On Identity Politics
Some say that the success of identity politics trumped up by the Left proves that a man will always side with his inborn tribal group, grievance group, and identity politics group rather than with any political doctrine or party or nation into which education, experience, or personal decision might lead him.
Nations are never built on a proposition that all men are created equal and never have been: they are only build on tribes and clans. So runs the theory.
Those who believe this say that the way to defeat Leftwing Anti-White identity politics is by adopting Pro-White identity politics.
They are seduced into making a simple error. It is an error so simple that even a highly intelligent partisan of that movement might not see it.
The identity-grievance politics groups on the Left are all about Leftism and nothing about identity.
The only people who ever side with their tribal group and identity politics group are people who have been indoctrinated by the Left. They are Leftists. Identity politics is their stock in trade. It is the only product remaining on their intellectually bankrupt shelves.
Federalism is the doctrine the different groups in adjoining but sovereign territories can coordinate to their mutual advantage by having a limited government of enumerated powers hedged about by checks and balances to deter the inevitable abuse of power to which sons of Adam are prone.
By definition, any federalists who side with their tribal group or identity group against their their commonwealth are no longer federalists. The two ideas are opposite. The philosophy of federalism is the philosophy offering a solution to tribalism, and, in this writer’s opinion, the only solution.
Tribalism says that the loyalties one has toward genetically similar groups will eventually overwhelm all other loyalties of religion, culture, language community, political philosophy, and self interest, and that therefore one must abandon loyalty to religion and culture and state but adhere instead to one’s tribe.
A more naive reading of history is difficult to imagine: as if civil wars never happened, and nothing but race wars did.
In this particular case, the tribe in an imaginary one, created by postulating that all the sons of Europa have a common ancestor in her. What has Crete in common with Iceland, or Iberia with the Ukraine?
The genetically determined loyalty of identity-grievance groups on the Left is a myth. These groups are lobbyist groups, not tribes defined by shared genetic traits.
It is perfectly obvious that the pro-Homosex lobby are Leftists first and care nothing for homosexuals as such. If this lobby cared about homosexuals, they would be foes, not friends, of Islamic Jihad. Just ask Milo.
It is perfectly obvious that Black Lives Matter are Leftists first and care nothing for blacks as such. Just as Thomas Sowell. Ask Ben Carson. Ask Frederick Douglass.
It is perfectly obvious that Feminists are Leftists first and care nothing for women as such. Just ask Ann Coulter. Ask Monica Lewinsky. Ask Juanita Broaddrick.
The ‘White Lives Matter’ argument is that the Leftist identity-grievance politics is invulnerable and invincible because men genetically always adhere in loyalty to their tribe.
But a tribe is a tribe. A grievance group is a lobby.
Some advocates are asking the Right to void its core principles of equality and limited government republicanism in order to adopt race-based policies. Such an advocate is awed and shocked by the enormous success of the Leftist religion in subordinating and overwhelming Rightwing lobbyist groups, so he thinks that the key of success lies in the racism of the Left.
It does not. It rests on the patience, breadth, and fanaticism of the Left.
All the Leftwing lobby groups are expendable. They are auxiliaries. We have already seen, after the Orlando massacre, the Homosex lobby thrown under the bus in favor of the Mohammedan lobby and, more to the point, in favor of the dogmatic doctrine of Gun Control.
The Left would rather support Gun Control than support a Gay man’s right to defend himself from a Muslim with a gun.
The Leftwing core never changes. It is essential. The Leftwing core is unreality in metaphysics, dishonesty in ethics, totalitarianism in politics, socialism in economics, perversion in sexual matters, antinomianism in art, atheism in religious matters, and anti-Americanism in all things. Whatever destroys Western Civilization and whatever spits in the face of Christ, the Left finds a way to encourage, defend, and promote.
A religious zealot is patient, because he thinks that the thing he worships (god, fate, the direction of history) is on his side. Hence, for him, the argument is never over and the battle is never lost.
The Right gave up on the idea of State’s Rights as a bulwark to Federal overreach after 1970, and gave up on state-appointment of Senators, and gave up on dismantling the central bank and returning to the gold standard. All of these, for them, were political struggles, and, for them, politics is the art of the possible. When wide popular support for this issues failed, the Right dropped them.
By way of contrast, the Left did not give up on nationalizing and socializing medicine after World War Two. Nor did they give up after Hillary Care failed. Nor did they give up after Obamacare failed. They have not given up to this day. They never will.
The religious zealot is patient, as I said. He accepts your compromises, but never compromises himself, for that would be apostasy.
A zealot works longer hours, concentrates on indoctrinating the youth, and never ceases to denounce his foes as demonic.
The lobbyist of the Right, by way of contrast, is not a religious zealot. He is willing to live and let live, and to compromise when need be.
The Right thinks the Left are foolish, but not evil.
The Left think the Right are an abomination, literally Hitler, and must be exterminated from the Earth as soon as this is practical.
Zealots are broad. By this I mean their interest extends to all aspects of life. Political lobbying groups have political goals. When the goals are met, they fold up shop and go home.
Religious zealots never quit, never go home, and never pass by even a single soul to save. That is why the Left is tangled into the innermost workings of the least political communities imaginable: comic books and science fiction.
The fact that it is an ersatz religion, an idolatrous religion, does not make the Leftists any less partisan, nor any less willing to kill and die for their idols. Satan has his martyrs, too.
Myself, I see nothing wrong with Caucasian pride and much to recommend it. If Black Pride is laudable, so is White Pride. If White Pride is racism, so is Black Pride. If the Jews have a moral right to claim their own homeland as a sanctuary to escape persecution, so do the Christians. If the Christians have no such moral right to exclude heathens and enemies, neither do the Jews.
But such advocacy mistakes a surface feature for a permanent core feature. The core of the Left is not Anti-White racism. This was not even a policy of the Left when I was a child. They were all on the other side then, standing in schoolhouse doors with Orval Faubus, turning fire hoses on marchers with Bull Connor, donning hoods with Nathan Bedford Forrest, voting for George Wallace, cheering James Earl Ray.
(I note in passing that every time, every single time, the roots of the Democrat Party are mentioned, the Alt-Right goes into a tizzy of sneers and scorn, scoffing that one should never say that Democrats are the real racists. Why one should never say it, they never say. But it does undermine their whole race-is-politics theory, because the race of the Dems did not change their race before and after Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ programs, but only changed their political tactics. The utility of accusing the Party of Lincoln and Nixon of racism only started then, and so the Democrats only because the advocates of anti-racism then.)
So in asking the Right to accept pro-White tribalism into its political platform, the advocate of race-based politics is attempting to fight a religion with a lobbyist group.
This is the same mistake the mainstream Right has been making for decades, if not centuries.
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ADDENDUM from Doc Rampage.
This was left in the comments below, but I thought it bears repeating:
Allow me to add a few more proofs. The Left’s tolerance for women who are not women, blacks who are not black, and American Indians who are not American Indian gives the lie to their claims of identity politics. Those liars are allowed access to the special privileges of the “underprivileged” even though they do not truly have the identity that would entitle them to those privileges because they are Leftists. If the Left were truly about identity then they would hate those who fraudulently claim the identity.
When Bill Clinton betrayed the feminist movement, the feminists leapt to his defense. Cubans are as Hispanic as Mexicans, but they get no love from the Left because they are politically on the wrong side.
And finally, the very back bone of the Democrat party is still whites, and primarily white men who routinely and reliably engage in identity politics against their own tribe, proving that they do not really care about tribe at all. It is all a pose.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
