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.
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?
It’s surprising to see such a disagreeable wintroll like yourself espouse such normgroid sentiments
racism is bad. Glad you understand how the elites are trying to control us
Racism is fine, just fine.
Win against me.