Archive for September, 2018

Identity Politics III

September 30, 2018

Peter Hartcher, the political correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, has made a similar argument to the one I made a few weeks ago about identity politics, so I’m just going to explore the points of difference and similarity. He also refers to Francis Fukuyama’s new book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. Obviously, this is an argument which is timely.

Quotes from Mr. Hartcher’s article are in italics.

He begins:

“Politics since World War II has been dominated by the ideological struggle along Marxist economic lines. The working class versus the capitalist class.”

He implies this is now over because of identity politics. I’m not sure about that, I think class war helps drive certain types of identity politics. As Warren Buffett, the great investor, said in 2006 “There’s class warfare, all right but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” In 2011 he said more firmly, “there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won.” This seems correct, given the lessening of wages and increase in profit as percentages of the national income in many states, and the ease with which donors and industries threaten governments.

“According to the right of politics, it’s the left that’s guilty of playing identity politics, fomenting the resentment and anger of minorities. In truth, the right plays it just as hard. The difference is that the right foments the resentment and anger of the majority.”

This seems basically correct, although the right also foments the resentment and anger of minorities as well. They do this to support their class war on ordinary people. I also agree that the Right pretends it is not doing this.

“From a time when power resided only with kings and warlords, the rights revolutions have, over centuries, extended recognition and power to ordinary citizens, to slaves, to women, to indigenous peoples, to the disabled, to homosexuals, to children and, increasingly today, to animals. The Australian philosopher Peter Singer has pictured this force as an “expanding circle of empathy.”

Being a Humean in terms of ethics – that is asserting that ethics is based on what Hume called ‘sympathy’, or what we today call ’empathy’ – this also seems to be an accurate statement. We have, at least in some places in society, been extending the range of humans and creatures we feel are like us. Some people have argued that this extension is an accidental consequence of reading novels, as you may have to understand people who are not like you, to read one. Good novels teach us that other people and sometimes animals are human too. I’m not saying this argument is true, but it seems to me that empathy requires imagination; in a novel we imagine the other as like us, or as capable as feeling as we might if we were in their situation.

‘Fascism’ also requires imagination, the ability to imagine that our next door neighbours are not human, or that they engage in dastardly, inhuman, or subhuman, acts that you, yourself, would never do. The imagining is usually visceral, fascists imagine their neighbours are disgusting, and they try to make those they hate physically repulsive to them, and completely different. That helps prevent other kinds of thinking and imagining. There is nothing inherently good about imagination, but its vital for real ethics.

“But the way identity politics is being played today is not a quest for equality. It is about asserting not equal rights but superior rights“. Emphasis added.

True, if you modify to read, “but the way identity politics is being played today, by the right in particular, is not a quest for equality. It is about asserting not equal rights but superior rights…”

“It is an intolerant impulse that claims greater rights for one favoured group over others. Members of outgroups are even denied the right to be heard.”

We can see this sometimes in the left, but they are usually trying to prevent specific occasions of speech, rather than speech in general. After all there are right wing TV programs and papers who will allow the expression of almost anything if it supports them, and will prevent, or attack, anything being said if it does not. The right has an advantage here as the winners of the class war own most of the mainstream media. The right often seems to try to prevent speech in general. They, for example, identify people who may hold them to account, as leftists, and try to prevent visible account holding happening at all. This is the basis for much criticism of the ABC, and it is worrying because sometimes, in Australia, the ABC is the only organization that holds them to account or asks difficult questions.

Hartcher points to a ‘left’ example by saying “the activists in the Black Lives Matter movement fume against anyone who says “black and white lives matter”“.

The point here is not that activists are denying that white lives matter, just that the number of black people imprisoned, beaten up, or shot by white people especially cops is far greater than the other way around (especially per head of population). Official society looks, and acts, as if black lives really don’t matter. Saying “all lives matter” can seem like an attempt to diminish the crisis faced by black people, even if its innocently intended. Saying all lives matter, can be a way of saying “we don’t really have a problem”. Its like saying candidates should be selected on merit, not because they are women. The point is that if there is no effort to have female candidates, then male dominance will ensure most candidates continue to be men. If we say ‘all lives matter’, then it may appear ok for black people to be harassed and shot in proportionally much larger numbers, as they are now.

