Idpol, ideology, and "Capitalism With a Human Face"

I realize there's an oncoming onslaught of people with this post, but I want to have a serious discussion without demonizing anyone, and so if I do that, then I do apologize and want to say it isn't intentional. I'll be honest now, I am a feminist, but I have a hard time reconciling my feminism with a lot of the idpol sides of it. I'm as annoyed by trigglypuff tumblrite types as anyone else, but I keep looking around and seeing many people who are just as bad on the other side [gender essentialists, etc.]

I get why people get annoyed by SJW's. They distract from class struggle, a lot of them write off critiques, many of them are legitimate white knights and just bad people, but what I'm asking is, is it okay to think there's a dimension of truth to some of what they say?

A good example, right, I don't think every white guy is literally an evil devil clansman, this is a "no shit"'er, but I don't disagree with the idea that people in, say, a majority-white country might have a degree of unintended racial bias.

Or another one, I do agree with intersectionality - but the problem I have with intersectionality is in the pretense Liberals have given to it where "All white ppl r innately moar privilegged than errybody elz!" Personally, I find an intersectional analysis that discounts class to be sickeningly worthless.

What I'm saying is, is it k to be in that sort of camp if I'm not fucking shitnuts insane about it?

Also, this somewhat ties into an oncoming analysis: essentially, I think Neoliberalism's appropriation of these concepts is the reason why so many are turning to the alt-right. Someone hears Shillary talking about her presidency as a "true success for womenz duh wurld over!" and they think "Well, if this dumb cunt's the face of Feminazism, I can't be a feminist."

Again, I'm not trying to call anyone a sinner or "reactionary" if they disagree with me. I'm open to discussion, and I hope this thread doesn't just devolve into a shitflinging contest on any of our ends. I'm honestly being incredibly careful to not step on any toes here, because I get where the anger comes from and even find some of the criticisms valid. Hopefully this was all comprehensible and we can have a good discussion about it.

GET OUT.

I feel the same way op. I think by far the worst part of left idpol is it's tendency to breed right wing idpol.

If sjws are "defending" black people we have to resist the temptation to say "fuck black people"

I think that is pretty obvious, but apparently not.

You're right. There's a reason that a lot of feminist writers are socialists, because they recognize the need for systemic change hierarchy as a de facto system in general. The conflation here with Tumblr SJWs and feminists is as bad as the right's conflation of the DPRK and communism.

Also read bell hooks' "Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center." You can find a free PDF and I imagine you'd like it based on what you said.

There's no conflation, feminists just aren't happy until they have it all. They have the entire left internet to discuss this and still here they, concern trolling and trying to slide the board towards idpol. What has feminism done for the left recently besides water down debate into liberal feel good shit and push thousands of people into the arms of the right? They only care about themselves and grandstanding on social media and deserve to be shunned.

Read Adolph Reeds

You're reasonable and I don't really have an issue with your views, OP. I can't speak for anyone else, but your feminism (at least judging by this post) is not the kind I'm complaining about.

Then again, I can't say I wholly agree. I do think many feminists have internalized some kind of loopy ideas about the unconscious, and think campaigns based on language policing and thought purification are inevitably ineffectual. But then again I also think that a lot of *conscious* (if far milder than Holla Forums) racism and sexism survives in the west that tends to be downplayed in favor of the unconscious bias theory.

And I do think that intersectionality is fundamentally wrongheaded in failing to grasp the base-superstructure relationship - not that the problems complained about by intersectionalists are themselves false, but that I don't think it provides an effective framework for solving them. It seems to envision a system of hierarchy forged not in material structures produced as a justification and prop for elite rule, but in personal failings - and as such, most of the activism I've seen from the intersectional camp treats moralism as an alternative to revolution. (Exceptions in this regard are a few socialist feminists, and in their case I don't know if their embrace of intersectional theory is sincere or a rhetorical tool to push intersectional feminists left.)

But then again, I don't 100% agree with anyone. You're not my enemy or someone I want to chase out - I want to end structural racism and sexism, I just see myself as taking a different path to the same goal.

Firstly, just wanna say, thank you for being as respectful as you are. Secondly, I absolutely agree with your critiques of unconscious bias theory being too commonly used. I feel in some ways, the theory is definitely salvageable in the sense that many of them need to begin taking class into account almost as a firsthand, then spread out to how the economic sphere relates to the way racial/gender politics has played out. Also, I completely get your opinion on the language policing and I definitely think our side would benefit wholesale by dropping that kind of thing.


I'm not concern trolling, dude. Nor am I trying to push anyone toward my ideas. If you disagree with me, you disagree with me, and that's cool.


I've had it on my computer for awhile, but I'll definitely start reading it soon.

[forgot this one]
I'll check him out, thank you.

I think most people on leftypol—if they aren’t petulant teenagers or recently converted Holla Forumsyps—think roughly the same as you.

Gender and race issues are quite obviously real, and neoliberal capital has quite obviously “appropriated” (rather, recuperated) these causes, so a lot of snowflakes on leftypol get triggered when you bring it up.

Well, let's think about this way.

