Left Is In Danger Of Becoming What It Hates

The identity politics left is making me question what it means to be a liberal.

by Ben Cohen

Over the past few years I have become increasingly uncomfortable with what I am seeing in progressive politics. This is extremely difficult for me because I have long associated myself with the left. I worry about the plight of minorities, the poor, and anyone I see as being vulnerable. But this no longer seems to be the primary concern of progressive activists, and I think it incumbent upon liberals to speak out about it.

Radical identity politics has traditionally been a feature of the right, and we have seen it take hold of the Republican Party with catastrophic consequences. The MAGA movement is a product of 19th century European racial identity politics, and it has turned a conservative political party into a deranged ethno-nationalist cult.

However, an increasingly militant identity politics movement appears to have captured the left in a qualitatively different but equally dangerous way.

Death to the Jews

The events in Israel on October 7th highlight this new reality on the American left. Consider this: nearly half of young progressives favor Hamas and more than half believe Hamas was justified in murdering over 1,300 innocent Israeli civilians. Hamas, it should be noted, is an organization that has publicly declared its ambition to murdering all Jews:

“The Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the Earth, because they have displayed hostility to Allah.”

- Atallah Abu Al-Subh, Hamas minister of culture, April 8, 2011

My colleague Justin Rosario wrote about the appalling antisemitism seen on the left at length this week, but I want to take this further. Because radical identity politics doesn’t just pose a physical threat to Jews — it threatens to undermine the basis of liberalism in America itself.

What has happened to left wing politics that murdering innocent Jews in the name of “decolonization” is ok? This is a complex issue, but I believe it is something I can shed some light on because of my own history of radical left politics.

The origins of madness

I went through a period of time in my early 20’s where I read everything I could get my hands on written by Noam Chomsky and intellectuals in his circle like Edward Said, Tariq Ali, Ed Herman and John Pilger. I found Chomsky’s view of politics and history to be the most interesting and his work had a powerful effect on my thinking. More than that, it slowly radicalized me in a way I was only able to grasp many years later.

Chomsky is a self described anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist, but his analysis of history is essentially Marxist. Chomsky contends that history can be understood as a struggle between those who have power and those who do not. He argues that “our concern must be to dismantle those forms of authority and oppression that survive from an era when they might have been justified in terms of the need for security or survival or economic development, but that now contribute to — rather than alleviate — material and cultural deficit.”

According to Chomsky, the world we see today is one shaped by class struggle, Western imperialism, and the subjugation of poorer people and nations. His arguments are compelling and based on much historic fact, but leave out crucial nuances it took me quite a long time to see. This one dimensional understanding of history is endemic to left wing intellectualism, and Chomsky-style thinking has morphed into something far more binary, and far more dangerous.

The identity trap

Over the past 20 years or so, Chomsky’s influence in left wing circles has declined precipitously. In its place is an equally strident but far more popular analysis of history that takes much of Chomsky’s critique of Western power, but rams it through the narrow lens of radical identity politics.

In academic circles, this is known as “critical race theory” — a much misunderstood philosophy that had been badly abused by both sides of the political aisle. It is worth trying to understand what this theory really is, because it is having a huge impact on our discourse, and not in a positive way.

Political scientist Yascha Mounk’s explanation is, at least in my opinion, extremely helpful in this regard. He writes:

Critical race theory is far more than a determination to think critically about race; similarly, the identity synthesis as a whole goes well beyond the recognition that many people will, for good reason, take pride in their identity. It claims that categories like race, gender and sexual orientation are the primary prism through which to understand everything about our society, from major historical events to trivial personal interactions. And it encourages us to see one another — and ourselves — as being defined, above anything else, by the identities into which we are born.

I am not opposed to looking at history through the lens of identity. In some ways, much of the identity politics movement has been positive. It has been great to see more color and diversity in politics and in the media. For too long there has been a power imbalance that has had a negative impact on people of color, the LGBTQ community, and women. Race, gender and sexual orientation really do matter, and a course correction in America has been long overdue.

The problem, however, occurs when race gender and sexual orientation become the only lens through which you see history. If you begin to see politics as one long, Manichean conflict between the oppressed and their racist, homophobic and sexist oppressors, you run the real risk of creating an inverse hierarchy where oppression becomes currency, and nuance is thrown out of the window. And that is exactly what is happening on the left.

In an interview with Mounk, even Chomsky expressed concern about rise of radical identity politics: "People can call themselves whatever they want, but the traditional left was concerned with class issues... [The] particular issue of identity politics is basically dissociated from the left."

Sanctioned dissent

In his seminal work, “Manufacturing Consent” Chomsky and Ed Herman argue that political and corporate media elites don’t actively censor debate, but rather propagandize for the economic system that gives them power, and marginalize those who speak out against it. This partly explains why Chomsky’s philosophy never really gained much traction in mainstream discourse in America. I do not fully buy into Chomsky’s explanation as to why he has remained on the fringes of public discourse, but his assertion that America’s political and media elite have a vested interest in limiting the parameters of debate is compelling.

