His point at the end about the impossibility of the word "un-Danish" is at least thirty years out of date, if not 80. "Udansk" is fairly frequently used, across the political spectrum, usually denoting some variation of intolerance, unwillingness to compromise, and narrowmindedness which are implied almost universally to be antithetical to Danishness.
Even on the right, the phrases "Danish culture" and "Danish values" are used much more than any reference to blood or ethnicity. It is very much a fringe view to suggest that people are not able to become like us and assimilate (though a lot less fringe to claim that many foreigners, especially muslims, don't want to do so.)
Yeah, saying "Udansk" is all too common. Though is strikes me as a word almost exclusively used by politicans - maybe a tactic that some spindoctor picked up from US media at some point?
Now I realise you have to produce many words to fill a book, but a more succinct argument would be appreciated, and this seems to be all over the place, with pat explanations of recent history, which is probably much more complex in reality.
And is the argument really about 'identity', or just 'status'?
IMHO, economics is flawed at it's core, because people do not just value material wealth, but relative, social wealth, aka status, in fact, almost above all. That also explains twitter, facebook, instagram, etc.
Ego rents are very much a part of modern economic theory. As are any range of cognitive biases (see behavioral economics), institutional frictions, spatial constraints, and on and on. It's a wide tent. Some say too wide.
I have no earthly idea how "identity politics" is related to the demise of the arab spring. In as far as it may relate to the rise of authoritarianism in Eastern Europe (Poland and Hungary), it is by being easy foil for Victor Orban and his ilk (cf. "LGBTQ-free zones"). Even if one were to believe these neo-fascists wouldn't just find some other scapegoat, I don't see how it would morally justify a return to 1950s social policies. Throwing some people under a train in support of human rights seems to be the quickest way to defeat your stated purpose.
It isn't even obvious that "identity politics" is tethered exclusively to left-wing politics. Plenty has been written about the group of people that invaded the Capitol last year, and the only consistent characteristic of that group was being white. No, it has nothing to do with economics. It included a doctor making $ 650,000 p. a. as well as a group that traveled to DC on a private jet.
Hell, the major group of young reactionaries in Europe (until recently) had "Identity" in their name.
This text just seems entirely out of place, and I was wondering if I missed the (2008) in the title while reading it. There's nothing new in it, and it wouldn't get much attention if it weren't for the name.
It is equally confounding to me that you either: read the piece and still have these complaints, or you didn't and still feel authorized to respond in this way.
>>Identity politics aims to change culture and behavior in ways that have real material benefits for many people.
>>By turning a spotlight on narrower experiences of injustice, identity politics has brought about welcome changes in cultural norms and has produced concrete public policies that have helped many people. The Black Lives Matter movement has made police departments across the United States much more conscious of the way they treat minorities, even though police abuse still persists.
This is another false, politically correct account.
The impact of the Black Lives Matter movement, on black lives, has been devastating.
What this racial justice movement led to is riots, wherein 18 people were murdered in one night in Chicago:
“Many of our officers are not arresting people, are letting crimes that happen right in front of them go by because they don’t want to be misconstrued as being racist or being held liable for any kind of misconceived notions of brutality or whatever,” he said."
Consequently, revenge killings, where one gang retaliates against another for a previous, unsolved, homicide, have skyrocketed.
This is a moderate essay with an unfortunate title. What it is not is a typical right-wing rant. I would hope people could tell these apart.
It presents a middle path and almost plaintively asks people to follow it. I fear this is wishful thinking, but at least he's trying to be conciliatory and constructive.
What surprised me was his reference to Snow Crash. I did not expect that in an essay by Francis Fukuyama.
I hate identity politics as much as the next guy, but I think a lot of Fukuyama's takes here are pretty bad. He repeatedly paints massive groups with a large and indiscriminate brush. For instance:
"The right seeks to cut off immigration altogether and would like to send immigrants back to their countries of origin."
Uh, what? The United States is a nation of immigrants and we all know it. I don't think anyone wants to send immigrants back, it would be illegal and unconstitutional as well as impossible. Now, restricting ILLEGAL immigration on the other hand? Yes, basically everyone on the right supports this. But not wanting illegal immigration is literally on the other side of the map from not wanting any immigration at all and sending back immigrants.