“Trump, of course, is the high priest of the low order of angry right-wing identity politics. Muslims are terrorists and must be banned from entry; Mexicans are rapists and must be sealed off behind a wall; women are objects that can be grabbed by the pussy; and the Ku Klux Klan aren’t really all bad.”

This comes back to class war. Trump and the Republicans, probably can’t win support for their policies enabling corporations to maim workers, poison people, kill endangered animals, and pollute with ease. They can’t win many votes in dismantling the Affordable Health Care Act, especially given that many Republicans seem to think that Affordable Care was different from Obamacare, or was the Republican improvement of Obamacare. It may be hard to convince people, who have been continually warned about the dangers of big government surpluses, to support massive tax cuts for wealthy people which increase the surplus, or that the military needs more spending which increases the surplus.

Focusing on right wing identity politics is helpful to the right, and they ask for special rights to be able to diss other people, especially precarious people who most likely cannot fight back with the same force, and to exclude them.

Apparently Francis Fukuyama has a new book, in which he argues that left “political correctness” is responsible for this, as it removed the ability of white males to complain about how bad things were for them. “You are not listening to what’s been happening in the last few years if you think there’s no connection between the two.”

This is obvious bullshit. White people, and white working class people, could always complain and have complained. The problem would only occur for white people if they complained that their problems came from ‘niggers’, ‘towelheads’, ‘poofters’ or whatever, and that these minorities should be shot or expelled or whatever. In other words the left were trying to shut down fascist imaginings. This may have been counter-productive, but it was not oppressive. ‘Political correctness’ as used by the left often functions as a request for both politeness and sympathetic imagination directed towards the relatively powerless. Politeness was at one time a conservative virtue, but not any more. The term “political correctness” is often used by the right to help stop thinking, as in: “Perhaps we should not cut down every tree in the country,” “Oh stop being politically correct”, “Perhaps we should have an inquiry into Church abuse of children” “Oh stop being politically correct”. In other words the division between people was already established, partly because of class war, and the engineered shift of attention.

Fukuyama says about the economic crash of 2008 onwards, “But people’s reactions were expressed in identity terms, not economic terms. If it was an economic reaction they should have lined up behind the parties of the right and left” on income or class grounds.”

This is precisely the point. In modern neoliberal economies, you don’t have a majority living on high incomes. Those truly benefitting from the order are a tiny percentage of the population. You may need a fascist kind of identity politics to get people to support the neoliberal wealth elite and keep voting for the interests of that elite, and that is what the right (on the whole) agitates for.

“It’s the nature of right wing populism to demonise elites, plus an out-group. It doesn’t matter which out-group. Jews, Muslims, Chinese, any minority will do to fill the vacancy.”

The issue is that not all elites will be demonized by the Right. The corporate elite are largely spared in rightwing identity politics. “The wealthy are like us, and we can aim to be like them.” The Right can even elect billionaires who have inherited most of their wealth – you can’t get much more elite than that.

This is a careful anti-elitism. Anti-professors, anti-science, anti-knowledge, anti-art, not anti-wealth. Australian right wing members of parliament, or right-wing media propagandists on huge incomes, often pretend that they are not an elite, but that those criticising them are.

“To date, the major parties [in Australia] are flirting with identity politics. But only flirting.”

No, not true. What else is the anti-refugee policy and the “Christian religious freedoms,” the “aboriginal life style choices”, the “bludgers on the dole, taking your money” and “more money for private schools” stuff?

Fukuyama again:
“The retreat on both sides” – left and right – “into ever narrower identities threatens the possibility of deliberation and collective action by the society as a whole. Down this road lies, ultimately, state breakdown and failure.”

No, again. The left is still visibly trying to work with the idea that women are equal to men, that black and white should have equal rights, that gays should have equal rights, that transsexuals are people, that we should not kill all koalas for profit and so on. They are still following the expansive nature of their identity politics.

So we have identity politics on both sides. No question. However, we do have a destructive identity politics on the right apparently built up to support the victors in the class war. The right nearly always pretends that its vices are universal rather than engineered for the benefit of dominant elites.

