French left tears itself apart over ‘non-white’ meetings | Hacker News Reader

French left tears itself apart over ‘non-white’ meetings

politico.eu

57 pointsTomte50 comments

I think this emphasis on identity politics will be self-defeating in the long term.

Humans are inherently tribal in nature. I don’t see that ever changing. We can mitigate the issues caused by this by emphasizing that we all belong to a bigger tribe than our race/ethnicity. For example by emphasizing we are all Americans or French or even Humans, and as members of this one big tribe, we should be good to each other.

However, what we are doing is instead emphasizing tribal identity, and even setting up an adversarial relationship between racial/ethnic tribes. This breeds tribal animosity.

If you look at Martin Luther King, Jr, a lot of his appeals to white people were based on “We are all Americans, and this is not how you are supposed to be treating fellow Americans, or we are all Christians, and this is now how we are supposed to be treating fellow Christians” and appealed to shared documents and values (such as the Declaration of Independence, the Bible) etc.

Now there is less emphasis of being part of a larger tribe, less emphasis on shared documents and values.

As a person of color, I worry that the coming blowback to this will end us up in a worse place that we are now.

This is why I'm a (classic) liberal - because if liberalism wins, not even its enemies have to be afraid of the outcome.

Classical liberalism mostly did win in the West, which is why it split into the modern western center-to-center-right which is oriented around protecting the interests of the elites established by implementation of classical liberalism, and the modern western center-left-to-left which is focussed on going beyond the concrete program of classical liberalism to further the outward distribution of power. (Outside of the center-left to center-right are a mixture of ideologies which are often, but not entirely, less closely tied to classical liberalism as antecedents; many that aren’t derived from liberalism are reactions against it.

The idea that “enemies” of classical liberalism (or even adherents outside of the mercantile elites) have nothing to be afraid of from it is only true at the level of bland platitudes, not concrete implementation. But that’s not unique to classical liberalism, many ideologies are harmless to anyone, even their opponents, at that level.

> The idea that “enemies” of classical liberalism (or even adherents outside of the mercantile elites) have nothing to be afraid of from it is only true at the level of bland platitudes

I agree that there's things to lose, but I don't think the achievement that the enemies of an ideology should not be put to death should be underestimated! Sure there's things you lose, but there's a lot of things that you were historically at risk of losing when your ideology lost, that you aren't anymore. Like your life, your children, your self-determination. To me that's an achievement well worth protecting and celebrating.

I think inasmuch as that's a bland platitude it's because we've forgotten how bad it was. The guillotine is a tasteless internet joke now.

Actually, I think that the main problem is that this question is... the wrong problem !

The problem should not be if there should exist some meetings to discuss of some specific problems with only concerned people (black, arabs, women...or plumber) but why these people need to meet only together to be able to express themselves freely.

IMHO, the real problem is that we seem to be less and less able to discuss freely, to listen to other opinions and to accept that other people may have different point of view. It's harder and harder to express himself freely in public without someone feeling bad, insulted, either right or wrong!!!

So people meet "together", to be sure to hear the other say exactly what they want to hear.

"We don't talk anymore", we try to convince the others that we are right

40 years from now we will look back at the 2010s and 2020s as an ideological dark age.

Who’s “we”?

Depending on your politics, you could say the same about the 1980s.

Interesting dilemma. Let's take race and politics out for a moment.

Suppose I arrange a meeting for a group with a specific interest. And then suppose people then attend my meeting who disrupt it; I'd be within my rights to ask people to leave, right, because it's 'my' meeting?

Now... does that basic principle change if a) we make that specialist interest related to race or minority issues, or b) I'm a politician?, or c) it's arranged by (e.g) a students' union?

Genuinely interested in people's views on this...

You can be adjacent to the special interest and have a genuine, good faith interest in the discussion, and in the interest of inclusivity, should not be turned away.

Maybe you’re role is to listen more than share your own experiences, but you shouldn’t be turned away.

I totally get why it 'feels' wrong - but what I'm trying to establish is what precisely makes it wrong.

I mean, people hold private meetings with a specific list of invitees all the time around the world, and we don't police peoples' private reasons for who they choose to invite.

To take another example: support groups for women coming out of abusive relationships. Very good reasons to not allow men to attend, no?

>> To take another example: support groups for women coming out of abusive relationships. Very good reasons to not allow men to attend, no?

So women cannot be in abusive relationships with other women?

Are all men abusers?

Edit: Downvotes? So allies are not possible? Is everyone in a given group summarily guilty because of their identity?

Good Q. In point of fact, people might be interested in looking up the percent of lesbian relationships that are abusive and compare to other relationship types.

> people hold private meetings with a specific list of invitees all the time

They're not private meetings, they're public policy meetings. And yes, in Europe, you couldn't even do this on a commercial level (which is more "private" than a political meeting). You can't go "sorry, only people with this skin color are allowed to enter".

I think you can exclude people from a group. But when you're explicitly excluding people from a group on racial lines in the name of inclusion and fighting racism, you should expect some raised eyebrows. If you have an ideal of equality, you cannot use methods that are unequal; if you have an ideal that people should not be excluded based on race, you cannot make it a criterion of exclusion - at least, you can't and still expect anyone to buy that you believe in what you're selling.

It's not a dilemma in my mind. They're free to exclude anyone they want from their private meetings. What is disturbing is that there is a sizeable chunk of the population that thinks this sort of exclusion and bigotry is acceptable and would even vote for parties that seek to have such policies codified into law.

Then again, most of the rest of the world is already okay with plenty of "racism" and discrimination when it comes under the guise of justice, so I'm not hopeful that we'll be seeing the light anytime soon.

