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identity politics
JD Vance, Kamala Harris, and the Illusion of Inclusion
Both parties now engage in a kind of political theater, where the appearance of representation often substitutes for meaningful policy reforms.
Jul 27, 2024
In a move that surprised few but disappointed many, former U.S. President Donald Trump has chosen JD Vance, the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy and junior senator from Ohio, as his potential running mate for the 2024 presidential election. This choice, while generating the expected media buzz, represents far more than just another calculated political maneuver. It embodies a troubling trend in American politics: the weaponization of identity politics by both major parties to create a veneer of representation while sidestepping substantive policy changes.
Vance's nomination is a clear play for the rural working-class vote, a demographic that has become increasingly crucial to Republican electoral success. His personal narrative—rising from an impoverished Appalachian-adjacent background to Yale Law School and eventual political office—is meant to resonate with voters who feel left behind and "forgotten" by globalization and technological change. In this way, the GOP is attempting its own version of identity politics, one focused not on racial or ethnic minorities, but on the white working class that forms much of its base.
This strategy mirrors long-standing Democratic efforts to court historically marginalized communities through high-profile appointments and symbolic gestures. Both parties now engage in a kind of political theater, where the appearance of representation often substitutes for meaningful policy reforms. It's a game where faces change, but the underlying power structures too often remain frustratingly the same.
The Vance Gambit: The Republican's Pro-Worker Mirage
JD Vance's meteoric rise from obscure memoirist to potential vice presidential nominee encapsulates the GOP's attempted pivot towards a more worker-friendly image. His critiques of coastal elites and championing of Rust Belt revival have positioned him as a voice for the disaffected working class. Yet, a closer examination reveals a stark disconnect between Vance's rhetoric and his actual policy positions.
While Vance speaks passionately about the struggles of working-class Americans, his actual views and voting record in the Senate has consistently aligned with traditional Republican pro-business stances. He has voiced support for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy and policies directly threatening the power of unions. Indeed behind his "pro-worker" stance appears to be a xenophobic nationalism centred on the mass deportation of immigrants.
The selection of Vance represents an attempt by the Republican establishment to co-opt the language of economic populism without embracing its substance.
The rise of figures like JD Vance reflects a new conservative policy agenda championed by groups such as American Compass, which seeks to blend traditional conservative values with populist economic nationalism. This approach advocates for policies like family-friendly labor laws and restrictions on global trade, supposedly representing a new "Trumpian version of the GOP, the one that threw away the country club, Chamber of Commerce, free trade, and foreign wars."
However, beneath this worker-friendly veneer lies a fundamentally corporate-aligned ideology. While paying lip service to workers' concerns, this brand of "national conservatism" often stops short of embracing true economic democracy or structural reforms that would significantly shift power to workers. Instead, it offers a limited, top-down version of economic populism that ultimately preserves corporate interests and existing power structures.
This contradiction lays bare the hollowness of the GOP's newfound "populist" messaging. It is a Party that invites the head of the Teamsters to speak at its convention while doing all it can to undermine unions and actual worker power. The selection of Vance represents an attempt by the Republican establishment to co-opt the language of economic populism without embracing its substance. By elevating a figure who can speak convincingly about working-class struggles, the party hopes to maintain its grip on a crucial voting bloc while continuing to advance policies that often work against their economic interests.
This approach is not without precedent. The Tea Party movement of the early 2010s similarly channeled working-class anger into support for policies that ultimately benefited the wealthy and corporate interests. Vance's nomination suggests a continuation of this strategy, repackaged for the post-Trump era.
The Democratic Parallel: Kamala Harris and the Limits of Representation
While the Republicans court the white working class through figures like Vance, the Democratic Party has long engaged in its own form of identity politics, particularly focused on racial and ethnic minorities. The selection of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's running mate in 2020 exemplifies this approach.
Harris, as the first woman of African-American and Asian descent to serve as vice president, undoubtedly brings important representation to the executive branch. Her nomination was deservedly celebrated as a historic milestone, particularly for Black and South Asian Americans. However, much like Vance, Harris' personal identity and the symbolism of her position often overshadow the substance of her political record.
The narrative surrounding Harris' candidacy has largely centered on what she represents demographically, rather than critically examining her track record, policy proposals, or how she might address the pressing issues facing the nation.
