Is There a Difference Between Ethnic Politics and Identity Politics

In his latest column at NRO Jonah Goldberg is trying to draw a line between good old ethnic politics, which he says is harmless, and identity or "categorical" politics, which is not.

First, Jonah on identity politics as ethnic politics:

[T]his form of political engagement is as old as the country itself, because it’s as old as politics itself. From the Pennsylvania Dutch (who were actually Germans) to the Irish of Boston and New York, to the Scandinavians of the Midwest, various European ethnic groups engaged in politics in much the same way later waves of Vietnamese, Chinese, Hmong, Arabs, and Hispanics have, never mind the most obvious example of African Americans.

This, he thinks, is a far cry from categorical politics,

[t]he notion that all you need to know about a person is the color of their skin still strikes me as close to the definition of racism, whether you’re talking about black people or white people or people of some other hue. If you think you know what a woman is going to say before she says a word simply because you believe all women think a certain way, you’re a sexist.

I think I see what he is trying to say here. Let me help, by making my own judgements.

Ethnic politics is the politics of people arriving in the city from the farm and forming a defensive community based on their previous identity, as members of the tribe in the old country: Germans from Germany, Irish from Ireland, Italians from Italy. It is perfectly natural and physical, and confirmed by settled science such as the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma.

Categorical politics is when ruling-class intellectuals and politicians gussy up ethnic loyalties into an intellectual system and, as often as not, into a Saving Truth, and they use it not as a defensive system but as an offensive system, an ideology of conquest and domination.

Let us say it again. I think the difference is that when ethnic groups newly arrived in the city group together it is a natural and physical effort to band together for self-protection.

But when ruling-class intellectuals and politicians turn ethnic loyalties into a categorical system then you are facing exploitation, straight up. Because the folks in the categorized group are no longer merely banding together for self-protection. They are now Little Darlings, soldiers in the ruling-class army, and they are merely soldiers to be used, abused, and disposed of, in service to the ruling-class's power project. Hello white working class!

But we would expect this, we Hegelians, knowing that the thesis is equal and opposite to the antithesis, that the Master is very often manipulated by the Slave, and that there is no difference between the North Pole and the South Pole of the magnet. The follow-on Germans in the psych business called this  thingy "projection."

Thus we would expect that our lefty friends -- devoted unto their sacred tenure and their well-earned pensions -- would, by their devotion to the demolition of oppression and exploitation, create the most exploitative and oppressive structures in history. Their very devotion to the acquisition of power to help those ethnic groups would, by the nature of the process, create power that would dominate and oppress the very groups they turned into helpless victims.

You lefties listening? I thought not.

But what should happen? How should ethnic politics fit into our glorious modern world?

Thank you senator, I am glad you asked that.

My reductive Three Peoples theory is intended to answer such questions with great depth of understanding and breadth of wisdom.

Obviously, the People of the Subordinate Self are the folks that naturally and physically coalesce into ethnic groups when they approach to politics. They are people that look to a leader to protect them in the terrifying new world of the city. They look to their leaders to tell them how to vote, because they are not really newspaper readers; indeed they really do not relate to the world of ideas. Not yet.

But when the People of the Subordinate Self get their city legs and learn how to wive and thrive in the city they no longer need the protection of the ethnic association. And so they become city people, bourgeois, where, as People of the Responsible Self, they understand that it is each individual's job to make himself useful to his fellow citizens, by his work skills, his contribution to civic associations, and her contribution to the network of neighborhood women. A member of the bourgeoisie, the Bürgertum, does not feel threatened by the market; he knows it is dangerous but he has learned to ride it like a surfer. So he does not need to hide from the world in his ethnic group.

Now we come to our pals the People of the Creative Self. These are people that want a bit more out of life that to merely function as responsible citizens. You can see this when considering their gods. Whereas the People of the Subordinate Self think of gods as temperamental lords rather like the earthly leaders that have their quirks that you have to deal with, and the People of the Responsible Self think of the one God as a just and wise lawgiver that tells his people the rules you need to follow to be a success in life, the People of the Creative Self understand that it is up to them to invent their own life, to create it. In this, they are like gods; it is gods that create the world. In fact they want to be as gods.

Now there are two ways to be creative and be a hero. You can be an Egoistic Hero, that comes into the world to create amazing monuments, or to lead the oppressed to liberation, or invent amazing inventions. Or you can be a Sacrificial Hero, a Christ-like figure that goes down into the underworld to encounter the evil demons in his unconscious and then, shimmering with this hard-won knowledge, he returns to the public world to explore the border between Order and Chaos, and probably die in the process.

The Left's Error, in my view, is that it has chosen the path of the Egoistic Hero, and that means that all the efforts of lefty People of the Creative Self are devoted to self-glorification. Look at me the Glorious Activist! Look at me the conquering feminist! Look at me challenging the white supremacists!

If you look at a lot of the ideas that have come out over the last century, you can make a good point that it is all about trying to figure out what a creative life means.

But what people don't really want to know is that the creative process is one blind alley, one dry hole, after another. It is not about cutting a fine trajectory in the world.

And the point about identity politics -- or ethnic politics or whatever you call it -- is that it belongs only to people just starting out in the city that do not yet feel the competence to interface directly with the market.

For People of the Responsible Self to band together and exploit the People of the Subordinate Self is wrong.

For the People of the Creative Self to systematize ethnic politics into categorical politics is not just wrong; it is evil.

But I fear that the lefty People of the Creative Self are going to find that out the hard way.

As Nietzsche says, again and again: Being a "free spirit" is hard.