Brocialism and Identity Politics

I'm having an internal conflict, Holla Forums. I've considered myself a feminist and an anti-racist for as long as I've been in politics. Women's and LGBT+ are very important to me, abortion, marriage equality, etc. At the same time however I consider myself opposed to Identity politics, electing a female to oppress the proles instead of a man, White people are muh privileged even if they are poor,etc. Because of this I feel turned off to both sides of the argument, both the Brocialists and the "IdPol" Socialists. Is it at all possible to be in the middle? Could you guys give me objective arguments from both sides? For and against Intersectionality, Class Essentialism, Etc

Other urls found in this thread:

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lupus-dragonowl-against-identity-politics
zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-27/about-whiteness-uc-berkeley-students-segregate-campus-block-bridge-human-wall
frontpagemag.com/fpm/257808/profound-racism-black-lives-matter-john-perazzo
youtube.com/watch?v=qgeCc4soa4A
youtube.com/watch?v=jxrsbjlRHrM
escalatingidentity.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/who-is-oakland-anti-oppression-politics-decolonization-and-the-state/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

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Yes. Both the hardcore Brocialists that refuse to acknowledge that racism and homophobia are still serious and the SJW arm chair warriors that want to create a fucking PC Newspeak language are both retarded.

Be reasonable. Understand that minorities still get special extra shit flung at them while still understanding that using words like "retard" or "spaz" or electing a woman to office because "it's progressive" is completely fucking stupid.

1. brocialism is a meme
2. most of us are feminists, just not bourgie liberal feminists like your mods.
3. materialism > muh bourgois representation quotas

It was identitarian politics which resulted in these """""opressed groups""""""" in the first place, via segregation, denying women the right to vote etc.

It plays little function within the 21st century. Most of us on this board would agree that sexism and racism is wrong, but we've got more important shit to worry about as opposed to some dumb bitch whining about manspreading and whitesplaining. They can honestly suck a big fat warty dick they are beyond useless. They are in fact: not needed.

But even then, let's look at this through the scope of theory.

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lupus-dragonowl-against-identity-politics

IPs seek to reproduce institutions of hierarchical power. The alternative here is affinity: the attempt to form connections, informal groups, and unions of egoists without these groups being mediated by spectres. Creating unmediated intercourse across socially operative hierarchies (race, gender, etc) is complicated, but by no means impossible - nor necessarily more difficult than creating unmediated intercourse between members of the same category. Where radicalism works well, it manages to construct such direct connections. As Landstreicher argues, “[t]he awareness each has of the others’ individuality creates a basis where decision and action need not be separate” (21). Relating to others as unique beings, as non-disposable creatures valuable in themselves, makes possible communication even in contexts of radical difference. Anarchic affinity is undermined by the inability to challenge others’ views, the construction of oppressed people as Experts, and the idea of incommensurability (Dot Matrix, CWS). This actually reinforces binary thinking and relations of domination.

IPs start from a standpoint within the dominant system of spectres, and encourage us to identify with our position within systems of oppression (Gelderloos, 13). They require that “any person interested in radical transformation relinquish the ability to define her/ himself” (Jarach, 5). Instead, people are to dissolve themselves into the pre-existing social categories into which they are classified, both by the dominant system and by IPs. As Jarach argues, “they can’t conceive of the possibility that the elevation of any particular culturally constructed marker into a significant value-laden category could lead to oppression” (3). Indeed, they define the possibility out of existence: we really are our categories; to oppress is to oppress a category; to liberate is to liberate a category. And leadership of Experts is necessary, if the extensional set are to be reduced to the spectre.

From a Stirnerian point of view, instead of starting from a subject-position assigned by the regime of spectres and categories, anarchists should start from a standpoint of being a unique individual irreducible to any spectre or category (including those of uniqueness and individuality). A Stirnerian recognises racism or sexism, not as one's own muh privilege separating one from the other, but as an act of normative repression against other unique ones, and an insult against one’s own uniqueness. The intensity of internal and external barriers to free expression vary with context, but there is a basis for networking together in the rejection of alienation and spectres. This is recognised from non-Eurocentric perspectives; some indigenous scholars argue that modern alienation is a kind of sickness, afflicting colonisers as well as colonised - indeed, that the colonisers infected the colonised because they were already sick (Duran and Duran, Burman). This position meshes with the Stirnerian view that oppressor as well as oppressed is possessed by spectres.

Anarchy does not necessarily stem from any identity at all. More often, it comes from a standpoint outside the field of available identities - as in Stirner's idea of a standpoint unique to each person (190-1). Gelderloos argues that his own experience is that “[a]ll the identities that society tried to stitch me into don't fit, and the fabric is coarse” (6), offering “an inheritance stripped of anything I value” (7). Similarly, for another anonymous anarchist, “Our task is not to give up some phantom muh privilege that has never really been our own, but to expose and move beyond the artificial identities that smother our individuality” (Willful Disobedience).

