HARPER: IDENTITY POLITICS--WE ALL LOSE

(Seattle Antifa)

I vividly recall staying up past 1 AM on election night 2016, watching CNN, as it became clear that Donald Trump had been elected the next President of the United States.  News anchor Dana Bash was beside herself at the outcome, and at one point, in a fit of honesty, she exclaimed, "This means the end of identity politics."  Well, yes, but a deep ideology like identity politics does not die a quiet and sober death.  Last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, we saw identity politics playing out--violently. Whether it was the white protesters who formed part of the original crowd, or the black and "antifa" protesters who formed part of the counter-demonstration, we witnessed a clash of identities.

President Trump was not wrong when he said that there were violent protesters on both sides of the clash, and that many of the protesters were not there to show their racism, but to protest the tearing down of a statue of a figure in American history who cannot be airbrushed out of our nation's story.  Is the next step to burn down the campus of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, because it was co-named after Robert E. Lee after the Civil War?

Watching the tirades on MSNBC and other news outlets over the past 48 hours, I can't help but lament how twisted our public discourse has become.  Clearly some of the counter-demonstrators were part of the very same "antifa" apparatus that got very different news coverage when they torched and trashed Seattle a number of years back in protest at a WTO meeting.  This time around, they were defended by the icons of media, who denounced any thought that there was "moral equivalence" between their violence and the violence of the hardcore white racists who made up part of the protesters on UVA campus.

There is a difference between legitimate civil rights struggles, which at times led to violence, and the reverse racism that I see and hear far too often out of the Black Lives Matter people.  And there is the matter of George Soros spending millions of dollars to help launch that movement after Ferguson.  Soros Money Matters too.  He is not a benign figure but a promoter of division and discord.  I sat in a room when he complained bitterly, with racist overtones, during a meeting of the Drug Policy Foundation years ago, that there were not black voices promoting the legalization of crack cocaine, part of his libertine agenda.  Is he a friend of the black community?  I don't think so.

Identity politics is a disease.  It divides people and makes them into the sum of their self-defined attributes.  Far from bringing about the end of identity politics, the Trump election has hardened the fault lines, whether on Capitol Hill or on the streets of American cities.

Comments

[gaikokumaniakku]

Brennan Gilmore, Tom Perrielo, Michael Signer, and other friends of Podesta arranged the Charlottesville violence. This isn't just a bunch of college-age leftists getting excited about Derrida. The Charlottesville violence was the result of a conspiracy by well-connected insiders.

I quote the "Signs of the Times" website linked below:

The STOP KONY 2012 psyop was all about using the Joseph Kony boogieman to justify letting Barack Obama send Special Operations troops into Africa to run around and squash any and all resistance to our new imperialism campaign. It was a fraud. A show. And Brennan was part of it.

He was also part of the campaign of Tom Perriello's in Virginia to become the next governor.

End quote.

"Signs of the Times" dot net has a story on this that I will link in the third field below.

https://www.sott.net/article/359361-Charlottesville-Brennan-Gilmore-and-the-STOP-KONY-2012-Psyop

[turcopolier]

gaikokumaniakku

I fear that we are approaching a season of disintegration. September 11 at Texas A&M and September 16 on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia will be indicators. pl

[Lars]

On June 6, 1944, a bunch of "protesters" attacked Nazis and did so violently. Was there a moral equivalency then too? You have to reach rather low to accept Nazis, et al, and try to deflect blame for what they stand for. What the defenders of the Confederacy has managed to do is to thoroughly discredit their cause by associating with these despicable groups. It is again a lost cause and again, they only have themselves to blame.

We may be watching the end of the Trump era come nearer. By association, he is rapidly losing the moral stature of the office that he holds. A lot of people near him are losing their reputations forever.

[turcopolier]

Lars

Of course Sweden did not fight the Nazis at all. Was there a moral equivalence there or was it just self-interest? In fact there were many Swedish volunteers in the 5th SS Panzer Division. What is the factual basis for saying that the people who would not have the statues moved are Nazi-associated or supporting? Do you think the UDC and SCV (of whom I am not qualified to be a member) are Nazi-associated? pl

[Seamus Padraig]

Comparing a foreign country that declared war on the US, with a group of US citizens just trying to exercise their constitutional rights and being attacked for it is just fatuous.

[AEL]

The SCV has absolutely no connection to the events at Charlottesville.

I did not see many women on the protesters side, so I strongly suspect that the UDC had no connection either.

