the philosophy of identity...

let us engage in a thought experiment…

the right accuses the left of engaging in “Identity politics”…

but the fact is, everyone, EVERYONE is engaged in the question of
Identity… in fact, being human requires us to have an engagement
with Identity…when the right accuses the left of “Identity politics”
that misses the point of what is happening…for the right also engages
in Identity questions…but the right holds to the question of “Identity”
in terms of religion… what is the status of our “Identity” in terms
of god, heaven, hell, the devil? Those questions are simply another
way to explore our “Identity” an athlete will explore their “Identity”
by the way of sports… as I did for over a decade…or we can explore
our “Identity” by politics, as I was an anarchist, and I explored my “Identity”
via my study of Anarchism… my “Identity” was discoverable in terms
of my belief in Anarchism…

a lot of women, not all and certainly not a judgement about women,
but a lot of women hold their “Identity” as being a mother, or wife or
companion to a man/or women…

the question of “Identity” is the biggest question we face as human beings…

‘‘Who are we?’’ or ‘‘Who am I’’ is an ‘‘Identity’’ question…

To say ''I am an ‘‘American’’ is an ‘‘Identity’’ question…

I might even say that ALL questions of existence are questions of ‘‘Identity’’…

I have often spoke of this question of the role of the individual within
the society… How do I fit within society? that is an ‘‘Identity’’ question…

the Kantian questions I so often refer back to, these are “Identity” questions…

and even the question, one of the basic and fundamental questions,
what is the “meaning of life” “what is my purpose in existence”
that is a… yep, you guessed it, an “Identity” question…

part of my own personal “Identity” is that I am a man, I am white,
I am getting older…these are my questions of ‘‘Identity’’’
but they aren’t your questions of ‘‘Identity’’ for you are a different person,
a different ‘‘Identity’’

one of the basic and fundamental statements of philosophy is this…

‘‘To know thyself’’… the Socratic starting of philosophy,
along with ‘‘The unexamined life isn’t worth living’’

are just two questions about ‘‘Identity’’

Kropotkin

By identity politics, the right means how the left often divides people into two groups, an ‘oppressor’ group and an ‘oppressed’ group usually based on what are thought to be immutable characteristics like ethnicity, race, gender and sexual orientation, also nationality and religion.
They then try to give more rights and freedoms to the oppressed group to compensate them for their oppression sometimes, but not always at the expense of the oppressor group.

By contrast the libertarian right advocates treating everyone equally under the law, according to their deeds rather than who or what they are, or what they say as in political correctness.

By contrast the authoritarian right also divides people into groups, the superior, dominant and ingroup and the inferior, submissive and outgroup.
Rightwing identity politics hasn’t been in vogue for decades until recently with the rise of rightwing populism, since then it’s made a bit of comeback, only time will tell for sure what, if anything comes of it.

By contrast if leftwing populism ever takes off leftwing identity politics may be supplanted by class and economics as the left’s priority.
Whatever happened to: ‘it’s the economy, stupid’?

in line with the questions of “Identity” lay two more points…

and they both involve Socrates…

his two “commands” first, to know thyself…
and the second “the unexamined life isn’t worth living” …

the question becomes, who around here in ILP actually obey Socrates?

who engages in the commandment of “know thyself?”

from what I have seen, most people around here run far and fast away,
when challenged about their knowledge about “who they are?”
most people avoid, like the plague, any attempt to understand
what they believe and why… why those values? what makes those
values worth having? Why is your “truth” superior to my “truth?”

and of course the second aspect is about examining our lives…
and once again, most people run away from that…
the terrors within are far greater then the terrors outside…
for we are far more scared/frightened by true knowledge of
ourselves, then the worst devil or demon known to man…

I would suggest that people around here are actually Marxists, then
they are capitalist… if you gave them a choice of values, with some
values being “Marxists” and some values being “Capitalist” most people
around here would choose “Marxists” values if they were blind as to
which values were which values, ‘‘Marxists’’ or ''capitalist"

in other words, in a blind test of values, stripped of the names, people
would choose Marxists values over Capitalist values… but because of
the capitalist’s overlords century long attack against Marxism, we have deemed
Marxist values to be dangerous because of capitalistic propaganda…

so those who attack Marxism do so because they have been fooled by
our corporate overlord’s big lie about Marxism…

so we define our “Identity” in part based on our political, social, philosophical,
and culturally…I am against “Marxism”… is an understanding of your own
“Identity” but because of the “fake news” against Marxism, we have a false
understanding of our “Identity” in terms of a political system…

to be a Marxists, is to hold a certain understanding of “Identity” and what
it means for us personally…

so think about Capitalistic values, selfish behavior, greed, lust, hate,
destruction… those are values you have accepted, personally…

whereas Marxist’s values… of cooperation, of acting together, of a people,
not the individual values of Capitalism… Marxism is about the collective
values, Capitalism is about personal values irrelevant of the collective…

so what values do you individually hold? and what does that mean for your own
“Identity?”

Kropotkin

Identity politics isn’t just about what we are, race and sex, it’s about who we are and what we say.
Those with the ‘right’ beliefs, friends, opinions, party affiliation and so on are rewarded, those with the ‘wrong’ ones are punished.
The educated, white collar people with progressive, cosmopolitan values from blue states are in, the uneducated, blue collar folks with traditional values from red, flyover states are out.

Carless, please insert/add this song into the thread link source so that it plays automatically the moment one begins reading keter propotkin’s OP.

Thanks in advance.

