The inhumanity of identity politics
This year, more than any other in recent times, we've had an unsettling glimpse of the inhumanity of identity politics. In the US context, the Rittenhouse trial and the Waukesha massacre captured the grim dehumanisation that identity politics has given rise to. Everything is now filtered through the identitarian narrative. Crimes, trials, world events, the moral worth of victims, the moral worth of people - everything.
None of this is accidental. It is
the inexorable, depressing endpoint of a politics that deprives us of our
individualism, of our humanity, and which instead accords us goodness or brands
us as bigoted depending on our skin colour, our sex, our accident of birth, or
our beliefs. The ruthless reorganisation of humankind into the neo-racialist
boxes of 'privileged' and 'oppressed' has stoked division, inflamed hatred,
generated violent sentiment, and undercut the old liberal ideals of equality
and fairness. Standing up to identitarianism will be one of the most important
causes of 2022.