Universalists Don’t Divide Us by Identity. Identitarians Do.

When I talk about identitarians and universalists, some people insist I’m being identitarian by pointing out the division between identitarians and universalists. They don’t understand that identitarianism and universalism are attitudes, not social identities.

When I first saw the political compass, I liked the way it mapped political attitudes from right to left and from authoritarian to libertarian, but I saw something was missing, so I made The Political Cube.

On the line from right to left, Karl Marx and Warren Buffett are far apart, but both are universalists. On the line from authoritarian to libertarian, pure fascists want the rich to rule the rest of us without bias, and democratic socialists want a world where no one of any race or gender has to serve anyone else.

When St. Paul wrote “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one,” he was rejecting the idea of dividing us into identity groups to treat one group better than another. When universalists point out identitarianism, we don’t want identitarians to be treated any worse than anyone else. We simply want them to stop treating any tribe, class, or gender better than others.

Though universalism cuts across politics, the people who insist universalists are identitarian may a lot in common with people who can’t see that Socialists Don’t Divide Us by Class. Capitalists Do.