Identity Politics? Sure. What other kind is there.

The Alt Right is increasingly derided for engaging in Identity Politics. The accusation is usually accompanied by a correlation of White Identity with the various forms of race, gender, and sexual identity groups on the Left. “Identitarians are just White SJWs,  no better than LGBTXYZ, or BLM activists.” Remnant Conservatives, Libertarians or some kind of Alt-Light¹  are the most likely to hurl this insult; Leftists just scream ‘Racist!’ Often enough pejorative accusations reveal the bias of the accuser in more interesting ways than they do weakness in the accused. For this derision begs the question, what is the the alternative? Deracinated politics? Social cohesion  merely by ideas or political theories or social institutions? And is this really an escape from the Identity accusation; especially in the absence of a more compelling identity, isn’t assent to a propositional political system a form of identity? Well, yes and no. At least not all forms of Identity are equally grounded. And in the motive of these folk’s accusation we can find the root to the larger Western identity crisis.

Known or unknown by its proponents, the Anti-Identity ethos posits the existence of the Universal Person². From the secular wing of the Universalist school we are each biological units of Homo sapiens sapiens. From the theistic Universalist school we are all children of God. These two wings are quintessential strange bedfellows, they should be at odds, but converge in their rejection of the validity of Identity, or at least certain kinds of Identity as politically meaningful. We cannot say one is evolutionary, while the other is creationist, as there are plenty of theists who believe in evolutionary process. Instead we have to separate these positions in terms of intentionality. For the secularist the Universal Person came into being accidentally, while for the theist this person became by the will of God. So for the former Universal Person has neither impetus nor goal, but for the latter it has divine intent.

No one can be taken seriously who claims that Universal Person has been with us since the dawn of time. At least it is not possible to claim that any had an Identity, or self-awareness in such a personhood until the last few centuries at the earliest. And even in the French Revolutionary period this Person was embryonic. Universal Person has reached adolescence only in recent decades, and  has matured in European thought space; though educated in part by Jews. In other other words, Universal Person is the invention of White people. It is our people’s Will rarefied into a thing in itself. As such it is held as applicable to all of mankind. Indeed for the devout it must be brought to every corner of the globe. Western governments and institutions, such as the EU, UN and USA  assume all humans into this Will, or abstract Identity. Quite literally abstract; drawn out of the European. The implicit tyranny and Totalizing colonization in this paradigm  and the global policies that emerge from it are somehow unnoticed. Universalizaton is seen as an intrinsic good. While particularization, othering, is the last sin to be purged.

There is the problem with the nature of this Universal Person though. Where does it exist, if it exists at all? Is it a discovery of an invention on the part of European man? This Identity is positive in a way, but it is posited as a negation. It is the rejection of other identities, especially biological identity: race. We should say that the rejection of Ethnic Identity is the foundation of this Ideological Identity. More accurately, Universal Person is the necessary citizen of Universal Democracy. In this way ethnic or competing ideological identities are rejected all at once in order to establish the ideal democratic citizen: the atomized individual with no identity apart from self-interested participation in democratic society.

When the form of governance, Democracy, became an end in itself the ethnic community that initially chose it for its own good, became incidental. At least as a positive object of public democratic discourse White ethnicity has become forbidden. This is one thing in a mongrel ‘Nation’ like America, but particular European ethnic identities are even denied political status in the very countries, yeah on the very land these ethnic communities became upon. Quite clearly the racial realities of the community, its habits and in-group biases persist. And so sickness in public discourse and policy manifests when the only identity permitted is purely Ideological, ignoring the racial>biological, unspoken discourse that binds ethnic communities.

Such a profound irony. The romantic arc of freedom that we still learned about when I was an American school boy. The arc from the tyranny of Europe and its traditional institutions of Church and Monarchy to the democratic will of the people and the individual rights of Universal Person. We fell so in love with this invention that we isolated it from its intention. We sanctified it as a good in itself, and now are but its servants. We Whites who invented this democracy have no necessary right to exist under its care. The tool of our liberation has become the means of our destruction.

