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So this is spinning out of many things: a couple of things that have been said in the Images of Abortions thread; a conversation about the importance of "ideas v. people" that I had in the pub with a Barbelith member; my own sense that the demographic of Barbelith has now shifted to the point where people are more likely to identify themselves with relatively vague "liberal"/humanist sentiments than with specific political beliefs.
To start with, here's the bit from a post by sdv that got me thinking:
"[I]n events like the Iraq colonial (mis)adventure, you should start from the understanding that the domination of one group of people by an imperial state is wrong and not from the terrible fact of the 100s of thousands of people who have died in Iraq since Hussian was encouraged into power by the West. In actual fact if nobody had died (an impossible phantasy this) as a result of the imperial/colonial (mis)adventure it would still be utterly wrong because it always is."
This interests me because I suspect it will be anathema to many, but I think it's absolutely correct. And really important. (In this specific case, it's important because I think otherwise you risk holding a position that's based on events in Iraq having gone "badly" - as if there was an alternative where the war went "well", which would be okay...) The reason I think this is important is that I suspect that many people will have a kneejerk reaction to the phrase "the understanding that the domination of one group of people by an imperial state is wrong", because to them this reads as ideology. And ideology has connotations of political "extremism", of unwieldy dogma, of putting abstract theories ahead of practical realities or concern for other people. Ideology scary, crazy and bad!
I want to propose instead that the above connotations have been engineered for a Reason by people with an Agenda, and that an ideology is really just any organised collection of principles or beliefs. To lack an ideology, therefore, is to lack a pretty basic strategy for understanding the world around you. And I don't really think that there are many people, hardly any, who genuinely lack an ideology. It's just that the term has been distorted to apply only to certain ideologies: basically the ones that might motivate anyone to challenge dominant (and thus usually invisible) ideologies such as capitalism, so-called "moderate" secular liberal humanism, legitimised forms of racism such as immigration control, etc.
Who are the people telling us that having an ideology is an outdated and unhelpful thing? Well, for starters, there are people like New Labour, who claim to have abandonned a dogmatic left-wing ideology in favour of compassionate but practical policies... You know the routine, "the old divides of left and right do not apply anymore, blah blah thirdwaycakes". Whereas in fact it doesn't take an especially insightful observer to see that New Labour's policies are shaped by some very dogmatic ideologies indeed: whether it's Blair's Christian imperialism, Blunkett's overt racism, or the general fanatical adherence to privatisation and the privileging of big business interests over those of the public. That's just one example, but there are others...
Essentially, any time you want to shore up existing inequalities, one helpful way to discredit your opponents is to to accuse them of clinging to militant, out-of-date ideologies (feminism, socialism, "identity politics"). For those who claim that we live in a world in which all the battles for equality have now been won as much as they need to be, it makes sense that nobody should need an ideology that challenges the status quo, and anyone who admits to having one should be distrusted, even by people who claim to support the specific principles that make up that ideology (see: the effective demonisation of 'feminism', which leads some people to disavow the term whilst espousing the things it stands for).
Okay, this post is too long already, anyone want to take over or disagree? |
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