I don't lend much credence to this guy anyway, considering that he thought history ended in 1992, as other comments have mentioned. But I think just as important as identity politics is defining the opposing side by the worst ideas of its supporters. For example, defining Democrats by "defund the police", or defining Republicans as the party of "white nationalism". There are tons of people on both sides who don't believe in this crap and are dedicated to the core ideals of economic prosperity for all and expansion of opportunities. Tuning these crazies out would go a long way to calming down the discourse in this country, but I don't think essays like this really help the situation.
The key behind understanding the guy is he's always defending imperialism and the current power structure as the correct, natural and inevitable course of events, with no other alternative possible.
He's been playing that same song for decades. You already know what his position on everything is and how he'll argue for it. The real amazing thing is how much he's committed to it
per 'defund the police' being extreme, here's a story. living near Pitt in 1981. iiuc, Reagan defunding forced the local psych hospital to empty out. So now we had a bunch of patients with psychiatric disabilities living homeless in the neighborhood, and my understanding is that they needed to stay close by the hospital in order to get daily meds. Of course this resulted in more police involvement, and though I don't have the proof, the common sense reaction would be to allocate more officers to the zone. I'll bet the officers in the street weren't thrilled.
end result : mental health funding decreased and police funding increased.
So my understanding of 'defund the police' is to reverse what happened in that and many similar situations
> For example, defining Democrats by "defund the police", or defining Republicans as the party of "white nationalism".
This is a false equivalence.
On the one hand, the Democratic party has unequivocally rejected “defund the police” on multiple occasions. First in the 2020 primary by electing a presidential candidate who explicitly rejected the slogan, and continues to do so as president; then by excluding it from its platform altogether; and most recently by a nearly unanimous bipartisan vote in the senate to denounce the slogan. So the record is quite clear that Democrats do not in fact stand for “defund the police” beyond a loud minority.
On the other hand, Republican senators have unanimously refused to renew the Voting Rights Act, which
until 2006 enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support. The VRA is one of the enduring legacies of the civil rights movement and has been a bulwark in protecting Black citizens in particular from disenfranchisement in the southern states. This is evidenced by the fact that, since the VRA has lapsed, virtually all Republican-controlled states have resurrected the same sweeping restrictions on the right to vote that MLK and others marched against. Let’s not even get into the January 6 attack on the capitol which was instigated and carried out by openly white supremacist organizations and which, to this day, the Republican party refuses to denounce, probably because so many of its own leadership is directly implicated.
So, yes, the Republican party is now defined by white nationalism. This is an established fact, and you being uncomfortable with it does not make it less true.
During the last administration, a leading Republican senator brought forth a bill to cut legal immigration by 50%. Many, many Republicans, or at least their elected representatives, want to restrict both legal and illegal immigration.
Yeah that’s a bad take, though it’s true that even for legal migration the right is generally cooler on it than the left. They wouldn’t cut it all off, but they’d probably restrict it more.
> I don't lend much credence to this guy anyway, considering that he thought history ended in 1992
I'm not sure why people jump on this so much - it very well could have ended if the US had better leadership & strategy... If the US had Marshal plan equivalent for the former USSR & a realist China strategy, things would have been different. But sure Huntington's book is better.
Fukuyama isn't worried about facts. Factually, Obama and now Biden have deported far more people than Trump or Bush. Obama was even known as "the deporter in chief."
They "seek to" cut off immigration altogether, and work towards it. They "would like to" send immigrants back to their countries of origin, but know it's not going to happen. The sentence seems carefully constructed to me.
Divisive identity politics could well be one symptom of the breakdown of the USA, but I doubt that it's the reason.
It pretty clear that in the last forty years, politics has primarily focused on the needs of the wealthy[0], to the detriment of the needs of the general populous. This has led to a massive discontentment in the populace that - in my opinion - was the driving factor in the election of Donald Trump. (The Democrats were able to bring their populist wing under control, otherwise it could well have been Bernie.)
So, all in all I think it is the misguided attempts by the elites to somehow divert the plebes from the realization that they have been screwed over that's breaking the USA. On the right this is done using white-grievance politics and xenophobic propaganda, on the left using identity politics.
What they use in the end doesn't matter, as long as they manage to divide the plebs.
Unfortunately, the spiral of escalating language has now reached a point where the 'other' side is so railed up that legitimate elections are being questioned. I hope the elites are smart enough to turn it around before they totally wreck the country.
He gives a summary of 20th century politics that doesn't include fascism, and makes the Cold War sound like it was a battle between "small government" and "worker's rights". He says outright that nationalism on the political right is a "redefinition".
This is so bizarre I can only assume I'm reading it wrong.
What, in your mind, was 20th century politics defined by?
