IDiots: How Identity Politics is Destroying the Left

IDiots

How Identity Politics is Destroying the Left

By Katie Roche

First published in 2021 by Katie Roche

Copyright © 2021 Katie Roche

All rights reserved

Printed by Amazon

ISBN: 978-1-8380896-4-1

To learn more about Katie, see www.KatieRoche.net

Contents

1. Introduction

What is Identity Politics?

What is a Social Justice Warrior?

A Note on Vocabulary and Grammar

2. How the Left Went Crazy

The Theories that Made the Social Justice Warriors

The Birth of the Social Justice Warrior

3. Identity and the Social Justice Warrior

Privileged People are Bad, Marginalized People are Good

Grievance Studies

Self-Identity

Woke Segregation

‘Validity’

4. Class and the Social Justice Warrior

Class and Political Activism

How Social Justice Warriors See the Working-class

Ignoring Issues that Matter to the Working-Classes

5. Mental Health in Identity Politics

Why Are Social Justice Warriors So Unhappy?

Self-Care, Self-Love and Radical Kindness

The Politicization of Mental Health and Emotions

Mental Health Activism

Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings

Emotional Blackmail

Fragile Minorities

Call-out Culture: Mental Health and Kindness Matter, Except When They Don’t.

6. Speech, Language and Violence in The Social Justice Warrior Movement

The Language Police

Censorship

‘Violence’

7. Capitalism and the Social Justice Warriors

Woke Companies

Left-wing Media

The Wokeness Industry

Woke Feminism

8. The Social Justice Warrior Movement and Reality

Postmodernism and Reality

Re-writing History

Ignoring Science

9. The Consequences of Identity Politics

Trump was Elected President

Labour Lose Four elections

Brexit

Splitting the Left

Hurting Marginalized People

10. Conclusion

References

1. Introduction

Biological sex isn’t real. All white people are inherently racist. Obesity is neither unhealthy, nor caused by lack of exercise and poor diet. For the average person, these statements sound crazy. No sane person would say something like that. But there’s a place where these views would not only be accepted, but any opposition is regarded as bigotry. Welcome to the world of identity politics. A land where anything goes. It’s a place where feelings trump facts. Where weakness is celebrated. And where identity is placed above all else. Frighteningly, it’s taking over the left in both the UK and the USA.

Because of identity politics, the left now fetishizes victimhood. It obsesses over identity. And it treats wokeness as a competition. (Woke, as in ‘woke up’ or ‘awoken’, means to be aware of social issues. Metaphorically, a woke person is awake to the oppression in the world, while others sleep, unaware of what goes on around them). They call themselves socialists, but they’re not. A more apt name for them would be ‘fauxialists’. Because they have little interest in redistribution of wealth or other economic matters. Nor do they care about other topics, such as humanitarian issues. As Angela Nagle, the author of Kill All Normies points out, to be accepted by the left, you just have to be seen to be liberal, rather than actually be a liberal. Like Barack Obama, you can launch drone attacks but still be liberal because you support gay marriage (1). Many of us socialists are exasperated by these people. We hate watching the movement that is so important to us being destroyed by lunatics. And it’s terrible to see so many people reject the left because they think all we do is push bizarre narratives and overlook simple facts.

So how did the left go insane? This book will analyse the rise of identity politics in the UK and the USA from 2010 to the present day. It will look at how the current obsession with identity politics came to be. As well, the book will explore some examples of what social justice warriors believe and how they act. These examples illustrate how social justice warriors are self-serving and hypocritical. It will also explain why identity politics is damaging for the left and examine the big problems with identity politics. In addition, this book will make the case that the social justice warrior movement has caused lasting damage to the political landscape. And that the cultural left has ultimately undermined themselves.

What is Identity Politics?

Identity politics is where groups of people with a shared background campaign for their specific interests. Examples of identity politics movements include gay rights, civil rights and feminism (2). These movements aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Throughout history, they have made some important contributions to social progress. However, there are many problems with identity politics.

The biggest issue as the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm said, is that: Identity groups are about themselves, for themselves, and nobody else. A coalition of such groups that is not held together by a single common set of aims or values, has only an ad hoc unity, rather like states temporarily allied in war against a common enemy. They break up when they are no longer so held together. In any case, as identity groups, they are not committed to the Left as such, but only to get support for their aims wherever they can. (3). For the left today, it means that they are unconcerned with the abolition of the class system and economic inequalities.