MANARCHISM AND BROCIALISM WILL WIN

"Brocialism" is a strawman, it's a term used by idpolers (usually but not always liberals - witness "berniebros") for actual socialism. As comrade Marx wrote, the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle.

"Identity politics" is nationalism and its equivalents; one need not (despite the repeated claims of idpolers) support racism or sexism to reject it, and indeed supporting racism or sexism is a form of identity politics in and of itself - in that they treat one's race and gender as meaningful categories worthy of supporting their "side" of in some kind of struggle.

This notion of a struggle based not on class but on identity inevitably leads to a lack of solidarity with all proletarians, and support for the segment of the bourgeoisie which shares one's "identity". But this support is never replicated, because its purpose is to reinforce capitalism, not destroy it.

75% of the time brocialism is "why doesn't this white male want to give blacks complete supremacy"
The other 25% is actual racist idpol from the left
I personally never use the term because it's associated with marxism-redditism-tumblrism and the fact that pointing out idpol and ideology is more effective than screaming "brocialist" anyways

Cont.

Of course, then we take into consideration the lack of individuality of identity based on idpol.

How fitting it is for a rich black woman to claim she's opressed and tweet #BLM from her million dollar house, despite the fact that it comes down to her being bourgeoisie.

"Oh but she must be opressed because she herself is black, racism = power + prejudice"

Ah, so when universities (an institution which contains quite a bit of power) bar white kids from entering certain venues, that's not racism?

zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-27/about-whiteness-uc-berkeley-students-segregate-campus-block-bridge-human-wall

Or when BLM fuckwits start targetting white kids or white people and tell people who support them to go to the back of the line, or label black people who disagree with them a coon or a house nigger, that's not racist?

frontpagemag.com/fpm/257808/profound-racism-black-lives-matter-john-perazzo

Fuck off.

Or maybe I should just forget about the horrid race relations happening in south Africa, in which some Africans are using a form of institutions to voice quite horrid opinions on white people and generalising them, while other black people who don't stand for this bullshit are ignored and told to hate the white man?

youtube.com/watch?v=qgeCc4soa4A

Fuck off.

I guess we should also forget about major institutions such as MTV which promote some pretty vile shit "New years resolution for white people anyone?"

youtube.com/watch?v=jxrsbjlRHrM

Fuck off.

I could go on about the stormfags, but I figure you're smart enough to know that they're fucking retarded as well.

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It's not about being in the middle. It's about how you understand intersectionality in the first place.

There are at least two versions of identity politics which differ in how they understand class and racist / sexist oppression and the relation between these two. The problem is that many leftists who are interested in intersectional analysis adopt the version of IdPol that is promoted by milquetoast liberals, which is itself a reductionist view, except that it reduces oppression to inequalities of cultural recognition, as opposed to material inequalities (in sociology there are three resources: Political power, material resources and cultural recognition, and all class systems are structured inequalities of access to one of these things for groups of people based on different social identifiers)

But there is a leftist version of the theory which does not do this. In fact it happens to be the original version of this analysis. The very important intersectional feminist, Bell Hooks, was so mad at the prevalence of cultural reductionist views that she actually wrote a small book called Class Matters dedicated to this, noting exactly what you say. Breaking the ceiling, say by electing a woman president of the US, does not in itself change the situation of the working class. But many of the workers are women, and if we do intersectionality right, it's precisely to their joint identity as working class women, that we must look to understand their condition and the oppression they are facing. But milquetoast liberals don't want us to do that. They want us to completely ignore the economic and social class of those women, and instead try to isolate any oppression they face solely as women. This is not something that can't be done, and there surely is some oppression they face that could be reduced merely to their social recognition as women and existing cultural conventions. But it's also explicitly not intersectional analysis. It's just the opposite.

In fact the liberation that these identity politics result in is something totally compattible with capitalism. Actually, it's something that naturally happens as capitalist accumulation progresses. That is that all relations of oppression aside from that between the workers and the capitalists is abolished, leaving it to predominate the structure of our social world. It's equality within classes, not the abolition of class and general equality in freedom between humans. On one hand, this is a good thing because it creates a homogenous working class. On the other, it is a selective liberation of women. They are still oppressed, they just have fewer masters, the capitalist class and therefore it is not actually part of a liberation project (even a feminist one), unless you're an accelerationist.

Finally, there are four views on structured inequality. Cultural reductionists reduce inequalities of access to material resources and political power to inequalities of cultural recognition. Others reduce everything to economic inequalities or inequalities of political power. The only non-reductionist view sees each form of structured inequality influencing each other, but also recognises that there can be runaway inequalities. For instance inequalities of access to political power may cause economic inequality, but even when fixing the former, the latter may persist and perpetuate itself for some time. Or cultural inequalities may become ingrained and so on.