A Liberal Monopoly on Identity Politics
An article has been making the rounds over the internet this week called, "Why Feminists Hate Sarah Palin." The real answer to the question of course is that feminism as a political movement ceased when feminism was co-opted by the counterculture and morphed into "sex-positive feminism" which focuses the bulk of its efforts on protecting abortion rights and birth control, the two vital elements that make sex positive feminism practical for women, while ignoring the emotional, financial and health toll this has taken on American women.
Professional feminists like professional Jewish or gay or black or union activists have little to do with the groups they claim to serve. They're simply nothing more than front groups for a general Progressive agenda who are funded by major liberal think tanks, donors and political groups for the specific purpose of selling that agenda to the specific demographic they are responsible for.
A professional feminist's job is to recruit, train and position activists and voters to serve the larger progressive agenda and the Democratic party, by identifying the agenda and the party with their own identities. The role of most professional Jewish and black and radical union activists (e.g. SEIU) is the same. Many of them function as "community activists" or professors or recruiters, but that is a difference in function only. The agenda stays the same.
When people read about a Women's Group or a Jewish Group or a Black Group or a Gay Group or a Union, they're reading about a front for the Democratic party that is in lockstep with the Democratic party 95 percent of the time, and dissents 5 percent of the time to "demand" something more for their members to establish credibility with their base. If the party approves, it cedes another 2 percent and the Group leadership are celebrated for "making inroads". If the party doesn't approve, the Group leadership cites the legitimacy of the process and thanks the party for being allowed to voice their concerns.
So too feminists are allowed to be a little bitter about Hillary, so long as they understand that they are expected to return to the big tent and attack Sarah Palin. So too Jewish activists are allowed to sit on their hands or even walk out when the party gives Jimmy 'Hamas' Carter a standing ovation, so long as they understand that they are expected to promote and defend Obama at every turn.
And anyone who doesn't go along is clearly not a woman or Jewish or black. So Congressman Robert Wexler can inform us that Lieberman doesn't actually represent Jews, only he does. Never mind that Congressman Wexler himself lives in Maryland while representing a district in Florida, proving that he not only doesn't represent Jews, but doesn't even represent the right state. So too the professional feminists can announce that Sarah Palin is not a woman or black activists can announce that Colin Powell and Rice aren't really black.
The system is nothing new. The various flavors of Marxists and Communists used it to great effect in Europe and America, setting up front organizations aimed at "artists and writers", "wives and mothers", "workers and laborers", creating numerous shell organizations designed to parrot their agenda. (This became absurdly obvious when these groups spent every day until Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and attacked Russia, agitating against the war and condemning the warmongers, only to suddenly switch tack and cry for war with Germany.)
This demographic targeting served as a quite effective tool for making it appear that there was a wide range of opinion in favor of one policy or another, while co-opting and recruiting people who would have never walked into a Communist party meeting by adopting their identity.
By doing so the Communist agenda stopped being the Communist agenda and became the agenda of Wives and Mothers, Writers and Artists and Workers and Laborers. The front groups allowed people to invest their identity, often unknowingly, into a Communist cause.
These same tactics are used by the Democratic party today. Tens of thousands of liberal groups adopt the identities of Jews, women, and any other social, ethnic or demographic that they can think of, raise money from them and convince them that their interests lie with the Democratic party. To some they actually deliver enough of a pittance to make them fearful and dependent on the party, to others, such as Jews, they don't even bother with that much.
The battle for equality for women, which began with a battle not only for the vote but against sexual exploitation, has been co-opted to serve the "sex positive" ends of the counterculture which tore down American values by undermining its morals and attacking American society by undermining the family. Take away all the layers of justification and Newspeak about "Entitlement" and the "Patriarchy", and professional feminists today exists to defend the sexual exploitation of women by safeguarding the exit clauses of birth control and abortion. Not because it's what women need, but because it's what the larger agenda of those who fund and teach them, requires.
Meanwhile professional Jewish activists exist to channel Jewish contributions and volunteers to serve liberal aims that are hurtful and dangerous to Jews in America. They promote the culture of "Criminal rights first" that helped drive Jews out of the inner cities. They promote "Peace in the Middle East" when that really means funding terrorism against Jews. They promote redistributive taxation that penalizes both middle class and working class Jews for their hard work. They promote affirmative action which has forced numerous Jewish professionals out of civic jobs and denied Jewish students places in college. They promote immigration despite endless studies showing that the spikes in anti-semitism comes from immigrants. And they wrap it all up by claiming that these are Jewish values, when in fact they are blatantly anti-Jewish values.
I could go on with a similar list group by group, but so could most people reading this blog. Nevertheless we've been trained to take seriously the pseudo-marxist alphabet soup of organizations dedicated to co-opting the identities of different groups and exploiting and even destroying them to serve their own ends.
When you listen to a professional activist or organization that claims to represent one ethnic or religious group or gender, 9 out of 10 times you're listening to nothing more than a liberal activist camouflaging an agenda behind the colors of a specific identity.
There is an old Russian anecdote dating back from the Six Day War. A party meeting was held in a factory so that the workers would denounce the criminal Zionist aggression. A resolution would then be passed for this factory, and for factory after factory across the USSR denouncing Israel.
Since the average factory worker had very little political knowledge of the world, the usual procedure was to have workers from key demographics rise and read prepared statements from cards denouncing Israel. Things went smoothly as a young man denounced Israel on behalf of the students, an older worker denounced Israel on behalf of the Veterans of the Red Army who had fought in WW2, until a mix up occurred with the cards, and a drunken foreman rose and proclaimed, "As a wife and mother, I stand to condemn the Zionist aggression."
The professional feminists busy reading denunciations of Palin are nothing more than fancier versions of that drunken foreman with publishing deals and academic positions, who got the right card. Had they gotten the wrong card, they would have gone ahead and read it anyway. After all who can forget that Bill Clinton was really our first Black President.
If Bill Clinton can be a black man, then Sarah Palin can be not a woman. After all when you hijack people's identities, race, gender and ethnicity for your own ends-- you get to decide who's black and who's a woman.
The idea behind this is far more ominous than people realize. When Hitler was told of a Nazi party member with some Jewish blood, he responded, "I decide who is a Jew." Hitler had created his own idea of what Jewishness is and imposed it on Germany and much of the world. As such he could "waive" someone's Jewishness when it suited him.
Liberals have created and imposed their own ideas of Jews, women, blacks and various ethnic minorities and social classes should be. And they have the right to waive them when they please and decide who gets to be a part of that identity and who doesn't.
That will sound silly and far fetched to many. After all even if you concede that many racial and ethnic identities are artificially constructed, gender is not one of them. There is a clear line between a man and a woman drawn in biology.
Or so you would think, because when you can't easily control an identity, you begin deconstructing it to put it under your control. And deconstruction is something liberals are very good at. Today a man can have several surgeries, take a few hormones, and be considered a "woman" under the law. Transgender rights are one of the senseless pet causes of liberalism precisely because it puts gender identity under their control, to be able to say, "I define who is a Jew" or in this case, "I define who is a woman."
The way to fight that of course is to reject imposed liberal group identities and the phony professional activists who claim to speak for us in order to subvert and enslave us to their agenda. We resist by defining ourselves and rejecting the attempt to hijack who we are by ruthless ideologues who exploit identity as another playing card in their games of power.