A friend on facebook was decrying the relatively weak response to the virulently anti-Semitic social media output of a Grime artist called Wiley. This is my long-form response.
This is where intersectional (or group versus group) thinking gets you.
For the radicals who think in this way, there is a hierarchy of group oppression. We are not individuals choosing to co-operate to the extent we feel comfortable, we are simply a statistic within groups to which we are allocated, the members of which all think and behave the same way as each other. They have the same needs, desires, views, rights, privileges etc.
It's much easier to formulate and enforce rules and codes of behaviour for a relatively small number of groups than it is billions of independent thinking individuals.
So what's behind this radical group power ideology?
Should any individual within a group disagree with the 'correct' views & behaviours assigned to that group they are bullied into line or thrown out.
For decades after WW2, the Jews were at the top of the ‘oppressed groups’ hierarchy, now they are almost as low as 'whites'. Why? Because they are too successful both as a country (Israel) and more generally around the world to be considered ‘oppressed’ anymore.
And women, particularly, 'white' women, have also dropped down the order a lot in recent years. They have also done ‘too well’ over the past few decades to score highly in the current radical intersectional victim hierarchy. As an example, look at the social media grief J K Rowling took for simply stating biological facts and suggesting that it's OK for women not be comfortable with biological males in their sports and toilet areas.
At the top of the ‘oppressed groups’ currently are two groups: 1. 'Black' people - not Asians as they also do far too well. More specifically, 'Black' people who can trace their lineage back to slaves (this is after all primarily a USA issue exported to the rest of the world as we saw with the George Floyd protests and riots); and 2. Trans-people – mainly trans-women (biological males); we don't seem to hear as much from or about trans-men (biological women) for some reason.
But where does this ‘groups not individuals’ and ‘hierarchies of group oppression’ ideology come from?
Very simply for the sake of brevity, Karl Marx.
Marx believed that the fight was between the ‘oppressed working-class’ group and the privileged 'upper and middle-class’ groups.
Now unfortunately for Marxists, a combination of capitalism, patriotism and democratisation in the ‘West’ has meant that the living standards and general living conditions of the lower classes have improved enormously over the last 150 years or so.
In the mercifully few countries where forms of Marxism did happen, the death toll and economic failure showed that the ideology doesn't work in practice, however many different ways & times you try it.
Thus, the success of democratic capitalism over the last 5 or 6 decades has meant that (neo-)Marxists have abandoned the working-classes as their means to power and have instead formed a two-pronged attack. I think of these as the ‘slow-game’ and the ‘fast-game’.
The ‘slow-game’ was to gradually, and I mean over many decades, infiltrate major institutions such as education, the judiciary, the civil service, the media and management of large corporations. Give them their due, they’ve been highly successful.
The ‘fast-game’ which is to re-structure society along group racial and sex/gender-difference lines as fast as possible and before the majority realise what's happening, has been able to gain ground so fast recently primarily due to the co-operation of universities, large corporations and the media, particularly but not exclusively, social media.
There is a race to the bottom (or should that be the top?) of victimhood groups which is not being challenged and indeed is encouraged by large swathes of the media.
In the UK there is not a single TV channel that doesn't conform to the intersectional group hierarchy ideology.
Why did so many working-class people who have never voted anything but Labour, vote Tory at the last General Election? Because, while they are happy for left of centre ideas on the economy, they are socially conservative.
Sadly, both in the USA and the UK, the Left-of-centre parties have moved so far to the left in their societal views that they need a pair of binoculars to even see the centre ground.
The question we have before us now though is, ‘does it matter?’
The radical intersectional group ideologues and their wealthy elite supporters believe that they have the cultural and economic power to enforce their views.
Trump’s election and the Brexit vote were very aggravating for these elites but it has only made them double-down and push harder and faster for the destruction of society as we know it and the rebuilding of it along neo-Marxist intersectional victim group lines.
Everyone equal before the law?
The law enforced without fear or favour?
Of course, it never worked perfectly in practice but at least the principle was acknowledged and agreed upon.
No longer!
We now see the Police deciding whether or not to act based not on whether the law is being broken but 'who' it is and 'why' they are doing it. So if you are breaking the law for a 'good' reason, e.g. anti-racism, almost no action is taken.
If you're a member of an ethnic minority, the Police seem more concerned about being called 'racist' than doing their job. Just look at the grooming gangs in various UK cities that had been abusing young girls for decades, not because the authorities didn't know, but because they were more concerned with keeping good multi-cultural community relations than protecting the innocent.
So, in summary, intersectional politics is different to classical Marxism but is a definite off-shoot. They are both group power ideologies. And just like all other attempts at implementing group-based political utopias, it is more divisive and will do more harm than the systems they rail against.
Radical, violent change always over-estimates the benefits and under-estimates the problems from their change because wise thoughtful people don’t allow themselves to become radicalised. Only the closed-minded zealots do - and they never know when to stop.
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