Edit: like I get the economism here feels reductive to you, I think, but I just think it would at least be equally absurd to say they were predominantly defined by identity issues. As is shown in the essay, our concept of identity is intractable from globalism and modernity. So I'm just not sure what the obvious issue is here. If we admit that it is nuanced, then you have to explain where the lines of that nuance are obvious, and economism is a good tool for that.
Graeber tears this guy’s work apart in his new book and shows his work is incompatible with recent and old anthro research. Hard to take him seriously in other areas
And yet the future is all about Identity politics. It's an optimization problem really. Recent crises show that liberal democracy can no longer serve the needs of individuals that have increasingly more freedoms (partly thanks to technology) and who are no longer willing to compromise with large groups. The challenge is going to be how to build political systems that simultaneously cater to all the various identity dimensions of citizens, while at the same time avoiding the oppression of 50% by the other 50%, as happens in democracies. This is a technological problem (after all democracy itself was technology), and interestingly many of the decentralized projects aim to solve parts of it. What seems to be lacking is an integrated understanding of all such parts.
[+] [-] rvense|4 years ago|reply
Even on the right, the phrases "Danish culture" and "Danish values" are used much more than any reference to blood or ethnicity. It is very much a fringe view to suggest that people are not able to become like us and assimilate (though a lot less fringe to claim that many foreigners, especially muslims, don't want to do so.)
[+] [-] mollerhoj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahnfrieden|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacknews|4 years ago|reply
And is the argument really about 'identity', or just 'status'?
IMHO, economics is flawed at it's core, because people do not just value material wealth, but relative, social wealth, aka status, in fact, almost above all. That also explains twitter, facebook, instagram, etc.
[+] [-] Gimpei|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IAmEveryone|4 years ago|reply
It isn't even obvious that "identity politics" is tethered exclusively to left-wing politics. Plenty has been written about the group of people that invaded the Capitol last year, and the only consistent characteristic of that group was being white. No, it has nothing to do with economics. It included a doctor making $ 650,000 p. a. as well as a group that traveled to DC on a private jet.
Hell, the major group of young reactionaries in Europe (until recently) had "Identity" in their name.
This text just seems entirely out of place, and I was wondering if I missed the (2008) in the title while reading it. There's nothing new in it, and it wouldn't get much attention if it weren't for the name.
[+] [-] N1H1L|4 years ago|reply
People forget this a lot - and try to ignore it consistently.
[+] [-] beepbooptheory|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weerd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CryptoPunk|4 years ago|reply
>>By turning a spotlight on narrower experiences of injustice, identity politics has brought about welcome changes in cultural norms and has produced concrete public policies that have helped many people. The Black Lives Matter movement has made police departments across the United States much more conscious of the way they treat minorities, even though police abuse still persists.
This is another false, politically correct account.
The impact of the Black Lives Matter movement, on black lives, has been devastating.
What this racial justice movement led to is riots, wherein 18 people were murdered in one night in Chicago:
https://forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/06/08/18-people-were...
And massively less aggressive policing, which led to 1,003 homicides in Chicago in 2021, twice that of 2019.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Report-paints-grim-...
The reason is that police are arresting fewer people, and solving fewer homicides:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/1/3/22858995/chicago...
“Many of our officers are not arresting people, are letting crimes that happen right in front of them go by because they don’t want to be misconstrued as being racist or being held liable for any kind of misconceived notions of brutality or whatever,” he said."
Consequently, revenge killings, where one gang retaliates against another for a previous, unsolved, homicide, have skyrocketed.
[+] [-] FooBarBizBazz|4 years ago|reply
It presents a middle path and almost plaintively asks people to follow it. I fear this is wishful thinking, but at least he's trying to be conciliatory and constructive.
What surprised me was his reference to Snow Crash. I did not expect that in an essay by Francis Fukuyama.
[+] [-] uejfiweun|4 years ago|reply
"The right seeks to cut off immigration altogether and would like to send immigrants back to their countries of origin."
Uh, what? The United States is a nation of immigrants and we all know it. I don't think anyone wants to send immigrants back, it would be illegal and unconstitutional as well as impossible. Now, restricting ILLEGAL immigration on the other hand? Yes, basically everyone on the right supports this. But not wanting illegal immigration is literally on the other side of the map from not wanting any immigration at all and sending back immigrants.
