So me and my little uni left-wing group are currently engaged in some debates with other left-wing groups there, and the identitarians in general are being a problem.
There is a black group that hosted two panels we were invited to about the Left and black people, and pretty much every other group parroted the right things about blacks except us. We, instead, criticized identitarianism, said that their current inability to think past cultural signs is a symptom of their weakness, spoke about the economic origins of racism, and made other arguments that most of Holla Forums has probably heard.
It created a shitstorm among the people who care about in the uni and we're being kind of ostracized. We also got a reputation of being sexist out of nowhere.
Should I just give up? I feel like everything we say will just be deliberately misinterpreted in order to fit some strawman. There's no point in debating. I thought about just letting it go, but someone has suggested that if we started attacking them as they're attacking us we could show the divide between socialism and SJW politics and force people to take sides, and someone else suggested that we could have more debates, record them and put them online, where the behavior of the SJW groups (let's just say it's exactly what you'd expect) could easily go viral and bring people to our side, and show regular people who hate identity politics that there is a left-wing alternative.
Go, comrade! Expose how their idealist identitarian politics play right into porky's hands and conceal the true roots. Use the work of Marxist Feminists and Black Socialists to your advantage, to demonstrate the material basis of racism, sexism and oppression that is seen in the capitalist system. These spineless liberal traitors have been holding us down long enough. Godspeed.
Carson Nelson
Give use more deets about what you said and how they responded
Juan Jones
Hilarious thing about that is that this is precisely what we did because we knew that they would play the "when minorities speak you need to sit down and listen" card, so we found quotes from groups like the Panthers, people like Kwame Ture and african socialists to retort, and then they accused us of appropriating black voices to push our narrative. You just can't win.
Jose Baker
Out of curiousity, how many of these people are white themselves?
Samuel Russell
You can cite revolutionary arguments from historical feminists, black leaders, indigenous leaders, etc. Connect the dots and demonstrate the times everyone worked together in their common struggle.
Don't combat them. I think their movement is reaching a dead end and they need a new place to focus their energy.
MLK didn't fight for us to be separate but equal - he fought for poor people everywhere:
Jaxon Watson
Them? It's a black group, no white people in.
If you're asking us, we are a very small group of not even 30 people, we're not all white and people of color among us also tend to be part of the group we were debating.
Samuel Thomas
Yes, but MLK in particular is a terrible figure to quote. It hits some wrong notes, because black people are way too used to the media and conservatives using him condescendingly in order to tell them how to act.
Benjamin Watson
Ah. I'd ask what exactly makes it your narrative, in that case, and why they would try to minimize the responsibility of wealthy elites.
This, and I would be careful to not be an actual class reductionist either, and be ready to admit when blacks and women have gotten it harder than others.
Dominic Carter
The real problem with identitarianism is that it presents itself as a complete worldview, one that makes people feckless to the status quo. It appeals so strongly to personal biases that people cannot even imagine politics without identity; when they hear vocal opposition to it, they just assume it's about identitarian politics other than theirs.
So if you base your politics explicitly around being anti-idpol you'll just get invaded by dudebros that want to ramble casually about the evil shitskins instead of the blue haired whales.
Brayden Butler
Post a flyer/send them a message In that message, tell them exactly what they want to hear. Say that your club is in total solidarity with their movements, oppose male and white muh privilege, and oppose mass incarceration, police brutality, etc etc. Say your reaching out and want more minority members, in addition to the many you already have. Then, in meetings and flyers, blast your anti capitalist message full stop using those quotes from poc and lgbtqxyz activists. And bring up examples of politicians paying lip service to liberal causes while killing people in wars, expanding the police state, exploiting workers, destroying the environment, etc etc, and how all that is necessitated by capitalism
Joshua Gray
These petty "polemics" are pretty much everyday in uni politics and should be the least of your worries.
I don't know exactly what your arguments were in the debate (since "the Left and black people" is a very wide topic perhaps needs some context, was it about BLM or something?) but if you explained thing properly it shouldn't be a problem. Take what you mentioned about looking past cultural signs and make it real; like says, do tons of propaganda, speeches and what not, and recruit people into your group, until your politics are dominant in the campus. Show dedication to your postures and go all the way or go home.
Then again, it's not entirely wrong to do as and say and just accept that there are race and gender problems, maybe even send messages in solidarity, but that they ultimately have economic origins and anyone who wants to end racism/sexism should also fight capitalism.
Ultimately, the way to win is to appeal to the whole of the students. This also means students that aren't into Marxist theory or "politics" or whatever, which should be the majority of your campus - you guys *must* think about a way to work with them! Maybe think about how capitalism generates contradictions in your education and then make other, groups that agitate that. Think something like the "Fight for $15" campaigns: their objective is to ultimately reveal the "decent living vs. capitalism" contradiction to the workers, you can fight for a living wage but as long as capitalism exists we won't be guaranteed a living wage.
This is how you'll appeal as a revolutionary alternative to the majority of the students, and not just to the niche groups that idpol reaches out to.
This is an obvious fallacy and you should point it out as so.
Kudos to you OP for engaging in actual left politics; we need more people doing this rather than the typical tumblr-tier shit, or just shitposting here in Holla Forums.
Pic related may be useful if you ever want to talk feminism, I really have nothing else to show.
John Brooks
Yes. If not, enjoy being slandered and doxxed.
Ian Davis
This. Distance yourselves from them and make your own movement, based on sound theory, instead of identity politics.
Blake Martinez
Lupus Dragonowl and Jacobin have some good stuff on identitarianism/identity politics
Jordan Taylor
bump
Ryder James
No. There needs to be bastions of true leftism like the one you've made in order to cut through the mire of idpol. Keep on bludgeoning, OP. you'll get somewhere eventually.
Isaiah Walker
No, because that's what these people want. They want their little bubble and status quo. Be as big a thorn in their side as possible, at the very least.
Christopher Nguyen
this man is your comrade, he fights for freedom!
Julian Gray
Comrades.
You are fighting the good fight.
Keep it up.
Nicholas Hernandez
oh, you mean how to be an identarian?
Henry Anderson
You should have just supported black separatism OP. They would've eaten it up.
Oliver Perry
Can someone explain how the result of woman being kept as house servants up until this last half century is a result of muhterial kundishins, and capitalism?
Michael Taylor
Nice hysterical exaggeration, I don't see you complaining about the men being sent off to be gassed or down the mines.
Even if that was the case, what does that have to do with present conditions?
Grayson Butler
Capitalism in this scenario is liberating, because it integrated women into the work force and is gradually doing away with the family. The material and economic circumstances of pre-capitalist agrarian societies, where the family was an economic unit whose structure mirrored those of feudal order, is what shaped the traditional gender roles and the division of tasks within the family. Of course, liberalism has no use for that anymore.
Ian Hernandez
Women had no means to survive on their own or any institutional power so they had to rely on men who did.
