The absurd paradox of identity politics

Peter Thiel: You can do an incredible amount of mischief with a word that has two different meanings

”Not a thing comes to mind,” stammered Kamala Harris during an interview on The View a month before the November 2024 presidential election. Those immortalized words represent the most vapid and inauthentic response to the question: “What would you do differently” about the past 3.5 years of governing as second in command? For someone who evaded tough interviews, this statement was not only stupefying given the friendly environment, it gave credence to Master Oogway’s famous paradox: “A person often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.” 

When two-thirds of voters say the country is on the wrong track, her response lost her the election. It was also yet another sign identity politics is a failed strategy. Identity politics, as defined by Oxford Dictionary, are ​​”political positions and activism based on an aspect of identity (e.g. ethnicity, religion, sex, or sexual orientation) shared by a group which feels that its concerns are not adequately represented.”  

To follow this tactic, messaging is paramount to eschew exclusion of a specific group in an effort to win them over. Hence why she revealed nothing, lest she dare offend a constituent. 

This inability to displease anyone in the Democratic coalition led her to prevaricate on the Israel-Hamas conflict, making her look even more inauthentic. In the final days of her campaign, she continued to shamelessly drive home two different messages: one targeting Muslim residents in Michigan and one targeting Jewish people in Pennsylvania (as though people wouldn’t find out?). By not taking a side, she essentially aggrieved both. 

Trump, on the other hand, has been unwavering in his explicit defense of Israel, saying to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahou, “get your victory and get it over with.” 

In stark contrast, Trump is authentically the same wherever he goes regardless of who he offends, which is why binary reactions are left in his wake. For those who think he is a virulent convicted felon selling a lie, at least his messaging is consistent. Harris’ challenge was not just her lies, but her conflicting messaging delivered with a chameleon-like accent. She would have done herself a greater service, and may have avoided being labeled a word-salad communicator, if she stayed true to her progressive self. 

Identity politics doesn’t allow for this. It is flawed from the start. 

Absurd paradoxes when A means not A

“Identity is a very weird concept,” Peter Thiel said to me during our Fireside Chat at the Culture, Religion & Technology, take II event, hosted by the Economic Club of Miami in October 2024. “If a word means A and not A, you can do an incredible amount of mischief with it.” 

His astute critique of identity politics is that identity means “that which makes you identical, so that which makes you the same. And it also means that which makes you unique. If you start with a word that has two meanings: the same and different, you get into all of these sort of absurd paradoxes of identity politics where everybody is different in exactly the same way.”

That “same way” is the unifying glue that brings a party together. That unifying glue for the Democrats has been to champion the rights of an ever-growing minority class. A bunch of “A’s” combined with “not A’s” - a diversity of outward appearances all instilled with the same values.  

These minorities started with women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews and then expanded to Trans, Palestinians, immigrants, and then to the homeless, overweight, single, childless people, alongside cat ladies, furries, etc. The Democratic party became an intersectional class of different social identities that were supposed to find solidarity in their shared oppression, or shared guilt of the racism and bigotry in the world, or shared fear of the apocalyptic, life-threatening end to democracy.

The problem for this political strategy - that was borne out in this election - is that these identities ultimately didn’t monolithically share the same values, and never did. This especially rang true for those in the Democratic party who found themselves called racists, misogynists, and bigots if they didn’t tow the party line. Take for instance, Barack Obama, who effectively chided “the brothers” for being sexist. Scolding isn’t an effective tool to turn out votes.

There was also the female constituency that broke down. Why? Some women find men toxic and oppressive, and will support all women in their rights against men who take advantage of them or sexually assault them. But when women who do not want their daughters to compete with men in sports are considered heartless and transphobic, they start to become skeptical that the Democrats stand for their rights at all. When women who want to protect their children from exploring their sexuality to possibly mutilating themselves before puberty are considered unscientific, they start to see the Democratic Party as one that would sacrifice kids to stay in power.

Some Jewish people may support affirmative action that results in them having to work twice as hard as their fellow minority classmates to get into the same elite university. But they’re not going to sit back and watch pro-Palestinian students raise havoc on campuses and call for the genocide of Israelis. 

As Peter rightly observed, absurd paradoxes plague the term identity politics. Hence when Democrats are confronted with questions that require them to potentially offend one side, they simply don’t know what to say. Recall when Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik interrogated disgraced Harvard President Claudine Gay, asking her if calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s Code of Conduct.

Gay cowardly responded: “It depends on the context.” 

Stefanik rightly shot back: “It does not depend on the context the answer is yes, and this is why you should resign.” 

Let them eat cake

The problem with identity politics has been called out before. It is something Mark Lilla, a professor of humanities at Columbia University, pointed out in his essay “The end of identity Liberalism” in 2016 referring to Hillary Clinton. “In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing,” he wrote. “The fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life.”

Unaware is the operative word in Lilla’s observation. When people are told to unite for a cause that is inherently against their own interest, there is an unawareness about the validity of that cause. 

The people who have the luxury to buy into such a cause congratulate themselves for being compassionately part of some bigger team. Yet they just look like sanctimonious hypocrites telling everyone to eat cake. One former Democrat said it well: “My people were so bathed in righteousness, they’d become a living satire. For three months, I sat on a Minnesota water-conservation board with wealthy travelers who kept golf courses green while recommending water rationing for farmers. The group’s leader proposed we stage a “Pearl Harbor level” event that would scare the public into taking shorter showers.”

Look up, stop looking around  

What is our identity therefore? While on stage in Miami, Peter brought up Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The nuanced answer for what is our identity is that it “should be first Christian,” he said. 

His mentor Rene Girard, a historian, theologian, professor and underrated philosopher, taught Peter that people can learn not only about God from the Bible, but the nature of humanity. What therefore is our identity as humans? We are made in the image of God as man and woman. We are all inherently broken.

In Genesis 1:27, we’re told “God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.” Sex is binary.

In Romans 3:10, it says that none of us can boast of being good. “There is no one righteous, not even one.”

There are far too many heuristics to enumerate, but one to remember is to: always look up, and stop looking around. A point Girard always liked to make to Peter (which Peter now likes to make to his friends) is to remember the first and the last commandments. The first commandment is Exodus 20:2-5 "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall not have other gods beside me.” And the 10th commandment is Exodus 20:17 “You shall not covet your neighbor's house, or his wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.” 

In a world where God and “transcendent references get lost,” Peter explained, “you end up with people looking around at one another like crazy. And it doesn’t work.”

In other words, if our identity is in God, we have all the affirmation we need. We can be authentic and true to ourselves and to others. Importantly, we wouldn’t obsess about our identity, let alone politicize it.