More complex is the anti-identity position, especially in its anti-racist or anti-ethnic forms, is effectively a hope for a ‘promised land’. It is an Identity in things hoped for rather than things present. It is more about what ‘should-be’ than what ‘is’. Yet we are forced to ask, promised to whom?  To what really? For the promise is only to future holders of the idea of Universal Democracy. Mere things which we are not permitted the luxury of calling ‘our posterity’. In truth if we begin to care about our families or our ethnic communities, we taint the purity of the Ideal. Universal Democracy is a memetic sickness that corrodes the natural will to bring ones genetic heritage into the future. Reproductive relationships are increasingly ad hoc arrangements that produce individuals. Strong family and kin ties are a threat to Universal Democracy. Ethnicity is a social construct that undermines the efficient social functioning of Universal Person.

So those who smugly disdain Identity Politics hold a sickly version themselves, though ignorantly. And an anti-racist Identity, any Identity predicated on the rejection of physical, biological, racial, that is non-ideal criterion, is fundamentally precarious. An Ideological Identity only exists if there are people holding it. The holders are indeed incidental to the idea held. So if the Idea is forgotten or corrupted, what are the people who hold it? They are without Identity.

Atomization. Radical individualism. These problems of modernity trouble both Left and Right. Community is often pined for as a solution for our contemporary universalized selfishness that has lead to familial, social, and environmental degradation. And yet the paradigm of Universal Person can produce nothing else. Identity politics as we have seen flourish (or flounder) in the political theorizing of the West, have emerged to fill the Identity Vacuum inherent in  universal, pluralistic and multicultural society. The cult of Universal Personhood is the genesis of the Identity crisis in the West.

It is not that Identity Politics are actually new. They have usually been an unspoken grounding for social groups. In normal healthier societies Identity is assumed; that is societies where masses of members don’t suffer neurotic insecurity about who they are. In traditional societies, the ones we evolved into, it was assumed that ‘These are my people’. The idea of being able to choose who your people were was not possible. Tribal communities all the way through to nations of ethnic scale did not need to seek or invent Identity because they already had one. Universal Democracy necessarily  brings  spiritual, and social decomposition.

So the tables are turned on the Alt Light critique of White Identity. They are not merely akin to the SJW Identity Politics hacks, they are keepers of the very dogma, the very social and personal self-understanding that conjured the SJW and herm pathalogical insecurity. The Identity of Universal Person, admitted or not, is the assumed self-awareness of the Universal Democrat. And those who hold the conceit that they are freer than other men, are the most blind and dangerous. These derive their Identity from held Ideas; principles and abstracted notions that they find meaningful. They have at core an emotionally grounded Identity. This meaning is not felt universally however. So other members of society seek meaningful grounding elsewhere. There are still racial identities permitted in our multiracial societies; just not officially for White folk. For this reason many wounded White souls have invented identities out of their sexual proclivities or emotional states, or from membership in myriad propositional communities, political and cultural. All of these identities are flimsy on their own, and this is why we see such outrage when they are challenged. For without these masks of social belonging the holder fears they are literally nothing. Tragically they have been memetically isolated from the one Identity that is permanent, and grounded in their biological history: their kin group, their race.   

PS

Of course there are going to be sub-cultural identities and preferences. As long as we live above very small tribal communities we will have diversity of interests tastes and ability. We will discuss these in a further post. Our goal here was to establish race as the surest and indeed the  unavoidable ground for Identity. On this founding Identity all others, even religion, must rest and be limited.  For as much as we would not expect our faith to deny the existence of gravity, when our faith communities require us to deny the reality of race this cannot be of God.

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1. I prefer Lite-Right, or Right-Lite, as it is their Rightness that is light not their Alternativeness. But i’m probably going to make even the pedants cringe if I keep going on.

2. Person is used intentionally as it reflects the sentiment of this PC signaling camp, not because the author holds such sentiment.

I use capitals like a German, (sometimes), Looks a bit Wininie ther Pooish in English, but I trust the Germans. Smart people, Tremendous. Really.

They also get to engage in neology at will. Universalmensch would be nice to use for Universal Person, and would quell the temptation to abbreviate to UP.