Update, September 23, 2024: J.D Vance recently mocked Kamala Harris for deploying what he called a “fake” accent. This echoes Trump’s claim that Harris is faking her identity. Liberals everywhere are, rightly, pushing back against this kind of essentialism and racism, but as my essay below points out, the “left” is hardly impervious to identity policing. In my many years in left/radical organising, I, along with several others, have experienced pushback and mockery for not being properly Other enough. I’ll have a longer piece up soon-ish, about how the left polices identity, and my book in progress is partly an examination of this problem. But for now, enjoy this, from 2021. It’s also worth noting that I have since written about some of the events mentioned here, in “What Really Happened at Current Affairs?“
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