The second problem with identity politics is that minority groups are just that- a minority. There are not enough minorities to secure an electoral victory. To succeed in enacting change, the left needs the support of people who aren’t from minority groups. Politics- like it or not- is a popularity contest. Saying ‘our party is for minorities’ says to non-minorities ‘our party is not for you’. That’s a good way to lose votes. As a result, people who are sympathetic to left-wing views but aren’t minorities become disenfranchised. They will not vote for left-wing parties. If you’re a white, heterosexual, working-class man, and you’re repeatedly hearing from left-wing parties you’re a bad person. You shouldn’t vote for us; you will vote for a right-wing party. And that costs left-wing parties elections.

These problems have been around for a while. And admittedly, they haven’t destroyed the left. But more recently, identity politics has transformed into something toxic: the social justice warrior movement.

What is a Social Justice Warrior?

A social justice warrior is a follower of the social justice warrior movement. This movement is a fusion of identity politics and a self-help movement that began in the late 2000s on social media sites. Most social justice warriors are young, well-educated, middle-class adults. The movement has influenced older generations of left-wingers too.

The phrase ‘social justice warrior’ may be a play on the earlier phrase ‘keyboard warrior’, meaning someone who is very aggressive and argumentative online. This term is similar to an armchair activist, in that they complain a lot but do not get involved with actual campaigning (4). The word ‘warrior’ may have originally been used ironically, to indicate the trivial nature of the causes that keyboard warriors (and later social justice warriors) get involved with. However, social justice warriors aren’t just online anymore. Its influence has spread to real world politics.

The main goal of the social justice warriors is to achieve equality of opportunity for certain social groups. These include groups traditionally represented in identity politics, such as lesbian, gay and bisexual people, ethnic minorities and the disabled. But it also includes newer identity groups (these will be explored in chapter 3). The idea behind the social justice warrior movement is that through being aware of issues affecting minorities, society can bring about equality. They believe that inequality is caused by various subtle forms of discrimination. People who are not minorities must be constantly aware of their privilege, and how to tame it’s affects to bring about social equality. They must always be thinking about diversity and inclusion. And these people must make great efforts to ensure they are not subtly offending minorities.

In practice, there are very few people in the social justice warrior movement who don’t identify as some type of minority. We’ll see why that is in chapter three. This fixation with being a minority leads to is Oppression Olympics. Oppression Olympics is where different minority groups vie for the title of ‘most oppressed’. As well as backstabbing, and squabbling (5). Everyone is fighting all the time. They fight to have their voice heard above all others. And over who’s doing something ‘wrong’. As Nagle points out, social justice warriors can be savagely competitive over who should be leading the movement (1). Indeed, a social justice hero can find themselves falling from grace at any point. See the story of Ira Grey. Grey was held as a paradigm of woke purity: transgender, queer, a person of colour, and mentally ill. He ticked all the boxes. He told stories of escaping his abusive family. Online, he spoke about issues affecting transgender people. He also taught classes on sexual consent. Then he was accused of rape by a former partner. Grey tried to rationalize this by saying that there is no such thing as 100% good consent (6). Fortunately, the rank and file social justice warriors saw through him and he is nowhere to be seen. (Gray now uses multiple names, including Ira Sanchez, Ira Bohm-Sanchez and Dalton Sanchez. This makes it difficult to find information on his recent activities).

It has been interesting to see how rapidly these new identities and causes have taken hold of the left. As Douglas Murray noted in his book, The Madness of Crowds, it took many years for mainstream society to embrace racial equality and gay rights. In contrast, more recent issues such as transgender rights have been accepted straight away (7). Why has the mainstream left been so quick to embrace these new identities? It’s because the left has a fear of being on the ‘wrong side of history’. People don’t want to be seen in the way we see yesterday’s homophobes and racists. Most people feel ashamed of slavery, segregation and other forms of discrimination that were permissible in the past. So, they have gone along with these new identities without much critical thought. The downside of this is that they do not see the contradictions in what they support, or ways that they are regressive. Nor do they see that in some cases, these new identities are old prejudices dressed up in woke clothing. For example, there are many conflicts between transgender rights and women’s rights. The transgender movement also promotes regressive ideas about gender and sexuality. Yet those who raise concerns are dismissed as ‘transphobic’.