I think profiling white/people as universally ignorant to minorities’ issues is just a typical stereotype. Yes, there will be ignorant and disruptive individuals, but ban them selectively. One by one. Lumping everyone into “they don’t get it” is like admitting white people are a lost cause, and reinforces “us vs them” combative narrative, playing right into the hand of alt right.

In a similar fashion, the feminist movement can be like that. Or it can be like they did it in Iceland, for example, where (speaking from memory) women pushed a legislation to mandate for women to hold no less than a 40% board seats in public companies. BUT they also made it so that it also applied to men.

So, at the end of the day, it’s just political extremism. They come and go, as the social pendulum swings from left to right and back.

The only way it swings back is when there’s room to openly criticize. The opportunities and venues for that are shrinking and the costs growing.

Well if it's arranged by a group, you need to formulate a rule for who gets to attend. If that rule is "no whites" that's certainly controversial.

More like having a meeting with people where the specific interest has a lot to do with the excluded group.

A simple thing is just reverse the position.

Imagine a public meeting by WASPs discussing the (black/Latino/Asian/Jewish) “problem”.

Imagine this being a public meeting by men discussing the “female problem”. There would be massive backlash.

Look at college campuses. Left wing groups do not allow right wing speakers to even “speak to their own”. The disrupt and try to shut them down.

You can’t both fight to prohibit speech you don’t like and then have speech they aren’t likely to like and expect them to be quiet about it.

> people then attend my meeting who disrupt it

So ask those people to leave if they disrupt the meeting. But asking someone to leave a meeting because of their race is racism.

Ok, let's imagine you host a mtg for Linux users who are persecuted by Windows users.

A win user comes in and say that all win users are not like this. Is he disrupting?

He says that Linux users are sometimes harsh too and he suffered from that. Disrupting?

He says that this is all bullshit and win users are great. Disrupting?

For me the last one is - others are not. Except if the mtg is to one way complain (which is also a legitimate reason for a mtg, but it should honestly be announced as such)

All this is going to do is empower the white supremacists. We were so close to a point where we could acknowledge our wrongs and build something new together, but idiots like this decided to use it as a wedge to build their own powerbase.

Well done, idiots.

A...april fools?

"the growing influence of US-style identity politics."

Somewhat ironic but also dystopian that something that was born out of US intelligence agencies (identity politics) is now infecting the world.

It's almost as if cultural imperialism is a real thing!

It's been a theory of mine that US intelligence agencies are involved in pushing identity politics as well, but I haven't seen hard evidence. Do you have any articles or other links?

A pretty key element of the entire Cold War was US intelligence agencies pushing racial, ethnic, national, religious, and other identity politics — and pushing groups embracing them to violent extremism — as a tool against Communism and Soviet-aligned regimes.

Of course, another big part of that was the USSR doing to the same thing against western capitalism and US-aligned regimes.

A lot of people have made connections between the office of strategic operations and the Frankfurt school of sociology.

A lot of reading material down that rabbit hole. Very interesting.

This goes back to Soviet cold-war-era psy-ops. They planted the seeds in the US and now the US is exporting it to the rest of the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQPsKvG6WMI

There are rumors that Foucault was promoted by CIA money. If it's true, it's likely because he was an anti-USSR French leftist as opposed to all the pro-USSR French leftists.

As if Foucault has had any major influence. He's literally one among thousands of philosophers and by far not the most popular one. I'm working in a philosophy institute and of all 60+ researchers there is but one postdoc who takes Foucault as a basis of his own theorizing.

Foucault has had a huge amount of influence, though mostly not in philosophy.

In my experience he's inescapable in the humanities.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault#Influence_and_...

I work in the humanities and disagree. I know plenty of people in neighboring disciplines, too, and can assure you that you won't need to read Foucault in any of them if you don't want to.

Apart from “hard” evidence, have you seen any evidence at all?

Just circumstantial:

* Politicians using it as a technique to divide people. It definitely ramps up around elections

* Bots on twitter and Reddit pushing it

* Meeting several "woke" people deployed by the state department in foreign countries

* The narratives are all usually very flawed and crafted to cause outrage rather than right previous wrongs or bring people together

I have never heard this claim that it was born out of intelligence agencies.

Can i get some sources on this?

How has US intelligence agencies promoted identity politics? FoxNews, gop, news max are not us intelligence agencies.

Every theory (whether true or not) I've heard is this post modernist ideology came out of the French academia. Foucault, Derrida, etc. are who the American right wing blames for IDPOL

Noam Chomsky has some venomous words on French intellectual culture and post-modernism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cqTE_bPh7M

> The French intellectuals tend to be ... media stars. The French intellectuals are taken very seriously. They're on the front pages of Le Monde... If you want to be taken seriously, you have to have something exciting to say... And it's not easy to come up with exciting new ideas, so you have to come up with crazy ideas. Then they can make it to the front pages... One of the ways to have exciting new ideas is to tear everything to shreds and say everything is wrong: "The Enlightenment is wrong [etc.]"

Deconstructionism is a tragic mess. Tragic because the benefits it gave are getting overshadowed by base destruction with little to no return, and in fact a net cost as we relearn old lessons with real human consequences in the gap.

The popular thing to do in intellectual circles is to blame America for all of the world's problems, so it's no surprise to me that we're getting the blame for this one as well.

“identity politics” are older than the US, not a creation of US intelligence agencies.

I think someone got carried away by the recent mention of Gloria Steinem’s relationship to the CIA.

The vast variety and diversity of cultures and peoples historically in Northern Europe discovered after 10 minutes of looking makes both "white supremacists" and white-frighters look equally extremely silly. I understand the idea of wanting to provide an open space to discuss issues of various different people, but it sometimes pays to push your comfort level and be open to new experiences.

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