A lot - and I mean a lot - of people agree with the most common critiques of capitalism made by socialists. Our analysis is often right, they say, but our solutions to it are wrong. And the majority of these people do not side with us, because they need both the diagnosis and the proper medicine. Without both, there's no commitment from them, and there may even be hostility if our remedy is worse than what they consider the disease to be.

Our attitude towards the SJWs, except for a few minor fringe groups who are essentially anti-capitalist conservative, is similar to this one. Yes, they are often right when they criticize sexism or racism in society. They are also more often than not wrong when it comes to their proposed solution. And what we're fighting against is not so much the diagnostic people make about prejudice, but an entire culture that has internalized these awful solutions as their inevitable outcome.

And the problem is that, particularly in our case, their solutions often goes against basic tenets of our worldview. If we take racism as a frame of reference, for example, you can say that within the "racism is a problem" crowd you have two distinct theories: one is the idea that racism is the result of a racist attitude, and that people of color are kept down because they can't progress in a society dominated by this attitude (that is, Culture shapes our material reality) and the other is the idea that these notions of racial inferiority could not exist if different races did not correspond to radically different socioeconomic circumstances, diverging from the norm in terms not only of capital, money and skill, but also of cultural and social capital (that is, material reality creates our Culture) and although most people occupy different positions in an entire spectrum between these two points instead of completely siding with one, the perspective you're more inclined towards can lead to some radically different conclusions from the people inclined towards the other. One means that you don't really have to change our material reality in order to erase cultural biases, so we should just move on towards eliminating those in the existing system. The other presupposes a radical change in this material reality, which means that we must re-organize our entire economy. So just because we start from similar points (e.g. Racism/Sexism/whatever-ism exist and suck) doesn't mean we arrive at the same conclusions.

And I'd say that this is where we diverge from them. Their complaints are not illegitimate, their methodology is. And that methodology is not only faulty, but it leads to some really vicious patterns of thinking and behavior. That is, if the way we interact with each other becomes the alpha and omega of our solution to prejudice, then as long as certain inequalities exist we'll continuously be rethinking our vocabulary, learning and re-learning how to act properly towards minorities, changing our clothes, tastes and behaviors in order to accomodate them, etc. These are all valid to a certain degree, but when it comes to fixing major inequalities (like, say, racial inequality) it will achieve nothing, and people will obviously react against it, as they already are. We can't always be having "conversations" and dramatic moments of "addressing the problem", as much as people seem to have fallen in love with this method.

And the sad thing is that this practice is not only mainstream, it is for the most part institutionalized, partly because certain powerful groups don't really want us questioning the impact of their economic practices in shaping our attitude towards identity. Some of us have made this connection in the late 60's and early 70's and then took it to the streets, and they know better than to allow us to arrive at the same conclusion again. And now they actively work towards stopping more radical groups from pushing Materialism back into the lexicon of social justice.

In general, for me, this is a question of who you want your enemies to be. If you want to fight Capital, to fight the owning elites, to change the anarchic and inherently unfair system they force upon us, and to abolish inequalities of all sort at its roots, you pick the materialist approach. But if all you want is to roll your eyes at your uncle's racist joke at the dinner table, to sneer at some peasant who isn't as clued up as you are on the 'proper' way to act, to jointly complain about some old white lady who stared too long at some black chick's hair, and to feel part of an exclusive group of people who get it, you choose the culturalist approach.

Sorry for the TL;DR I like ranting about this topic

I'm going to go balls to the wall here, but do you think you can be a good Nazi if you don't kill Jews?

I mean, the ideology is full of idiotic ideas, and if you're going to strip them all out, why even call yourself a feminist?
Let's, for a second, define feminism as the belief in equality between men and women. That's a good goal, and if that's your goal, then that's awesome. However, I think you can do better than feminist. I think you can believe in equality for more than just between men and women. Strive for more, like equality for the workers, and equality for all races, and equality for all tongues, and nations. Be more than a feminist. Be a communist. When you treat people as equals, they become equal. So if you want to call me a feminist, then do so, but if you bring that patriarchy bullshit around here, you gonna get rekt.

I'm another person who'd say no. Look at the way you're singling out "a majority-white country" for the majority population group demonstrating unintentional ingroup bias. The majority population demographic practically everywhere does this to some extent. Some of them are quite intentional about their bias, too. Just look at the way Hindu nationalists treat Muslim's accused of eating beef…

Except that's not feminism.

I agree with you OP. Feminism is cool. It has been hijacked by liberals, that's the problem.

And then what? Why is that a problem that needs a brainwashing targeted at every aspect of our lives -and still failing then, as exemplified by the guilt ridden self-criticism sessions of SJW's- instead of the far simpler solution, that the PoC's should simply stay away if they can't handle it?

Bingo. The radical 'Social Justice' left has been the biggest recruiter to the right in decades.

I'm not entirely convinced the materialist and culturalist approaches (as you phrase them) are necessarily incompatible. I agree that Capitalism should be ended just as a firsthand, but something, something, "I think we can do both," etc.

Also, no worries about the long reply, I like reading those lol

I wouldn't call that justified either, tbh. If it seemed as if I was purely singling out white people or whatever, then apologies, that's not my intent.

There have been shitty feminisms since the beginning tbh