Source: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/469774-id-politics-establishment-women-potus/
September 27, 2019
By Neil Clark
Identity politics is shamelessly exploited by pro-war western Establishments to promote certain candidates, but only those who promote the ‘right’ elite-friendly policy stances.
She’s the first from her ethnic background to make it to Congress, and the first of her religion too. And of course, she’s a woman as well. Now you might have thought that those personal correct (PC) hipsters and Inside the Tent self-proclaimed ‘feminists’ who championed ‘Hillary for President’ not so long ago, and were telling us what a huge advance it would be for women around the globe for the US to have its first female president, would be falling over themselves to endorse Tulsi Gabbard, who not only has the right sex, but ticks other diversity boxes too.
But guess what? They’re not. Far from it. A lot of these people have been at the forefront of those attacking Tulsi. They not only don’t want her as President, they don’t want her in debates either. All of a sudden ticking gender, race and religious boxes isn’t so important. Gabbard once met Assad, and that puts her out of it.
Read more
Gabbard campaign joins voices raising concerns over Democrat debate-qualifying criteria https://www.rt.com/usa/467220-gabbard-dnc-debate-polls/
It’s also important to note that Wall Street Democratic donors, the people who lined up with their check-books behind Hillary in 2016, have threatened ( https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/wall-street-democratic-donors-may-back-trump-if-warren-is-nominated.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain) to sit things out – or even back Trump – if the surging Elizabeth Warren gets the party nomination over Joe Biden. Don’t we want a female President after all, you ‘enlightened’ capitalists?
What this all shows us is that identity politics is used selectively, to maintain the elite-friendly status quo, by giving it a ‘progressive’ veneer.
Women to lead the country – great! But it’s not so great if the women in question rail against regime-change wars, as Gabbard does, or are outspoken critics of the big banks and giant corporations, like Warren.
Trans women in politics – great! But again, it’s not so great if she’s Chelsea Manning (1), a brave whistleblower who helps us see behind the curtain and exposes imperial crimes.
Read more
Chelsea Manning jailed for a YEAR for refusing to testify against Assange https://www.rt.com/usa/466018-manning-year-jail-fine/
Muslim women in politics – great! But not so great if they overstep the mark and criticise entrenched foreign policy lobby groups, like Ilhan Omar (2) has.
It’s not just in the US where Identity politics is used in this way. It happens in Britain too. Consider how the Murdoch press has been promoting the Labour MP Jess Phillips (3) as a feminist icon and potential future leader of her party, most recently putting the ’fearless’ politician on the front cover of last week’s Sunday Times magazine. Now, Phillips has many admirable qualities and I’m not going to denigrate her, but does anyone seriously think that a female Labour MP who was a strong supporter of Jeremy Corbyn would be promoted in such a way by News Corp?
Consider too the treatment of Ed Miliband (4), who preceded Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party. He might have become Britain’s first Jewish Prime Minister since the 19th century. Surely a cause for celebration, if you believe in fighting anti-Semitism and promoting religious diversity? But Miliband was lambasted for helping to prevent David Cameron’s drive for war against Syria in 2013, and all of a sudden it wasn’t so cool to have a Jewish prime minister. Support for Miliband within the Establishment disappeared the moment it was clear we were not going to bomb Damascus because of his actions.
Read more
Liberal media puzzled: Openly gay Brnabic & Weidel prefer hard work to aggressive PC campaigning https://www.rt.com/op-ed/466090-brnabic-weidel-liberals-gay-values/
Politicians who you’d think might be promoted because of their gender, sexuality and/or ethnic background, but who don’t ‘convince’ on foreign policy don’t get the big Establishment media public relations (PR) push. Have you heard of Sahra Wagenknecht (5)? She’s the leader of the Left Party (Die Linke), in the German Bundestag. She’s bright and has ethnic heritage (her father is Iranian). She’s very photogenic too. And she’s a brilliant public speaker. But how many can place her name outside of Germany? I’m sure if her politics were different, she’d be known across the western world by now.
By applying Identity politics selectively, the pro-war neoliberal Establishment is actually putting the cause of genuine anti-sexism, anti-racism and anti-homophobia backwards. Because we know that if there was a candidate who ticked every single diversity box – but who opposed foreign military interventions and who represented the prospect of real, meaningful change, they would be ruthlessly attacked. Identity politics is great, and so cool, ok ya, – so long as it doesn’t rock the boat.
Notes
(1) Chelsea Elizabeth Manning[4] (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly 750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents. She was imprisoned from 2010 until 2017 when her sentence was commuted. Manning is currently in jail for her continued refusal to testify before a grand jury against Julian Assange. A trans woman, Manning released a statement in 2013 explaining she had a female gender identity since childhood and wanted to be known as Chelsea Manning. She also expressed a desire to begin hormone replacement therapy.
