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The Problem of Identity Politics and Its Solution Matthew Continetti Editor-In-Chief, Washington Free Beacon

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The Problem of Identity Politics and Its Solution Matthew Continetti Editor-In-Chief, Washington Free Beacon A PUBLICATION OF HILLSDALE COLLEGE ImpriOVER 3,700,000mi READERS MONTHLYs November 2017 • Volume 46, Number 11 The Problem of Identity Politics and Its Solution Matthew Continetti Editor-in-Chief, Washington Free Beacon MATTHEW CONTINETTI, the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, received his B.A. from Columbia University. Prior to joining the Beacon, he was opinion editor of the Weekly Standard. The author of The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine and The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star, Continetti’s articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on October 24, 2017, during a two-week teaching residency at Hillsdale as a Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Journalism. The beginnings of identity politics can be traced to 1973, the year the first volume of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago—a book that demolished any pretense of communism’s moral authority—was published in the West. The ideologi- cal challenge of socialism was fading, its fighting spirit dwindling. This presented a challenge for the Left: how to carry on the fight against capitalism when its major ideological alternative was no longer viable? The Left found its answer in an identity politics that grew out of anti-colonialism. Marx’s class struggle was reformulated into an ethno-racial struggle—a ceaseless competition between colonizer and colonized, victimizer and victim, oppressor and HILLSDALE COLLEGE: PURSUING TRUTH • DEFENDING LIBERTY SINCE 1844 oppressed. Instead of presenting col- new departments of “studies”: African- lectivism and central planning as the American Studies, Women’s Studies, gateway to the realization of genuine Queer Studies, Chicano Studies, Gender freedom, the new multiculturalist Left Studies, and so on. “What these radicals turned to unmasking the supposed blandly call multiculturalism,” wrote power relations that subordinated Irving Kristol, minorities and exploited third world nations. is as much a “war against the The original battleground was the West” as Nazism and Stalinism American university, where, as Bruce ever were. Under the guise of Bawer writes in The Victims’ Revolution: multiculturalism, their ideas— The Rise of Identity Politics and the whose radical substance often goes Closing of the Liberal Mind, beyond the bounds of the political into sheer fantasy—are infiltrating The point [became] simply to our educational system at all levels. “prove”—repetitively, endlessly— certain facile, reductive, and This revolution in American uni- invariably left-wing points versities was accomplished swiftly and about the nature of power largely outside the public eye. What and oppression. In this new little resistance the radicals met was version of the humanities, all vanquished with accusations of racism. of Western civilization is not It was not until the late 1980s, with Jesse analyzed through the use of Jackson’s presidential campaigns, the reason or judged according to battle over the Stanford core curriculum, aesthetic standards that have been and the publication of Allan Bloom’s The developed over centuries; rather, it Closing of the American Mind, that the is viewed through prisms of race, rise of identity politics on campus and class, and gender, the idea of “political and is hailed or correctness” became Imprimis (im-pri-mis),−´ condemned in [Latin]: in the first place a page one story. By accordance with that time, however, it certain political EDITOR was too late. Alumni, Douglas A. Jeffrey checklists. DEPUTY EDITORS trustees, and parents Matthew D. Bell had no recourse. The Timothy W. Caspar Under the new Samantha Strayer American univer- leftist dispensation, ART DIRECTOR sity was irrevocably Shanna Cote the study of English MARKETING DIRECTOR changed. became the applica- William Gray There have been PRODUCTION MANAGER tion of critical and Lucinda Grimm liberal critics of iden- literary theory to STAFF ASSISTANTS tity politics through Robin Curtis disparate texts so Kim Ellsworth the years. In 1991, as to uncover the Mary Jo Von Ewegen historian Arthur hidden power rela- Copyright © 2017 Hillsdale College Schlesinger, Jr. pub- tions they concealed. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not lished The Disuniting The study of history necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. of America: Reflections Permission to reprint in whole or in part is became the study hereby granted, provided the following credit on a Multicultural line is used: “Reprinted by permission from of social history or Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” Society. Schlesinger “people’s history,” the SUBSCRIPTION FREE UPON REQUEST. noted that the Soviet record of Western ISSN 0277-8432 Union had collapsed Imprimis trademark registered in U.S. Civilization’s oppres- Patent and Trademark Office #1563325. in a heap of warring sion of various nationalities and that groups. And popping the state of Yugoslavia up everywhere were was in the process of 2 NOVEMBER 2017 • VOLUME 46, NUMBER 11 < hillsdale.edu doing the same, and asked whether on American society. America would be next. Presenting This year another liberal academic, America as a nation of nations, a shared Columbia humanities professor Mark national culture whose diverse citizenry Lilla, has taken up the banner. “Identity is united behind principles of liberty politics on the left,” he writes, and equal justice, Schlesinger quoted Jean de Crèvecoeur’s 1782 Letters from was at first about large classes an American Farmer: of people . seeking to redress major historical wrongs by He is an American, who leaving mobilizing and then working behind him all his ancient pre- through our political institutions judices and manners, receives to secure their rights. But by new ones from the new mode the 1980s, it had given way to of life he has embraced, the new a pseudo-politics of self-regard government he obeys, and the and increasingly narrow, and new rank he holds. Here exclusionary self-definition that individuals of all nations are is now cultivated in our colleges melted into a new race of men. and universities. The main result has been to turn people back onto In 2004, Harvard political scientist themselves, rather than turning Samuel Huntington published Who them outward towards the wider Are We? Huntington examined the world they share with others. stunning immigration, both legal and It has left them unprepared to illegal, from Mexico and argued that it think about the common good was undermining longstanding notions in non-identity terms and what of American national identity. America, must be done practically to Huntington said, has both a creed and a secure it—especially the hard and culture. The creed is formulated in the unglamorous task of persuading founding documents of our nation and people very different from in the speeches of Abraham Lincoln. themselves to join a common The culture derives from the Anglo- effort. Protestant settlers who first peopled North America. Huntington worried Lilla exhorts Democrats to replace about a “hispanicization” of American identity liberalism with civic liberal- culture. ism in the mode of Franklin Roosevelt. This book was controversial, to say That Lilla’s opponents wasted no time the least. Nor was it without weak- in labeling his argument as racist is a nesses. It is hard for this descendant testament to how divided the Left is on of Irish and Italian immigrants to this issue. accept the notion that America’s culture is mono- lithically Anglo-Protestant. Lilla notes that a visitor to Clinton’s Furthermore, Huntington website could open tabs related to tended to underestimate ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, the importance of the creed but not one related to a shared vision in shaping the culture. But of American community. such criticism should not obscure the fundamental point: Huntington, a Democrat who Despite these intellectual dissi- advised Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 presi- dents, the Democratic Party and liberal dential campaign, shared the same con- elites appear committed to the idea cerns one finds today among Trump that multiculturalism and identity supporters about immigration’s effect politics, combined with the changing 3 HILLSDALE COLLEGE: PURSUING TRUTH • DEFENDING LIBERTY SINCE 1844 demographics of America, will bring Democrats fooled themselves into about an enduring Democratic national thinking that identity politics won majority. The two victories of Barack Obama his two terms when in fact Obama strengthened their assump- precisely the opposite had occurred. tions and set the template for Hillary Obama made his debut on the national Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Lilla notes, stage in the summer of 2004, during for example, that a visitor to Clinton’s the Democratic National Convention website could open tabs related to eth- that nominated John Kerry for presi- nic, religious, and sexual minorities, dent. The only reason anyone remem- but not one related to a shared vision of bers that convention is because of American community. Obama’s keynote address, where he This approach has had catastrophic repudiated the division of American consequences for the Democratic Party. society and famously said, “There’s not “The fatal conclusion the Clinton team a black America and white America made after the Michigan primary and Latino America and Asian debacle,”
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