The Supremacy Diaries IV: How Populism actually is Identity Politics
‘The Woke generation isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being present and aware of the injustices around us.’
Ava DuVernay
The biggest mistake the Labour Party in the United Kingdom ever made was by leaving its core base behind.
What do I mean by this? Well, when my father arrived in this country in the 1940s, although he aspired to be something more, to climb up that capitalist ladder, he always voted Labour because they spoke to him and they supported him. As a working class immigrant, a man who saw the inception of the National Health Service, and a man who felt the need to be part of the unions which dominated his time. My father, like many working class peoples of that time felt that the Labour Party, although flawed in many ways, represented them.
When Harold Wilson said in the 1970’s that the Labour Party was a moral crusade or it was nothing. Yet, whilst the Labour Party of the 1970s and 80s worked hard to embed equality into the working lives of so many, what they also seemed to have done was to silence and alienate so much of their core base, to the extent that they had nowhere else to go. No one else who would fight for them.
So in steps the Far Right.
And this, the theme for this months blog, is where the real battle for Identity Politics of the Political Sphere begins.
‘Yes, I will pull off that liberal’s halo that he spends such efforts cultivating. The North’s liberals have been for so long pointing accusing fingers at the South and getting away with it that they have fits when they are exposed as the world’s worst hypocrites.’
Malcolm X (2013)
This is not just a British pattern. This is something which has been witnessed in the political debates of the United States of America, across France and parts of Germany, and in Argentina. That left wing flirting with the sanctity of specialness which comes with gaining the political centre ground. Where left leaning elites emerge, and oppress and silence those who got them there. Claiming to fight for those of the working classes, whilst pointing a finger at the opposite end of the spectrum (they are the problem), selfishly abandoning their own core support in order to certify their own capitalistic positions.
We live in a political sphere where we do not see the other. We are so rigid and entrenched in our positionality that the other becomes nothing more than a shadow for what we don’t like in ourselves. Our own darkness projected. Our own self-hatred given a home.
This narcissistic need to be right is what I feel Benjamin talked about in her book about the narcissism of the Left and the Right (1998, p. 171). And it is something I recognise in the writings of Martin Luther King, where he quotes the works of Buber in showing his understanding of the difference between the polarised positions of an I-It relationship versus the interconnectedness of an I-Thou relationship (King, 2018). That difference between a relationship of othering, self-righteousness and distance, against a relationship of mutuality, humility and a desire to learn about oneself, is what is missing in so much of this discourse at present.
The politics of the traditional Left, a position abandoned by Labour in the U.K. (and the Democrats in the U.S.A.) left behind it huge swathes of people who were unable, or maybe unwilling, to climb that capitalistic ladder towards supremacy. Abandoned, often times struggling, and with no one to represent them, of course they were to be swept up by a Right Wing elite.
It was kind of inevitable.
‘The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was in convincing the world he didn’t exist.’
Keyser Soze (Singer, 1995)
The problem with populism is that it is in its own way a form of identity politics. There is an identity attached to it; that one has to be British, to love the flag, to eat English foods, to stand up for the same things. That one even has to dress the same way, the Pink Ladies for example, the group of the Far Right who have chosen to dress, act and perform in a way which shows who is in and who is outside of said grouping.
The problem with Identity Politics today, for me this is, is that the Right have confused the narratives to such an extent that the true meaning of Political Correctness and Woke have become shrouded by misinformation and misdirection. Meaning the messages which drove the Left of the 1970s have become lost in the moves by both parties to score political points by appealing to too many, too quickly, and all just for a quick political point. This is in some ways the legacy of Left abandoning its base and stretching out towards the centre ground, a ground where their rules silenced the worries and fears of many, whilst leaving so many more without a home and a political voice.
This is the reason why I don’t care about Left and Right when it comes to the politics landscape of the Global North. With any political system rooted in a Capitalist landscape, there will always be a self-serving nature to the discourse. An us and them, a polarisation of ideas and ways and being which needs an Other to hate in order for it to feel good, to feel valued and to survive.
Morality is little to do with either of these polarities. It has everything to do with each of us in turn. The ability to see and be with the bit of each of us which is oppressive of women, of other races and cultures and genders, of immigrants, of those who are just not us. The ability to see these parts and recognise that we are the hatred we so want to project outwards onto others. This then, for me in this blog, is one of the ways in which we move forward, and I am seeing some of this present itself out in the world today. The rise of the Greens in the U.K. for example, is an attempt to present common sense political solutions to some of the major existential problems of the day; climate change, wars, inequality.
Morality in a political landscape means staying connected to that which makes us human and conversely sees the humanity in the Other at the same time.
This is the real, clear, unhindered meaning of Identity Politics.
References
Benjamin, J. (1998). Shadow of the Other. Routledge.
King, M. L. (2018). Letter from Birmingham jail. Penguin Classics.
Sustar, L. (2013). The Politics of Malcolm X. SocialistWorker.Org. https://socialistworker.org/2013/01/18/the-politics-of-malcolm-x