A bunch of truth here:
November 12, 2024
The Right must be on the offensive (not the defensive) to confront identity politics
By
Rajan Laad
Recently, President Trump announced that Susie Wiles will be his White House Chief of Staff for his second term.
In a statement, President Trump said that Wiles “just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history” and “is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected”.
Wiles began her career working for Ronald Reagan’s immensely successful 1980 election campaign. Wiles enabled success for Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in their successful gubernatorial races. DeSantis described Wiles as “the best in the business”. Wiles played key parts in Trump’s presidential and primary campaigns since 2016.
But when the mainstream media covered Wiles’s appointment, they were focused on, you guessed right, her biological sex.
The mainstream media is the PR wing of the Democrats. The Democrats have, over the decades, placed increasing importance on identity politics. For almost every appointment, media operatives declared the candidate “the first [insert minority group] to fill [insert the position].” They frequently announce the
demographic group from which the candidate will belong to even before the individual is selected.
What is surprising and disappointing is that even the right-leaning media were focused on Wiles’s sex.
The American Spectator
mentioned Wiles’s sex in the second sentence of their column.
Breitbart mentioned Wiles’s sex in their headline, as did
Fox News and the
NY Post.
When Trump appoints Vivek Ramaswamy and Kash Patel to key posts, the focus will be on their skin color and the fact that they are the first Indian Americans to hold their respective posts.
If Richard Grennell is made Secretary of State, the focus will be on his
sexual orientation.
The right-leaning media in the UK did better reacting to Kemi Badenoch being elected as leader of the Conservative party.
The mainstream news media in the
UK and the
US, remained focused on the fact that Badenoch is the first black woman to lead a major UK party.
The right-leaning media in the UK such as The Sun, GB News, The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, etc. mentioned the news, but didn’t focus on Badenoch’s race or gender.
So what does one make of this?
The left won this identity politics battle by infiltrating organizations of consequence, attaching virtue to their agenda, and making changes in small increments.
Their tentacles penetrate both the public and private section and even armed forces.
They almost run the education system, and basically all of showbiz.
Consequently their ideas have become mainstream and are accepted as axiomatic guidelines.
Governmental organizations and corporate houses boast about “DEI” and have departments to ensure the DEI guidelines are followed.
Most organizations comply with DEI requirements out of fear of being hounded, sued, or branded bigots.
The left isn’t in the majority and their ideas such as DEI are deeply unpopular, but they do have control over the loudspeakers.
Leftwing organizations are adept at building perception. They hold demonstrations with paid thugs, write op-eds in “important” newspapers, hire PR Firms who have bogus trends on social media, and also engage in shouting matches on TV.
This cacophony is conflated as the voice of the majority and soon challengers capitulate.
The Democrats have long-been the party of oppressing and abusing minorities, yet they have successfully pushed the perception that they stand with these communities.
The Democrats have also successfully pushed this narrative that Republicans, particularly the MAGA movement, are driven by bigotry.
Hillary Clinton’s notorious “basket of deplorables” attack on Trump supporters, where she branded them “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic,” etc. was part of a concerted effort at narrative-building.
These allegations of bigotry no longer have the impact that they once used to.
But the fact that the bumbling word salad chef with no accomplishments received 71,816,262 votes proves that the left’s brainwashing efforts have had success.
For decent people, being branded a bigot causes anger, offense, pain, and disgust. It also places them on the defensive, i.e. they unknowingly find themselves in a position in which they are guilty until proven innocent.
This is what is happening to the right.
In their effort to disprove allegations of bigotry, the right has accepted the left’s premise and implied its guilt.
We often hear the following from Republicans.
“Trump is not sexist, he appointed the first female as White House chief of staff.”
“Trump is not racist, his close aides are Kash Patel, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ben Carson, Tim Scott, etc.”
“Trump is not a homophobe, he appointed Richard Grennell as Acting Director of National Intelligence.”
How does the left react?
They brand it an act of empty tokenism.
They engage in whataboutism about Trump’s “inappropriate” remarks and actions toward minorities, people of color, women, and LGBT+ people.
It is simply impossible to win a reasoned argument with irrational haters and indoctrinated ideologues.
So how does one resolve this?
Firstly, the right must free itself from the shackles of the left’s narratives and declare open war on identity politics.
They must state that DEI is a euphemism for a quota system, which is both discriminatory and unconstitutional.
They must highlight that DEI ranks perceived victimhood higher than achievement, experience, or talent.
They must talk about DEI destroying spirits because it punishes achievers for no fault of their own, and places importance on DNA-driven attributes, also known as immutable characteristics, such as sex, race, skin color, etc., which exist by virtue of biology alone.
They must state that DEI is the bigotry of low expectations, assuming that people from minority groups are incapable of rising up on their own and hence need handouts.
They must declare they believe in talent, record, accomplishments, and efforts, and that they identify individuals not demographic groups.
In the future, there should be little or no focus on any appointee’s demographic group, but rather on accomplishments and record.
The right must lead a movement to end these abhorrent “identity politics” metrics. This can only be achieved by rejecting every aspect of the idea.
The new leader of the British Conservative part, Kemi Badenoch,
stated it aptly as she echoed Martin Luther King's famous
content of character quote:
t doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like . . . it’s about what the offer is . . . the best thing will be when the color of your skin is no more remarkable than the color of your eyes.