What Is Identitarianism? (An Introduction.)

Note: This is the current draft of an introduction to a collection of my posts on identitarianism, so the quotes in the third paragraph will be very familiar to my regular readers.

We live our lives being told who we are by people who want to use us. Some believe what they tell us, some think we’re fools, but their words and their purpose are the same: they want us to think we are who they say so we will do what they want. The liars want our money and our vote. The believers want our work and our love. Both know we need to know who we are and what part we have in our community, and both know they can exploit that need.

Their tool is identitarianism, the belief we should be separated by socially created identities like gender, religion, tribe, and race. Identitarianism is easily taught to us when we’re young. As I learned my first words, I learned I was a boy. Perhaps a few months later, I grasped that going to a church on Sundays to hear Bible stories meant I was a Christian. I dimly remember learning I was an American—most likely as part of teaching me my address in case I got lost, my mother taught me we lived in Lexington, Kentucky, in the United States of America. But I clearly remember learning I was white—my father told me that if he ever heard me use the racial insult for black people, I would be spanked so hard I would not be able to…