[Lars]

The main reason Sweden did not fight The Reich was because they were not invaded. There was plenty of resistance, mainly helping Norwegians and Danes, who were fighting the Nazis. There were very few Swedish volunteers in the SS and they had very little impact.

If you show up with the KKK and the Nazis, you are supporting them. This is a different country than in the 1920's, when most of those statutes were put in place and now a lot of people want them gone.

As the old adage says: If you lay down with dogs, you end up with fleas. You may not like guilt by association, but it exists and is now in focus, due to Donald Trump. Many people are going to have to decide which side they are on. So far, it seems that there is a lot of rejection going on, including from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

[plantman]

I'm with gaikokumaniakku on this one.
This whole thing smacks of a setup.

The media wants people to link Trump to the fringe element because they are afraid that the "America first" nationalists are gaining ground. They have identified the right-leaning nationalists as the defacto enemy of their globalist world order.

Just like the US has eliminated every strong, secular nationalist leader in the arab world, the deep state is now focused on annihilating or discrediting the patriot movement in the US.

[Cvillereader]

I read somewhere that former Gov. Gilmore has called for an independent investigation of the security planning done by state and local police for the rally last Saturday. I haven't been able to find a published source for this though.

I am somewhat taken aback by the attitude of many commenters here who don't seem overly concerned if "Nazis" had the $hit beat out of them.

Would you feel the same if antifa did this to anti-abortion demonstrators? What about a rally that supports restrictions on immigration? Or more simply, a rally to protect significant historic monuments in the US?

Because you can bet that the BLM and antifa thugs would do to you exactly what they did to the Nazis, if you held such unpopular or retrograde opinions and they had the chance. Last week that chance was significantly enabled by local and state government officials.

The Virginia ACLU got this right. This is about core 1st Amendment rights. Without them, we as country are doomed, because we will have no non-violent way to resolve our differences.

[FND]

Lars, my father was in the battle of the bulge and other battles against Germany, but he also realized one of our allies, the Soviets, were also a murderous regime.

[JohnsonR]

You actually believe, then, that the demonstration would not have been attacked by the antifa thugs or condemned as deplorable racists unfit to be allowed to express their unfit opinions by all the usual suspects, if they'd diligently cleansed themselves of any real or supposed "Nazi" elements?

Laughable.

There were no "Nazis" at President Trump's pre-election political gatherings, but the thugs attacked them nevertheless.

Time to admit that there is a basic problem with the political left in the US and in the UK, in that much of it believes it is justified in silencing, blacklisting, and in physically attacking those whose opinions it regards as unacceptable.

[Hank Foresman]

Sorry but you are just wrong. I know Mike Singer and one other of the member of the Charlottesville City Council well. They are honorable people. Sir you are deluded by false news and consipral theories. You need to climb back into you hole. I doubt if Pat will post this, but then again I hope he does.

[The Twisted Genius]

pl,

The SCV made a point of distancing themselves from the "Unite the Right" crowd well before that rally took place. They wanted no part of it. They also have a long standing policy of staying away from the KKK. Their members are not allowed to join the KKK or any other bigoted, white supremacist group. The SCV leadership is well aware of the danger, almost inevitability, of being painted with the same brush as the various alt-right, nazi and white supremacist groups. Even with this policy in place, I would be surprised if there was not a substantial overlap in attitudes among a number of the members of all these groups.

[Fred]

Lars,

In May of 1945 a bunch of "protestors" attacked Nazis in Berlin and did so rather violently. Antifa in Berkley and Charlottlesville are just following the example of comrade Joe's boys in brown using "peaceful means"; for now. That's the alt-left for you.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-violent-left/534192/

[The Twisted Genius]

pl,

I think both rallies were cancelled. I know the Richmond rally organizer pulled the request for that rally to avoid the possible violence. I do think the Virginia Flaggers and SCV are keeping an eye on various confederate statues.

[pj]

I live in Oakland, California and am familiar with the violence that some anarchists have reigned on our city. So, I know some elements of the 'deranged' left are capable of that. But I have to say, I'm fairly scrupulous in looking for facts and not jumping to conclusions, and so here I've been looking for any evidence that the counter-protesters initiated any of the violence. I've not seen any. I've seen testimony from clergy thanking the anarchists and antifa for inserting themselves between the neo-Nazis and themselves to protect them. Scuffles did break out there, but i they were in self-defense. Again, I've seen no evidence that the anarchists initiated any violence. If you have some evidence, please provide it.

