Identity politics tends to be shallow and myopic. They are far from concerned with a post-Rawlsian or pre-Rawlsian idea of human dignity and eudemonia. They tend to be overwhelmingly single-issue and also don’t give much thought to collateral effects. When I was in the Gay-Straight Alliance of my high school, for example, I was the only one concerned with whether the anti-bullying policies they wanted would have detrimental effects on civil liberties. They were gay rights activists, not civil libertarians, and were not nearly intersectional enough to have the thought come to them that anti-bullying policies could have wide-ranging and sometimes bad results or even results counterproductive to their aims. They were all emotionally affected by the issue and seemed to prefer simple-to-understand quick solutions to more long-term and more nuanced ones.
As mentioned in earlier articles, I mentioned that the tactics of the #metoo movement enlarged the manosphere and drove potential allies (many of whom were guilty of the more benign offenses) away and into the deep crevices of places like 4chan where supportive and non-judgmental people would welcome them and love them. In their haste and rage, the #metoo warriors alienated potential allies and gave support to their opposition. While it might be an obvious result that people who you try to destroy the lives of will hate you, fight you back, and join the ranks of your enemies. Identity activists feel so sorry for themselves, they forget that their opponents are not the cartoon monsters who they want them to be so they can justify destroying them but are humans with emotions, lives, and everything else.
Their vision is not one of a beautiful human family but a world where they get theirs and that’s it. They have no plan for their opponents except for them to wallow in suffering. They don’t care what happens to them. They believe in human rights but not human dignity which means that they would, ostensibly, oppose the violation of their negative liberties but not their love, acceptance by society, or anything beyond their lowest level of Maslow’s Needs being met. In how they regard their opponents, one surmises they oppose the idea of human dignity because human dignity would entitle people they are against to love, social acceptance, and the Aristotelian richness of human life. I am a member of Black Lives Matter but I believe that a skinhead should be loved, accepted, and have availed to them the fruits of culture from the arts to the sciences.
And in that system, the bulk of those skinheads won’t be skinheads for long but while love, acceptance, and eudemonia will result in the most racists leaving racism and this is borne out in psychology. Notably, in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Identity activists, being so entrenched in hatred and myopia, will ignore that science to justify trying to destroy people which will result in their opposition growing stronger. Tom Morello, a few years ago, was on Bill Maher’s show and justified punching neo-Nazis while Bill Maher (who recently supported hitting children) was against it on free speech grounds.
The science is against both hitting children and hitting Nazis. Tom Morello didn’t really think this through because punching a Nazi may be a fun video for a BLM activist, it is a clarion call over a martyrdom for the far-right. I agree with Bill Maher’s free speech argument but, perhaps, what is most important is that people who were on the fence about their far-right group they were in just got alienated by BLM because one of their friends was assaulted. Neo-Nazis tend to come from broken homes and broken lives, if they are nurtured so that they heal then they’ll likely stop being Nazis. Tom Morello didn’t see that man he had never met as a full person with a soul and knew only one thing about him; Tom Morello knew him not as a human but as a stock character monster and wished ill on him. Obviously, my Christian hippie worldview wants to love everybody for directly normative reasons but loving people and wishing them an enriching life is the best route to everything the identity activists want but that they are too myopic, enraged, and impatient to get.
The Autistic Resistance 