Just Another Cheap Blame-Shift

Identity Politics Lead to Repression and Division

Martin van Beynen
Stuff


OPINION: Over the holidays I became a bit of an expert on Marxism.

This was thanks to a couple of hours of intense research on the internet. I made a number of startling discoveries, one of which was that last year was the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx's birth.

Marx, as you will recall, believed that the exploited working class needed to take power from their rulers, by force if necessary, and form a state in which factories, land and other means of production were owned collectively.

The German philosopher continues to be influential but, as a rule, we don't talk much about class struggle any more.  Politicians might be dubious about capitalism but Marx is not a name they want to mention in polite society.

Any discussion about Marx inevitably leads to the disastrous Marxist experiments in Russia and China where totalitarian regimes killed millions.   But we are now seeing the rise of another form of repressive politics called identity politics.

This is a creed which holds that society is structured to disadvantage certain groups defined by ethnicity, race, gender, religion and sexual orientation. Identity has always been part of the political landscape but it has taken a more pernicious form.

Our Culture of Identity Politics

Identifying As An Afflicted Dairy Cow

Here is an observation on political correctness in schools, penned by Allan Peachey.  It speaks for itself.

The politics of political correctness are playing too big a role in our schools.  Single-issue activists seem to have an influence well beyond either the merit of their ideas or the level of support for them.  Now we have gay marriage masquerading as civil union, legalised prostitution and willingness to make claims of "sexism" or "racism" without apply reasoned argument to support them.

It is ironic that these activists--who promote sweeping social change--are arguing for tolerance, yet they are not tolerant of people who hold more orthodox or traditional views.  We are seeing political correctness made into law and there is a politically correct, sanctioned intolerance being built into our education system.  [Allan Peachey, What's Up With Our Schools?  A New Zealand Principal Speaks Out (Auckland: Random House, 2005),  p.80.]

Fifteen years later, little has changed, except things have got worse.  One of these days we expect someone will make an Official Information Act request of the Ministry of Education, asking it to divulge how many abortions schools have procured for their students without parental knowledge or consent over the past fifteen years.  We fear that the number would shock us all--although it will take a sledgehammer to crack through the wall of stony silence, the OIA notwithstanding.

One of Theirs

The Progressives Own Joseph Roman

The West is awash with identity politics and "trans" politics.  The sexuality of no-one can be limited to genes or sexual body parts--we are told.  One's sexuality is all a matter of how one self-identifies.  Facebook has kindly identified over fifty different, distinct gender identities.  The chattering classes, the elite, the media, and the Left in general insist that the rest of society treat these gender identities with deep respect.

Recently a thirty-eight year old man, accused of a large number of molestation charges against pre-teen girls, offered a rationale for his actions: he said he was a boy trapped in a man's body.  He is playing the (now) stock, standard identity gambit.

A 38-year-old Chicago man accused of molesting three pre-teen girls told police he is a boy trapped in a man’s body, according to court documents.  Joseph Roman was charged with a long list of sexual molestation charges after three girls between the ages of six and eight came forward alleging they were assaulted during a three-year period.  During a January 24 hearing, Roman reportedly admitted to some of the charges and told the court he felt he was “a nine-year-old trapped in an adult’s body,” according to the Chicago Tribune.  [Breitbart News]

The point is this: no-one in the progressive identity crowd can gainsay the claim.  If a male can be a female inside a man's body--and that identity can be recognised in law, social institutions, employment, schools, the work-place, etc.--so must Roman's claim be recognized.

Western Society: The Institutionalisation of Envy

Dressed Up And Living Like A Peacock

Sociologist Daniel Bell has drawn a picture of Western society that is so telling and true that it bears reprinting in full.  Whilst this was written in 1976, it is even more true and faithful a representation of the Western man in our day.  In other words, what Bell describes has proved so accurate that 40 years later it is even more true.

Without wanting to reduce or distort Bell's description, as you read keep in the back of your mind the current fascination with gender diversity, gender change, and the sociology of identity (as the tip of the iceberg).  Bell's commentary will thus appear profoundly prophetic.