Conversely, identity politics is far more palatable to those in power because it poses little threat them. Corporations are far happier to support Black Lives Matter than, say, mass unionization efforts because it doesn’t effect their bottom line. In fact, it is quite profitable to get behind so-called “Woke” trends. This isn’t to say corporations shouldn’t get behind Black Lives Matter or other social justice movements, but you can certainly question their motives.

The oppressors

For the identity politics left, Jews present a real problem for the oppressed/oppressor narrative. Jews have arguably suffered more oppression than any ethnic/racial group in history, yet to this new movement, Jews are regarded as people of “European ancestry,” and thus part of the oppressor class. I know this first hand because it is something I’ve been told this on a number of occasions.

It is now deemed perfectly acceptable for liberals to tell Jews that their success in Western society is only because of their skin color. As Pamela Paresky writes:

One “critically informed” social-work curriculum teaches that the notion of Jews “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” is a “myth.” Instead, having “become white,” Jews benefited from federal programs that allowed “Jews and other European immigrants to be recognized or rewarded.” In other words, these social-work students are not taught that antisemitism is a conspiracy theory about Jews gaining unmerited success and power. They are taught that Jews, having been initiated into whiteness, have gained unmerited success and power.

She continues:

American Jews have generally looked upon Jewish success in the United States as evidence of the country’s fundamental (if far from fully realized) commitment to the principles of tolerance, fair play, and recognition of individual merit. But, according to critical social justice ideology, that explanation is not just false. It’s racist. Jewish success can be explained only by Jewish collusion with white supremacy.

This logically has to extend to every other successful minority. Even successful black people must be aligned with white supremacy because according to social justice ideology, it is impossible to succeed unless the white oppressors allow it.

White people

If the plight of Jews can be easily ignored because of “whiteness” then so too can the plight of historically oppressed Gypsy, Roma and Irish Traveller communities. You could technically argue that desperately poor white people in West Virginia have “white privilege,” in that they are less likely than black Americans to be shot by the police (which is a very real privilege), but in virtually every aspect, they demonstrably have no privilege at all.

It is now perfectly acceptable in left wing circles to insult white people, or “whiteness.” Initially, I did not see this as a big problem given the power imbalance between white Americans and non-white Americans, and I found some of the pushback against “Karens” and demonstrably racist white people to be quite cathartic. But I now think this is a very, very slippery slope to go down. White people are not a monolith, and many white people do not have any discernible privilege. You cannot have a hierarchy of oppression based on skin color, because skin color isn’t the only defining marker of oppression. Racism is racism, irrespective of who it is aimed at.

In many progressive circles expressing the opinion that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” is a sign of “white fragility.” Because identity is central to this new ideology, trying to see beyond it turns you into an oppressor. This has all sorts of counterproductive consequences that can be seen in academic institutions from as early as first grade. As Mounk continues:

It’s increasingly common these days to see schools seek to ensure that their students conceive of themselves as “racial beings,” as one advocate puts it. Some of them even split students into racially segregated affinity groups as early as the first grade. These kinds of practices encourage complex people to see themselves as defined by external characteristics whose combinations and permutations, however numerous, will never amount to a satisfactory depiction of their innermost selves; it is also a recipe for zero-sum conflict between different groups. For example, when teachers at a private school in Manhattan tell white middle schoolers to “own” their “European ancestry,” they are more likely to create racists than anti-racists.

Again, I am not arguing that race/gender etc has no role in poverty and discrimination, but to highlight the negative consequences of declaring it is the only factor.

The kids

My five year old is curious about his heritage and asks lots of questions about where he is from. I want him to be proud of his ancestry, but to know that it is only a part of his identity — the most important part being his character. I don’t want his school telling him he is a “racial being” even if is a noble attempt to counteract historic injustice and discrimination. Because where does he fit in? Is he a beneficiary of white supremacy because he has white skin and has European ancestry, or an oppressed victim because he is also of Hispanic and Jewish heritage? Like millions of people, he is a mixture of “oppressed” and “oppressor.”

I worry that if he adopts the “oppressed” narrative, it will become central to his worldview and how he moves forward in life. I have seen friends go down this path at enormous personal cost. Their unyielding sense of aggrievement and anger filters into every aspect of their lives and makes personal relationships outside of their officially oppressed tribe almost impossible. Given the extraordinary rise in antisemitism, it is an anger I well understand — because it feels like everyone hates Jews right now, and we have nowhere to turn.

After the terrorist attacks on October 7th however, several friends reached out to see if I was OK. All of them were black. This to me was a reminder of why I am still a liberal. The spirit of seeing beyond race and identity still lives in liberal circles, and I believe it is key to its success going forward.

Rejecting fundamentalism

The allure of a Chomsky-esque, one-dimensional view of history is extremely attractive to young, unformed minds. It gives them a sense of identity and agency during a time of great uncertainty in their lives. The truth however, is that even the best intentioned ideologies can become fundamentalist religions incapable of self reflection or nuance.

While liberalism absolutely should attack the systemic nature of of discrimination, it cannot do so at the expense of our individual experiences or the creation of new and potentially deadly forms of bias. Racial identity politics has already destroyed the right in America, and now the left must confront its own destructive version of it. We have to recognize that it really is an extremist movement, and that is really does pose a threat to the physical safety of Jewish people. This is not liberalism in any sense of the word and more on the left need to say so.

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