Keskilinjan amerikkalaiskolumnisti David Brooks kirjoittaa artikkelissaan valkoisesta identiteettipolitiikasta ja uskoo että se lopulta tuhoaa republikaanisen puolueen sisältä päin. Kirjoituksessa on asioita joita en allekirjoita, mutta lainaan pätkän mainiosta kirjoituksesta.
But the Republican Party has changed since 2005. It has become the vehicle for white identity politics. In 2005 only six percent of Republicans felt that whites faced “a great deal” of discrimination, the same number of Democrats who felt this.
By 2016, the percentage of Republicans who felt this had tripled. Recent surveys suggest that roughly 47 percent of Republicans are what you might call conservative universalists and maybe 40 percent are what you might call conservative white identitarians. White universalists believe in conservative principles and think they apply to all people and their white identity is not particularly salient to them.
White identitarians are conservative, but their white identity is quite important to them, sometimes even more important than their conservatism. These white identitarians have taken the multicultural worldview taught in schools, universities and the culture and, rightly or wrongly, have applied it to themselves. As Marxism saw history through the lens of class conflict, multiculturalism sees history through the lens of racial conflict and group oppression.
According to a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, for example, about 48 percent of Republicans believe there is “a lot of discrimination” against Christians in America and about 43 percent believe there is a lot of discrimination against whites. I’d love to see more research on the relationship between white identity politics and simple racism. There’s clear overlap, but I suspect they’re not quite the same thing.
Racism is about feeling others are inferior. White identitarianism is about feeling downtrodden and aggrieved yourself. In the P.R.R.I. survey, for example, roughly as many Republicans believe Muslims, immigrants and trans people face a lot of discrimination as believe whites and Christians do. According to a Quinnipiac poll, 59 percent of those in the white working class believe white supremacist groups are a threat to the country.
Brooks leimaa valkoisen identiteettipolitiikan roskaväen touhuksi ja lopulta identiteettipolitiikka siis tuhoa republikaanipuolueen.
Tätä kolumnia on mielenkiintoista verrata demokraattipuolueen kannattajan professori Mark Lillan kolumniin Trumpin voiton jälkeen, jossa Lilla esitti, että Clinton hävisi vaalit koska kampanja perustui "identiteettiliberalismiin".
But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing. One of the many lessons of the recent presidential election campaign and its repugnant outcome is that the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end.
Hillary Clinton was at her best and most uplifting when she spoke about American interests in world affairs and how they relate to our understanding of democracy. But when it came to life at home, she tended on the campaign trail to lose that large vision and slip into the rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, L.G.B.T. and women voters at every stop. This was a strategic mistake. If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded. Which, as the data show, was exactly what happened with the white working class and those with strong religious convictions. Fully two-thirds of white voters without college degrees voted for Donald Trump, as did over 80 percent of white evangelicals.
...liberals [are] not recognizing how their own obsession with diversity has encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being threatened or ignored. Such people are not actually reacting against the reality of our diverse America (they tend, after all, to live in homogeneous areas of the country). But they are reacting against the omnipresent rhetoric of identity, which is what they mean by “political correctness.” Liberals should bear in mind that the first identity movement in American politics was the Ku Klux Klan, which still exists. Those who play the identity game should be prepared to lose it.
We need a post-identity liberalism, and it should draw from the past successes of pre-identity liberalism. Such a liberalism would concentrate on widening its base by appealing to Americans as Americans and emphasizing the issues that affect a vast majority of them. It would speak to the nation as a nation of citizens who are in this together and must help one another. As for narrower issues that are highly charged symbolically and can drive potential allies away, especially those touching on sexuality and religion, such a liberalism would work quietly, sensitively and with a proper sense of scale. (To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, America is sick and tired of hearing about liberals’ damn bathrooms.)
