I used the word “identarian” yesterday when I referred to Pamela Price’s “identarian politics.” It’s a word I only discovered a few days ago when I stumbled across it in an article about how some self-professed liberals are getting tired of certain Democratic policies. I’ve known that for a long time; in fact, I’m one of them.
The Fox article referred to a woman, Ana Kasparian, whom I’ve never heard of, but was described as a “progressive political commentator.” Quoting Kasparian, it said, “More recently, [Kasparian] ripped the left for obsession with race and gender, stating, ‘The biggest change that some of you might have noticed with me is that I’m done with the identarian garbage. I’m done with it. It is a giant distraction.’"
I immediately thought of a news story from a couple weeks ago about how the Mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson, a Black man and lifetime Democrat, announced he’s becoming a Republican. He’s had it, he said, with Democrats’ “virtue signaling,” among other things.
What Kasparian meant by “identarian politics” isn’t entirely clear. She had previously criticized “gender-affirming care” for young people who come out as trans, and she’s also criticized feminism. She has a particular antipathy for some of the neologisms hatched up in the salons of left. She went ballistic over references to women as “birthing persons.” “I'm a woman,” she said. “Please don't ever refer to me as a person with a uterus, birthing person, or person who menstruates.”
I Googled the term “identarian” and it led me to this: “Identitarianism [sic] can be defined by its opposition to globalisation, multiculturalism, Islam and extra-European immigration; and by its defence of traditions, pan-European nationalism and cultural homogeneity within the nations of Europe.” That certainly makes it sound like the rightwing White nationalism that undergirds today’s Republican Party. In fact, the Anti-Defamation League defined identitarianism as “roughly analogous to the alt right segment of the white supremacist movement in the United States.”
It’s weird, then, that in this sense identitarianism (or identarianism) is an extreme rightwing ideology, while in the sense Kasparian used it (to characterize Democrats) it’s an extreme leftwing or woke ideology. I suspect that Kaparian misused the term: she meant “identity politics.”
All this just underscores how confusing labels are these days. Identarian…identitarianism…identity politics…woke…progressive… These things mean nothing in themselves, only what the user intends.
I certainly have no problem with people feeling pride in aspects of their personal identity, but I’m uncomfortable when they so fiercely define themselves by these aspects that they separate themselves from the greater community and can’t see the forest for the trees. I’m gay and Jewish, and I like being both, but I’ve never considered “gayness” or “Jewishness” as the core of my identity. I’m also a Boomer, an American, a Californian, short, a Gemini, a wine geek, a weightlifter, a history lover, and many other things. We see what happens when people who are obsessed with one part of their identity become powerful: for instance, Pamela Price can’t let go of her obsession with Blackness, which leads her to be an ineffective District Attorney who alienates many people who aren’t. I could also mention the evangelicals and radical rightwing Christians who try to impose their beliefs on the rest of us. That, too, is identitarianism. Or identarianism. Or whatever you want to call it.
I came across this tweet on X; it’s a shrewd observation on the current political climate in America: “Combine finger-wagging morality policing that seems very popular not just with christofascists but also liberal identarian obsessives, alongside much of this nation now having the critical thinking acumen of 4th graders, and here we are.” Indeed.
Steve Heimoff