I’ve known for the longest time that there had to be some common philosophy (although, perhaps, a weak one) linking the same hard left faces together that I see at anti-Trump rallies, at women’s rights rallies, at pro-LGBTQ rallies, at Black Lives Matter rallies, at anti-gun rallies, at Antifa rallies, at anti-Israel rallies, at pro-Democratic Socialist rallies, at pro-Palestinian rallies, at Occupy Wall Street rallies, etc., etc.
I knew that common philosophy couldn’t be Marxism, because so many of those hard left faces that I saw didn’t look educated enough to know what Marxism actually advocates and so many of those faces certainly didn’t look old enough to remember when the CPUSA had any kind of a voice in this country, at all.
So, what is the common philosophic thread binding Zephyr Teachout, Bernie Sanders, Cynthia Nixon, Bill Di Blasio, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and many others, with less recognizable faces, together? It’s “intersectionality.”
I stumbled across “intersectionality” when I read a very enlightening article about Great Britain’s current left-wing Labour Party, that appeared in a recent issue of an English language magazine devoted to Israel and its survival.
However, before I quote from that article, here’s some of what I found on the Internet about “intersectionality.”
“’Intersectional’ theory asserts that people are often disadvantaged by multiple sources of oppression, their race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion and other identity markers. Professor Kimberle Crenshaw, of the University of Chicago, was the first to introduce, in 1989, ‘intersectionality’ as part of Marxist feminist critical theory, when presenting a paper that she had written for the university’s legal forum.”
“Intersectionality” is having a negative impact on all Jews and on Israel today, and it has become a convenient cover for anti-Semitism, as I think is well explained in the following quote from that magazine story that I mentioned above.
“A fashionable new-wave philosophy called ‘intersectionality’ has captured the left-wing in the UK and in the USA. ‘intersectionality’ holds that there is a link between all manifestations of oppression, however diverse, and therefore, between all victims. Female victims of sexual inequality have a bond with black victims of racial inequality and with victims of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender inequality, and so on. ‘Intersectionality’ decrees that Palestinians are quintessential victims, and that their villainous oppressors are Israel, which it accuses of every sort of monstrous criminality, including genocide. The logic of ‘intersectionality decrees that anyone who opposes racism, homophobia or sexism MUST NECESSARILY OPPOSE ISRAEL. That diktat is easily extended to all who support Israel (primarily Jews), and by a further extension, (to) all Israelis, most of whom happen to be Jews. This is how eminent academics have come to refuse to engage professionally with their Israeli counterparts, while stoutly maintaining that they are not anti-Semitic in doing so.”
I hope that you’ve found the above edifying and that you will deny the validity of ‘intersectionality’ when you are faced with it.
When in college, I studied some anthropology, paleoanthropology and some sociology.
Tribalism, ethnic and other diversities, human development and the rise of nationalism, are covered in those courses.
I wish the originators of ‘intersectionality’ had studied some anthropology and sociology, too.
Joel Katz
Port Washington
