I'm pretty new to left thought but idpol weirds me out

DemSoc in recovery here.

I just recently discovered Anarchism about 3 months ago from going out and LARPing in Berkeley.

One thing that I'm struggling with a little bit is identity politics. I'm ok with black people embracing their history or queers embracing theirs but I hate the idea of using your color, gender, sex, or anything else to gain an upper hand in a discussion.

I'm white, straight, and working class so I guess IdPol doesn't apply to me but it really pisses me off when I'm trying to have a discussion and all the sudden I get a Reddit user telling me to "check my muh privilege whitey". Ok. I checked my white cis-gendered male muh privilege. Can we now talk about how Capitalism is destroying the fucking planet and how it discriminates against everybody even ME? Just because I don't understand YOUR specific struggle doesn't mean I don't respect you any less as an individual.

Folks here seem to be pretty anti idpol but I'm hoping I can get a variety of advice here.

I guess my big problem is the idea that somehow my opinions of issues holds less value because of who I am. Its come to the point now where I feel like I have to say "I'm sorry for being white. Can I please participate in conversation about class struggle?"

I need some help comrades. What the fuck do I do?

Other urls found in this thread:

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lupus-dragonowl-against-identity-politics
twitter.com/AnonBabble

OP here… typing from phone and apparently male got changed to muh… fml

You can't complain about victim hierarchy when being a victim is at the center of your ideology.

Which is why Standpoint Theory is the central issue with idpol. No one on this board, besides falseflagging Holla Forumsyps and the most misguided newfags would try to claim that racism and sexism aren't real, the issue with idpol is theoretical, and bad theory leads to bad praxis. Standpoint Theory dictates that what's important isn't what you say, or how logically consistent what you say is, but rather who you are when you say it. It might sound like I'm being reductionist but Standpoint Theory literally dictates that the more oppressed you are the more right you are, and it creates an environment where everyone is just vying for that bottom position of "most oppressed", it creates an envirnment where being oppressed becomes a form of social capital, everything just becomes a matter of who's in the in crowd and who's in the out crowd. This is why idpol has degenerated from a politics to a form of morality and social etiquette, notice that most idpolers don't have any concrete belief in actionable politics, they just know that being "priv.liged" or being "proble.matic" make you a bad person, and that certain words make you a bad person, and then from there it's just an excuse for certain personality types to constantly abuse their positions within these circles to constantly publicly humiliate and belittle others so they can feel powerful for a second.

The theories behind idpol aren't necessarily wrong, they just miss the point, and are useless for promoting class solidarity.

For all the best efforts of idpol groups like feminists and race activists, they always defeat their own efforts by not standing with the working class above all else.

I think there's a backlash against idpol brewing. People on the internet are getting sick of SJW leftism, and are getting more interested in class. This is evident by the upsurge of "dirtbag left" on Twitter and leftypol here

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

Meanwhile in reality.

I should also point out that these people think being racist or sexist is inherent to one's subject positionality, i.e. "all whites are racist", "all men are sexist". So there's no pleasing them, there's no light at the end of the tunnel for them, there's no point to what they're even doing by their own logic. No matter how much you self-educate they'll never belive you've been "cured" of these original sins.

Marx himself said that economists and philosophers who aren't marxists were merely rationalizing their bourgeois interests and could be dismissed for that reason.

OP here! Thank you for this response.

I'm glad I'm not considered a class reductionist because of my views.

I always just felt that class struggle should encompass all identities. There's nothing wrong with sharing a struggle that is unique to your traits but at the end of the day, oppression of all types in my eyes is because of Capitalism.

This is your brain on Reddit, folks…

:( I'm trying man I'm sorry

Then you don't belong here, libcuck

I thinks rebel may be indeed loosing he/her mind

i think people here need to be more critical of whiteness and heteronormativity and the many subtle ways they affect discourse and muh privilege certain perspectives. To do otherwise is to invite Holla Forums infiltration: too many of the anti idpolers here are obviously white straight male Holla Forums dropouts who obviously feel a lot of resentment towards POC women and queers and want to silence anything that hurts their fragile white egos

I'm not sure if you're tumblr or Holla Forums falseflagging, but go away.

poor bait attempt

lel

notice how only white straight males are ever 'anti idpol' hmm

wdhmbt?

