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I’ve been “experiencing” liberal American post-election analysis on every form of media I visit. I’m sure you’re in the same boat as politically engaged people – but things have really reached frustration point today. So, without naming names, msnbc, I want to explore how “liberal politics”, or really what should be labeled soft-right after this Trump-slide, maintains hegemonic control through a variety of interlinked mechanisms that ultimately serve capital while preventing genuine social transformation. You know – the usual. Specifically today I’m interested in “sanewashing” and virtue signaling, because that’s the thrust of post-electoral fervor in the US – and I can feel it in my bones coming to Australia next (after all we’re just little USA, right? More on that soon). It’s worth beginning with how liberals internally justify their political positioning. Their inaction, justification of government and corporate dec...

We live in a time of intensifying identity-based conflict, where every social and political issue becomes refracted through the lens of personal identity and group affiliation. Look no further than headlines shared here on mind reader every day. The deployment of identity politics – both by the ostensible “left” and the increasingly mask-off right – has become a primary mechanism through which hegemonic power maintains its grip on civil society while forestalling any genuine movement toward working class solidarity (let alone anti-capitalist movements). I think it is worth us spending additional time examining this phenomenon and its implications for building an intersectional movement capable of challenging capitalism’s death grip on our collective future. Because our future is collective, identities be damned. Identity politics, in its current manifestation, represents both a genuine expression of marginalised groups’...