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We had the pleasure to be joined in the studio by journalist and author Ash Sarkar before the release of her new book Minority …
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A lot of all-knowing sages in these comments… 🙄
Identify politics was also the weapon of choice used against Corbyn.
Leaders of left-wing organisations are afraid to reject false accusations of racism or misogyny for fear of appearing reactionary.
What distinguishes identity politics is its subjective individualism. It is not interested in the objective causes of oppression, nor of proposing any way of fighting collectively to end this oppression. Instead, it simply talks about the experiences of members of oppressed groups as individuals.
This subjectivism is very useful to those with power. Not only does it relegate any understanding of how capitalism and class society necessarily produces oppression, but it also allows them to undermine the left by dissolving its collective organisations.
Perhaps it's the rite of passage to once be young and naive, but it comes from the heart, rather than the greed of wealth and status, of the older age.
It’s not really surprising that a broad materialist analysis has yet again proven more applicable/useful than individualistic idealism in the context of climate change and economic decline is it. I would even question whether identity politics, postmodernism and the modern conception of ‘social democracy’ is even progressive or left wing at the time of writing. Many of these approaches would have been considered centrism at best 100 years ago.
Ash talked about “a room full of adults”. I’m not so sure they are adults. Chronologically they might be, but developmentally they’re not.
Tax WEALTH, not work! ✊ Follow Gary Stevenson @garyseconomics
This was going so well until Farage came up. They both accuse him of weaponising resentment and anger and then lament how the left has been unable to do the same (presumably meaning in a way that is politically useful to them). I feel that this 'Woke is Dead' olive branch is a strategy to gain votes, and I don't mean that it's some kind of cynical ploy – I think that neither of them believe that there are any other acceptable positions on the political spectrum, so it has to be their way or the highway
As usual great comments from Ash, just finished her book and it's incredible
It is somewhat annoying that some Leftists are now realising what a bunch of us have been saying for years while they’ve been off cancelling everything and everyone they disagree with
Yes minority rule seems to be happening and it doesn’t look good. I’ll give it a miss thanks.
Seeing the dramatic rise of desperate homeless people everywhere in every city and suburb is a constant reminder that our institutions are fundamentally broken, and as the tide rises, those who are housed all quietly panic, who will be next?
Ash Sakar sounds like a Jedi 😀
The young are basically stupid. Is she finally growing up?
Great stuff Ash – so interesting to hear a journalist who actually thinks for themselves!
I love this brave, self-criticist attitude of Ash. When I recall her during the Corbyn,s campaign and I see her now, I have to acknowledge how much she has grown and matured, both politically and intellectually.
She will be a "must have" for any future inclusive, genuinely leftist movement in the UK.
Ash Sarkar, British journalist and author of Minority Rule: Adventures In The Culture War, is correct to observe that the Left destroys itself. For example, in the UKpolitics subreddit thread the moderators will delete a comment, branding it hate speech, if it argues that children have the right to an open future and therefore their adolescence-related distress should not be medicalised. The same applies to a comment that argues that adolescent girls and women should have the right to female-only sports competitions, gyms, changing rooms, toilets, and social clubs. Both of those comments resonate with the vast majority of people and are reasonable comments to make from a feminist and a children’s rights perspective. UKpolitics subreddit moderators, on the other hand, freak out when they see those comments. How can you build a cohesive left-wing political movement when some people in that movement feel the need to impose an unpopular and illogical orthodoxy on left-wing progressive commenters?
There is more to being a woman than a collection of body parts and a feeling. Womanhood is a lot more complex than that because it develops over a lifetime. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a female-only gym and the people who oppose this idea exhibit a disturbing degree of narcissism, as well as an inability to regulate their emotions in constructive ways. There is nothing stopping those critics from setting up a gym for people who are united by the shared experience of being transgender. But to claim that women and trans women have something meaningful in common is wishful thinking at best, narcissistic entitlement at worst.
Any of you buying into this is deluded. Ash IS and has been one of the most decisive people in the U.K. She celebrated the low birth rates of white people and said “come on boys” to her Asian men replacing us
That mentality does not simply change. She is A Snake and the second she gets the chance to revert ,she will.
FIRE🖤
While I see the clear value in raising class consciousness and action, I still struggle to see where or who is going to get working class bigots/nazi's/etc to stand side by side with the people they (insert marginalised working class people here) hate to make the ones they actually should hate (the ones mentioned in this video, career politicians, lobbyists and so on) to both fear and listen to them.
Using WOKE as a pejorative is about as lazy as using the term PC
If you object to what a person is saying, be honest about it.
Dont just hurl pointless epithets.
Also, be specific.
Seems like Ash has seen the light…trying to backtrack out of the woke space 🙂
lol she's mental
I don't disagree with Ash's core argument about the pitfalls of liberal identity politics, but there's nothing she's saying here that seems particularly new or even controversial, at least in the political circles I'm familiar with. I also think her examples of this in left contexts are weak and this means that her argument mirrors the structure of right wing anti-woke rhetoric seen in books like "The Coddling of the American Mind" i.e. take an essentially marginal moment happening on some college campus and then say "this is what all the crazy kids are doing". From what i can make out, the original "Anne Frank had white privilege" tweet was just some guy having a stupid opinion that blew up on Twitter. It wasn't in a statement signed by antiracist organisations or MPs, and doesn't really tell us anything about the state of the left. As for Roger Hallam, there are a hundred good reasons why people wouldn't leap to his defence at TWT. The man is an egomaniac who absolutely refuses to be part of any group where he is not in control, and is only very questionably on the left – when XR were arguing about whether to adopt the fourth demand for a just transition (I.e. be up for talking about climate change in a way that would forge the kinds of alliances Ash says we need to build) Roger was so hostile to this that he took the side of literal ecofascists in the US to stop it. So yeah, him saying the c word wasn't a terrible act of harm, but he has actually been extremely materially harmful in his behaviour, both towards those in his groups and those outside. Again, i don't know what it tells us about the left, except that we're often not great at choosing panel speakers who will create the space for generative, intersectional dialogue rather than derailing the conversation to make it all about them.
The true heroes of the left are the ones like Kshama Sawant, who are organizing the working class and improving their material condition.
Starmer was Brutus and Corbin was Cesar, who voted for that? Oh I know, it was a vote against the Tories! But replacing it with the same? In German we have a saying. "Better an end with a nightmare than a nightmare without end!" Do you have an equivalent?
Look at the veiws, its a great way to make the money, and just keep it. Socialism is great for that, feel good and get rich.
I don't trust her any more than I trust Owen Jones.
Buy my book.
Sorry but she was part of the identity politics regime?
A large subsection of our global youth, young adults and "thirty somethings" especially in USA, UK, Canada, France…have been brainwashed into this "woke" CRT, progressive mind-f***!
Those orchestrating this (for the last 40 years or so) wrote the playbook for this Leftist, Socialist, "progressive" nightmare and have been slowly integrating it into American society a little at a time, until recently when they went FULL RETARD!
(Never go full retard)
This cultural rape by the Left serves one purpose in their overall scheme of total control of the "have's" over the "have nots."
To destroy the current cultures so that lanes begin to open up for Marxist thought.
Period. The Left couldn't care less for LGTBQ, Blacks, immigrants, women….if it's politically expedient, we will exploit anyone. These people are evil.
Their young, loud histrionic ignorant constituents….are just stupid, lost and believe the lies they're being sold by these evil, elite Leftists.
Ash, the next John Oliver!