K: as anyone who knows me will tell you, my favorite rock group is the WHO…
I have seen them in concert and have all their albums/CD’s…
this song is off of my favorite CD…its as good as any song intro
that will work for me…

Kropotkin

Are you familiar with the thought experiment the Ship of Theseus in the field of identity metaphysics? Naturally. The Ship of Theseus is an artifact in a museum. Over time, its planks of wood rot and are replaced with new planks. When no original plank remains, is it still the Ship of Theseus? Secondly, if those removed planks are restored and reassembled, free of the rot, is it the Ship of Theseus? Neither is the true ship. Both are the true ship.

One can be an authoritarian conservative while still eschewing Identitarianism.
One can be a corporatist, hawk and tough on drugs, crime and terrorism (to the point of burning the constitution), while still being for multiculturalism and open borders.
An example of such a political philosophy is neoconservatism.

Conversely, you can be a white nationalist, separatist or supremacist while still being fiscally and otherwise socially libertarian.
An example of such a political philosophy is Jacksonian Democracy.
It was racist, sexist but otherwise libertarian, small government, the party of ‘Rum, Romanism and Rebellion’.
Jackson’s Democrats attracted a lot of blue collar Irish Catholics and Southerners, while the relatively big government, prohibitionist and abolitionist Whigs then later Republicans attracted a lot of white collar WASPs and Yankees.
Rightwing populism is similar in some respects to Jacksonian Democracy.

Some old-school progressives are social democrats, peaceniks, environmentalists, for decriminalizing drugs but eschew leftwing identity politics.

Conversely, some embrace leftwing identity politics but are otherwise neoliberal, not progressive at all on the economy, foreign policy, the environment or other social issues.

I think that “Identity politics” is all about removing individual identities in favor of group identities so that “group-think” can make manipulation calculations easier - individuals become irrelevant in the equations.

Then through media proposed groups of peasants can be turned against each other to initiate hate and destruction - even when the individuals were not interested. Racism in the US seems to have been ignited in that way.

It is typical Marxism - establish the belief in united groups then using media establish the belief that everyone in each group is causing all of the troubles of the other group - the entire group. The innocent get drawn into it - forced to defend themselves thus proving to their enemies that the war is real.

Recently in the US that exact scenario took place -
A black bloke went on a shooting spree on white men strangers. He shot 5 white men he didn’t even know. When asked why he did it - he replied that he was tired of white men oppressing him and causing all of those atrocities.

If a police officer had shot the black bloke involved in the act - the police would have been the oppressors (regardless of their color) because they would be the oppressing group. Other would then feel justified in shooting other police officers merely because they are a part of the group of oppressors.

Marxism is Satanism - propose that people are groups then blame each entire group for the troubles of the other. Innocent individuals who had nothing at all to do with the accusations are merely causalities of the perceived war (even though they are by far the majority).

Karl Marx was a media producer - so of course media was his weapon of choice.

I’m much more interested in how the various factions within the left and right are vying for supremacy than I am in the left and right themselves vying for supremacy, for I hate the dominant faction of the left (so called ‘liberals’) and the dominant faction of the right (neocons) equally, there’s very little difference between them.
I’m enjoying watching both of them lose control of their parties and the crises they conjure to take the heat off themselves.

Marxism 1.0 was merely about two classes - the upper and lower (as shown in the depiction of Satan). And that worked well for most of the West. But those bloody Americans formed a Middle-class (no doubt expressly to prevent Marxism). So to destroy the US the Middle class had to be removed - and just look at what has been targeted for decades - especially with the pandemic.

So the objective became largely one of destroying the Middle class. How do you destroy anything? - You create division. But the Middle class had no class distinction - so create one - or two - or ten.

When racism was apparent - the Americans amended their constitution to outlaw the distinction - “under the law”. So they had to come up with something else - how about feminism? - Damnit they did it again - amended their constitution to abolish that distinction too. Allowing that constitution to rule the land was getting intolerable - to those trying to destroy the US. So they started just sneaking around it - keeping the issues out of public view - not letting them talk about things openly - just to help the peace - of course.

After decades of sneaking into their education systems, media network companies, law enforcement agencies, and government officials - they were all ready to begin the onslaught of creating the belief of oppressing and sinister groups or classes (ignoring individuals) and turning them against each other - en masse. - race, gender, party, age, ethnicity, vaccinated, wealthy, corporatist ----

And that is where it is today - Marxism 2.0 - Kali- the same formula just used on different classes.
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The two biggest factions on the right, right now appear to be the champion, Neocons and the challenger, Rightwing Populists.
Neocons are hawkish authoritarian conservatives in favor of free trade, multiculturalism and loose borders.

Contrastively Rightwing Populists are dovish libertarian conservatives or moderates in favor of protectionism, monoculturalism and tight borders.
In some respects their rivalry is reminiscent of the rivalry between Whigs/Lincoln’s Republicans and Jackson’s Democrats.

The two biggest factions on the left are the champion, ‘Liberals’ and the challenger, Leftwing Populists.
Liberals don’t differ much from Neocons.
They’re just to the left of Neocons on most things.
Perhaps the biggest difference between them is Liberals have exchanged feminism and monoculturalism for misandry and reverse racism.
They now prefer the foreigner’s color and creed to their own.
They’ve even made the Neocons a bit uncomfortable with this.

Contrastively Leftwing Populists like Tulsi, Yang and Bernie are progressives who eschew identity politics.

Then you have progressives like AOC who’re into identity politics.