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[av_hr class=’invisible’ icon_select=’yes’ icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ position=’center’ shadow=’no-shadow’ height=’20’ custom_border=’av-border-thin’ custom_width=’50px’ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ custom_border_color=” custom_icon_color=” id=” custom_class=” template_class=” av_uid=’av-a63ul’ sc_version=’1.0′ admin_preview_bg=”]<\/p>\n
[av_textblock size=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” font_color=” color=” id=” custom_class=” template_class=” av_uid=’av-krq15rb5′ sc_version=’1.0′ admin_preview_bg=”] 31 <\/b>July 2021<\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou can be sincere and still be stupid.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u2015 <\/span>Fyodor Dostoevsky<\/span><\/p>\n \n Back in the day, Thatcher’s bully boys in the right-wing British media coined the phrases <\/span>loony left<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>PC madness<\/span><\/i>. They used them to label and to demonise left-wing local authorities, feminist and anti-racist organisations, and the trade union movement which was fighting to protect jobs and services.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n The motivation was to weaken opposition in advance of the ravaging effects of the disinvestment and privatisation that neo-liberalism was ushering in.<\/span><\/p>\n \n The first thing the Thatcher government did was to remove the controls on the export of capital. That signalled the start of a massive flow of investment to places in the world where corporations could extract more profit by paying less for labour, and have the bonus of being able to pollute and spoil to their heart’s content.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n They did not invest to improve the lives of workers in those regions. Like the first wave of transnational corporate investment and its associated governmental aid, neo-liberal corporate investment was purely in the pursuit of <\/span>profit<\/span><\/i>. The first wave of investment had been aimed at developing infrastructure to facilitate the extraction of natural resources; the second was aimed at the exploitation of \u201chuman resources\u201d.*\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n Neo-liberalism has been in the driving seat for almost forty years. During that time there has been an explosion in digital technology and a dramatic rise in the living standards, choices, and expectations of the buffer class.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n The price for that is a massive increase in energy consumption, the development and use of thousands of toxic chemical products, the dumping of billions of tonnes of toxic waste, along with galloping species\u2019 extinctions and accelerating climate change.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n Arguably neo-liberalism\u2019s greatest harm is also its greatest ideological success \u2013 the virtual destruction of the belief in the possibility of foundational economic change.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n In this on-going process, its media game has become more subtle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n The second-wave feminist-inspired idea that <\/span>structural<\/span><\/i> change needs to be accompanied by <\/span>attitudinal<\/span><\/i> change, has been transmogrified into the idea that attitudinal change alone is sufficient to bring about such structural change <\/span>as is necessary<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n For neo-liberalism\u2019s well-padded buffer class, whose members are the most heavily invested in identity politics, what constitutes <\/span>necessary structural change<\/span><\/i> is radically different from that demanded by the traditional left operating in the interests of the working class.<\/span><\/p>\n \n Underlying much of identity politics (rhetorical flourishes on Twitter bios notwithstanding) is the acceptance that a radical change of the economic base is either not necessary, or is unachievable.\u00a0 All that needs to be, or all that can be achieved are <\/span>accommodations <\/span><\/i>for those who are disadvantaged because they belong to one or more of the categories on the current list of approved oppressed-minorities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n This locates the adherents of identity politics as the progressive wing of neo-liberalism, or the neo-liberal left. It does not make them <\/span>left-wing<\/span><\/i> in the original meaning of the term.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n What worsens the situation is that for some of the neo-liberal left, all that is needed to bring about attitudinal change is <\/span>attitudinising<\/span><\/i>. As a result, posturing on social media often becomes the measuring stick of what is <\/span>progressive<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n That attitudinising has been deemed by the right to be <\/span>left wing <\/span><\/i>and the older, discredited right-wing slurs of <\/span>PC madness<\/span><\/i> and the <\/span>loony left<\/span><\/i> have been replaced by <\/span>woke<\/span><\/i>, the <\/span>radical left, <\/span><\/i>or<\/span> hard left<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n \n The neo-liberal left falls into the trap set for them by not questioning why it is that demands which question arguably the most universal and foundational of human understandings \u2013 that there are two sexes\u00a0 \u2013 are not just accepted, but are actively promoted by neo-liberal governments and the giant corporations whose interests those governments serve.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n Their narrow focus effectively privileges demands for extensions of, or even entirely new, formal rights within a politico-economic system that is either perpetuating or deepening gross inequalities and injustices in other spheres.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \n
\nBy: Aphra<\/strong><\/p>\n