Identity politics fragments solidarity

Identity politics operates as a sophisticated divide-and-conquer mechanism. What appears to be progressive organizing is actually the systematic dissolution of collective power into manageable, competing fragments.

──── The atomization strategy

Traditional solidarity was based on shared material conditions. Workers united because they shared economic exploitation, regardless of background differences. This created genuine threats to existing power structures.

Identity politics reverses this logic. Instead of shared conditions creating unity, individual characteristics create separation. Each identity becomes its own political island, complete with distinct grievances, language, and goals.

The result is predictable: a movement that could challenge systemic power gets subdivided into dozens of micro-movements that can barely challenge each other, let alone the system.

──── Competitive victimhood economics

Identity politics creates scarcity where none should exist. Instead of expanding the definition of injustice to include everyone suffering under the system, it creates hierarchies of oppression.

Groups compete for recognition, resources, and moral authority. Energy that could be directed at systemic change gets redirected into internal rankings of who deserves attention most.

This competitive framework ensures that no single group accumulates enough power to threaten the core structures that create oppression in the first place.

──── The authentication industrial complex

Every identity category requires constant authentication. Who counts as authentic? Who speaks for the group? Who has the authority to define the group’s interests?

These questions create endless internal conflicts. Movements spend more time policing their own boundaries than challenging external power. The authentication process becomes more important than the political goals.

Meanwhile, actual power holders watch these authentication battles with amusement. The more time movements spend defining themselves, the less time they spend defining alternatives to the current system.

──── Language as territory

Identity politics transforms language into battlefield. Each group develops specialized vocabulary that signals belonging and excludes outsiders. Learning the correct terminology becomes more important than understanding the underlying issues.

This linguistic fragmentation makes coalition-building nearly impossible. Groups can’t communicate across identity lines because they’ve developed incompatible vocabularies for describing shared problems.

The focus shifts from changing material conditions to changing how people talk about material conditions. Symbolic victories replace substantive ones.

──── Representation theater

Identity politics reduces political change to representation questions. The assumption is that having the right people in positions will automatically improve conditions for their identity groups.

This creates the illusion of progress while leaving systemic structures intact. A diverse board of directors still manages the same exploitative corporation. A multicultural government still enforces the same oppressive policies.

Representation becomes a substitute for transformation, not a step toward it.

──── The privilege framework trap

The concept of privilege, while descriptively accurate, becomes politically paralyzing when operationalized through identity politics. Instead of using privilege analysis to build broader coalitions, it gets used to create hierarchies of who can speak about what.

Those with more privilege are expected to step back, while those with less privilege are expected to lead. This sounds reasonable until you realize it prevents anyone from building the kind of broad-based movements necessary for systemic change.

The framework becomes a tool for fragmentation rather than coalition-building.

──── Corporate capture inevitability

Identity politics is perfectly compatible with corporate capitalism. Companies can easily adopt diversity initiatives, celebrate identity months, and sponsor pride events without changing their fundamental business models.

This compatibility isn’t accidental. Identity politics focuses on inclusion within existing systems rather than transformation of those systems. It’s much easier to diversify a corporate board than to challenge corporate power itself.

The result is that identity-based movements get absorbed into the very systems they originally sought to challenge.

──── Historical amnesia

Identity politics encourages historical amnesia about successful solidarity movements. The labor movements, civil rights movements, and anti-war movements that actually achieved systemic change get rewritten as identity-based rather than coalition-based.

This revisionist history obscures the fact that effective movements have always required building alliances across identity lines. It makes current fragmentation seem natural rather than strategically imposed.

──── The eternal present

Identity politics operates in an eternal present. Instead of building toward future transformation, it focuses on current identity management. The goal becomes maintaining and defending identity categories rather than transcending the conditions that make those categories politically necessary.

This temporal orientation prevents long-term strategic thinking. Movements get trapped in reactive cycles rather than proactive transformation.

──── Value extraction from difference

The system has learned to extract value from identity differences rather than suppress them. Diversity becomes a market opportunity. Authentic cultural expression becomes content for platforms. Resistance aesthetics become fashion trends.

Identity politics provides the cultural material for this extraction process. By celebrating difference as an end in itself rather than as a means toward solidarity, it creates exploitable content streams.

──── The solidarity alternative

Real solidarity requires abandoning identity as the primary political category. This doesn’t mean ignoring identity or pretending differences don’t exist. It means subordinating identity to shared political goals.

Effective movements organize around what people want to change together, not around who people think they are individually. They build power through shared action, not through shared characteristics.

This approach threatens existing power structures because it creates the kind of broad-based coalitions that can actually challenge systemic arrangements.

──── Why fragmentation serves power

Fragmented movements are manageable movements. Each identity group can be addressed separately with targeted concessions that don’t threaten the overall system. Representation can be increased without redistribution. Cultural recognition can be provided without economic transformation.

Identity politics gives power holders a toolkit for managing dissent without addressing its underlying causes. It’s counterinsurgency disguised as social justice.

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The tragedy of identity politics isn’t that it’s wrong about identity mattering. Identity does matter. The tragedy is that it transforms identity from a tool for understanding oppression into a tool for managing opposition.

Real solidarity means building power together despite differences, not celebrating differences instead of building power.

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This analysis examines structural dynamics rather than questioning the legitimacy of any particular group’s experiences or concerns.