chomsky.
"If you feed Midjourney the prompt “center-left,” it’ll give you a picture of Beauchamp humping the Vox logo."
I really really did not need this visual.
I've said what I'm about to say before, more or less, in the comments of this same blog, but it bears repeating. There's something in the current liberal-and-left ("""left""") character that deplores action. The social justice movement is an enormously successful one if measured by widespread acceptance; this year is the first in many that corporate pride has seen widespread pushback making national headlines, the POTUS says things like "systemic racism" and "LGBTQ." In terms of material gains, we all know it's piles of fluffy nothing, but it terms of Facebook letting you customize your pronouns, it's an unmitigated victory. This feels like progress, and it feels like righteousness, if you're intellectually sort of lazy and looking for the bubbly comforts of yas-queen liberalism and have never given Libya any more thought than someone making stickers of Ruth Bader Ginsberg told you to. I think in many ways this intense antipathy to action, and this intense embrace of institutions being "on our side," explains (if not justifies) the bizarre cognitive dissonance you're discussing here. I guess given the choice, people will choose to argue what is comforting and asks little of them, even intellectually, even when it is obviously not true. I don't know that I'm coherent here, and I don't think I have a clear point. The frustration is endless, the grievances more so, and material gains are nothing. Idk man.
Social Justice Politics, as I think you are using it, is focused on prioritizing the importance of racial and gender identity in our culture and our politics.
I think trying to make these identities a consideration rather than a dispositive guiding light is crucial to battling the DeSantis-like reaction, which I believe is more harmful than anything positive accomplished by the Social Justice movement in the last few years.
Something I wrote before: now that the Soviet Union is gone, and People Of Influence And Authority no longer have to toss the masses a bone or two, they would much prefer that we dissipate our energy on dreary arguments about cultural appropriation and how many LGTBQXYZPDQ can dance on the head of a pin, endless and endlessly performative struggle sessions, rather than raise questions about how the economic pie is sliced.
Put another way - to paraphrase Chris Hedges - elites will gladly discuss race, they will decry gender inequality most piteously, they will demonstrate a touching sensitivity to the rights of sexual and gender minorities so oppressed that they have not been discovered yet. Those same elites will not readily discuss economic class.
Or, in the negative formulation - if businesses were to stop opposing unionization of their workers, the result would be a transfer of wealth, of concrete material benefits, to brown and black and yellow and white working class people greater than all the allyship statements ever penned, all the diversity committees ever instituted, all the preferred pronoun tags ever attached to a corporate email.
Which is precisely why they will not do this.
I think asking, "are we overly concerned about wokeness?" is totally valid, what is infuriating is, "wokeness is not the problem and anyone who has concerns about overreach is a bad person trying to deflect from the Real Problem". Adam Davidson does this too. Appreciate you calling out this behavior.