To reiterate:
Left wing identity politics wants more people to be recognised as having a legitimate and relatively safe place in the public domain. Right wing identity politicians want to have a safe space to declare that they are superior and have the right to supress other people of less favoured categories.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-destructive-american-fad-australia-needs-to-avoid-20180928-p506mg.html

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is the political problem impossible

September 28, 2018

Politics is difficult, because recognising what is happening makes it seem insurmountable. That is, we are being eaten by the rich, and the institutions that support them. ‘Eaten’ is quite literal here.

We are living in the result of 40 years of agitation for free markets and small states. Libertarians and others can say that free markets and small states have never arrived, but that does not mean it is not predictable that agitation for small states and free markets will result in corporate domination, and a State which exists primarily to defend and ‘nanny’ the rich and their markets and hold down the ordinary person. Hence the disintegration of the welfare state, the massive growth in military spending, the stagnation or decline of ordinary wages, and the growth of massive inequality on class lines, as money is transferred from the workers to the rich.

The growth of inequality leads to a greater and greater intensification of power with wealth. We live in a capitalist corporate plutocracy. As the classes separate, the wealthy appear to regard ordinary people as inadequate, easily fooled, and as burdensome costs which should be eliminated.

Not all wealthy people support plutocracy (eg Soros, Buffett), but it tends to be that way. We live in a world in which politicians and policies are largely bought.

The problem is intensified, in that unlike other systems of plutocracy, corporate capitalism will destroy anything if there is a profit in it. They will destroy traditional values, cities, lifestyles, and political systems. What is worse is that we live in a world in which people are rewarded for destroying our life support and degrading our environment, because they think they are too wealthy to be hurt, and they have no connection with the majority of the people who will suffer from this degradation.

In this world the parties of the Right openly support the wealthy and shift the burden of paying for ordinary people’s oppression onto the workers. The parties of the centre right, are slightly less bought and think that somehow the people should live relatively happily under corporate domination.

Further, news is largely produced by a State or by the corporate sector. Thus the information the populace gets, even when it is pretending to be radical as with Fox and Brietbart, exists to make sure people do not get information that challenges corporate dominance but information that reinforces it. Whether the information is correct or not, is secondary. It is extremely difficult to get accurate information to work with, and readers/viewers tend to judge information’s value by their own bias and aprioris. Hence it is difficult to change anyone’s mind, in any way which does not reinforce plutocracy.

This factor is intensified, because, in order to persuade people to vote for them when they do not have the interests of ordinary people in mind, the right in particular has to distract people with lies, culture wars, racism, nationalism, hatred of people who are unfortunate and so on. It constantly has to flirt with the fascist right to get votes – as such it drifts to the right. Right centre parties follow the drift as that is the only way they can get funding. Both parties like wars, especially cheap wars, because the people get behind them and it justifies military expenditure at the expense of the people.

So, for me, the political questions are how do we break the power of wealth, how do we get people involved in politics, and how do we stop the wealthy and their instruments destabilising planetary life as a whole?

Is it possible to change this? Is it inevitable that capitalism leads us to where we are?

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Identity politics 2

September 15, 2018

We are having a lot of announcements from our government that religious freedoms must be protected. There is no doubt that there are areas of the world where religious freedoms are under threat. It is increasingly difficult to be Christian in many Islamic countries, and Muslims in many Christian countries can face daily abuse – in particular women in hijab. Fundamentalist Hindus in India seem to be attacking everyone else. Buddhists in Myanmar are behaving with apparent brutality to Muslims who have lived in the country for centuries. While this level of religious intolerance and violence should not be accepted, there is no evidence I have seen that suggests that Christians in Australia face anything remotely resembling this level of attack or that they are remotely likely to face this level of attack in the future.

The evidence presented does not seem that persuasive either.

The prime minister has mentioned that kids have been stopped doing Christmas plays. He does not present evidence for his statement. He says that Christians have been prevented from discussing the real meaning of Easter. No evidence is presented again. We are told that boards of directors may stop people from being members because of incompatibilities of belief. No evidence is presented, and the PM even seems to think the lack of evidence for it happening now, is evidence for it happening in the future.

