r/stupidpol has been infamous on this site and on the sub for a while, and for good reason. I decided to make an effortpost on why I personally dislike them, and explain how they could fix their shit.
- They don't post actual stupid identity politics On the surface, a sub making fun of woke politics of liberals seems like a good idea. But r/stpidpol rarely does that. What do I mean?
An example of identity politics being used in a stupid way would be the NYT calling bernie a sexist while praising Bloomberg, people denouncing Marxism as "racist," or neolibs and "rainbow capitalism," ie, female drone pilots.
Their biggest problem is that they don't focus on shit that matters. For instance, recently, they talked about how the University of Michigan banned some words that were, well, stupid. For example, they banned "brown bag," which is dumb as fuck. But this isn't a serious issue, imo. Some university banning the word "slave" isn't really a pressing societal issue.
Or, often, they will mock some leftist subs for banning words LIKE stupid, which I agree is... stupid - but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a discussion about it.
I'll often see the stupidpol types fall into the same traps that far-right people do, being overly sensationalist about small stuff.
- They are often reactionary Today, one of the top posts is from a website literally called "The American Conservative." I've seen dozens of people who have flairs saying "Nazbol" and "Strasserist," or "Conservative." They label any LGBTQ content "soft queer shit," and one time, while discussing more teens becoming LGBTQ, mocked it and belittled it (LGBTQ Issues). They once said that Taxi Driver, a movie that the director has called a feminist film, and which is very obviously a deconstruction of the effects of a misogynistic and toxicly masculine culture, is actually just about a war vet and mocked tumblr for even thinking that the movie could have feminist undertones.
Also, there 3rd most overlapped subreddit is some anti-sjw sub.
- They aren't socialists The leftists that you do see on the sub are almost always social democrat bernie types, and they seem to have a massive hardon for Bernie. I love Bernie, but he isn't the greatest thing ever, and they make him out to be that way. i've seen almost no leftcoms, anarchists, MLs,, or any actual leftists, and a higher percentage of rightists.
Finally, they aren't edgy. They like to pretend they are, but their humor boils down to the same crap that rightists use. The n word, sexism, etc.
And any time they try and say we're the PC, safe, sanitized ones, remind them that our subs were the ones that got banned, not theirs.
While we're at it: the word "idpol" comes off to me as a red flag, and it doesn't really make sense as a criticism. Like, politics centering around marginalized identities can actually be important.
If the issue is with cynical neoliberal uses of identity politics, I think the problem can be better described as "liberal representational politics". I saw someone call it that and it seems like it does a better job capturing the problem with the "more women of color drone pilots" thing without throwing legitimate identity-based political issues under the bus.
Am I making any sense?
Yes. I'm going to make a point to always refer to it as "liberal representational politics" from now on, or something more concise with the same idea. You're spot on that "identity politics" is the wrong framing, the problem is that liberals think representation is the endpoint of justice for marginalized communities.
Co-opted movements is another good phrase. Makes it clear that your criticism is of the cheapening of those movements and not the movements themselves.
you're right, it's like we have this slang "idpol" which means "the bad identity politics" which is totally incoherent and impossible to form an internet community around
Stupidpol is the stupidpol lol. The entire community is centered around obsession with identity politics in an aesthetic/performative way. It's just gamergate with less overtly nazi undertones.
Anyone who actually cares about the abuse of "identity politics" isn't upset that people are talking about them, they're upset that those struggles are being cheapened and watered down by liberalism. Their (stupidpol's) anger isn't about the fact that LGBTQ struggles are being co-opted by capitalists, it's about the very existence of those struggles. Which makes them reactionary as fuck.
So yeah, fuck stupidpol. Fuck anyone who belittles social movements. Fuck the capitalists that try to co-opt those movements.
As I understand it, when we use idpol to describe a bad thing, we usually mean identity politics from the top down, which becomes the useless hypocritical neolibshit, what you describe is bottom up