Not Enough Glue

Crumbling Common Ground

We are familiar with the expression, Too big to fail.  It usually refers to a company or business enterprise which is so significant and so influential that many, if not all, are dependant upon it in one way or another.  Usually "too big to fail" morphs into an expectation, then demand, that the State must bail out said failing company. 

When nations reach the point where they risk breaking up into constituent geographical components, "too big to fail" is not usually an issue.   We can readily contemplate Scotland or Northern Island breaking off from the United Kingdom and the subsequent countries surviving, and, in the case of England, probably thriving.  The current issue of Catalan voting to secede from Spain would fall into this category.  At such occasions it is probably better in the long run to accede to the breakup and maintain the most harmonious relationships possible--provided a genuine and strong majority wish it so.

But in order for nations to co-exist in comity there has to be a widely shared world-view.  If there is none, all bets are off.

Inane Identity Propaganda

"Maoridom" Is A Meaningless Construct

David Garrett has written a guest post in Kiwiblog which is worth a read.  It is about "Maoridom"--which is to say, it is about identity politics.  What Garrett describes and rejects is the same mindset that equally applies to feminists who both claim and assert that there is a "woman's perspective" or ideology.  The most egregious example in recent times is Michelle Obama ridiculously claiming that women who vote Republican are not really voting according to their "true selves".  

Another topical example is "African Americanism" in the United States.  For the reasons Garrett finds Maori identity politics to be stupid and meaningless, so with all forms of identity politics and propaganda. 

Following the shock defeat of all Maori Party candidates at the recent election, there were lots of comments – from all sides of the commentariat – about how “Maoridom” were affected, and how this mythical beast would feel about what had happened. I have often wondered about this odd construct, which implies that all Maori think alike, and all Maori view all issues – including political issues – in the same way. That surely makes no more sense than referring to “pakehadom”. Grant Robertson and I are both middle aged white men, but other than that,  I have  about as much in common with him as I have with Kim Jong -Un.

Thicker Than Two Short Planks

In The Silliness Stakes, Michelle O. Trumps Trump

Michelle Obama Says Conservative Women Can's Think For Themselves

Imagining that women on the Right are mere sock puppets for their husbands, sons, and fathers is a crucial illusion for an ideology that has constructed a political paradigm entirely upon identity.

Inez Feltscher
The Federalist

Michelle Obama believes the 42 percent of women and 53 percent of white women who voted against Hillary Clinton only did so because someone—presumably our patriarchs—told us to.

“Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their [sic] own voice,” the former first lady declared, speaking at a conference in Boston. Believe it or not, the pomposity only got worse from there.

“What does it mean for us as women that we look at those two candidates, as women, and many of us said, that guy, he’s better for me, his voice is more true to me,” Obama said. “Well, to me that just says you don’t like your voice. You like the thing you’re told to like,” she continued, apparently unaware of the cognitive dissonance evident in telling 125 million adult women what they must think about a presidential candidate while simultaneously encouraging them to find their own voices.

Michelle Obama--the proud product of elite US schools.  Smarter than the average bear.  An expert in convoluted self-contradictions.  

Letter From Australia (About Victimhood, Grievance, and Entitlement)

"The Force is Strong in This One"

A politician in Australia has been caught out with her snout in the trough.  But because it's all to do with a PC cause, there is "nothing to see here.  Move along."  Nonetheless, voters have taken umbrage.

Here's a way to test your capacity for self-delusion.  If your child is too ill to go to school today, do you take her on a business trip at the taxpayer’s expense? A moral bind surely, even if it is within the so-called company rules.  But if you’re a warrior for Single Motherhood, that excuses everything.

You can attend, with a sick child in tow, an overnight jaunt to see a few whales and shuck oysters because you are simply doing your job.  In other words, tick, another problem solved in the tyranny of life known as Single Motherhood.  That is, of course, if you’re blindly entitled like the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young.

The Senator has this week been condemned nationwide for using a reported $3874.24 of taxpayers’ money to go whale watching with her daughter Kora last September in the Great Australian Bight.  Hanson-Young says she didn’t have an option and therefore had to take her unwell 11-year-old along on the trip to discuss BP’s plans to drill for oil in the marine reserve.  [Daily Telegraph]

 If anyone dare criticize this snout-in-trough behaviour, the good senator will face them down with masterful guilt manipulation.  How dare anyone persecute a single mother such as her!