If indeed Church groups have been prevented from preaching to their members, or prevented from putting on Christmas plays in the Church, then we do have real problems. But nobody seems to be claiming this. Likewise Christians and others have discussed the meaning of Easter in public with me, with no apparent hinderance. The local newspapers usually have meaning of Easter articles, and editorials, and summarise the various Easter messages from the main churches. There is no one screaming in the papers that Christians should not be allowed to talk about Easter – nothing like the screaming against various right or left wing speakers that seems a regular feature of contemporary debate. Sure people commenting on articles with a Christian slant may be abusive or more likely dismissive, but facing abuse online is a regular event for everybody, and there is often abuse from Christians in return, suggesting atheists are subhuman or deserve to burn in Hell for eternity and often expressing joy at this hypothesis.

We also have continuing tax exemption for religious organisations, even if they seem run for profit or for the income of the leaders. Taxpayer subsidy of religious schools, public money spent on Chaplains to council school children who don’t need any qualifications in counselling, and a total lack of funding for qualified counsellors who are not approved by the local denominations. We still effectively have compulsory religious instruction in public schools – as the NSW government does not allow schools to reveal if they have the substitute ethics courses available. We allow religious schools to sack people if they find them incompatible with their beliefs (ie they are gay, feminist, or the wrong form of Christianity) – oddly this is one area that people say is not strong enough for religious liberty! We have politicians and right wing commentators who have defended the clergy from accusations of child abuse. We have politicians claiming their religion as a matter of course. No one has persecuted them in any effective manner. There is not any movement to curb much of this.

I am absolutely open to counter evidence for impingement on Christian liberty.

All of this, along with the lack of concern for the religious freedoms of Muslims or Buddhists, suggests that there is a level of fantasy in these allegations and they are really about identity politics of a specific group that seeks privilege over others.

Now it is true that the secular state has stopped human sacrifice, religious torture and persecution of other religions. It has tried to stop child abuse by churches, it has recognised rape in marriage, it has allowed women to claim equal rights, and not be beaten in marriage as a matter of religion. It does not allow people to sell their children into slavery, or have them wedded by the age of 12. It has failed to stop male genital mutilation, but that failure is an example of religious power. I would suspect that most Christians and other religious people, can live quite happily with these restrictions.

However it was notable during the debate on whether the State’s category of marriage could be extended to homosexual relationships. No religion was being forced to carry out marriages, just recognise them, as they do other marriages not held in their churches. Many religious people seemed to consider that the attempt to stop them discriminating against others was a threat to their freedom. They naturally did the suggesting that homosexual people were subhuman immoral and deserved to burn in hell line, and seemed surprised that other people responded strongly to these suggestions. Is it that only they should be allowed to abuse others, or that they don’t they see these comments as abuse? Later in the debate when the ‘burn in hell’ lines did not seem to work amongst the general population who don’t think gay people are any worse than other people, they decided to attack heterosexual and Christian marriages as illegitimate if there was no chance of producing children. Naturally they did not put it that way, but that was the logical consequence of arguing that marriage was solely for the production of children. They also kept imagining gay couples will deliberately go to Christian bakers for wedding cakes to upset them. Such are the stands Christians have to take nowadays.

The suggestion of all this, seems to be that Christians should not have to live under the same conditions as everyone else. They demand protection from debate, from having to justify their positions, and from any opposition, even opposition that they have provoked. This campaign, does not seem to be about freedom, but about privilege, and fits the general pattern that right wing identity politics differs from left as it is not about recognising more people’s rights to participate in public life with their full personal identity, but about saying “we are special, and better than others”. It represents an attempt to shut others down. Given Christian history, Christians from minority sects, those who try to live with love rather than condemnation, people from other religions, agnostics etc, should all be worried by this movement.

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What would Satan do?

September 8, 2018

Let us imagine that there is an incredibly powerful evil being who has influence over the earth, and was free for some time to do as he could, for whatever reason.

Well, what would he do?

Well one obvious answer is that he (and let’s be traditional and say he is male) would not try and tempt people one by one. That is a terrible expense of time and effort, for very little result, and he would probably think most humans are contemptible, so why spend time with them? My guess, as to the answer, is that he would try and confuse and corrupt whole civilizations, because its easier – humans reinforce each other’s behavior.

