>So white christians vote republican because of a long history of opposition to abortion rights, black votes have gone to democrats ever since the Civil Rights Act passed, etc... Not everyone, but enough that it makes sense as political strategy to court specific groups via these affiliations.
You're defining identity politics in a way that's so broad that it encompasses all politics and some non-politics (corporate brand loyalty). That makes it a non-useful phrase. Generally it's useful to define phrases in ways that exclude a lot of interpretations.
Any view of identity politics that includes racial minorities but doesn't include white Christians (or especially white Protestant Christians who have different but overlapping identity with white Catholics (who also frequently have ethnic identity that also comes up in identity politics Italian Americans, polish Americans, Irish Americans, etc)) seems oddly and uselessly specific.
Yeah, that's right. I am only claiming that "liking a group because they have a history of supporting your personally held goals" is not identity politics. That's barely even politics, although it might be politics. Identity politics is liking a group because you feel a primordial tribal identification with the group. Oftentimes this has nothing to do with whatever the group has done for you.
> Identity politics is liking a group because you feel a primordial tribal identification with the group
And again I tell you that this definition is fake. It's not the way these groups think about this at all. And more over it's fake in a deliberate way, designed to fool YOU, as a member of your particular libertarian subculture, into discounting the political desires of other demographics by leveraging YOUR trust in your own group due to "primordial tribal identification".
Seriously: I know you think that your desires are "real" and these other groups are just "identity politics". You're wrong. All desires are real.
That's the way the term is understood by people trying to understand politics. The definition I was responding to is a partisan smear used only by a particular political demographic[1] who think "identity politics" is a kind of thought control.
It's true that the latter is more specific. I don't see how that makes it better.
[1] See? Identity politics at work. You don't seriously think no one targets libertarians via the same tricks, do you? You're literally falling for one in this very thread by discounting the discourse of "centrist political scientists" in favor of your in-group's spin. So when your in-group tells you to vote for someone, who are you going to believe? Them or the crazy centrists and their warped understanding of the evils of "identity politics?"
Inventing meaningless buzzwords is a very common activity in any community. Using the definition you're proposing, I have heard people say things like "all politics is identity politics." Any definition of a word that makes claims like that reasonable, is a non-definition of a non-word.
Using words like "quantum," "AI," and "blockchain" as examples, in all of those cases you have one community with a meaningful definition and another community with a meaningless definition. In deciding which definition is "better" one would typically go with the way it's defined in the community that uses it to mean something.
> I have heard people say things like "all politics is identity politics."
Which, to me, is a very apt statement in context. For example, when dealing with someone trying to dismiss an important point without consideration by labeling it with his own subculture's spun definition.
To wit: online libertarians screaming about how terrible identity politics is as a way to disparage their political enemies are absolutely practicing identity politics.
>To wit: online libertarians screaming about how terrible identity politics is as a way to disparage their political enemies are absolutely practicing identity politics.
But haven't you heard? Anyone who places value on liberty is a libertarian, anyone who says something in today's hyper-connected age is "online" (because their ideas could make it to the internet, even if they didn't put them there themselves), and screaming is indistinguishable from speech because it exists on the same continuum. Furthermore, as you point out, identity politics is politics, but in an even deeper sense, politics can be anything. Furthermore, any claim can be construed as disparaging depending on the values of the listener, and "political enemies," if you think about it, really extends to anyone who is not yourself - because no two people believe exactly the same things. So, now that we realize the true meanings of all the words used, we are left with the sentence:
>Anyone speaking against anything are practicing activities.
You're defining identity politics in a way that's so broad that it encompasses all politics and some non-politics (corporate brand loyalty). That makes it a non-useful phrase. Generally it's useful to define phrases in ways that exclude a lot of interpretations.