Pitkän linjan laitaoikeistolaisena en tietenkään tuomitse identiteettipolitiikkaa. Kollektivistinen identiteetti on oleellinen osan ihmisyyttä. Hyvä vain että esimerkiksi Euroopassa identitaarinen oikeisto haluaa estää Euroopan islamisoitumisen ja negroidisoitumisen.
Mutta nykyinen kaksijakoisuus, missä identitaarinen oikeisto ja identitaarinen "liberalismi" monopolisoivat keskustelun, on erittäin haitallinen. Meidän puolen identitaristit ovat tehneet itsestään pellejä alkamalla mm. vastustaa ilmastotiedettä ja veljeilemällä venäläisten kanssa. Vasemman puolen identitaristit jauhavat sukupuolineutraaleista vessoista ja ovat viimeisenä tempauksena alkaneet kiusauskampanjan Antti Rinnettä vastaan, koska tämä uskalisi sanoa "synnytystalkoot", mikä muka on naisvihamielistä.
Suomessa tarvitsemme kansakunnan yhtenäisyyttä Venäjän uhkaa vastaan. Sitä ei rakenneta keinotekoisten konfliktien keksimisellä jonninjoutavista aiheista.
But the Republican Party has changed since 2005. It has become the vehicle for white identity politics. In 2005 only six percent of Republicans felt that whites faced “a great deal” of discrimination, the same number of Democrats who felt this.
By 2016, the percentage of Republicans who felt this had tripled. Recent surveys suggest that roughly 47 percent of Republicans are what you might call conservative universalists and maybe 40 percent are what you might call conservative white identitarians. White universalists believe in conservative principles and think they apply to all people and their white identity is not particularly salient to them.
White identitarians are conservative, but their white identity is quite important to them, sometimes even more important than their conservatism. These white identitarians have taken the multicultural worldview taught in schools, universities and the culture and, rightly or wrongly, have applied it to themselves. As Marxism saw history through the lens of class conflict, multiculturalism sees history through the lens of racial conflict and group oppression.
According to a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, for example, about 48 percent of Republicans believe there is “a lot of discrimination” against Christians in America and about 43 percent believe there is a lot of discrimination against whites. I’d love to see more research on the relationship between white identity politics and simple racism. There’s clear overlap, but I suspect they’re not quite the same thing.
Racism is about feeling others are inferior. White identitarianism is about feeling downtrodden and aggrieved yourself. In the P.R.R.I. survey, for example, roughly as many Republicans believe Muslims, immigrants and trans people face a lot of discrimination as believe whites and Christians do. According to a Quinnipiac poll, 59 percent of those in the white working class believe white supremacist groups are a threat to the country.
Brooks leimaa valkoisen identiteettipolitiikan roskaväen touhuksi ja lopulta identiteettipolitiikka siis tuhoa republikaanipuolueen.
Tätä kolumnia on mielenkiintoista verrata demokraattipuolueen kannattajan professori Mark Lillan kolumniin Trumpin voiton jälkeen, jossa Lilla esitti, että Clinton hävisi vaalit koska kampanja perustui "identiteettiliberalismiin".
But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing. One of the many lessons of the recent presidential election campaign and its repugnant outcome is that the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end.
Hillary Clinton was at her best and most uplifting when she spoke about American interests in world affairs and how they relate to our understanding of democracy. But when it came to life at home, she tended on the campaign trail to lose that large vision and slip into the rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, L.G.B.T. and women voters at every stop. This was a strategic mistake. If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded. Which, as the data show, was exactly what happened with the white working class and those with strong religious convictions. Fully two-thirds of white voters without college degrees voted for Donald Trump, as did over 80 percent of white evangelicals.
...liberals [are] not recognizing how their own obsession with diversity has encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being threatened or ignored. Such people are not actually reacting against the reality of our diverse America (they tend, after all, to live in homogeneous areas of the country). But they are reacting against the omnipresent rhetoric of identity, which is what they mean by “political correctness.” Liberals should bear in mind that the first identity movement in American politics was the Ku Klux Klan, which still exists. Those who play the identity game should be prepared to lose it.
