Monday, December 24, 2018

Identity Politics vs Class Consciousness

The distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is continually being abused and/or ignored. Also, some of the comments made by the disputants in this article about "all Jews" and all white people should remind us of the perilous terrain we enter when we start talking about "all" of an ethnic, religious, or national group (all Black people, the Chinese are such and such, the Irish, etc.,) this is the soil in which the seeds of racism are sown. The greatest confusion of all is the lack of understanding about class as opposed to ethnicity. Jewish bankers and Jewish factory workers have little in common in their living standards and lifestyles and have more in common with Black Bankers and Black factory workers respectively, and working-class women have more in common with working-class men than either has with upper-class bourgeois capitalist men or women. Identity politics is, in fact, a ruling class invention to tamper down and prevent the development of class consciousness by dividing the oppressed along "racial," gender, ethnic and religious lines as they know full well that once class consciousness is fully developed it marks the beginning of the end of their oppressive rule. Let's not help them in this by playing by their rule book.


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NYTIMES.COM

Women’s March Roiled by Accusations of Anti-SemitismAs the second anniversary of the Women’s March approaches, charges of anti-Semitism are overshadowing the movement and plans for more marches.




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