Politics × Identity

Politics and Identity

Browse 23 quotations catalogued under Politics with "identity" in the text or topic label.

23 quotes

This collection contains 23 quotations filed under Politics with "identity" in the quote text or topic label. These keyword matches offer a starting point for exploring Politics and Identity; they do not by themselves establish a shared argument or a historical connection between the authors.

The authors represented include Jonah Goldberg, Rod Dreher, Glenn Greenwald, Ilana Mercer, and others. Read each quotation in its own context rather than assuming that these authors share a position.

One matching quotation reads: "I understand that identity-politics arguments are supposed to trump everything else these days, but the idea that all Americans of Asian, black, and Hispanic h…" The full quotation appears below.

Another matching quotation reads: "istorians will look back at this era of American politics and find it absolutely deranged that the political left, and mainstream instituti…" Compare the wording and surrounding context to decide how each passage relates to your question.

Use the quotation links to explore individual entries and the author links to visit their profiles on QuoteLineage. For broader reading beyond these keyword matches, explore all Politics quotes or the concept page for Identity.

23 Quotes on Politics and Identity

"I understand that identity-politics arguments are supposed to trump everything else these days, but the idea that all Americans of Asian, black, and Hispanic heritage have homogeneous political interests and identities is both ridiculous and grotesque."

— Jonah Goldberg

"istorians will look back at this era of American politics and find it absolutely deranged that the political left, and mainstream institutions, embraced antiwhite identity politics at the same time that the United States desperately needed to strengthen its traditions of classically liberal civic nationalism, which offers the best hope for a racially pluralistic democracy to hold together. But that’s not what’s happening."

"There's a very similar and at least equally important constituency deeply vested in the perpetuation of this fear. It's the sham industry... "terrorism experts," who have built their careers on fear-mongering... and can stay relevant only if that threat does. These "terrorism experts" form an incredibly incestuous, mutually admiring little clique in and around Washington. They're employed at think tanks, academic institutions, and media outlets. They can and do have mildly different political ideologies -- some are more Republican, some are more Democratic -- but, as usual for D.C. cliques, ostensible differences in political views are totally inconsequential when placed next to their common group identity and career interest: namely, sustaining the myth of the Grave Threat... in order to justify their fear-based careers, the relevance of their circle, and their alleged "expertise." Like all adolescent, insular cliques, they defend one another reflexively whenever a fellow member is attacked, closing ranks with astonishing speed and loyalty; they take substantive criticisms very personally as attacks on their "friends," because a criticism of the genre and any member in good standing of this fiefdom is a threat..."

— Glenn Greenwald

"In the US, Great Britain and Western Europe, state and civil society acculturate immigrants into a militant identity politics. Essentially, newcomers are taught to hate their hosts."

— Ilana Mercer

"When conspiracies have governmental powers, they can usually cover up their guilt at the time and they often destroy evidence so thoroughly that later generations are left with a puzzle they can solve only partially or tentatively. We now know only that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was arranged by a conspiracy for the dual purpose of eliminating a political figure who was no longer useful and of exciting fresh animosity against the Southerners who had been conquered, and whose country had been destroyed, in the unconscionable war of aggression of which he had been the ostensible leader; but, aside from a few hirelings, the only person whom we can positively identify as a member of the conspiracy is Stanton, who was the Secretary of War in Lincoln’s cabinet, arranged many of the practical details, and was able, after the event, to silence key witnesses, although we can only guess what it was they knew that made it necessary to have them judicially murdered. And Stanton seems to have been only a local manager for principals whose identity we can only surmise."

— Revilo P. Oliver

"I will never be hungry again." Individualism lies at the core of the American identity while Russia has been a country of collectivism."

— Vladimir Putin

"These new ways of looking at ourselves politically redefine what it means to be American. It took our until now, very passive identity and turned us all into revolutionaries."

— Margaret Cho

"The question is: can they now be prevented from taking back into their own hands the decision about their identity and their form of government which truly was theirs all along? I do not believe they can be prevented: for they are now, at a general election, provided with a clear, definite and practicable alternative, namely, a fundamental renegotiation directed to regain free access to world food markets and recover or retain the powers of Parliament, a renegotiation to be followed in any event by a specific submission of the outcome to the electorate, a renegotiation protected by an immediate moratorium or stop on all further integration of the UK into the Community. This alternative is offered, as such an alternative must be in our parliamentary democracy, by a political party capable of securing a majority in the House of Commons and sustaining a Government."

— Enoch Powell

"The black subject reveals the inability of social movements grounded in Gramscian discourse to think of white supremacy as the base and thereby calls into question their claim to elaborate a comprehensive and decisive antagonism. Stated another way, Gramscian discourse and coalition politics are indeed able to imagine the subject that transforms itself into a mass of antagonistic identity formations—formations that can precipitate a crisis in wage slavery, exploitation, and hegemony—but they are asleep at the wheel when asked to provide enabling antagonisms toward unwaged slavery, despotism, and terror."

— Frank B. Wilderson III

"Republicanism is so meaningless a political identity that a Democrat can just as easily transition to being one, without too much pain."

— Ilana Mercer

"We are witnessing the end of the late 20th- century progressive welfare democracy. Its fiscal bankruptcy is merely a symptom of a more fundamental bankruptcy: its insufficiency as an animating principle for society. The children and grandchildren of those fascists and republicans who waged a bitter civil war for the future of Spain now shrug when a bunch of foreigners blow up their capital. Too sedated even to sue for terms, they capitulate instantly. Over on the other side of the equation, the modern multicultural state is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship. So they look elsewhere and find the jihad. The Western Muslim’s pan-Islamic identity is merely the first great cause in a world where globalized pathologies are taking the place of old-school nationalism."

