Identity politics in the words of the anti-racist activist bell hooks:
“Identity politics emerges from struggles of oppressed or exploited groups for a standpoint from which one can criticise dominant structures, a position that gives meaning and significance to the struggle.” 203
Woke activists claim to pursue identity politics.204 The term “identity politics” goes back to the radical-left, feminist Combahee River Collective, which coined it in 1977. For this collective, their politics was rooted in identity:
“We believe that the most profound and possibly the most radical political attitude emerges directly from our own identity.” 205
Today, identity politics has become established as a collective term for actions that
“aim to establish a self-understanding as a political collective within a particular group.” 206
Put simply, identity politics is meant to turn identities into political interest representations. For this, a strategically constructed group must demarcate itself outwardly and align itself inwardly.
Identity politics forms the basis for intersectional theory, which was published in 1991 by the CRT activist Kimberlé Crenshaw. According to Crenshaw, identity is to be strengthened in the fight for social justice:
“Identity politics, however, stood in contradiction to the prevailing notions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in the liberal mainstream as remnants of bias—that is, as inherently negative frameworks through which societal power marginalises the different. According to this understanding, our goal should be to deprive such categories of any societal significance. Nevertheless, in certain anti-racist and feminist liberation movements, the view is implicit that the social demarcation of differences does not necessarily have to be a force of oppression; it can instead be the source of political empowerment.” 207
So-called empowerment in identity politics works differently from an individualist perspective, as there is a fundamental difference in the handling of identity: liberal viewpoints place a common humanity in the foreground and fight for equal rights. People are to be treated according to the same universal standards. The pastor Martin Luther King Jr. fought as a civil rights activist in 1963 for equal treatment when he preached: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”208
These universal viewpoints are problematised by woke activists as blindness to oppression (see Universalism).209 The intersectional approach attacks all cross-group commonalities. Instead, for the fight against oppression, allegedly marginalised groups are to receive special rights. So-called “positive discrimination” and solidarity are said to be necessary as a form of compensatory justice.
This view of identity is imbued with a similar tribal thinking to right-wing extremist politics: both right-wing extremism and wokeness classify identities collectively according to superiority (often in the reverse direction). Although they allegedly pursue opposing goals, both follow a collectivist logic: in right-wing extremism, people are classified according to alleged races; in activism for so-called “social justice”, according to privileges. In both cases, ideological group hierarchies result.
But it is not only the ideological proximity to right-wing extremism that is dangerous. The catastrophes of left-wing extremist collectivism are systematically ignored. The new-left view of conflicts is based on collective blame and conspiracies. The past of communism warns us impressively against such thinking. To name just one example: the Maoist divisions into hostile and loyal parts of the people led to the annihilation of millions of people with allegedly problematic identity.210