Who is more opposed to “identity politics”? The extreme right or the academic left? What is it about the oppressed taking a stand against brutalities imposed specially upon them that so rankles & unites these counterposed political forces? Why should the oppressed subordinate their demands in the interests of some false harmony with the privileged? How do you separate being woman, Dalit, Black, Latino, Native American, Palestinian, Kashmiri, Rohingya, Uyghur, Muslim, LGBT, indigenous from the special forms of oppression imposed on us?
In truth, there was never a more banal objection to the struggles of the oppressed than the rubbish around “identity politics.” Perhaps it isn’t so banal as it is pernicious in making the oppressed defend their resistance to injustice.