Why Do Wealthy Elites Push Divisive Identity Politics?
So that they can then sell us the so-called "solution" of voting right-wing, of course
The feeling of complete demoralization is now inescapable. It is, as the alt-right would say, now clown world everywhere - but not in the way that alt-righters think it is. There is absolutely no such thing as normal discourse anymore - just strident screaming, crying, shit-flinging, and miasmic vitriol. You know the one group of people who benefit from that rancorous environment? Wealthy elites, of course - big banks and their cohorts.
In the 2000s, when I was a kid, racism was at the lowest point that it's ever been in modern history. Hardly anyone was talking about racism, and gender ideology nonsense was almost nonexistent. All of this woke idpol hokum was started by a small group of wealthy elites who had a vested interest in spreading discord and dividing the common people along tribal lines - and, unfortunately, they succeeded. They successfully lured in young, vulnerable, freedom-loving people who thought that they would be fighting the good fight by joining the idpol crusade.
Now look where it got us. The western world has essentially split into two camps, neither of which has the truth on their side. The common people are mercilessly fighting each other non-stop, exactly as the wealthy elites want it. Duplicitous, Janus-faced wealthy elites pushed all of this extremely divisive woke idpol nonsense with gender ideology, mass immigration, and so forth for a very specific purpose. They turned western countries into swamps on purpose. They planned it all out in advance and they wanted it to happen this way. Why? Well, that's simple: if everything seems horrible and disgusting, then they can sell the common people the supposed "solution" of voting right-wing.
In the US, we never had much of a real choice. Much like the wealthy elites destroyed Occupy Wall Street by introducing the "progressive stack" and other divisive idpol bullshit into the movement, the wealthy elites also conspired to take out the likes of Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang and replace them with utterly despicable neoliberal weasels like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris and, as a result, now we have Trump as president again (or, perhaps more accurately, we now have Elon Musk as president while the senile orange idiot serves as a figurehead). But it's not just Trump and Elon's American oligarchy where this can be observed in action. In Germany, for example, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is now the second most popular political party in the country, and anyone who can look beyond their crude tribalist populism can see that they will simply make Germany even poorer. It's a party for the rich, just like the GOP. Again, the wealthy elites sell us the "solution" to a problem that they themselves created, and it's a "solution" that will just make the common people even poorer.
The powerful billionaire class has had complete control over public discourse for decades now, and they created two fronts for the common people to tear each other apart over: left vs. right. We all bought into it, and we all lost with it in the end. Everyone lost except for the billionaire class, who is now doing better than ever. The filthy rich oligarchs will simply keep getting richer and richer while everyone else keeps getting poorer and poorer. If you ever want to know why your life is shit... well, just follow the money.
In other words, the wealthy elites played you like a fiddle. Now, they have created an entire class of oligarchs in the western world with the help of right-wing parties. In America, Peter Thiel and his protégés like Curtis Yarvin and Elon Musk are currently trying harder than ever to create a plutocratic, oligarchic, neo-feudalist kleptocracy. Peter Thiel is funding the politicians, Curtis Yarvin is providing the ideology, and Elon Musk is controlling the narrative. Oligarchs like them have ruled Russia for decades, and they are soon poised to enact Russia-style ultra-corrupt oligarchy in the western world as well.
Their next play, of course, is World War III. It will create immense wealth for them, while also culling useless eaters that they can replace with robots and AI after the war.
Don't fall for their lies. Donald Trump, Alice Weidel, Viktor Orban, and all other right-wing leaders are all part of the same club - and it’s definitely not a club that has the common peoples’ best interests at heart.
I think your use of 'elite' is too broad, and confusing. Divisive identity politics (DIP) ideas began in certain very discrete, easily traceable places: in academia and on the margins of culture. We KNOW who created these ideas, and we also know who began to spread them (hint: they were all Marxists, of one kind or another).
Is it possible that Our banker overlords used the dissatisfaction after 2008 and the Occupy Wallstreet farce to divide the left by funding equity and gender ideology and 4th-wave feminism? Sure. You could easily make that case, but those ideas were already present and spreading, and ESG metrics and nonprofits didn't cause those memes to devour the Left from 2015-2020. This wasn't a conspiracy-it was a transparent psychological phenomenon. Academia (Marxists) did the heavy lifting-to serve the goals they advertised of remaking society and dethroning hierarchy and tradition-and they were able to because college graduates and educated people and professionals (the controllers and foot soldiers of the Blob) were more alienated, lonely, and naive than any class or generation in human history. DIP is what happens when activism meets a large group of people who are intensely ambitious and status-conscious, know very little about the world, and want to feel and appear like good people.
You could POUR funding into antiracism conferences and equity committees in 1970 and people wouldn't have bit, partly because of actual racism, but mostly because the vast majority of people were in contact with actual working class people and black people and working class black people and so they would intuitively understand that the morality tale of antiracism is absurd on its face. Yes, black people can be racist. No, everything is not racist. Only racist things are racist.
I think it's a mistake to see the possible intentions of 'elites' and observe the movement of money and resources and assume that THEY are the cause. The true generative cause of DIP is that we have a group of educated people who are so uniquely lonely, mentally ill, and segregated by class that any nonsense that certain institutions tell them about race or femininity or performative gender, etc. is likely to be believed IF IT MAKES THEM FEEL AND LOOK VIRTUOUS. These aren't beliefs in the normal sense. You can understand that just by talking to these people. They're affiliative markers and psychological coping mechanisms and tools for status gamery (which is why any dissent or criticism is so brutally suppressed-that's not the way beliefs usually work, unless they're religious). Divisive Identity Politics DID serve the interests of the blob, and it was useful for the machinations of 'elites' but that doesn't really answer the question of why it became popular.
When people become so separated from real labor and crime and scarcity and the other constraints of reality (and they're not anchored by traditional norms or sacral ideas) they begin to believe absurd things, and when those beliefs become part of a status game they spread like wildfire and become devilishly hard to uproot. Change the status incentives and the beliefs will vanish, but that will require a reinvention of academia and credentials and the character of work and wealth and class in our society. As long as people become elites themselves by attending certain colleges, and as long as their degrees are crucial status markers and enable them to participate in a vast parasitic relationship with the producer economy (sucking wealth out for fundamentally unproductive work) the ideas will remain. Those dynamics are their true source.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/leviathan
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-poverty-of-transgressive-allegiance
Why does it matter what a Goldberg has to say?