{"id":4735,"date":"2018-02-28T05:55:01","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T05:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/02\/28\/how-identity-politics-is-made-to-destroy-us\/"},"modified":"2018-02-28T05:55:01","modified_gmt":"2018-02-28T05:55:01","slug":"how-identity-politics-is-made-to-destroy-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/02\/28\/how-identity-politics-is-made-to-destroy-us\/","title":{"rendered":"How Identity Politics is Made to Destroy Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

An outstanding essay<\/a> by David Horowitz. I am tempted to reproduce the whole thing. I shall restrain myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Three Pillars of Totalitarianism<\/strong>
<\/span><\/p>\n

The totalitarian implications of this increasingly powerful ideological trend in the national culture have become pronounced enough to have alarmed some liberals, most notably the writer Andrew Sullivan. Observing that cultural Marxism is now the required creed of America\u2019s liberal arts colleges, <\/span>Sullivan warns<\/a>, \u201cWhen elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education<\/a> as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based \u201csocial justice\u201d movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well. If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large. What matters most of all in these colleges\u2014your membership in a group that is embedded in a hierarchy of oppression\u2014will soon enough be what matters in the society as a whole.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In America\u2019s universities, which are the training grounds for America\u2019s future leaders, the victory of the cultural Marxists is already complete. In Sullivan\u2019s words, <\/span>\u201cThe Enlightenment principles that formed the bedrock of the American experiment\u2014untrammeled free speech, due process, individual (rather than group) rights\u2014are now routinely understood as mere masks for \u201cwhite male\u201d power, code words for the oppression of women and nonwhites. Any differences in outcome for various groups must always be a function of \u201chate,\u201d rather than a function of nature or choice or freedom or individual agency. And anyone who questions these assertions is obviously a white supremacist himself.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There are three pillars of the totalitarian outlook. The first is its <\/span>totalist agenda<\/em>\u2014the elimination of private space and the abandonment of the liberal idea that there should be limits to government authority. In its place, totalitarians insist that \u201cthe personal is political.\u201d Since the hierarchy of oppression that inspires social justice warriors encompasses all social relationships between races and ethnicities, between men, women, and <\/span>multiple politically correct genders<\/span><\/a>, there is no area of social life that escapes political judgment and is protected from government intrusion.<\/span> Already, in New York City\u2014to take one municipality controlled by the political Left\u2014there are 31 government designated genders<\/span><\/a>, and fines for failing to recognize them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second pillar is the idea of the social construction<\/em> of race, class, and gender. This anti-scientific idea that races and genders are socially created rather than biologically determined is already the unchallenged premise of virtually all academic courses relating to gender and race, and informs many of the planks of the official platform of the Democratic Party. Recognizing the role of biological factors in determining gender and race would require an adjustment to reality, whereas the goal of identity politics is revolutionary and \u201ctransformative.\u201d Removing and\/or suppressing the alleged creators of genders and races will make possible the social transformation whose goal is \u201csocial justice.\u201d The alleged creators of genders and races are the designated villains of identity politics: patriarchal and racial oppressors (white supremacists) who employ these categories to marginalize, dehumanize and dominate vulnerable alleged victim groups.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The centrality of these victim groups is encapsulated in totalitarianism\u2019s third pillar: objectification<\/em>\u2014the elimination of individual agency and accountability in favor of group identities and oppression status. This, of course, is the inevitable consequence of collectivist ideologies which make groups primary and remove from individuals their agencies as subjects. If there is inequality its source is an invisible hierarchy of oppression, never the inequalities and failures of individuals themselves. If homicide is the number one killer of young black males, whites must be responsible because whites allegedly control all the institutions and social structures that determine black outcomes\u2014notwithstanding the fact that the same crime statistics plague municipalities run by blacks as those run by whites. What may go on in black communities to account for these and other appalling statistics\u2014out of wedlock births, physical abuse by parents, drug trafficking, lax law enforcement policies instituted by liberal authorities\u2014is rendered invisible by an ideology which regards race as the determining factor regardless of individual behaviors and failings. If women are \u201cunder-represented\u201d in engineering positions at Google, this cannot be because of individual choices made by women\u2014to think so is <\/span>prima facie<\/em> sexism\u2014but must be the work of a patriarchal conspiracy, however invisible.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The third pillar, Objectification, is also relevant to the identity politics of the Alt-Right, a topic Horowitz does not address in his essay. It is important to see that both the Left and the Alt-Right share the pernicious "elimination of individual agency and accountability in favor of group identities." 'Objectification' is exactly the right word for the refusal on both the Left and the Alt-Right to view people as individuals, as persons, as subjects irreducible to their class or racial or sexual membership.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/a>The Left Eats Its Own: Andrew Sullivan<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An outstanding essay by David Horowitz. I am tempted to reproduce the whole thing. I shall restrain myself. Three Pillars of Totalitarianism The totalitarian implications of this increasingly powerful ideological trend in the national culture have become pronounced enough to have alarmed some liberals, most notably the writer Andrew Sullivan. Observing that cultural Marxism is … Continue reading “How Identity Politics is Made to Destroy Us”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[163,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","category-social-and-political-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}