Progressive Politics

[David]

Here's a new discussion/debate on identity politics featuring Judith Butler, Cornel West and Glenn Greenwald that some might find interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv-TXOfI7vg

[stui magpie]

I might have a look but I struggle with watching videos that require concentration, I prefer reading.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-educational-divide-that-threatens-to-split-the-left-20211118-p59a8k.html

Interesting article I read a week or so ago on how Identity is replacing Class as the basis of left politics.

It creates a conundrum for the Labor Party which was founded on and by the union movement, the workers party, as the educated elite generally have no time for the working class masses.

[pietillidie]

^Can't access it, so I'll just comment generally. Those pieces often don't make sense because if you look at the policies, the very cultural types they decry still support actions that by far favour the working class. David might write about feminist film, but you sure as hell know he'll support a higher minimum wage, access to better housing and services, access to training, etc., among a host of policies that favour the working class of any creed.

What's actually happening is the cultist right is hating its way in blind rage to unemployability — like the far left before it — as creative cooperation, critical thought and hard numeracy move to the centre of economic productivity. Right or left, no one can afford to employ people who can't learn, articulate, compromise, reason rigorously, cooperate, maintain peace, bite their tongue and accept people as complex individuals.

Only the highly numerate, intelligent or creative get away with not having those skills (which is probably why you find so many far-left and far-right extremists in, say, coding). But those on the far right (or far left) who are not gifted are doomed to poverty as Christian Taliban warriors. The far left has long been poor; the far right is now joining it in a guaranteed-to-lose psychiatry.

Moderates almost don't need a party anymore. Every additional act of self-destruction — climate denial, foreigner panic, Brexit, Trump, anti-abortion vote, anti-vax protest, illiterate outburst, hating on education, uninformed reaction to science, worsening of own healthcare, sacrificing of children to war, polluting of own communities, anti-whatever else — is another nail in the unemployability and underclass coffin of the right.

If you have any experience with cults, it really is like trying to help people in thrall to a movement — at mass scale.

[stui magpie]

^

Nah, wide of the mark. Try to read the article, it's very similar to something David posted not long back.

[pietillidie]

^I was just bouncing off the topic. Putting the original article aside, my claim of a growing unemployable right underclass ought to be causing people who care to lose sleep. Once underclasses become locked in, they're very hard to undo.

[stui magpie]

They do sort of play into each other in a way. The gist of the article as I understand it is that the left is increasingly attracting university educated people who are more interested in identity politics. This leaves the working class, the traditional Labor voters, disenfranchised by the left and attracted to some of the far right ideals that, in appearance at least, give them a voice.

Many of the people who flocked to Trump were just Blue Collar workers who'd seen the factories and industries they worked in closed down. They felt disempowered and without a voice and Hilary's collective insults only pushed more that way.

[roar]

[Jezza]

Thanks for the link, David.

I've becoming a growing admirer of Glenn Greenwald.

[David]

I’m a fan too, Jezza! I think he says some really perceptive stuff here in particular, though I found the contributions from all of the participants interesting and worth listening to.

[roar]

Yep, all 3 provided insightful discussion. More open, respectful discussions without the political bs is what we need.

[nomadjack]

Ron Inglehart (post-materialist politics) says hi! Am I missing something here or is this discussion 40 years late to the party?

[David]

Can you expand on that, NJ? I must admit I’m not familiar with his work at all.

[nomadjack]

[David]

Thanks for that – makes a lot of sense, and I think summarises where things are at pretty succinctly. The only thing that surprises me is that people have been talking about this for so long; I really thought of identity discourse as something that was very new in the late ‘70s (emerging in, say, African-American feminism) and only became a significant factor in left discourse after the decline of unions and triumph of neoliberalism in the 1980s.

I guess the big question is whether a material politics can be reinvigorated, or if that ship has sailed and the left needs to be reconstituted in some way that incorporates both material and identity-oriented approaches (or something else entirely).

[stui magpie]

yeah, NJ's succinct summary does make perfect sense with the benefit of hindsight. That someone wrote it in the 70's is really good work.

I personally don't see material politics in Australia making a resurgence, while there are certainly many impoverished people, there's not nearly enough to make a critical mass. Society has changed, politics needs to change with it. It's called evolution.

I wouldn't be at all surprised though if material politics does make a comeback in Europe and the USA. Trump basically bought himself the Presidency using it.