"You can’t explain the votes of places like Clay County as a response to disagreements about trade policy. The only way to make sense of what happened is to see the vote as an expression of, well, identity politics — some combination of white resentment at what voters see as favoritism toward nonwhites and anger on the part of the less educated at liberal elites whom they imagine look down on them."

— Paul Krugman

"Hindutva was a political argument made in a poetic register. It was an argument with and against an unnamed Gandhi at an opportune moment when he seemed finished with politics. Hindutva was also a political cry from behind prison walls, reminding the larger world outside that even if Gandhi was no longer on the political scene, Savarkar was back. He was still a leader, a politician capable of pulling together a nationalist community. But unlike Gandhi, he was offering a sense of Hindu-ness that could be the basis for a more genuine and, in the end, more effective nationalism than that of the Mahatma. The startling change for its time was Savarkar’s assertion that it was not religion that made Hindus Hindu. If Gandhi had officiated at the marriage of religion and politics, and Khilafat leaders were using the symbols of religion to forge a community, Savarkar argued that name and place were what bound the Hindu community, not religion . . . The fundamental contribution of Hindutva was to install a new term for nationalist discourse, one that was both modern and secular, if open to a secular understanding of religious identity. In place of religion qua religion, he secularized a plethora of Hindu religious leaders. In so doing, he did not create a sterilely secular nationalism. He did quite the opposite. He enchanted a secular nationalism by placing a mythic community into a magical land ."

— Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

"Politics is ultimately subservient to the interests of the nation. If we give up all thoughts of a nation’s basic identity, history, culture and traditions, of what use is that politics ?"

— Deendayal Upadhyaya

"Every identity, such critics say, even the multitude, must be defined by its remained, those outside of it, call them exluded, the abject, or the subaltern. … There can certainly be points or nodes outside a network but none are necessarily outside. Its boundaries are indefinite and open. … None is necessarily exluded but theis inclusion is not guaranteed: the expansion of the common is a practical, political manner."

— Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

"Although Black feminism and some currents of postmodernist theory share some common assumptions and common language, these are overshadowed by key differences that make them two distinct approaches to combatting oppression. Thus the concept of intersectionality has two different political foundations--one informed primarily by Black feminism and the other by postmodernism. More recent evolution of the post-structuralist approach to identity politics and intersectionality, which has a strong influence over today's generation of activists, places an enormous emphasis on changing individual behavior as the most effective way to combat oppression. This has given rise to the idea of individuals "calling out" interpersonal acts of perceived oppression as a crucial political act. More generally, intersectionality in postmodern terms, even among those who have no idea what postmodernism is."

— Sharon Smith (writer)

"American progressivism maintains a hyper-consciousness of race, obsessively emphasizing its centrality to human identity and relentlessly breaking down populations by racial categories. If nothing else, aggressive affirmative action requires that everyone be identified racially. When it’s time to measure political opinions, nothing is as salient as race, and the Trump phenomenon gets explained almost exclusively in terms of racial distributions, as white rage or white nationalism."

— Crispin Sartwell

"I mentioned at the outset that I dislike the term “.” This is because the phrase seems to suggest that our identities is the most salient feature of our activism. Indeed, this is probably why those who oppose IP-umbrella activism seem so fond of calling it “identity politics” in the first place. ... In contrast, within IP circles, the term is often reserved for a specific brand of single-issue activism that completely precludes perspectives from those who do not share the identity in question."

— Julia Serano

"It was measured that the splinters of the Armenian nation that had managed to miraculously escape the Genocide would not be able to recover from the blow, would disappear in the whirlpools on five continents, lose their national identity, and aptitude to be a political factor. But we, as a nation and as a state, were able to reappear at the international arena to affirm that we continue our eternal journey and that we are determined not to allow for such a crime to ever happen again."

— Serzh Sargsyan

"If the government is convinced that he is innocent and that he has been a victim of mistaken identity, it should move ahead to save him."

— Prakash Javadekar

"If the dangers of racism are apparent, even in a non-violent form, then it was the same for Islamism. Communalist identity politics, self-segregation and group-think are far more damaging to societies in the long run than the odd bomb going off here or there, because it is such a milieu that keeps breeding bomb-makers."

— Maajid Nawaz

"This is the year in which I get to smile at all of those naysayers – every single mediocre insecure wannabe who fixes their mouth to suggest that I do not belong on this stage, that people like me cannot possibly have earned such an honour, that when they win it it’s meritocracy but when we win it it’s ‘identity politics’ –… I get to smile at those people, and lift a massive, shining, rocket-shaped middle finger in their direction."

— N. K. Jemisin

"The present class government means the severance or antagonism of nations, because each ruling class can only keep and use its rule by forcing the antagonisms of foreign policy: intelligent democracies would perceive their identity of interest, and would ensure it by their amicable policy. The genuine forces of internationalism, thus liberated, would first display themselves as economic forces, securing more effective international co-operation for postal, telegraphic, railway, and other transport services, for monetary exchange and for common standards of measurement of various kinds, and for the improved intercommunication of persons, goods, and information. Related and subsidiary to these purposes would come a growth of machinery of courts and congresses, at first informal and private, but gradually taking shape in more definite and more public machinery: the common interests of the arts and sciences would everywhere be weaving an elaborate network of intellectual internationalism, and both economic and intellectual community of needs and interests would contribute to the natural growth of such political solidarity as was required to maintain this real community."

— J. A. Hobson

Key thinkers on this theme

Jonah Goldberg· Journalism Rod Dreher· Literature Glenn Greenwald· Law Ilana Mercer· Journalism Revilo P. Oliver· Education

Related ideas in Politics

All Politics quotes Explore the idea of Identity