I don't lend much credence to this guy anyway, considering that he thought history ended in 1992, as other comments have mentioned. But I think just as important as identity politics is defining the opposing side by the worst ideas of its supporters. For example, defining Democrats by "defund the police", or defining Republicans as the party of "white nationalism". There are tons of people on both sides who don't believe in this crap and are dedicated to the core ideals of economic prosperity for all and expansion of opportunities. Tuning these crazies out would go a long way to calming down the discourse in this country, but I don't think essays like this really help the situation.
[+] [-] kristopolous|4 years ago|reply
He's been playing that same song for decades. You already know what his position on everything is and how he'll argue for it. The real amazing thing is how much he's committed to it
[+] [-] was8309|4 years ago|reply
end result : mental health funding decreased and police funding increased.
So my understanding of 'defund the police' is to reverse what happened in that and many similar situations
[+] [-] zapita|4 years ago|reply
This is a false equivalence.
On the one hand, the Democratic party has unequivocally rejected “defund the police” on multiple occasions. First in the 2020 primary by electing a presidential candidate who explicitly rejected the slogan, and continues to do so as president; then by excluding it from its platform altogether; and most recently by a nearly unanimous bipartisan vote in the senate to denounce the slogan. So the record is quite clear that Democrats do not in fact stand for “defund the police” beyond a loud minority.
On the other hand, Republican senators have unanimously refused to renew the Voting Rights Act, which until 2006 enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support. The VRA is one of the enduring legacies of the civil rights movement and has been a bulwark in protecting Black citizens in particular from disenfranchisement in the southern states. This is evidenced by the fact that, since the VRA has lapsed, virtually all Republican-controlled states have resurrected the same sweeping restrictions on the right to vote that MLK and others marched against. Let’s not even get into the January 6 attack on the capitol which was instigated and carried out by openly white supremacist organizations and which, to this day, the Republican party refuses to denounce, probably because so many of its own leadership is directly implicated.
So, yes, the Republican party is now defined by white nationalism. This is an established fact, and you being uncomfortable with it does not make it less true.
[+] [-] woopwoop|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAISE_Act
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkk3|4 years ago|reply
I'm not sure why people jump on this so much - it very well could have ended if the US had better leadership & strategy... If the US had Marshal plan equivalent for the former USSR & a realist China strategy, things would have been different. But sure Huntington's book is better.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pessimizer|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] drewcoo|4 years ago|reply
https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/state-and-local-...
[+] [-] mjmsmith|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fumeux_fume|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yob22|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esarbe|4 years ago|reply
It pretty clear that in the last forty years, politics has primarily focused on the needs of the wealthy[0], to the detriment of the needs of the general populous. This has led to a massive discontentment in the populace that - in my opinion - was the driving factor in the election of Donald Trump. (The Democrats were able to bring their populist wing under control, otherwise it could well have been Bernie.)
So, all in all I think it is the misguided attempts by the elites to somehow divert the plebes from the realization that they have been screwed over that's breaking the USA. On the right this is done using white-grievance politics and xenophobic propaganda, on the left using identity politics.
What they use in the end doesn't matter, as long as they manage to divide the plebs.
Unfortunately, the spiral of escalating language has now reached a point where the 'other' side is so railed up that legitimate elections are being questioned. I hope the elites are smart enough to turn it around before they totally wreck the country.
[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
[+] [-] magwa101|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] draw_down|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] netcan|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rvense|4 years ago|reply
This is so bizarre I can only assume I'm reading it wrong.
[+] [-] beepbooptheory|4 years ago|reply
Edit: like I get the economism here feels reductive to you, I think, but I just think it would at least be equally absurd to say they were predominantly defined by identity issues. As is shown in the essay, our concept of identity is intractable from globalism and modernity. So I'm just not sure what the obvious issue is here. If we admit that it is nuanced, then you have to explain where the lines of that nuance are obvious, and economism is a good tool for that.
[+] [-] moomin|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Lamad123|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] borepop|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jzellis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yob22|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahnfrieden|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cblconfederate|4 years ago|reply
And yet the future is all about Identity politics. It's an optimization problem really. Recent crises show that liberal democracy can no longer serve the needs of individuals that have increasingly more freedoms (partly thanks to technology) and who are no longer willing to compromise with large groups. The challenge is going to be how to build political systems that simultaneously cater to all the various identity dimensions of citizens, while at the same time avoiding the oppression of 50% by the other 50%, as happens in democracies. This is a technological problem (after all democracy itself was technology), and interestingly many of the decentralized projects aim to solve parts of it. What seems to be lacking is an integrated understanding of all such parts.