No fam, that was just "privilege" getting wordfiltered to "muh muh privilege"

Tumblr really did a number on your brain, didn't it?

Class reductionism is good at this point. It doesn't matter whether there are problems tied to identity or not at this point - idpol has, in fact, made it impossible to address them. Yes, Tumblr has entirely sabotaged everything it has ever touched.
It can only encompass no identities at this point and be extremist and unremitting in its stance towards any instance of the law of value. Take the class-reductionist pill.

That's not at all what he said.

am i not right? why is it so hard to acknowledge we live in a white supremacist society? that there is a bias that permeates all aspects of our culture, even far left politics

Well, the fact that the US recently had a black president pretty much shows that the ruling class ultimately doesn't care about race. We are dominated by capitalism, not white supremacy

did that stop white cops from killing black people? did that stop racism? wasn't obama subject to racist attacks from the very start to the very end? wasn't he replaced by a white supremacist in the white house?

...

Cops kill everybody who is not part of the elite. inb4 disproportionate representation of a particular identity in statistics

the historic origins of the police force lie in slave patrols, the police is historically and by definition a white supremacist institution

Notice that all those black kids getting killed are poor. Racism exists to divide the working class. The system doesn't care about the skin colour of the ruling class, so long as they maintain the status quo. This is why Obama did nothing to stop institutional racism.
As for all the GOP assholes complaining about Obama: Surprise, racist people exist, even among the ruling class, and they like to pander to the proles. But Trump's view on Islam didn't stop him from shaking hands with the Saudi king. Ultimately the ruling class of all countries have a lot more in common with each other than they have to their own proletariat, and it is in their interests to keep the proletariat divided.

You are thinking of the Federal Mashalls, not police in general. Police go back farther than plantation slavery.

Shut the fuck up

BITCH

No fam, the first police were created as enforcers of Capital: to break strikes, to quell protests, and, yes, to put down slave uprisings. Before that they used to send the military, which tended to escalate things, since soldiers are trained to kill people.

Not an argument fam. Stay mad

Black Harvard professors have been arrested for breaking into their own homes, an off duty black cop was shot by his coworkers last week

Just tell those idol people to fuck off when you encounter them.

Also happens to poor whites.

Wut

You sound like such a spooked cuck, and somebody trying to pander for nigga points.

Blue-on-blue crime needs to happen more often.

Happens to whites too. Cops are just dipshits.

I wonder if Rebel has anyone to play the role of Mako for her

This. It breaks down even in the trivial case of just class, i.e. "I'm a prole, so I'll necessarily know more about capitalist antagonisms than a bourgeois" is patently false (for instance, seeing as capitalists tend to understand these antagonisms better, or instinctually behave as though they did, because the process of retaining control of means of production against competition, accumulation, and the proles involves selective pressures towards that end.)
The other issue is reversing cause and effect, for instance "capitalism is built on (and requires) white supremacy" rather than vice versa. This displaces materialism for idealism.


Eh, I mean, social oppression does kind of reduce to class. Not in the naive sense that "class is all that matters" but in the sense that class and class antagonisms are the ultimate cause of any real discrimination. For prejudice to harm people or society in any way, it must become actualized through control over material things and the social relations involving them (pic related.) Additionally, prejudiced attitudes are largely a product of these same class antagonisms, as any cursory trip through history will more than show. But this is largely irrelevant either way - it is hopeless to presume to control everyone's attitudes; we must invariably settle for liberating everyone.


1. any evidence of this?
2. it's ad hom lmao
Or maybe they would really like a revolution that liberates all and fully resolves the contradictions of capitalism, and are leery of the academic currents with serious, serious theoretical issues which have time and again led to diversionary struggles and the death of working class uprisings, to the sole benefit of the bourgeoisie?

Really?! Can you give me a link to this shit, need new fap material.

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