The power that the social justice warrior movement holds over its followers has been compared to a religion. The New York magazine journalist Andrew Sullivan identified many similarities between the social justice warrior movement and Christianity. These include the way that they aim to restrict speech, along with having no tolerance for alternative views (8). Further parallels include the way that it views whiteness, heterosexuality and masculinity as equivalent to the original sin (that humanity has been guilty of sin ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden). In the social justice warrior movement, a person with these characteristics must repeatedly state that they recognize their privilege. They are also held responsible for the actions of their ancestors. It is reminiscent of how Christians must regularly ask to be forgiven for the original sin. Another comparison between religion and the social justice warrior movement is their powerful dogma. They command an unquestioned following and unfaltering belief. They see dissenters as ‘sinners’- even when those ‘sinners’ actually agree with some of what the social justice warrior movement says. And like with sinners in the church, these dissidents are to be ostracized. We must not see or hear anything they have to say, in case they lead people astray.

The Socio-Economic Background of the Social Justice Warrior

The circumstances in which social justice warriors were born into explain why the social justice warrior movement started when it did. The bulk of the social justice warriors were born in 1990s and early 2000s, falling into the late millennials and generation Z. The psychologist Jean Twenge refers to this age group as Generation Me (9). Generation Me had a childhood that was idyllic in many ways. They grew up in affluent families with heavily involved ‘helicopter’ parents. Helicopter parents metaphorically hover over their children, monitoring everything they do. These parents were very anxious and protective about their children. They gave their children much less freedom and independence than prior generations. For instance, by not allowing them to play unsupervised in case they were injured or abducted (10). They also pushed their children to participate in many extra-curricular activities. And they emphasised academic attainment (11). These parents would also get involved in their child’s life in more extreme ways. For example, phoning their child’s school to dispute poor grades (12). Or contacting their child’s summer camp because their child looked unhappy on a photograph (13). As a result, many members of Generation Me lived very infantilized lives into early adulthood. Parents were still involved in their adult child’s life, as if it were a continuation of childhood. For example, by contacting their child’s university and employers to resolve disputes (14).

Generation Me were also the first generation of children to be particularly wanted by their parents. Thanks to improvements in birth control, couples could postpone parenthood until they had established their careers (9). This had many advantages. Parents were prepared for the child’s birth and were financially stable. The child was also unlikely to feel unwanted or neglected. However, this brought its own problems. Couples had to put a conscious effort into conceiving children, which is more difficult in older couples. Both men and women’s fertility declines after the age of 30 (15,¹⁶). However, in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and other reproductive technologies became widely available in this period (17). In 1986, the first pregnancy resulting from a frozen egg was documented (18). This development led to social egg freezing where a woman freezes her eggs while she is young. This enables her to focus on her career and find a partner without worrying about being too old to conceive (19). While these treatments let people have children when they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise, they came with many downsides. These include side effects, high failure rates and a high monetary cost. Having a child became much more difficult and expensive.

For that reason, kids were more precious to their parents than they had been in the past. Parents started off with high expectations for their children from before they’d even been conceived. These expectations continued throughout the child’s upbringing and into early adulthood. Parents were also more protective of their children. Parents of children conceived via IVF report feeling that their child was more vulnerable than other children. They were also less confident than their parenting ability than parents who conceived naturally (20). This lack of confidence makes it harder to be assertive and set boundaries. For instance, if the child is told to do something they don’t want to do (such as chores or eating a certain food). They become sad. The parent thinks ‘I’m a bad parent’ and backs down. This teaches the child that they can’t cope with mildly unpleasant experiences and that acting sad gets them what they want. This is unhelpful for their development. Children often thrive when they are exposed to some controlled risks and when boundaries are set (21). But these precious bundles of joy were often doted on by their parents. Childhood was about happiness, not instilling discipline.