For this purpose he might try to set himself up as the one true God. He could tell his followers that if they obeyed him they would be virtuous and successful, and only they would be virtuous, as everyone else was following false gods. Followers should support each other, and would be rewarded with material prosperity as well. Sounds good, and it reinforces group boundary lines and group loyalties. Then he might ask them to go and kill some people he didn’t like (perhaps they had rejected his claims) and take their land. His followers might object, so he might say he would punish them, so they then decide to go ahead with it, and occupy the land and slaughter the original inhabitants. They would probably not think, “Satan claims to be omnipotent – why can’t he just provide us with unoccupied land, or change some piece of desert into a land of milk and honey for us. Why did we have to slaughter people?” After all obeying Satan is good, by definition, and those who don’t obey him must be evil, so slaughtering these people is permissible.

Satan tells them what they are doing is just. Genocide becomes virtue. Maybe he tells them to kill the men and rape the women. That’s good too, by definition. So Satan gets a war machine. His chosen people, or true believers, can murder, steal and rape with impunity, as long as they keep it under control with each other. He tells them they are surrounded by evil, and they must not associate with non-believers (unless to convert them to be his followers). They should not share food with them, as this is a good way of maintaining boundaries. Non-believers are corrupt and frightening – anything can be said about them, and it is probably true. This further reinforces both group boundaries and the assumption that other people are evil, and deserve persecution.

Some time later he gives up the rewarding followers thing, because well he is evil and its boring, and he tells people he will generally reward them after death. No one will ever find out and bring the real news back. But people now know if the rewards don’t come immediately, with Satan testing their faith, rewards will come in the afterlife, and you should not struggle against Satan’s will, or you might not get the rewards.

However, when things go wrong, he can tell them he is punishing them, perhaps not for their disobedience but for the disobedience of some other people nearby. As the rules are contradictory, or difficult, it is not too hard to find someone (or yourself) to hate and sacrifice to appease Satan’s wrath. That’s good as it produces more terror, although most believers don’t object to terror being the aim, because terror is the beginning of wisdom, or so Satan says.

He then tells people he is a loving and compassionate being. This can confuse people, and as they emulate him, it also shows murder and so on must be compassionate, as long as it is not against fellow true believers. if they worry about that, well Satan is a mystery beyond human understanding. Eventually a few people do think this is incoherent as well. So he responds by telling people he is loving and compassionate and has people who disagree with him tortured for eternity. That can be really confusing. But you had better believe or else you face a dire fate, and you might decide you need to please Satan, and send people to hell to prove you are on his side. If the people you kill are really virtuous, then you can be sure Satan will make it up to them after they are dead. So no worries. If you think hell and compassion don’t go together that well, you must be allied with the forces of real evil, because if you were good, you would have no problems with this teaching, because Satan is good and truly compassionate. He tells us so.

Because they know that by following Satan they are as good as it gets, believers know they are better than non-believers and should rule over them. If they don’t rule over heathen infidels, then they are being oppressed and should strike back. Likewise, men are better than women and should rule over them. Older people should rule over their children. This creates more bad temper, friction and murder. There are few families which are not rent inside, spurring on those evil, vicious and cruel acts, which are (not that) secretly pleasing to Satan.

Perhaps some people come to think that people can be moral without obeying Satan, and that he does not show a very good example anyway. Those people are told that there is no basis for morality other than Satan’s word, and so they are without morality, and should not be listened to, or should be persecuted until they know better. Whatever Satan says is right, and the basis for a good virtuous life. If believers are not allowed to follow Satan’s word exactly, then they are oppressed. Believers also know that rebels against Satan always fail, and are always cursed, because he is the source of everything – so he says. And Satan says he cannot lie, or be mistaken. So that is the end of that. Unbelievers demonstrably have bad morals, as you can see by looking at any society run by non-believers, and they will not be saved – they are not righteously human.

Followers really try to please Satan and even end up fighting other Satan worshipers, over massively important factors of doctrine or history (which look pretty trivial to ignorant non-believers), to preserve the real purity of belief and teaching which is necessary for rewards, and Satan is pleased.

He sits back in his mighty throne and smiles…. It all worked well.

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