Throughout her career as a prosecutor and later as California's attorney general, Harris often took stances that were at odds with the criminal justice reform movement that has become central to many progressive platforms. Her "smart on crime" policies and past resistance to independent investigations of police shootings contrast with calls for police reform and racial justice that have gained prominence in recent years.
This critique of Kamala Harris is not meant to single her out or suggest a monolithic view on crime among Black voters. Rather, the point is to highlight a broader pattern of symbolic representation with limited substantial policy change. Indeed, the Biden administration has fallen far short on its promises to address disproportionate levels of Black unemployment, the plight of Black farmers, and the need for far-reaching criminal justice reform.
Since President Biden's unexpected withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, the phenomenon of performative representation has been thrown into stark relief with Vice President Kamala Harris emerging as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Media coverage has overwhelmingly fixated on Harris' identity as a woman of Jamaican and Indian heritage, often at the expense of substantive policy discussions. Pundits and commentators repeatedly emphasize her racial background and historic potential to be the first female president, while giving comparatively little attention to her actual policy platform or vision for the country.
This focus on identity over substance exemplifies the troubling trend in American politics where symbolic representation often overshadows meaningful policy debates. The narrative surrounding Harris' candidacy has largely centered on what she represents demographically, rather than critically examining her track record, policy proposals, or how she might address the pressing issues facing the nation. This imbalance in coverage risks further entrenching a political culture that prioritizes optics over genuine progress.
This underscores a systemic problem wherein political gestures often substitute for meaningful reform, leaving many of the underlying issues unaddressed and communities still grappling with longstanding injustices. The growing potential of a Harris to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for present, while breaking important barriers, also reveals the limitations of representation without corresponding policy shifts. Her presence in the administration often served as a shield against criticism, with her identity being invoked to deflect concerns about the administration's failure to enact far-reaching changes.
Beyond a Politics of Mere Representation
The nomination of JD Vance as Trump's running mate, much like the selection of Kamala Harris as Biden's VP and now likely presidential nominee, represents a troubling trend in American politics. It reflects a system where the appearance of representation often substitutes for meaningful transformation, where identity is weaponized to maintain existing power structures rather than challenge them.
This allows political parties, far too often, to avoid grappling with difficult structural issues. By focusing on representation at the top levels of government, parties can sidestep the harder work of addressing systemic inequalities or economic challenges. The result is a politics of gestures rather than genuine action.
While increasing representation and challenging the traditional white rich male dominance over U.S. politics is urgent and necessary, it is far from enough. Real progress requires policies that address the root causes of inequality and injustice, not just gestures towards inclusivity. Ultimately, revitalizing American democracy will require embracing a politics of substance over symbolism. Advances in political representation must be coupled with a genuine commitment to addressing the deeper needs and concerns of all Americans. Only then can we move beyond the politics of performance and toward a more responsive and effective system of governance that can legitimately address the nation's deeper problems.
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French Elections: What the Global Left Should Learn About Defeating the Far-Right
A united left is a formidable opponent that cannot only halt the surge of neo-fascism, but can also offer a positive and inspiring vision for the future.
Jul 10, 2024
Far-right forces have gained ground across Europe, particularly in Austria, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. In fact, the Netherlands has a new government, a coalition between far right and right, and the far right came first in the first-round of France’s snap election. But fearful of the prospect of a neo-fascist and xenophobic party in government, French voters came out in record numbers and rallied not behind Ensemble—the centrist coalition led by President Emmanuel Macron—but behind the coalition of left forces calling themselves the New Popular Front (NFP), delivering in the end a blow to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) which had made historic gains in the first round and topped the poll with 33.15 percent of the votes cast. NFP came in first in the run-off election, with 188 seats, but falling short of majority.
France’s snap parliamentary election results help us to make sense of the surge of the far right and offer valuable lessons for the left all over the world, including the U.S. where a centrist democrat and a wannabe dictator face off in November.
First, it is crystal clear that the main reason for the rise of Europe’s far right, authoritarian, and ethnonationalist forces is the status quo of neoliberal capitalism. The neoliberal counterrevolution that begun in the early 1980s and undermined every aspect of the social democracy model that had characterized European political economy since the end of the Second World War has unleashed utterly dangerous political forces that envision a return to a golden era of traditional values built around the idea of the nation by fomenting incessant and socially destructive change.
France’s snap parliamentary election results help us to make sense of the surge of the far right and offer valuable lessons for the left all over the world.
