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Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

He gives a summary of 20th century politics that doesn't include fascism, and makes the Cold War sound like it was a battle between "small government" and "worker's rights". He says outright that nationalism on the political right is a "redefinition".

This is so bizarre I can only assume I'm reading it wrong.

I am not clear on your complaints here, maybe you are reading it wrong? To pick up on one thing: do you feel that the political right has, rather, sustained a consistent nationalistic bent for the past century? You dont feel like it has changed recently, and rather, perhaps, believing it has changed is misguided?

Nationalism is a defining characteristic of political conservatism.

It is in fact the first feature - conservatism is almost always focused on preventing changes to a current identity from multiculturalism and cosmopolitan forces

I agree; he ignores all the national liberation movements, which were typically nationalistic and linked to an ethnic identity (even when nominally "Communist"). More charitably he's trying to talk about the transition from the Old Left to the New Left.

He also ignores all the material demands of the groups involved in identity politics, as if they don't intersect (A LOT!) This is inane.

What are the material demands of those groups? There seems to be a general demand for special treatment and privileged legal status based on membership in their identity group, but symbolic issues seem very much at the center of identity politics.

When a group is disproportionately excluded from the education, economic and other systems of society due to, for example, racism or sexism, they tend to have disproportionately worse economic outcomes (sometimes extremely so.) This is almost always recognized by that group of people and a strong motivating factor from overcoming their systemic disadvantage.

> demand for special treatment and privileged legal status based on membership in their identity group

Usually they're just asking for equal treatment, but if you mean things like affirmative action then this is obviously just society paying off its debt to the group for previous exclusion or jump-starting things to get closer to an equal society.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action#Origins

> When a group is disproportionately excluded from the education, economic and other systems of society due to, for example, racism or sexism, they tend to have disproportionately worse economic outcomes

Well, it depends. A lot of real-world identity politics amounts to malicious, overt marginalization of "market-dominant" or "model" minorities who, despite their marginalized status, have better educational and economic outcomes than the relevant majority group.

This is the story of, e.g. Asians in the U.S. but also of recent African immigrants from subcultures like the Igbo, Ashanti and Yoruba with a focus on education and cultural development, who get marginalized in Black communities throughout the West for supposedly "acting white" or, more diplomatically stated, "pursuing respectability politics".

> overt marginalization of "market-dominant" or "model" minorities who, despite their marginalized status, have better educational and economic outcomes than the relevant majority group.

Because they aren't "disproportionately excluded from the education, economic and other systems of society due to, for example, racism or sexism." Being a minority does not automatically make one marginalized and one does not need to be a minority to be marginalized.

> Because they aren't "disproportionately excluded from the education, economic and other systems of society"

Of course they are, this is pretty much what marginalization means. My point is precisely that real-world marginalization can be an outcome of identity politics, especially when minorities differ in their overall attitudes towards education or economic development.

> Of course they are, this is pretty much what marginalization means

Then we can't agree on that premise. I don't think they are even remotely marginalized to the same extent. If they were, they would suffer the same consequences. To be clear, I'm not saying that anti-Asian racism doesn't exist; obviously it does, it's just not on the level that anti-Black racism is on.

> My point is precisely that real-world marginalization can be an outcome of identity politics

Sure, it can, Ethiopia is repeatedly a great example of that. Asians in America aren't. None of those that Fukuyama listed are either.

> To be clear, I'm not saying that anti-Asian racism doesn't exist; obviously it does, it's just not on the level that anti-Black racism is on.

I never said that anti-Asian attitudes are "on the level" that anti-Black ones are. What I'm saying is that such things should point us towards a far more nuanced understanding of how "identity politics" might play out in the real world.

More nuanced than what?

What, in your mind, was 20th century politics defined by?

Edit: like I get the economism here feels reductive to you, I think, but I just think it would at least be equally absurd to say they were predominantly defined by identity issues. As is shown in the essay, our concept of identity is intractable from globalism and modernity. So I'm just not sure what the obvious issue is here. If we admit that it is nuanced, then you have to explain where the lines of that nuance are obvious, and economism is a good tool for that.

The US is not the world. US politics were deeply identitarian too first of all, Jim Crow Laws, Civil Rights Act and desegregation were explicitly identity based and not economic.

And then as other posters have mentioned - hundreds of national independence movements - almost all based on a national identity

Indian independance, irish independance and the formation of most current nation states...on the basis of national identity. Fascism, Nazism, the kmer rouge. Even communism, in its own terms, was about class identity.

The US civil rights movement and the creation of its modern political dichotomy. Islamism. Arabism & the Arab league. Apartheid. Post-apartheid SA. Post colonialism. The Rwanda genocide. Yugoslavia's demise.

Really, it’s just a shitty comment that probably doesn’t belong in any discussion and should be ignored. “Huh?!” This doesn’t pass as substantive in any way whatsoever. Don’t waste your time thinking about it.

I have always wished for an official rule against beginning comments with either “Huh?” or “What are you talking about?”

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