According to Twenge, another defining aspect of Generation Me was that they were raised in the self-esteem movement. Self-esteem is about perceived self-worth. High self-esteem is about thinking you’re brilliant. At school and in extra-curricular activities, there was a heavy emphasis on making sure children’s self-esteem wasn’t damaged. For example, children would often receive a participation certificate for taking part in a competition when they didn’t win. Generation Me is also known as the trophy generation for this reason (22). The idea was that their self-esteem wouldn’t be dented and so they wouldn’t be discouraged from continuing with the activity in the future. Children were also taught to think about how important and special they were. They were encouraged to value themselves based on the things they were good at and that made them unique from other children. For small children, this included singing songs about how they were special and making posters with the same message. Parents were encouraged not to criticize their children or point out when they weren’t good at something. As a result, this generation learned to think highly of themselves. But the darker side of this is that Generation Me have high rates of narcissism (9).

The self-esteem movement was supposed to have many benefits. Low self-esteem was said to cause children to bully others. And when the children grew up, high self-esteem was supposed to prevent unemployment and criminality. However, evidence does not support that. Studies show that criminals, drug addicts and bullies have higher self-esteem than the general population (23). As well, focusing on self-esteem doesn’t look at the structural issues that cause such problems. For instance, unemployment isn’t just a matter of attitude. If there are more jobseekers than there are jobs, there will be unemployment. This implies that high self-esteem isn’t the magical cure-all it has been touted to be.

Furthermore, self-esteem is more complex than the self-esteem movement claims. It relies to some extent on comparisons with others. Psychologist Mark Leary developed the sociometer theory of self-esteem (24). Leary argues that self-esteem is actually about what he terms relational value. This is how much you feel you matter to other people. He proposes that personal successes, such as outperforming others in a competitive environment, raises self-esteem by making a person feel that they are important to those around them. In contrast, being rejected by our peers lowers our self-esteem. This suggests that self-esteem isn’t simply about being ‘special’, but about being valued by others. He also raises the question of cause and effect. For instance, do shy people lack confidence because of low self-esteem, or do shy people have low self-esteem because their shyness means they are rejected in social situations? There are no answers to this. But it does imply that self-esteem might be the consequence of success, rather than the cause.

Another defining aspect of Generation Me was that they were the first digital natives. In 1995, companies such as AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy began providing home internet access. This has meant that Generation Me were the first generation to have had internet at home for their whole lives. They were also the first generation to grow up with social media. In the early 2000s, many popular social media platforms were founded. Facebook was launched in 2004 and Twitter started in 2006 (25). So, Generation Me has been using social media from an early age.

Social media provided fertile ground for affluent, liberal young people to socialize and share ideas. Many aspects of the social justice warrior movement were forged on Tumblr. Tumblr is a blogging site with social media features. For instance, users can follow other users and reblog posts as they can on a site such as Twitter or Facebook. However, it was unique in allowing people to post lengthy, expressive, and personal posts. This format facilitated discussions of complex ideas that were out of place on other social media platforms. It could also be used anonymously. Unlike other social media sites, people could use Tumblr without their friends and family knowing (6,²⁶). As well, there was a culture of victimhood on the site. Many users used identity-related phenomenon to explain their personal issues. Young people would describe normal aspects of growing up as abuse or oppression. For example, having to do chores or getting in trouble at school were being described as forms of abuse or discrimination. Typical teenager problems were transformed into issues around identity. Feeling misunderstood could be from undiagnosed Autism, or from unrecognized mental health issues or being gender nonbinary. Rather than simply from being a teenager. Because these sites attract similar people, there is nobody to question what they are saying. This resulted in these communities descending into groupthink. These sites also enabled people to bond with others with similar identities from around the world, when they might not have otherwise met anyone else with that identity. Also, these sites enabled people to forge new identities by letting them experiment without their friends and family knowing.

The effect of internet access and social media is that Generation Me grew up in the filter bubble. The filter bubble occurs online, as we are increasingly only shown content that validates our perspectives. This is a result of personalized features on search engines and social media feeds. It means we don’t see material that contradicts our views, so we don’t learn how other people think, or see that others disagree with us. This exacerbates political polarization (27). We make our own filter bubbles to some extent. For instance, by following only people we agree with on social media. But the consequence of the filter bubble is that we now all live in our own little echo chambers. It can feel like everyone agrees with you and supports the parties and candidates you like. Even when that doesn’t reflect reality.

More broadly, Generation Me are Thatcher’s and Reagan’s children. They