tThere’s so much to thank musician Sam Fender. It revives socially conscious songwriting, highlights the aggression atrocities and calls for a ceasefire in Gaza before it becomes politically convenient. But selfishly, the most important thing he did is take my place to scream on the internet. In a recent interview with the Sunday Times, Fender aimed to be prominent in identity politics compared to class.
“We’re good at talking about privileges, whether it’s white, male, or straight privilege, but we rarely talk about classes,” he said. “And that’s a lot of the reason why all young young people are seduced by demagogues and psychos like Andrew Tate. Then Tate tells him he’s worth something? It’s seductive.”
Why has this proven controversial for some people? Online backlash includes accusations that Fender mischievously captures minorities against the working class, that he justifies misogyny as a response to poverty, and that he is against the Phantom. Some of these criticisms are fair. It’s not just white working class boys in the north who are attracted to Tate, but also children of color in downtown London. But Fender has identified some truth. We witnessed the rise of identity politics that stands by the ranks. And the far right benefits from it.
The working class is not homogeneous (shockers – includes minorities of all kinds of ethnic and gender!), but identity politics has somehow been stripped as another concern. Expressing benefits on one side is often considered to be in conflict with doing the same thing on the other side. Voting is tough. Research from the financial age simultaneously shows that there has been an increase in people who believe Democrats will stand up to marginalized people (i.e. identity minorities).
At least a little, this is the right thing to mobilize a kind of identity politics of one’s own. Talking about white working class redirects anger about economic inequality to racial dissatisfaction. It’s not a wealth tax, an investment in education, or an intensifying collective bargaining that helps the white working class. Minorities are silenced about injustice. But it is also true that the language of straight/white/male/cisgender privilege creates little room for the experience of white men from a working-class background. It seems that in the world of modern identity politics, the only visibility of white, male, straight people, can sometimes look like villains (“men are “trash” brands of Instagram’s feminism” or “allies” of political movements led by identity minorities. These discourses do not come with an asterisk that indicates that they do not imply working-class men.
It is worth pointing out that it is much less likely to encounter a sermon of privilege identifying trade unions, housing and tenants campaigns, or Palestinian solidarity movements. . But we live in an age where political parties and union membership has declined for decades. What we encounter on the internet is for most people the main way we engage in politics. The weakening of collective politics is no coincidence. It’s design.
As Margaret Thatcher once said, “Economics is the way. Objects are to change the mind and soul.” Our economic situation greatly changes how we think and feel about ourselves. Tories never had problems with class inequality. What they wanted to destroy was class consciousness. 45 years of active neoliberal policymaking – breaking the background of the trade union movement, selling council homes, destroying industrial labor, and shattering it into bits – was intended to bring sledgehammers into a social engine of collective action and solidarity. What is left behind is a patchwork of disconnected identities that are in motion from a sense of shared material conditions.
These dismembered groups now compete for a validation of their struggle, often expressed through online hostility. Attention was always psychological wages. Being recognized by others is what you say is important. But social media has transformed its natural human attention needs into traps. Silicon Valley has created a literal attention economy in which the eyes are converted into advertising revenue and into ripe, delicious data for harvest. Feeling anxious and lonely, drive us to Instagram, Tiktok and dating apps. Such a platform reinforces these feelings and keeps us there as long as possible.
Other users are our rivals. We compete with each other for our followers, influence, status and central positions of public conversation. What does this mean for politics? That means we see them as a threat rather than seeing people who see us as a potential opportunity to build a coalition.
We tended to spend too much time against our own feelings. Whether the all-white yoga classes are claimed to be “trauma” for people of color, or whether climate activists who make vows claim to bring “violence” to the universe, or David Badiel, accusing Arab-Australian poets of wiping out Jesus’ Jews, argues that modern identity is being told that it is harmed.
Competing for the attention economy encourages us to turn Morehill into a mountain. “I” takes over the politics of identity. Instead of striving for liberation from discrimination and material oppression, we simply want to inflate the value of visibility that comes with suffering. The withdrawal to subjective experience speaks to us for res, competitive complaints, and the politics of weaponized victims. The individual is political, but if what you want is social change, the self is a dead end. It is worth remembering the lessons of narcissism. If you are too interested in your own reflection, it will kill you.
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