The Identity Trick
How should you respond when identitarians say you hate people of their identity?
Identitarians on the right and left love the identity trick: the easiest and most despicable way to deflect criticism is to claim it comes from hate for who you are instead of what you do. The trick works more than it should because sometimes it’s true to a degree, though never to the degree that identitarians claim. There were anti-Catholics who opposed Mussolini, white racists who opposed Obama, and male sexists who opposed Clinton, but that does not mean anti-fascism is code for anti-Catholicism or that opposing neoliberalism is racist or sexist.
The identity trick is revealed by the exceptions its players have to make. The identitarians who claimed opposing Clinton was sexist never argued that opposing Sanders was antisemitic, even though in 2015, 92% of US voters were willing to vote for a woman and only 91% were willing to vote for a Jew.
The trick is always played by insisting some sort of identityism is the real reason a person of another identity criticizes your politics, but that ism has nothing to do with the reason you criticize theirs. You can even play the trick with people of your own identity — you only have to declare they’re self-hating traitors. Identitarians invariably believe all true members of their…
