- Identity politics?
Yet some critics consider the insistence on identity in politics to be a serious
problem. For instance, Canadian political philosophers Daniel Weinstock and his
French colleague Pierre Rosanvallon argue that identity politics is incompatible
with, and a danger to, deliberative democracy. By magnifying differences, it
closes the door to compromise and destroys the we a democratic society ideally
should be. The ideals of the French Revolution, liberté, égalité, fraternité and
the willingness to overcome differences are sacrificed on the altar of identity
assertion. The unacknowledged model of exclusionist identity politics is
apartheid, the racial segregation of erstwhile South Africa. The identitarian
movement embodies similar ideas in a new key. Launched with the formation in
2003 of the Bloc Identitaire in France, this movement spread to other European
countries and across the Atlantic. It stands for restricting immigration, correcting
the presumed preferential treatment of asylum seekers, and upholding native
traditions. Since ‘identity’ has for many a positive ring to it, the identitarian
movement chose its name cleverly to give its nationalist, xenophobic, and racist
agenda a respectable label.