Unbelief Makes For a Crazy Mixed-Up World

Dozelal as she appears today--as a transitioned black

A Problem of Identity


Rachel Dolezal has become far, far worse than a "gender bender".  She has become a "race bender" which is a step too far, it would seem for our stereotyped "identity culture".

Her autobiography can be perused at leisure. The short version of her story has been published in The Guardian.

The Guardian piece, can be summarized as follows:

Rachel Dozelal is genetically a caucasian female. She has, however, self-identified as a black female.  She has been rejected by whites, blacks, homosexuals, and transgenderists.  Go figure.

Dozelal as a teenager

This is a sad story.  But the angry rejection of Dolezal by both blacks and sexual identity protagonists is telling.

Enrolling in the School of the Prophets

The Dervishes of Baal

As we have mentioned before these are great times for satirists to practise their art.  There is so much folly, so much lunacy, so much self-righteous poppy-cock masquerading as wisdom that Elijah would be rolling around on the floor, laughing fit to bust.

It is high time for Elijah to come again.  The Scriptures give some interesting insight into Elijah and his successors.  Elijah, of course, was the Lord's prophet who spent much of his ministry denouncing the established religion of Northern Israel--Baalism--during the reign of Ahab and Jezebel.  A good deal of his work involved excoriating the worship of Baal and the wickedness of King Ahab and his Phoenician queen.  The high point of his ministry was the contest on Mount Carmel and the subsequent defeat and destruction of Baal's prophets--much to Jezebel's fury. [I Kings 18:20ff] Elijah mocked the false prophets mercilessly as they proved to be,  not just impotent and powerless, but also liars and deceivers.

Fast forward to the day of the Lord.

In Love With Death

Suicide: The Next Civil Rights Frontier

Only someone tone-deaf to what’s going on in culture will fail to understand how we’re only a few logical steps away from suicide being an act of personal expression.

By Peter Burfeind
The Federalist

One staple of conservative conversation these days is the parlor game of cultural prognostication: What will the lunatics come up with next?

We’ve only tapped the surface of sexual deviancy, so God only knows what’s in store for us there. Diaper-wearing men diagnosed—back when the notion of “disordered behavior” meant something—with paraphilic infantilism? “Dommes” walking their leather-clad coprophiliac slaves on a leash? (I saw an article entitled, “Coprophilia: Symptom, Cause and Treatment” at a website on depression. I thought, “Awww, how cute; so 2012.”)

After last summer’s gay marriage ruling coupled with this year’s transgendered march through the institutions, you can only imagine the flavors of sadomasochistic fetishism lining up to take their turn at the bat. The natural response of “eww” that used to guide social behavior is a microagression, so it’s only a matter of time.

Identity holds a lot of promise for potential wackiness.

New York City Gets Serious

NYC Will Fine You $250,000 For ‘Misgendering’ A Transsexual

by ALLUM BOKHARI

Breitbart News

Did you call a transsexual person “he” or “she” when they preferred to be called “zhe?” According to a newly updated anti-discrimination law in New York City, you could be fined an eye-watering $250,000.

In the latest, astonishing act of draconian political correctness, the NYC Commission on Human Rights have updated a law on “Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Expression” to threaten staggering financial penalties against property owners who “misgender” employees or tenants.

Incidents that are deemed “wilful and malicious” will see property owners face up to $250,000 in fines, while standard violations of the law will result in a $125,000 fine. For small business owners, these sums are crippling.

It’s not as simple as referring to transmen “he” or transwomen as “she,” either. The legislation makes it clear that if an individual desires, property owners will have to make use of “zhe,” “hir” and any other preferred pronoun.

Letter From America (About Transracialism)

Everything You Need to Know About Transracial Hero Rachel Dolezal

Ben Shapiro
Breitbart News

On Friday, after a long news week, the story of Rachel Dolezal hit the press, proving once again that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Just last week the President of the United States congratulated Bruce Jenner on his courageous decision to pretend to be a woman, and the entire left bursting into spasms of ecstasy over a collectively insane decision to ratify the notion that men can magically become women. Today, the entire left is struggling to explain how a white woman who identifies herself as black is not, in fact, black.