[walrus]

On a technical note Gentlemen, the scholarly definition of the Alt - Right, is not and cannot be identified with the terms "Nazis" or "Nazism" at all. Those are dog whistle terms of abuse used by the Left that immediately tarnish any arguments they may wish to make in accordance with Godwins Law. I thus know there is no point listening to any tirade.that calls the Alt Right "Nazis" since technically speaking they are not whatever the listener thinks.

Professor Robert Paxton observes that the Nazis were not an "ism" in the sense of Communism, Liberalism, Socialism, etc. for the simple fact that there were no "great books" of tightly organised. academic theory underpinning the Nazi ideology as there are for the other "isms" - Marx, Engels, etc., there were only the deranged rantings of Hitler.

As such the Nazis appropriated a stack of differing memes to suit their needs from time to time. These included agrarian socialism, nationalism, racism as required.

The Alt - Right does none of this as far as I can tell. They seem to me to be consistent in their respect and reverence to The Constitution and their abhorrence of big Government forcing social theory down their throats on a daily basis for example LBGT crap, extreme militant feminism and phony 'diversity" memes.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2801%28199803%2970%3A1%3C1%3ATFSOF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3

[kao_hsien_chih]

Did United States (necessarily) fight the "Nazis" or "Germans" during World War 2?

I think this is an important distinction: we did not get into the habit of fighting amorphous monsters formed out of figments of (other) peoples' imaginations until Cold War was well on its way. Yes, Germany was run by Nazis and its policies were guided by their odious ideology, but we fought a country, with a well-defined government that, if beaten via superior violence, could and did surrender to us to bring about the end of hostilities.

Isms don't have governments. Isms don't have physical return address.
Isms don't surrender. They can only be made to disappear by being put in the dustbin of forgetfulness and irrelevance. Violence can't achieve that.

[English Outsider]

Lars - In your post you talk about Nazis. Then you tell us that defenders of the Confederacy have associated themselves with Nazis. Then, by the flimsiest of pretexts, you move over to attacking Trump. This is a tour de force of damning by juxtaposition but for the life of me I can find no sense in it.

What we are seeing is usual when there's an intractable political divide. The extremists on either side get something going and start to draw the moderates on either side in with them. Your hope is that the process will go far enough to get rid of your President but no further. It's a discreditable hope and possibly a risky one.

[Lemur]

"Identity politics is a disease. It divides people and makes them into the sum of their self-defined attributes."

Identity politics is not Leftist indoctrination. It is reality. No, being otherkin is not a real identity. Being white and American is, however. Being white and Canadian is too. Individuated universalism is just a form of ethnic European identity politics, albeit a rather destructive and fantastical expression that posits we are avatars of a universal humanity.

I remain consistently amazed that this style of analysis retains currency in the current year. Identity is a dynamic exchange between the unique characteristics of the individual and the context in which he is born. Having seen multicultural state after multicultural state disintegrate (Yugoslavia), degenerate into civil war (Sudan), or stultify into permanently into frozen hostility (Lebanon); some STILL want to deny individuals will seek to preserve the context in which they realize themselves because its part of who they are. The only proven way to stop adversarial identity politics is to ensure homogeneous super-majorities reign supreme within discreet, geographically defined polities. America didn't have an 'identity politics' problem after WWII because everybody was a regional variation of the same cultural page, and the arguments were over how best to distribute economic capital.

The division entailed by 'identity politics' is a defence mechanism against the forces of globalization which will erase the framework in which individuals realize themselves. This framework is an artifice that keeps the will to power at bay. People *want* to be divided. Why do we get this urge to enforce in-organic unity at precisely the same moment the centrifugal forces engendered by this procedure are destabilizing our countries?

Uniting people results in the abolition the contexts of self-realization, and thus amounts to the abolition of man. The result is a gray gloop of atomized, passive consumers whose stunted personalities will go ape whenever global capitalism enters a crisis and the bread and circuses spigot is turned off.

Between the left actively working to undermine the levees protecting the formation of a sociable body politic, and centrist/conservatives denying these levees are worth protecting or even exist, the resolution of our political crises will likely be ugly. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." This secularized protestant ethos of moral posturing is how we all lose.

[Lemur]

'My team is on the right side of history', said the increasingly desperate Swede.

