The rawest forms of identity politics, grounded in the metaphysical premise that “whiteness” and “masculinity” are constructs solely predicated on a domination that we cannot hope to escape until those toxic forms of identity have been “dismantled” or “abolished,” began as provocations by radical academics. They have since become viral memes infecting the thinking and rhetoric of a certain strand of progressive activist, and through them, an ever-growing swathe of the media-making class. The resort to them is indicative of a profound failure of the political imagination.
Back in the USSR
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I’ve just finished reading two books on Russia, well, actually the old
USSR, set 30 years apart — one in the 1960s, and the other in the 1990s
when the USS...
4 years ago