Here’s the basic story: Rachel Dolezal is president of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the NAACP. For years, she has passed herself off as black. Now her parents have told the press that she is their “birth daughter and we’re both of European descent… we’re puzzled and it’s very sad.” Her ethnic heritage: German, Swedish, Czech. She is less black than Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is Native American. Rachel stopped corresponding with her parents because she was afraid, according to them, that they would expose her ruse. Now, some additional facts on the greatest story in human history:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Feminist Rape Constructs

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

January 21, 2015

Let us first review the facts.

Mount Holyoke College is an all-women’s college that recently began admitting male students who self-identify as female. And then, in a spasm of self-righteousness, there was a successful student-led effort to get a college performance of The Vagina Monologues cancelled because that play was insufficiently sensitive to those women who were vagina-less. We know that such creatures exist because we recently began admitting them to our college.

At American colleges, The Vagina Monologues is traditionally — ah, tradition! — performed on Valentine’s Day because, and this is important to note, American colleges generally don’t have a clue. But, and this is also important to note, if ever you think that this vapid cluelessness has disappeared down Alice’s rabbit hole forever, up it pops again later, right in your news feed, still chattering at us about gender constructs.

We need to recognize that some rapists self-identify as tender, sensitive, and thoughtful caregivers. What is more of a social construct than violence? We need to raise awareness of that, people.

So then, speaking of gender constructs, let us pursue the will of the sexual revolution all the way out to the end. Unless it is endless, of course, but we can still make some pretty good time. I think. After a while you lose track because the outer darkness doesn’t keep their mile markers maintained very well. And the roads are really bad.

The Vagina Monologues — that sexist throwback to earlier misogynistic times — was performed the way it was by the thoughtless feminist minions in order “to raise awareness of gender-based violence.” But if we have now gotten to the place in our absurdist theater review where we are laboring to avoid offending all the women-without-vaginas out there, I don’t know why we shouldn’t follow this to the utter frozen limit. We need to recognize that some rapists self-identify as tender, sensitive, and thoughtful caregivers. What is more of a social construct than violence? We need to raise awareness of that, people.

What A Difference Fifty Years Can Make

Psychology, Sin, and Bigotry

In 1960--more than half a century ago--a prominent psychologist, O. Hobart Mowrer wrote the following in the American Psychologist:

For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch-making.  But at length we have discovered that to be "free" in this sense, i.e., to have the excuse of being "sick" rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost.  This danger is, I believe, betokened by the widespread interest in Existentialism which we are presently witnessing.  In becoming amoral, ethically neutral, and "free" we have cut the very roots of our being; lost our deepest sense of self-hood and identity; and with neurotics themselves, find ourselves asking: "who am I?"  O. Hobart Mowrer, "Sin, the Lesser of Two Evils," American Psychologist, XV (1960), pp. 301-304.

Fast forward to the present decade.

Worthy Heirs

Integrating Into Folly

Self-destruction is always lurking at the edges of Unbelief.  Then, unexpectedly, it can capture the whole shooting box and what seemed so influential, so compelling slips away "not with a bang, but a whimper".  Here are a couple of prosaic examples.  The first is the soon-to-be-elected Mayor of New York City. 

Now we all know that NY City weighs in heavily at the "progressive", left-wing end of the spectrum.  What is known as the "loony left" has always found plenty of kindred spirits in that place.  How else could Nanny Bloomberg have been tolerated for so long?  Now he is about to be replaced by someone much more loony.  Robert Wargas, writing in The Telegraph, profiles the city's next mayor.

Letter From America (About College Hate Crimes)

The Coddling of College Hate-Crime Hoaxers

 

 

By Michelle Malkin

March 6, 2013National Review Online

American college campuses are the most fertile grounds for fake hate. They’re marinated in identity politics and packed with self-indulgent, tenured radicals suspended in the 1960s. In the name of enlightenment and tolerance, these institutions of higher learning breed a corrosive culture of left-wing self-victimization. Take my alma mater, Oberlin College. Please.

This week, the famously “progressive” college in Ohio made international headlines when it shut down classes after a series of purported hate crimes. According to the Oberlin Review (a student newspaper I once wrote for), anti-black and anti-gay vandalism/“hate speech” have plagued the campus since February 9.