Lars, what you have to understand is the application of the views you espouse are to blame for these admittedly rather goony convocations. The so called 'fringes' are starting to eat in toward the centre of the political spectrum because liberal ideology is destabilizing the national continuum. All the pejoratives and invective in the world won't intimidate people who do not share your moral premises.

'Nazis' today are often nothing more than pre WWII social democrats who believed in representative elections, the common good, ethnically defined political entities, and the legitimacy of politics uniformly embodying the values of culture, race, ethnos, and language. If you suppress this perfectly legitimate impulse to self-determination enshrined in the UN charter, you will only succeed in in instigating a situation beyond the means of electoral democracy to resolve.

I would prefer reasonable people correct the error of diversity, mass immigration, and imposed pluralism through peaceful policy realignment. The alternative is the fringes eating in toward the centre of the political spectrum and doing so violently.

[1664RM]

Lars,

Thank you for your wonderfully condensed 'Saving Private Ryanesque' lesson on the chronology of the Second World War. The Nazis had actually been under 'attack' for sometime...

I must say it so conveniently airbrushes out so many of the key events & sacrifices made by several key Allied Nations who stood & fought the Nazis while others very cleverly stood around on the touchline with the bucket, sponge & oranges in hand for some time.

The great American industrialists profiteered from the fighting by transforming American industry into one that built the weapons of war & then exported them for a couple of years to the fight for a princely sum under lend lease agreements; whilst no doubt sniggering as many went to the bottom of the North Atlantic at the hands of the German U - Boat Wolfpack. I know that public opinion in the USA was divided about the decision to commit to war, just like it was in 1917.

For an alarming majority of Millennials the attack on Pearl would probably be their 'go to' answer in a multiple choice question for the event which triggered the outbreak of World War Two. Thus it is also the catchphrase used today to describe all manner of possible future events that could lead to military action. In actual fact although it gave the US Navy a bloody nose it was not strategic success the Japanese had hoped for.

Thus today we are presented with a very warped version of the truth about how the second World War was actually won. It was won by the Allies - plural - the land campaign in the East was the predominant land battle against the Nazis. Had the Battle of the North Atlantic been lost by the Royal Navy then Britain would have fallen (regardless of what the Royal Air Force have to boast about the Battle of Britain) & the subsequent land campaigns against Germany would have never happened - including D - Day. The Battle of the North Atlantic was the longest single Allied campaign of the Second World War yet few if any can actually name it.

The land campaigns in North Africa, Italy & France, The Low Countries & finally inside Germany itself combined with the tactic of mass aerial bombing on Germany's industrial & populations centres simply pale in comparison to the sheer size & sacrifice in the East & at sea both in the Atlantic & the Pacific.

The War against the Japanese was predominantly fought by the US forces but there was a significant & protracted effort by the British & their Indian imperial Army in Burma & the Australians in New Guinea.

As a retired soldier who has seen war myself my comments take nothing away from the sacrifice of those who fell. War is an aberration & humanity never seems to learn from history.

Its a sad irony that such a young Country seems hell bent on tearing down a few statues that are reminders of recent history. History is best remembered as is. After all, without our history we are - as others have said, just a pack of dogs.

SRJB

Per Mare Per Terram

[mike]

Some of those racist a$$hats at Cville were screaming against Trump for giving his daughter to a Jew. Why does he put up with that? And when are they going to go after the Catholics? Again I should have said, as I recall in the 60s and 70s seeing Klan billboards in and around Kinston NC demonizing Papists in addition to their black and Jewish targets. The billboards alongside US Route 70 were as full size as the ones advertising Coca-Cola and tobacco.

The overwhelming majority (99%+ I would say) of the people who do not want the statues moved are NOT Nazi or Klan associated or supporting. But those 99% were screwed over by the few that are, because statues and monuments are coming down or being vandalized everywhere today, even on private land. That is directly attributable to the white supremo wannabees at Cville.

[eakens]

People are going to identify with weapons more than political parties if the left keeps this up.

[The Librarian in Purgatory]

Really? Couldn't get Adam Weishaupt, the Trilateral Commission, or the NWO in there, to name a few? Sigh.

To view this, and the underlying dynamic in either/or, black/white terms is to miss the point entirely, at least for those developmentally capable, but one wonders how the Abraham Lincoln Brigade would be viewed today, or "Inglorious Bastards" and, "...killing Nazis."

I think Yeats had it right:

"...The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

There is an I-Ching hexagram that speaks to this but I am too lazy to look it up tonight.

As Kurt Vonnegut opined, "...and so it goes."