True to its actual aims and intent, neoliberalism has exacerbated capitalism’s tendency to concentrate wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer, reduced the well-being of the population through mass privatization and commercialization of public services, hijacked democracy, decreased the overall functionality of state agencies, and created a condition of permanent insecurity. Moreover, powerful global economic governance institutions—namely, the unholy trinity of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization—took control of the world economy and became instrumental in the spreading of neoliberalism by shaping and influencing the policies of national governments. It is under these conditions that ethnonationalism, racism, and neofascism resurfaced in Europe, and in fact all over the world.
In France, the rise of the far right coincided with President François Mitterand’s turn to austerity in the 1980s as his government fell prey to the monetarist-neoliberal ideology of the Anglo-Saxon world. Once Mitterand made his infamous neoliberal turn, the rest of the social democratic regimes in southern Europe (Greece under Andreas Papandreou, Italy under Bettino Craxi, Spain under Felipe Gonzalez, and Portugal under Mario Soares) tagged along, and the eclipse of progressivism was underway.
Less than two decades later, reactionary political forces had emerged throughout Europe as extreme neoliberal economic policies had paved the way for the emergence of political tendencies with an eye to exploiting the catastrophic social and economic impacts of neoliberalism by tapping into a huge reservoir of public anger and discontent with the establishment. Indeed, as neoliberalism tightened its grip on domestic society, far right forces gained more ground. The surge of Marine Le Pen’s RN occurs against the backdrop of Macron’s obsession with converting France into a full-fledged neoliberal society.
A crucial lesson offered by the results of France’s snap election (as well as by Labour’s victory in UK) is that economics remains the rule of the day. Political forces that seek to promote multiculturalism and social rights while pushing at the same time the neoliberal economic agenda will, in the end, get the short end of the stick.
Initially, Macronism was a strategy of trying to appeal to a wide range of center-left and center-right voters by defending secular social rights and even making gestures to LGBTQ people but always with an eye to transforming the social contract and freeing up the “energy of the workforce.” Macron’s “progressive liberalism” philosophy worked up to a point. It backfired in a big way along the way when workers, farmers, and minority groups realized that their economic future was at stake by Macron’s pro-market policies—and that was clearly far more important to them than concerns over social issues and even the environment itself. The “yellow vest” movement that rocked Macron’s presidency in 2018 and left an “indelible mark” on French politics was the first indication that any set of government reforms that carried a disproportionate impact on the working and middle classes was going to be severely challenged.
In the end, Macronism even lost the support it initially had from women’s and LGBTQ organizations, and not simply because Macron’s stance on social policies hardened along the way as part of an opportunistic and desperate attempt on his part to stir conservative voters away from the arms of the far right. It is worth pointing out here that, unlike most social movements which are male-dominated, the “yellow vest” movement was distinguished by the “high proportion of women” that took part in the protests. It was economics that drove French women out into the streets, demonstrating against Macron government’s unjust tax reform measures.
Again, the lesson here is that voters are unlikely to be deceived by the sort of political rhetoric that emphasizes diversity, multiculturalism, and environmental concerns while policies are being pursued in favor of a brutal neoliberal economic setting. Social rights under neoliberalism is a mirage. This is a critical lesson for all left forces in an age in which multiculturalism and the politics of identity play such a prominent ideological role. We see the counter effects of this ultimately “pro-capitalist-stratagem” in the U.S. where voters without college degrees, which amount to over 60 percent of the population, are overwhelmingly on Trump’s camp. A similar tendency can be seen in the Latino community as a growing segment of Hispanic voters are joining Trump’s GOP party.
Voters are unlikely to be deceived by the sort of political rhetoric that emphasizes diversity, multiculturalism, and environmental concerns while policies are being pursued in favor of a brutal neoliberal economic setting.
For the benefit of political expediency and ideological integrity alike, the left should stick to its universalist traditions while remaining of course sensitive to diversity and particularism. But it has no business playing the game of identity politics that has become the hallmark of corporate capitalism and of the liberal political establishment. Last thing we need is a cultural and post-material left morphed into a movement vying for space in a capitalist dominated universe.
More important, as the unique experience of the formation of a coalition of leftist parties in France for the snap parliamentary election attests, the left’s best hope for making major inroads in today’s western societies, which are unquestionably highly complex and diversified, is by introducing and promoting an attractive yet realistic economic agenda that addresses the immediate concerns of average people but without losing sight of the broader objective of the leftist vision which is none other than social transformation.
