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@HlynkaCG, I believe you have been summoned.
Ah. If that's what we're talking about, I will cheerfully insist that I've been saying "the only difference between the alt-right and the far-left is the approved targets of their identitarianism" for at least as long as Hlynka has been on that train.
But then how do you explain:
Opposition to medical transition in general, and especially hormone therapy for children, is an alt right position, while supporting them is a leftist position.
The alt right thinks women should be encouraged (through both informal cultural means and formal policy) to be housewives, while the left thinks that women should be encouraged to build independent careers.
Opposition to mandatory Covid vaccination is right-coded, support for mandatory Covid vaccination is left-coded.
Are these not legitimate differences? Differences that aren't reducible to the target of their identitarianism?
I'm not saying there's no difference, I'm explaining what the difference is.
One can target identities in both "pro" and "anti" ways. The problem is the targeting of identities. Liberalism historically focuses instead on individuals.
The targets of identitarian favor/disfavor in this example are transsexuals. In my experience, regular people are typically pretty horrified by the idea of adults mucking about with the sexual maturation of children, and I think the polls bear me out on this--transing the kids has been a losing proposition for the left everywhere it has managed to become a salient election issue. By singling out adult transsexuals for special identitarian recognition, the otherwise-anathema views of transsexuals become the orthodoxy of the far left, and even creep into mainstream Democrat politics under "arguments are soldiers, you must support our troops," even though a large percentage of the left sees this as too much. This is very reducible to identitarianism.
Both groups approach women as a category, rather than as individuals. The far left doesn't just think women should be encouraged through both informal cultural means and formal policy to build independent careers, the far left thinks that it is objectionable for a woman to stay at home and raise children. (Often, the far left objects to people even having children, much less raising those children themselves.)
For a lot of SJWs this was downstream of disability-as-identity. I know I read about at least one lawsuit floating the idea that employers not mandating vaccination should be considered an ADA violation (where the relevant disability might be obesity, or bad immune systems, or other risk factors). And of course, to some extent anything the far left supports, the far right automatically rejects, and vice versa--at the extremes, your place in the extreme becomes the most central identity of all.
So I would say that all of these differences between the far right and far left are reducible to identitarianism.
So, do there exist two political ideologies that are both not liberal individualism, but also differ from each other by more than a "palette swap"? Based on the way I'm reading you right now, you seem to be saying that the political universe essentially breaks down into "liberal individualism" and "everything else". The ideologies in the "everything else" bucket may have differences from each other, but they will always be superficial differences compared to the primary difference of individualism vs identitarianism. Is that your view?
What is it that you actually want to know? I feel like this is a very "so you're saying" comment from you. You gave three specific examples of "not-identitarian differences" and I argued that, no, those are all identitarian differences. So you conclude from this, somehow, that I think "the political universe essentially breaks down into 'liberal individualism' and 'everything else'." But what does that even mean? The whole universe does break down into 'my cell phone' and 'everything else,' but you could replace 'my cell phone' with anything else that exists and the statement would still be true. I don't regard individualism versus identitarianism as the only or even necessarily the most important way of categorizing political views, but I do think that the far left and the far right are culturally radical in the same basic way: both tend to explicitly prefer the destruction of their outgroup/elevation of their ingroup over steps toward coexistence.
I do personally endorse a strain of liberalism that rejects interest aggregation, which has some role to play here, but you do not appear to be asking me questions in an effort to really understand my position--you appear to have some objection in mind. I would prefer, and suspect you would find it more fruitful, if you would just speak plainly about what it is you want to say.
I wasn't sure if you would recognize any difference between ideologies as a non-identitarian difference. The fact that you recognize the possibility of such differences is helpful for understanding your view.
I would argue that the differences between the alt right and the SJW left regarding medical transition are not identitarian. The SJW left regards transition (hormones, SRS) as a formal freedom that should be open to all; it's not tied to any one identity group. Anyone is free to transition as much or as little as they want to. Attempts to identify who is "truly" trans or not are considered "gatekeeping" and are generally viewed as pernicious. Doesn't matter if you're trans, bigender, genderfluid, or even just a man who wants to look more feminine... you should be able to have access to trans medical services if you want. That last one is not unheard of by the way. Plenty of "femboys" take estrogen for softer skin and wider hips, while still identifying as cis men. The SJW left would say "cool!", the alt right would say "what is your problem? You're a man, no you shouldn't be allowed to take any damn estrogen, what is wrong with you?"
I think the competing views on trans issues flow from the fact that the alt right is very friendly to the concept of rootedness, while the left views rootedness as constraining. This is also why the alt right is much more supportive of HBD, and biological explanations in general for human behavior. For the alt right, you are rooted in your identity - you were born into a certain race, into a certain gender, in a certain country, and you should stay put, you need to conform to the norms and live up to the expectations that those identities place on you. You can't just up and change who you are. The left is much friendlier to the concept of identity as a fluid thing that you can change as it suits you. Even when it comes to race for the left, where they're much less sanguine about fluidity, they're still careful to endorse social constructionist views of race instead of biological views, and they stress that the properties of racial groups can be socially re-constructed (in principle). The alt right thinks this is nonsense.
Regarding Covid vaccines, I agree that concerns about disabled people did play a role in the left's thinking, but I don't think it was the overriding factor in their policy decisions. And it certainly wasn't the overriding factor for the alt right - it would be uncharitable to them to say that their position was "yeah, if we cared about disabled people then we would support mandatory Covid vaccines, but we don't, so, they're out of luck I guess". I think the left simply saw an opportunity for collective social action with universalist ends and they embraced it. "We can all play a part in ending Covid and flattening the curve if we all take the vaccine, so let's all fulfill our social responsibility together". The alt right has a certain individualist strain that makes them skeptical of large-scale collective action like this, perhaps because a lot of alt rightists today are ex-libertarians. They bristle at the idea of the government swooping in and telling them what to do, even if it's for an allegedly good cause. These types of concerns aren't identitarian, but rather are simply related to a generalized conception of how the individual should relate to the social collective.
I'm less sure about the case of women, so I'll leave that to the side for now.
It's still identitarian because everyone isn't free to act towards the trans as much or as little as they want to.
No, I think they still have an out. You’re not allowed to treat cis people however you want either. Everyone’s gender identity has to be respected, and you shouldn’t misgender people. It applies universally.
But this also gets back to the concern I raised earlier about collapsing the political universe into minimal individualist libertarianism vs everything else. If an ideology takes a stand on “X is bad” or “X is good” you can always spin that as being “actually” an identitarian difference because it creates a distinction between one group of people who is pro-X and one group of people who is anti-X. So, what’s an example of a genuine non-identitarian difference to you?
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Yeah, /r/StormfrontorSJW is almost 10 years old now.
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