We need a post-identity liberalism, and it should draw from the past successes of pre-identity liberalism. Such a liberalism would concentrate on widening its base by appealing to Americans as Americans and emphasizing the issues that affect a vast majority of them. It would speak to the nation as a nation of citizens who are in this together and must help one another. As for narrower issues that are highly charged symbolically and can drive potential allies away, especially those touching on sexuality and religion, such a liberalism would work quietly, sensitively and with a proper sense of scale. (To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, America is sick and tired of hearing about liberals’ damn bathrooms.)
Pitkän linjan laitaoikeistolaisena en tietenkään tuomitse identiteettipolitiikkaa. Kollektivistinen identiteetti on oleellinen osan ihmisyyttä. Hyvä vain että esimerkiksi Euroopassa identitaarinen oikeisto haluaa estää Euroopan islamisoitumisen ja negroidisoitumisen.
Mutta nykyinen kaksijakoisuus, missä identitaarinen oikeisto ja identitaarinen "liberalismi" monopolisoivat keskustelun, on erittäin haitallinen. Meidän puolen identitaristit ovat tehneet itsestään pellejä alkamalla mm. vastustaa ilmastotiedettä ja veljeilemällä venäläisten kanssa. Vasemman puolen identitaristit jauhavat sukupuolineutraaleista vessoista ja ovat viimeisenä tempauksena alkaneet kiusauskampanjan Antti Rinnettä vastaan, koska tämä uskalisi sanoa "synnytystalkoot", mikä muka on naisvihamielistä.
Suomessa tarvitsemme kansakunnan yhtenäisyyttä Venäjän uhkaa vastaan. Sitä ei rakenneta keinotekoisten konfliktien keksimisellä jonninjoutavista aiheista.
4 kommenttia:
Suomessa on toistaiseksi varaa siihen ylellisyyteen, ettei mennä mukaan identiteettipolitiikkaan, koska omat rodulliset vähemmistöt ovat vielä riittävän pieniä. Mutta ei pidä kuvitella, ettei se politiikka siihen lopulta kuitenkin menisi. Olemme peliteoreettisen ongelman vankeja, eikä ihmisten oman kollektiivisen edun ajamista voi mitenkään ehkäistä, vaikka se johtaa ilmiselvästi kaikkien ryhmien aseman kollektiiviseen heikkenemiseen. On siis vähän naivia sanoa; "Hei ei me mennä sitten mukaan tähän sotaan", kun naapurimaat on jo tulessa, kuvainnollisesti sanottuna tietenkin.
Ilmastotiede saa puolestani olla, sillä en pitäisi yleistä köyhtymistä kovin pahana asiana, enkä taistele sitä vastaan. Kunhan nyt sairaaloissa sähköt pidetään, eikä koko energiapoliittista humppaa rahoiteta kotitalouksien maksuja kiristämällä.
Venäjän suhteen taas aika yksinkertaisesti pitää käydä poliittista sotaa Venäjää vastaan ja hengellistä sotaa sen puolesta.
Identiteettiliberaalit alkavat olla jo ongelma homoillekin. Kiitos Henri Laasaselle tästä https://www.qx.fi/debatti/235615/debatti-feministit-ovat-vaaristaneet-keskustelun-ihmisoikeuksista/
Kuten olen ennenkin sanonut identiteettiliberaaleja ei homojen "ongelmat" oikeasti kiinnosta - kyse on signaloinnista.
Pahakuutti, olet toki oikeassa. Kyse on ehkä siitä missä määrin identiteettipolitiikka pääsee vaikuttamaan. Maahanmuuttajat eivät ole identiteettipolitiikan ensi sijainen lisääjä vaan pikemmin kantaväestön ne ryhmät jotka asettuvat jyrkästi maahanmuuttoa vastaan tai jyrkästi sen puolelle. (No maahanmuutto ei tietysti ole ainoa aihe joka generoi identiteettipolitiikkaa.)
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