The “shocking” success of the New Popular Front in the run-off election in France did not materialize simply because French voters wanted to halt the rise of the far right to power, which is the mainstream interpretation. French voters backed NFP for two key reasons: first, because they finally saw the left leaving behind factionalism and, second, because they were lured by its radical manifesto.
For the first time since the 1930s, not only has an anti-fascist alliance been revived in France but there is now hope for the future of the left because of its economic vision, assuming of course that the left can stay united beyond the election. And this is perhaps the greatest lesson leftist forces should draw from the French snap elections: a united left is a formidable opponent that cannot only halt the surge of neo-fascism but can also offer real hope for a humane and sustainable future.
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The Brutality of Identity Politics Devoid of Class Consciousness
Diversity is important. But diversity, when devoid of a political agenda that fights the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed, is window dressing.
Feb 06, 2023
The brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by five Black Memphis police officers should be enough to implode the fantasy that identity politics and diversity will solve the social, economic and political decay that besets the United States. Not only are the former officers Black, but the city’s police department is headed by Cerelyn Davis, a Black woman. None of this helped Nichols, another victim of a modern-day police lynching.
The militarists, corporatists, oligarchs, politicians, academics and media conglomerates champion identity politics and diversity because it does nothing to address the systemic injustices or the scourge of permanent war that plague the U.S. It is an advertising gimmick, a brand, used to mask mounting social inequality and imperial folly. It busies liberals and the educated with a boutique activism, which is not only ineffectual but exacerbates the divide between the privileged and a working class in deep economic distress. The haves scold the have-nots for their bad manners, racism, linguistic insensitivity and garishness, while ignoring the root causes of their economic distress. The oligarchs could not be happier.
Did the lives of Native Americans improve as a result of the legislation mandating assimilation and the revoking of tribal land titles pushed through by Charles Curtis, the first Native American Vice President? Are we better off with Clarence Thomas, who opposes affirmative action, on the Supreme Court, or Victoria Nuland, a war hawk in the State Department? Is our perpetuation of permanent war more palatable because Lloyd Austin, an African American, is the Secretary of Defense? Is the military more humane because it accepts transgender soldiers? Is social inequality, and the surveillance state that controls it, ameliorated because Sundar Pichai — who was born in India — is the CEO of Google and Alphabet? Has the weapons industry improved because Kathy J. Warden, a woman, is the CEO of Northop Grumman, and another woman, Phebe Novakovic, is the CEO of General Dynamics? Are working families better off with Janet Yellen, who promotes increasing unemployment and “job insecurity” to lower inflation, as Secretary of the Treasury? Is the movie industry enhanced when a female director, Kathryn Bigelow, makes “Zero Dark Thirty,” which is agitprop for the CIA? Take a look at this recruitment ad put out by the CIA. It sums up the absurdity of where we have ended up.
Colonial regimes find compliant indigenous leaders — “Papa Doc” François Duvalier in Haiti, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran — willing to do their dirty work while they exploit and loot the countries they control. To thwart popular aspirations for justice, colonial police forces routinely carried out atrocities on behalf of the oppressors. The indigenous freedom fighters who fight in support of the poor and the marginalized are usually forced out of power or assassinated, as was the case with Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba and Chilean president Salvador Allende. Lakota chief Sitting Bull was gunned down by members of his own tribe, who served in the reservation’s police force at Standing Rock. If you stand with the oppressed, you will almost always end up being treated like the oppressed. This is why the FBI, along with Chicago police, murdered Fred Hampton and was almost certainly involved in the murder of Malcolm X, who referred to impoverished urban neighborhoods as “internal colonies.” Militarized police forces in the U.S. function as armies of occupation. The police officers who killed Tyre Nichols are no different from those in reservation and colonial police forces.
We live under a species of corporate colonialism. The engines of white supremacy, which constructed the forms of institutional and economic racism that keep the poor poor, are obscured behind attractive political personalities such as Barack Obama, whom Cornel West called “a Black mascot for Wall Street.” These faces of diversity are vetted and selected by the ruling class. Obama was groomed and promoted by the Chicago political machine, one of the dirtiest and most corrupt in the country.
“It’s an insult to the organized movements of people these institutions claim to want to include,” Glen Ford, the late editor of The Black Agenda Report told me in 2018. “These institutions write the script. It’s their drama. They choose the actors, whatever black, brown, yellow, red faces they want.”
