How cynical populism has created a culture of victimhood politics

Aug 31, 2016 by Jill

by Paul Bickley, Theos:

In Theos’ inaugural report, Doing God: A Future for Faith in the Public Square, Nick Spencer suggested that one of the reasons that religiously motivated political engagement was here to stay was the turn to the politics of identity. That is, the end-of-history assumption that liberal democracy was the final point of progress would be disrupted as religious and other identities would stubbornly persist, and continue to drive events.

He was more right than he could have known, and not just when it comes to religion. Who ten years ago would have predicted that Scottish nationalism would be one of the key forces in British political life, and that Scotland would return one solitary Labour MP in the 2015 general election? This was not just the victory of one political party and the rout of another, but a rejection of a generic social democracy in favour of Scottish social democracy.

That said, national and religious identities are actually some of the more obvious and predictable examples. Alongside and, increasingly, before these crowd a range of other micro and macro identities rooted in the political and the personal – in ideologies, gender, sexuality, ability and dis-ability, ethnicity and myriad others in combination. These identities are not invented, but they are continually emphasised. It seems it’s no longer enough simply to be a citizen – you now have to have an identity.

Just ask Rachel Dolezal.

Politically, this is hard to understand.

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