Friday, September 27, 2013

When leftist solidarity fails

Solidarity is one of those concepts that separates the left from traditionalists.

The traditionalist concept of solidarity is based on relatedness. I am loyal to members of my family because I am related to them through ties of kinship. There is a solidarity between myself and my coethnics because we are related to each other through ties of ancestry, history, culture and language.

Is there a solidarity between myself and someone I have never met who lives in Nepal? Yes, there is as we share a common humanity, but the degree of relatedness is not as close as it is to, say, my brother, and so my loyalty to my brother is naturally stronger and more immediate.

The leftist concept of solidarity is the opposite to this. The leftist idea is that we identify not with those we are most closely related to, but with those who are most "other" to us, particularly with the most marginalised or oppressed "other".

But can this really create a genuine form of solidarity? I want to give a concrete example of how the leftist understanding of solidarity fails.

There has been an argument happening on the Facebook page of the University of Sydney women's collective. It seems that some of the "women of colour" are upset at seeing some white girls wear a bindi (the decorative dot worn on the forehead). They are calling it cultural appropriation.

My understanding is that the bindi is not really considered a sacred religious symbol in Asia but is worn for decorative purposes by a range of people, so I don't think there's a lot of merit to the claim of cultural appropriation.

But what's interesting is the way that the argument has unfolded. The women of colour are pulling rank over the white feminists on the basis that they are the more marginalised and "othered" group. Here's a typical comment from one of the women of colour:
As long as the majority of wom*n who actively participate in the wom*ns collective are white, it is not a safe space for wom*n of colour. most of the wom*n i meet who are exclusively involved with women's collective have little to no knowledge of the way racial oppression operates especially in australia and i don't count on them to be sympathetic or productive allies. white wom*n: it is YOUR JOB TO EDUCATE YOURSELF. and the best way to educate yourself is by listening. i if you want your feminism to be intersectional you can't just say "im intersectional". you have to work to unlearn these ways of thinking that place your precious whiteness... above other people's experiences. my anger is legitimate. and i am angry at the laziness of white feminism. i am angry at the refusal to step outside of the issues that directly affect you. i am angry at the lack of empathy. don't count on being educated by wom*n of colour if you're going to have a whinge about how angry they are. it only goes to show that you TRULY do not understand."

Leftist solidarity ends up meaning that the white feminists are expected to lose moral status in the argument and to listen passively whilst they are educated by the women of colour.

There is an insistence by many in the debate that feminism be "intersectional." That seems to mean that there are intersecting relationships of privilege and oppression having to do with gender, race, sexuality, disability and so on. So there is a complex pattern of who gets to claim moral status and who loses standing, depending on an attribute such as race, gender identity or sexuality.

There is, in other words, a complex pattern of division and disunity. Instead of a sense of solidarity, there is a focus on how some within a group oppress others and the guilt and anger that is thought to be the right response to this.

To try to keep a sense of solidarity with the feminists of colour, this is the attitude one of the white feminists took:
whenever I'm trying to cycle through my immediate gut reaction to white skin privilege, which is guilt and then getting defensive about how I'm a bit better than some real bad racists, I remember a really good people of colour-facilitated talk I sat in on....

Solidarity isn't meant to be as miserable as this. It isn't meant to be a lifelong sentence of guilt, defensiveness and subservience.

And what of the feminists of colour? This is what they think of the white women of the sisterhood:
DB: Racist girls expecting those that they oppress to ask nicely for their rights, to hold their hand and walk them through their racism while they still comfortably sit on the throne of privilege. Nice try... really cute.

TC: Hell no, how bout they kiss the brownest part of our asses and watch the big girls do feminism. The most radical thing they've done since the 70's is take off their tops for Femen.

The feminists of colour are claiming that white feminists are privileged racists who oppress them and who need to be replaced and re-educated by women like themselves.

It's not a very impressive kind of solidarity and the problem goes back to the way that solidarity itself is conceived.

18 comments:

  1. The leftist concept of solidarity is the opposite to this. The leftist idea is that we identify not with those we are most closely related to, but with those who are most "other" to us, particularly with the most marginalised or oppressed "other".

    I would have expressed this to emphasize the is/ought problem, because the Left is, as always, struggling against reality:

    The leftist idea is that we SHOULD identify not with those we are most closely related to, but with those who are most "other" to us, particularly with the most marginalised or oppressed "other".

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  2. They actual type out "wom*n". I'm speechless.

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    1. Yes, that struck me too. In a way it's another aspect of failed solidarity. There is supposed to be a kind of solidarity between men and women, but that is lost when feminist women can't even bear to type out the three letters "men".

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  3. Their fantasy of the evil, hating "real bad racists" is a box into which they put the resentment, anger and other negative feelings they won't own in themselves.

    The resentment, anger and negative feelings are inevitable given that their morally superior lovey-dovey world is a lie.

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  4. Fascinating post, Mark. I've long observed a hierarchy amongst liberalists in that sexual orientation trumps sex, but race trumps them both, such that non-white + female == double plus good, and that a non-white lesbian is a walking trifecta.

    But it is interesting to consider that their solidarity FWIW may be defined not on who they are, but on who their alleged oppressors are.

    Fascinating also to consider then that there is a hierarchy amongst the Left's boogeym*n. The male oppressor is not as oppressive as the heteronormative one, and the white man is evil par excellence.

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  5. Living by rules like this, how can you not have resentment? Which of course you project on "real bad racists" and hate and punish them for it.

    One of the reasons antiwhite progressivism isn't moderating itself is that it's indoctrinated in institutions that create and sustain privilege. That means the frustrations and for whites the destructiveness of the system can always be externalized onto people with less access to the levers of power.

