Opinion of "identity politics"?

[Antonio the Sixth]

All politics is identity politics.

[Antonio the Sixth]

All politics is identity politics.

This has literally never been true (unless you fabricate a needlessly broad definition of "identity politics" that is too vague to be useful in political analysis).

Any political grouping exists to advocate the interests and values of a specific subset of society at the expense of others, whether they do so explicitly or implicitly. If you have a different definition of identity politics, I'm curious to hear it, but if it's only about setting an arbitrary threshold of explicitness I don't think that's a particularly useful distinction.

[Antonio the Sixth]

All politics is identity politics.

This has literally never been true (unless you fabricate a needlessly broad definition of "identity politics" that is too vague to be useful in political analysis).

Any political grouping exists to advocate the interests and values of a specific subset of society at the expense of others, whether they do so explicitly or implicitly. If you have a different definition of identity politics, I'm curious to hear it, but if it's only about setting an arbitrary threshold of explicitness I don't think that's a particularly useful distinction.

I think it absolutely is useful to differentiate between definitions of identity politics or else the phrase becomes completely useless. Imo "identity politics" is all about the motivations behind (and consequently rhetoric associated with) a bloc voting in unison. Identity politics would imply the group backs a certain candidate because they explicitly represent their demographic indicators. It ranges from the purely superficial to the patronage-based. Bloc voting--outside identity politics--implies people vote the same way as their demographic peers because of shared policy concernsthat are relevant to that particular group but not because of a consious effort to increase the relative power of their "tribe." Both motivations behind bloc voting have--of course--existed for a long time but they're not the same.

I just don't actually think this - issue voting that is truly divorced from a sense of self-identity - is really a thing. Ultimately, all issue voting is rooted in the interpretive lenses that are provided by group identity. Sure, those lenses might not always be made explicit, but I think we gain a better understanding by revealing them than by obscuring them. Like in Nathan's joking example, that Staten Island guy might claim that his politics aren't driven by group-identity, but if you peel the facade just a little, you realize that it's all about group-identity. And on a deeper level, that's equally true of the young white cosmopolitan PMC you and I are part of. Our attitudes are a product of our sociological environment, and that environment ultimately shapes which politicians and policy platforms we recognize as "our own" and which seem alien and hostile.

[Antonio the Sixth]

All politics is identity politics.

This has literally never been true (unless you fabricate a needlessly broad definition of "identity politics" that is too vague to be useful in political analysis).

Any political grouping exists to advocate the interests and values of a specific subset of society at the expense of others, whether they do so explicitly or implicitly. If you have a different definition of identity politics, I'm curious to hear it, but if it's only about setting an arbitrary threshold of explicitness I don't think that's a particularly useful distinction.

I think it absolutely is useful to differentiate between definitions of identity politics or else the phrase becomes completely useless. Imo "identity politics" is all about the motivations behind (and consequently rhetoric associated with) a bloc voting in unison. Identity politics would imply the group backs a certain candidate because they explicitly represent their demographic indicators. It ranges from the purely superficial to the patronage-based. Bloc voting--outside identity politics--implies people vote the same way as their demographic peers because of shared policy concernsthat are relevant to that particular group but not because of a consious effort to increase the relative power of their "tribe." Both motivations behind bloc voting have--of course--existed for a long time but they're not the same.

I just don't actually think this - issue voting that is truly divorced from a sense of self-identity - is really a thing. Ultimately, all issue voting is rooted in the interpretive lenses that are provided by group identity. Sure, those lenses might not always be made explicit, but I think we gain a better understanding by revealing them than by obscuring them. Like in Nathan's joking example, that Staten Island guy might claim that his politics aren't driven by group-identity, but if you peel the facade just a little, you realize that it's all about group-identity. And on a deeper level, that's equally true of the young white cosmopolitan PMC you and I are part of. Our attitudes are a product of our sociological environment, and that environment ultimately shapes which politicians and policy platforms we recognize as "our own" and which seem alien and hostile.

