The Fake Left that Keeps on Pretending: A Criticism of Identity-Based Politics
Confront them, and they will quickly make an attack on liberals, but have they even read Karl Marx’s and Lenin’s books ever? HA HA HA HA HA! Guess who we are talking about? Of course, the self-proclaimed, LOUD, pretentious “leftists”.
Tell me the last time you checked your class privilege. “What privilege? Ram/Jesus/Allah gave me these! Also, you know, I am {assert some oppressed identity here}, so no criticism about me will ever be counted as valid criticism.”
No intersectionalist feminist would deny that problems such as classism, casteism, patriarchy, queer-phobia, Islamophobia, ableism, and racism are serious problems. An intersectionalist feminist must stand up for the rights of victims of any of these forms of oppression. But in what world does that mean that nobody using any of these identities must ever be questioned or confronted or criticized?
That is the point of intersectionality — that all of us check our privileges and all of us listen to one another. And learning is not possible without criticism and self-awareness. But what about those who stubbornly refuse to self-check their privileges?
Wake up, scroll, blame everything on others, mix and mingle with fellows that use the same labels, continue to be ignorant, pretend like you are social warriors, spread your disinformation, be VERY LOUD ABOUT YOUR BIAS, hide under a label or more when confronted, go to sleep.
Many years ago, I would have said, that sounds much like a Sanghi cis-het man!
If you think that such people exist only on the politically right and liberal sides, you probably are not very active on social media. The difference between “liberal” men and these self-proclaimed “leftist” men is that the former are quietly unaware of their privilege and the latter thrive on blaming others when you tell them to check their privileges.
Also, I said “liberal men” and “leftist men” because I wanted to give them a chance to deny any accusation against them and turn the discourse to a different topic to make themselves look woke: “Why say “men” if you are really “feminist”?”. Had your snack? Was that tasty? Now, come back to the point — how can you excuse yourself from any accusation made against you and blame everything on someone else?
What is your personal definition of leftism? Is it “shameless denial of the truth and being absolutely biased to hate people of other identities”?
When a bunch of clowns like these — most of them cis-het men misusing their “Dalit” identity to merely silence non-Dalits — blamed “Savarnas” for everything (as though Netanyahu is a TamBrahm and that is why the genocide is happening today!), a Dalit feminist informed them that the threat faced by women is very much real because when a perverted man on the road sees a woman from far away, the first thing he sees about her is her nody, her figure, and when he sees a “woman”, if the opportunity presents itself, he would want to harass her. She insisted that all other identities like her class and caste come later. No, they would not listen to her. Her voice was silenced by the cis-het men who called her a sucker for casteism.
No intersectionalist feminist would deny that the lower a woman’s privilege, the greater are the chances that she might be attacked. But refusing to accept the privileges one has while blaming another, that’s a largely self-proclaimed leftist thing.
I am convinced that most of these folks are bored, lonely, and want validation: that is all that motivates them to be “left”, not Marx or Periyar or Ambedkar or any real anti-fascism or feminist values.
“I am a Muslim and any remark that I refuse to accept is Islamophobic!”
Bruh?! The last time I checked, Islamophobia is display of hatred and violence against Muslims for their Muslim identity; it is NOT criticism of Islam? Yes, like most other religions are, Islam is also a highly misogynistic religion.
Me to myself, every time I am surrounded by quacks that present themselves as “leftists”, who also clearly display the same traits that right-wing fascists do: Hmm … Why did Marx not recommend Islam as a cure for the classism problem? Why did Ambedkar not recommend Christianity as an alternative to Dalits? Why was Periyar not a staunch Hindu?
I am an ex-psychologist; yes, we study criticisms of conventional psychology and therapy methods, too, but what the fxck are “Vedic counselling”, “Christian counselling”, and “Islamic counselling”?
“Don’t be classist!”
How is that criticism “classist”?
“It is classist if I say it is classist when I call myself a Marxist.”
Sound logic that is!
Dangers of These Fake Left Politics:
No interest in any real cause: Most of these people would have rarely ever read books by scholars, at least nothing outside their area of interest. Most of these people’s knowledge of “leftism” comes from being active on social media most of the time. Does an idea seem appealing? Count me in because I am bored. Have they ever walked one protest march? Have they ever volunteered on the field for one real cause? Have they come out of their comfort zone to openly oppose an authoritarian government? The last, I bet not! It is convenient to lie your privileged butt on your couch and take sides in a heated debate because your bored, right?
At best, these folks care not about values but about securing their comfort. In a different country, they would be all identities that they hate: “liberals”, “patriots”, “centrists”, “apolitical”, and such.
If they truly cared, they could have organized some protest march for victims of the ongoing war in Gaza. NONE OF THEM DID, but many of them did and still do continuously, actively share their hate posts or push their agenda or promote their religion — which prove to be very useful for the victims. Thank you.
Did this crowd go to the Shaheen Bagh protest? No. What do they keep accusing the liberals of? INACTION.
Encouraging Closeted Bigots and Haters: I am convinced that there is little difference among these folks and the far-right wing when it comes to their online hate speech and harassment games. Would I say that no far-right-wing cis-het man can ever be nice to a woman? Of course not! Whom he pretends to be nice to depends much on her identity because of his identity-based politics. And a lot many of these self-proclaimed leftists are no different. All of them are equally capable of hate; only the flag they wave or the party they vote for are different.
Encouraging Pseudoscience: Should one give a victim of a road accident immediate medical help or thoughts and prayers? A lot of pseudoscience these days is often presented as “alternative” for proven science, alternatives with no scientific research or peer reviews, or as nonsense that is labelled “spirituality”. All that these self-proclaimed intellectuals need is to “feel” “the vibe” to label something as pro-something or anti-their sentiment. There is no critical thinking involved in their labelling methods, just plain hate and sentiments. This way, they put themselves and their dependents at huge risk. Even if their loud claims don’t cause harm, they still are flagbearers of oppressive systems, which they certainly won’t admit.
Silencing Victims: All that these people need to decide whether they will extend support to someone or not is just a word, an identity label. The only thing they care for is that, the label. If someone who shares their identity happens to be a victim of harassment or oppression, these would become online warriors, and the incident will go viral for a week at best. But if the harasser or abuser or offender shares their identity, they will coolly ignore the issue, or worse, make the victim feel ashamed. Thanks a lot for standing up for Afghanistani women, Mahsa Amini and Armita Geravand.
Rewriting Leftist Values: Resembling the far-right woke in all their ways and actions, if these people continue to present themselves and call themselves as “left” because it is a very comfortable place to hide one’s bigotry, especially when one is highly privileged but has one or more labels they can misuse or earn sympathy with, then these people will only make the left look much worse in the eyes of the public.
Anyone who is incapable of tolerating being questioned and/or criticized — should they be allowed to question or criticize or find faults with others? Anyone whose ‘values’ depend solely on their deep attachment to their own identities, anyone who displays, justifies, and denies their bias, do they even understand justice? Should a person who is incapable of acknowledging their privilege present themselves as activists? Should a person whose readings are mostly religious be an advocate of feminism? Are such fake clowns really different from the right-wing trolls?
I honestly won’t be surprised if this crowd would cancel Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, B.R. Ambedkar, and E.V.R. Periyar, calling them “privileged right-wing misogynists”.