Ford called those who promote identity politics “representationalists” who “want to see some Black people represented in all sectors of leadership, in all sectors of society. They want Black scientists. They want Black movie stars. They want Black scholars at Harvard. They want Blacks on Wall Street. But it’s just representation. That’s it.”
The toll taken by corporate capitalism on the people these “representationalists” claim to represent exposes the con. African-Americans have lost 40 percent of their wealth since the financial collapse of 2008 from the disproportionate impact of the drop in home equity, predatory loans, foreclosures and job loss. They have the second highest rate of poverty at 21.7 percent, after Native Americans at 25.9 percent, followed by Hispanics at 17.6 percent and whites at 9.5 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department for Health and Human Services. As of 2021, Black and Native American children lived in poverty at 28 and 25 percent respectively, followed by Hispanic children at 25 percent and white children at 10 percent. Nearly 40 percent of the nation’s homeless are African-Americans although Black people make up about 14 percent of our population. This figure does not include people living in dilapidated, overcrowded dwellings or with family or friends due to financial difficulties. African-Americans are incarcerated at nearly five times the rate of white people.
Identity politics and diversity allow liberals to wallow in a cloying moral superiority as they castigate, censor and deplatform those who do not linguistically conform to politically correct speech. They are the new Jacobins. This game disguises their passivity in the face of corporate abuse, neoliberalism, permanent war and the curtailment of civil liberties. They do not confront the institutions that orchestrate social and economic injustice. They seek to make the ruling class more palatable. With the support of the Democratic Party, the liberal media, academia and social media platforms in Silicon Valley, demonize the victims of the corporate coup d’etat and deindustrialization. They make their primary political alliances with those who embrace identity politics, whether they are on Wall Street or in the Pentagon. They are the useful idiots of the billionaire class, moral crusaders who widen the divisions within society that the ruling oligarchs foster to maintain control.
Diversity is important. But diversity, when devoid of a political agenda that fights the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed, is window dressing. It is about incorporating a tiny segment of those marginalized by society into unjust structures to perpetuate them.
A class I taught in a maximum security prison in New Jersey wrote “Caged,” a play about their lives. The play ran for nearly a month at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey, where it was sold out nearly every night. It was subsequently published by Haymarket Books. The 28 students in the class insisted that the corrections officer in the story not be white. That was too easy, they said. That was a feign that allows people to simplify and mask the oppressive apparatus of banks, corporations, police, courts and the prison system, all of which make diversity hires. These systems of internal exploitation and oppression must be targeted and dismantled, no matter whom they employ.
My book, “Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison,” uses the experience of writing the play to tell the stories of my students and impart their profound understanding of the repressive forces and institutions arrayed against them, their families and their communities. You can see my two-part interview with Hugh Hamilton about “Our Class” here and here.
August Wilson’s last play, “Radio Golf,” foretold where diversity and identity politics devoid of class consciousness were headed. In the play, Harmond Wilks, an Ivy League-educated real estate developer, is about to launch his campaign to become Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor. His wife, Meme, is angling to become the governor’s press secretary. Wilks, navigating the white man’s universe of privilege, business deals, status seeking and the country club game of golf, must sanitize and deny his identity. Roosevelt Hicks, who had been Wilk’s college roommate at Cornell and is a vice president at Mellon Bank, is his business partner. Sterling Johnson, whose neighborhood Wilks and Hicks are lobbying to get the city to declare blighted so they can raze it for their multimillion dollar development project, tells Hicks:
You know what you are? It took me a while to figure it out. You a Negro. White people will get confused and call you a nigger but they don’t know like I know. I know the truth of it. I’m a nigger. Negroes are the worst thing in God’s creation. Niggers got style. Negroes got . A dog knows it’s a dog. A cat knows it’s a cat. But a Negro don’t know he’s a Negro. He thinks he’s a white man.
Terrible predatory forces are eating away at the country. The corporatists, militarists and political mandarins that serve them are the enemy. It is not our job to make them more appealing, but to destroy them. There are amongst us genuine freedom fighters of all ethnicities and backgrounds whose integrity does not permit them to serve the system of inverted totalitarianism that has destroyed our democracy, impoverished the nation and perpetuated endless wars. Diversity when it serves the oppressed is an asset, but a con when it serves the oppressors.
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