    Not exactly in keeping with old-fashioned ideas of working class solidarity, but for a certain kind of antiwhite, a lot of fun.

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  6. My guess would be the "women of colour" in Australia do not wear traditional South Asian garb (sari / lehenga / choli etc.) -- they wear Western garb (jeans, sweats, tee shirts, etc.).

    Stop appropriating the garbs of other cultures if you want to complain about other cultures appropriating yours!

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    1. Your guess would be right, J. The feminists of colour are happy to appropriate Western dress but then get terribly upset if white women wear a bindi. It's difficult to take their complaint seriously.

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  7. "The feminists of colour are claiming that white feminists are privileged racists who oppress them and who need to be replaced and re-educated by women like themselves. "

    Their actions demonstrate racial resentment of whites which is very common in Asian and African social groups. Rudyard Kipling's words "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet" stand true to this day.

    In reality the political left has always been ignorant of other cultures and their aim was never to understand them but to use them as a battering ram against white European society. They were a tool to be used and never anything more than that. Asians were happy to go along with that so long as their position in White society was weak but now that they are wealthier and more powerful then many of the whites they feel sufficiently empowered to mount an attack on whites. This is just a foretaste of what is to come as white populations decrease.

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  8. Left wing virtue is most sincerely expressed as bullying, isn't it? Bullying, belittling, name-calling, verbal abuse, and when they really get power, actual physical violence. But always the rage at the scapegoat. Always de-haut-en-bas.

    Secondly, I like this thing with "privilege" where those accused of "privilege" are forbidden to ask what they're doing wrong. Like a crazy girlfriend saying "you KNOW what you did!" In either case, they feel bad and don't want to deal with it like adults, but there is NO sane reason for YOU to take the blame, and they know it. So they fake up an excuse not to explain.

    You are incurably unable to understand anything about them, and you are required to understand everything about them, and they refuse to offer any help. Riiiight.

    But in a way, it makes sense: how do you help a low IQ girl understand how to succeed in the first world? You can't. They feel very bad about that. They can't have what they want without understanding things they simply can't. They can't square that circle. That hurts. So they turn it around on any white person who'll listen.

    It was cruel to import them.




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    1. You are incurably unable to understand anything about them, and you are required to understand everything about them, and they refuse to offer any help. Riiiight.

      Yes, something like that. Being put in such a situation will hopefully help to make these sort of feminist circles even more unappealing to white women.

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    2. I think they enjoy it. They enjoy being dominated, and they enjoy the status of being the "good" white people: they take pride in their (mostly imaginary) "privilege" that they humble-brag about, and they take very great pleasure in being superior to all the other white people -- the "real bad racists" who commit hideous crimes like... Not apologizing to black people using today's formula. Which nobody will tell you, because it's not their job to "educate" you.

      They love the endless silly arbitrary rules and the endless drama and emotion and shunning and whispering. "Anti-racist" feminism is middle school girl society writ large, with grants and tenure.

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  9. The atmosphere of overt emotional hypersensitivity in the facebook discussion makes my skin crawl.

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  10. Intersecting relationships of privilege and oppression.

    Just think about that phrase for a second.

    A century ago, thinking of this type would have been laughable. How far we've fallen...

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  11. Thinking that this stuff was laughable is part of why we fell. There were two things that the antiwhite did and still does that were terrifically effective.

    1. They addressed race specifically and constantly, while forbidding their opponents from doing so on pain of social, professional and where possible legal consequences.

    "As long as the majority of wom*n who actively participate in the wom*ns collective are white, it is not a safe space for wom*n of colour. most of the wom*n i meet who are exclusively involved with women's collective have little to no knowledge of the way racial oppression operates especially in australia and i don't count on them to be sympathetic or productive allies. white wom*n..."

    2. They constantly came up with new labels, such as "racist", "racism", "cis-gendered" and so on. These labels dominated discussions and still do. Socially, politically and professionally it doesn't matter what the facts are, what the structure of your argument is or whether you are telling the truth; it matters whether you get some label like "racist" pinned on you. And it doesn't matter whether gender inclusive and female-preferred pronouns are awkward, relevant or even honest; what matters is that they are in academic style guides, and you must write in a way that validates antiwhite, feminist and leftist tropes or you are in trouble and you may not be able to publish your work, at least not without needless problems. They keep coming up with new labels, which means everyone has to keep up, and adjust their methods and thinking as required by the label-makers, whereas nobody needs to know what the right thinks on any issue. (So leftists can afford to say that the right just doesn't think. You're not forced to acknowledge right thinking every time you refer to the style guide.)

    "As long as the majority of wom*n who actively participate in the wom*ns collective are white, it is not a safe space for wom*n of colour. most of the wom*n i meet who are exclusively involved with women's collective have little to no knowledge of the way racial oppression operates especially in australia and i don't count on them to be sympathetic or productive allies. white wom*n..."

    In reply, the right came up with a three-pronged approach.

    1. Make no explicit defense of whites - not their common identity, their rights, their interests, their history - nothing. Instead, defend only abstract principles and neutral institutions in ways that sound palatable to whites and that may imply conclusions that suit white interests in a specific case, but never oppose head-on the constant and aggressive agenda of academically and legally institutionalizing antiwhitism.

    2. Laugh off the new labels and the new rules, as "silly", "exaggerated", "artificial" and so on. This is a lot like a swordsman laughing off firearms: you are committing yourself not to do such a "silly" thing yourself, you make no defense nor counter-attack (because you are saying it's just "absurd" and one doesn't go to war over mere absurdity), and you are as good as telling everybody on the sidelines that they have to come to terms with the gun-wielders. Politically, loaded labels are like bullets; you cannot laugh them off.

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  12. It's incredibly ironic how racist the "women of color" on that facebook page are. So much raw hate on display.

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