Identity politics

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Doug replies to Rakesh:
>>As this speaks to this list's concern with identity politics, I am
>>forwarding a letter I sent to Nation.
>>Yours, rb
>>
>>Eric Alterman's  banal reflections  (May 25) on divisions in the  left  are
>>confused as well[....]
>
>Please note that this piece was the first salvo of Alterman's new column.
>He really went out of his way to pick a fight, didn't he? The Nation should
>be trying to end this idiotic war, not promote it. Outbursts like
>Alterman's give the Left Conservatism folks some credibility.

The Alterman piece is just one more example of how the Right-wing view of
history has come to shape the 'left' thinking: it is blacks, women,
homosexuals, etc. and their critiques and activism that have divided the
allegedly once unified Left. It's a politics of white ressentiment that
seeks to pass itself off as the true voice of the working class. I don't
think that his piece is an isolated 'outburst'--it is, regrettably, just
another expression of what has become by now a 'common sense' view. That's
how hegemony works.

Yoshie