Assigned in 2009 to an Army unit in Iraq as an intelligence analyst, Manning had access to classified databases. In early 2010, she leaked classified information to WikiLeaks and confided this to Adrian Lamo, an online acquaintance. Lamo indirectly informed the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, and Manning was arrested in May that same year. The material included videos of the July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan; 251,287 U.S. diplomatic cables; and 482,832 Army reports that came to be known as the “Iraq War Logs” and “Afghan War Diary”. The material was published by WikiLeaks and its media partners between April 2010 and April 2011.
Manning was charged with 22 offenses, including aiding the enemy, which was the most serious charge and could have resulted in a death sentence. She was held at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico in Virginia, from July 2010 to April 2011, under Prevention of Injury status—which entailed de facto solitary confinement and other restrictions that caused domestic and international concern—before being transferred to the Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she could interact with other detainees. She pleaded guilty in February 2013 to 10 of the charges. The trial on the remaining charges began on June 3, 2013, and on July 30, she was convicted of 17 of the original charges and amended versions of four others, but was acquitted of aiding the enemy. She was sentenced to 35 years at the maximum-security U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. On January 17, 2017, President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence to nearly seven years of confinement dating from her arrest on May 27, 2010. Before her jailing on March 8, 2019, for her continued refusal to testify before a grand jury against Julian Assange, Manning was earning a living through speaking engagements.
In 2018, Manning challenged incumbent Senator Ben Cardin for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate election in her home state of Maryland. On June 26, 2018, Manning finished second among eight candidates. Manning received 5.7% of the votes; Cardin won renomination with 80.5% of the votes cast.
On March 8, 2019, Manning was held in contempt of court by a United States District Court judge for refusing to testify to a federal grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. Manning said she was objecting to the “secrecy of the grand jury process”. Except for a brief period of release between May 9 and May 16, she continues to be held in the Alexandria City Jail until she agrees to testify.
(2) Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (born 1982) is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district since 2019. The district includes all of Minneapolis and some of its suburbs.
Omar was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2016 on the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party line. In 2018, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, marking a number of historic electoral firsts: she is the first Somali-American, the first naturalized citizen from Africa, and the first non-white woman elected from Minnesota, and one of the first two Muslim women (along with Rashida Tlaib of Michigan) to serve in Congress.
Omar is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has advocated for a living wage, affordable housing and universal healthcare, student loan debt forgiveness, the protection of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She has strongly opposed the immigration policies of the Trump administration, including the Trump travel ban. She has been the subject of several death threats, conspiracy theories, and other harassment by political opponents.
A frequent critic of Israel, Omar has denounced its settlement policy and military campaigns in the occupied Palestinian territories, and what she describes as the influence of pro-Israel lobbies such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Shortly after she took office, Omar was criticized by a number of Democrats, Republicans and Jewish civil rights groups for comments about American support for Israel that they said drew on anti-Semitic tropes. Omar apologized for some of the remarks.
(3) Jessica Rose Phillips ( born 1981) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Yardley since 2015.
(4) Edward Samuel Miliband (born 1969) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Doncaster North since 2005, being re-elected in 2010, 2015, and 2017. He was Leader of the Labour Party and the Leader of the Opposition between 2010 and 2015. He also served in the Cabinet from 2007–10 under Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Miliband was born in the Fitzrovia district of Central London to Polish Jewish immigrants Marion Kozak and Ralph Miliband, a Marxist intellectual who was a native of Brussels and fled Belgium during World War II. He graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford and later from the London School of Economics. Miliband became first a television journalist, then a Labour Party researcher and a visiting scholar at Harvard University, before rising to become one of Chancellor Gordon Brown’s confidants and Chairman of HM Treasury’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Miliband was elected to the House of Commons in 2005. Prime Minister Tony Blair made Miliband Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office in May 2006. When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, he appointed Miliband Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Miliband was subsequently promoted to the new post of Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, a position he held from 2008-10.
After the Labour Party was defeated at the 2010 general election, Brown resigned as Leader of the Labour Party; in September 2010, Miliband was elected to replace him. His tenure as Labour leader was characterised by a leftward shift in his party’s policies, and by opposition to the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government’s cuts to the public sector. He led his party into several elections, including the 2014 European Parliament election. Following Labour’s defeat by the Conservative Party at the 2015 general election, Miliband announced his resignation as leader on 8 May 2015. He was succeeded in the ensuing leadership election by Jeremy Corbyn.
(5) Sahra Wagenknecht ( born 1969) is a German left-wing politician, economist, author and publicist. Along with Dietmar Bartsch, she is the parliamentary chairperson of Die Linke. Since 2009, she has been a member of the Bundestag.
*Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. He has written for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and other countries including The Guardian, Morning Star, Daily and Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Week, and The American Conservative. He is a regular pundit on RT and has also appeared on BBC TV and radio, Sky News, Press TV and the Voice of Russia. He is the co-founder of the Campaign For Public Ownership @PublicOwnership
Emma Olive 