This might be true for the conformist drones who comprise the core base of the major American political parties, but it cannot be applied to anyone else. There are innumerable stories about people who grew up in the same household ultimately developing wildly diverging political beliefs; people of the same race, gender, educational background, income level, and religion are in no way guaranteed to share the exact same opinions on all political issues. I hate to box you into a position where you must adjust your theory so that it accurately describes all political phenomena (even extreme outliers), but by making the sweeping claim that "all politics is based on identity" you leave me no choice. A huge amount of what shapes the average American's political views is rooted in the information that they encounter, which is in turn shaped just as much by dumb luck as it is by identity.

"All politics is identity politics" is a set phrase that I used as a shortcut to make my point. If your retort to it is literally just to say that there are some people who don't think about politics in terms of group identity, fine, I'll apologize for being imprecise in my language. I'm sure there are a few enlightened chads like you who vote purely on the basis of concrete issues and ideological principles (hell, I'll bite the bullet and say I hope I'm like that too).

The point of saying "all politics is identity politics" is to say that this is how mass politics in a modern democracy are necessarily structured. The vast majority of people don't have principled views about most issues - rather, they tend to take their cues from leaders they trust, and which leaders they trust is typically a product of sharing salient identity traits. There's a considerable amount of evidence in political science that confirms that. This leads both parties to try to signal to enough groups that they're "like them" in the image they present, and to try to emphasize a particular aspect of identity at the expense of another.

The fun thing when I made that post is that you're not who I was expecting to argue with. Typically my discussion of identity politics is directed more at the leftists who believe that class is something ontologically different from other identity group, rather than simply an identity group that we have normative reasons to believe ought to be the organizing principle of politics. Although I certainly get why the prevalence of identity in politics might be disturbing to a radical individualist as well.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'm honestly not trying to play gotcha here, but yes, this is essentially what I meant. Obviously it's a sliding scale; I'm sure we are both susceptible to certain identitarian appeals, but by that same logic even the most ignorant Trumpist probably has a couple of political beliefs that aren't informed solely by their own identity. In any case, I don't think it's useful to reduce all of politics to simple tribalism; that's a big part of it, but there is so much more.

I wasn't expecting you to take my comments as implying I was reducing all politics to group conflict. You should know me well enough to know I'm too much of an insufferable moralist for that. I think the Schmittian group conflict framework accurately describes some features of politics as it exists in practice, but it's certainly not what politics ought to be and I believe we can and should have political movements that are cognizant of the group logics inherent in politics and harness them for principled goals instead of being slaves to them. But in the context of this thread, I was trying to push against the idea that "identity politics" is something a specific side of modern US political divide is guilty of rather than simply one of the rules of the game that's being played.

Now, this I am more inclined to agree with. If all the evangelical preachers suddenly decided to start advocating for socialism and all the late-night hosts became libertarians, you'd probably see a startling amount of ideological drift in their respective audiences. People tend to listen to people they trust, and the people who they trust are often part of their "in-group." Again though, I would say that if the policy being advocated for isn't being pushed from an identity-based standpoint, it's still not what I'd call "identity politics."

I think my only correction here would be to say that it's not merely that 'the people who they trust are often part of their "in-group." ', but that they are trusted because they share some identity markers with their audiences. This is the level at which identity politics comes in, imo. And sure, yeah, that is an oversimplification, but I think it's the kind of oversimplification that helps illuminate something important. People vote for parties/politicians, watch shows, go to churches etc. that they perceive to be "for people like them". "People like them" can be defined in a variety of ways from really overt ones like race and religion to something as abstract and nebulous as "Real Americans" and whatnot, but every time there is an implicit mental image of the in-group (and often of the out-group as well). So that's basically what I mean by identity politics. If you think the definition should be limited to when these connections are drawn out loud rather than made implicitly in people's minds, we can agree to disagree, but I do think bringing the implicit to light is absolutely necessary to make any sense of American politics at the moment.