Oh, he’s sooooooo close.
Thanks for wading through Finkelstein’s material for us.
I am not up for that yet myself.
Some [publicly-accessible] history for one Subulation Media team member:
https://www.reddit.com/user/douglain/
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I question the need to see the two issues as being in conflict. In reality the concern usually comes from those who wish to ignore or are on the wrong side of identity issues and want some cover. There are classes and castes that aren’t solely economic in nature that are peopled by those certainly being oppressed. Which obviously includes economic oppression. And often targeted more intensely.
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I question any pov that leaves me feeling like I have to jump in the correctly labeled boat and throw any number of other people out of it in order to be treated with human dignity and have any wrongs against me acknowledged while others scramble to throw me overboard for the same reasons.
I’m particularly skeptical if at any point in such a thesis there is mention of the economy.
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I think it’s probably helpful to remind that student that real people are being hurt by the attack on racial minorities, women, and the LGBQT+ community. I’m really unsure how fighting for the rights of everyone, as well as for a just economy, should be “tiring”… If that student is “tired” imagine how tired the kids who are literally having laws crafted to ELIMINATE THEIR EXISTENCE must feel. Right now, over HALF of teen girls feel deeply depressed and hopeless, or have reported feeling that way. That in part stems from the very real attacks on their bodily autonomy, which hurts girls from working class families the hardest - but it impacts ALL teen girls, because they are literally having their rights stripped from them before they are even adults. They are telling us that they are fucking exhausted.
It’s not an either/or question, and as soon as we make it one, then they’ve won.
Has it though? Seems to me, that it’s at the top of the list for almost every single member of the left who think that “working class” equates to straight white dudes. They are eager to ignore how some in the working class have actively pushed against various forms of equality, which made it pretty fucking easy to deploy the southern strategy.
I agree.
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I remember being at my union meeting in 2013 when I was working to pass the trans health bill in Philly and someone rose to complain that the union was supporting it. They weren’t motivated by the economic impact of being excluded from healthcare on some members.
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Has this student been introduced yet to the concept of “intersectionality”? There must be well over a hundred good, straightforward primers on it available online.
As others above have implied, I’d be careful with this student’s (probably privileged) exasperation with “identity issues.” I mean, they do seem to get more airplay these days than does explicit discussion of “social class” (unless you happen to be having lunch with Bernie Sanders), but they are of course NOT mutually exclusive categories/phenomena.
EDIT: And since we’re talking about a teen:
Strange that it one-boxes that way; the title at the site is “Why I Am Passionate About Intersectionality”
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Sounds like they were just bigoted…
Is there some people using identity politics to try and shut down discussions of class? Quite possible. I just don’t buy that it’s the majority of people, or that we should give in to ignoring the struggles of everyone, because they’re not the “right” skin color, gender, sexual orientation, or what have you… and of course, people in minority groups are more likely to suffer from economic privation then white men. What’s the Franklin quote? We hang together or we hang separately?
I think, given the laws being passed, that’s probably a good idea. Actually installing a socialist system would not guarantee protections for trans kids (and adults now, thanks Texas), who are being directly targeted. And we should note, it’s BY people, who could give two shits about the working class, outside of getting their votes, and vacuuming up political donations from their emptying wallets…
Also… good old, radical Teen Vogue!!! 
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I’m sure there are those who are the opponents of equity for all classes and castes seeking to do so. It’s a usual billionaire tactic. They don’t support either. They fund disrupting that solidarity.
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It’s been the strategy since at least Bacon’s Rebellion… Divide the working class and conquer. Give some of them a psychic wage of superiority to some other group that they can punch down on and watch the profits roll on in!
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I think they’re called “the elite.” Or is it “the kleptocrats”? 
If a motivation for say, limiting slavery to people of African descent was to divide and conquer by pitting white and black people horizontally so they wouldn’t unite and move vertically, then it’s not a stretch to conceive of today’s powers that be as all too happy to continue fomenting divisive attention to identity issues (which is NOT to say that such attention is necessarily divisive).
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It does happen, but it’s not the people pushing for protections for the LGBQT+ community, or for protections for voting rights, or trying to end gerrymandering, or to ensure women have bodily autonomy… But those are often seen as “divisive” issues that we should ignore in favor of just focusing on economics - which ignores that all those issues have economic dimensions that need addressing. Plus, I doubt that Finkelstein is part of the kleptocratic class, so what’s his excuse here for ignoring how these groups are being attacked on social and economic level. I guess why it enrages me so very much is that ignoring the intersectional struggle means that we are divided, and far too many dude-bros seem okay with that. It’s depressing.
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Oh sorry, I thought we were discussing how to help with a high school student.
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Oh, yeah, we are… by all means, whatever works, but we also need to be teaching our kiddos to foreground their empathy, too. And trying to think about the struggles of others (whether that’s social or economic) is one way to do that. The material conditions are worsening for every, but for some others it’s getting worse, quicker, because of who they are, whatever their economic class. This just seems like an emergency to me right now and reminding kids of that is important.
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The divisive expression of identity issues in daily high school life is what seems to be tiring, not the root problems themselves. Apologies if I left a different impression. I think the students sometimes feel driven apart by identity politics, rather than their preferred, natural state of feeling very much at home in (what their parents identify as) diversity.
I am aware that I write from a 
context, which does not at all invalidate the excellent analysis from the 
sphere (which does sometimes feel a bit out of focus when applied here, like looking through the edge of a lens). Our constitutional revisions in the 80’s paved the way for our laws governing hate speech and legal protection of LGBTQ+ equality. There’s a line from the Christian socialists winning the universal health care debate in the 1960’s, to the explicit multicultural policies of the 1970’s, to the political acceptance today of responsibility for brutalizing the First Nations. Promoting mutual respect is the leadership default, supported by the law (even if it is unevenly expressed, sometimes grossly so, day to day).
I see the kids worrying a lot more here about how the economy will function at all. My impression is that the high school students in question seem to be miles ahead of their parents’ generation in their thinking about where the social conflicts arise, and want see their future defined not only in different terms, but especially not terms that were, ultimately, invented to limit rights and opportunities.
Not explicitly, but that has put a useful name on the analysis. Thank you… 
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To some people life is a zero sum game
I dislike those people
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The connection between fascism and the fossil fuel industries, both in the past and today.
Also… learned a term I had not heard before… Palingenetic ultranationalism (or palindefensive ultranationalism) as an umbrella term for different kinds of fascisms
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Speaking from the trenches, I just experienced this week the growing extremism regarding ‘fossil fascism’ from individuals I had previously considered to be intelligent and rational, so I can confirm they’re doubling down hard on this.
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Scary times…
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