Make Resistance Bigotry Again
On Liberal Identity Politics as Counterinsurgency
This weekend the Democratic Party made the smartest play possible: they successfully convinced Biden to drop his reelection bid, setting up Kamala Harris as heir apparent for the White House.
Within 24-hours the “I’m With Her” memes started appearing on my Instagram feed. It is not a new slogan. If you were around and voting in 2016, you might remember it as a slogan of the Hillary Clinton campaign when she ran against Trump. I remember it as an identity cudgel the establishment used to bring the left into line behind a neoliberal imperialist war criminal. I remember friends implying, if not saying out loud, that it was sexist to call Hillary a neoliberal imperialist war criminal.
In politics and PR, perception is reality, and in 2016, to be an anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist made you a misogynist, an entitled white incel keyboard warrior who thought they knew better than women. Now, in 2024, the Dems are not even trying to be inventive. They don’t have to be. Having a Black South Asian woman at the top of the ticket is immediately having the desired effect. Liberals are forgetting the past 10-months of wholesale slaughter and the burgeoning police state, turning off all critical thinking, and cheering for our institutions. We can breathe a sigh of relief, look at Kamala Harris’s identity markers, and forget policy. We have our savior. We can forgive and forget.
This is why liberal identity politics are an insidious and highly deadly poison. They program us to turn off our consciences, to blindly defer to a leader, and keep our mouths shut no matter what heinous policies they propound. The corporate interests that sponsor politicians know exactly what they’re doing. They do not care about BIPOC, women, or queer folks. It is a cynical tactic they use to manufacture consent for the status quo. White people defer because they’re afraid to be called racist. Men defer because they don’t want to be called sexist. BIPOC defer because they identify with the leader and don’t want to criticize them in public. And then the leader gets carte blanche to do racism, transmisogyny, and imperialism because nobody will hold them to account. A Harris Presidency is intended to demobilize broad opposition to imperialism and capitalism without changing a single Biden policy. If the establishment succeeds, it will more deeply entrench America’s fascistic institutions and political trajectories. We might not get Project 2025 right away, but it is coming for us, and the effect will be the same. No politician will protect us.
I would almost prefer “Blue No Matter Who” to “I’m With Her.” The first slogan at least implies, “hey, I’m not 100% down with my candidate’s policies; this is just tactical” (also problematic, but I’ve already written about that). To say one is with the candidate is to say you are all the way down. You are loyal. You love the candidate. You identify with the candidate. It tells me that you are okay with the status quo if it is headed by a woman of color. It tells me that you are willing to throw millions under the bus to save capitalism and American imperialism. That you are willing to endorse the criminalization and slaughter of other BIPOC, women, and children as long as the murderer isn’t a white male.
[Ruha Benjamin on “Black Faces in High Places,” Cop City, and Palestine. Play clip from 11:00.]
Or perhaps you truly believe that representation is liberation, that “Black faces in high places” will set us free, and that it is possible for a settler colonial entity founded on enslavement and genocide to be reformed. But I highly doubt the Democrats will be able to sell that line to the people resisting Cop City in Atlanta, or to the Palestinians who have pledged to abandon the Democratic Party for its endorsement of Zionism, or to the students who have put everything on the line for Palestine these past few months.
I’ll say it again another way: if a cop has a gun to my head, and you tell me you are “with” that cop and not with me, you are my enemy. Those who have had a liberal gun to their heads will not be deceived. A liberal bullet kills you just as dead as a conservative bullet.
Say “I am with her” to the people of Atlanta, who are facing fascistic white supremacist repression at the hands of an establishment with Black politicians at the helm. Say “I am with her” to the millions of families and communities criminalized by Harris’s policies as California District Attorney. Say “I am with her” to the students brutalized, rounded up, and criminalized by BIPOC politicians and university administrators for their resistance to genocide. Say “I am with her” to the people of Palestine.
Kamala Harris is a Zionist, an imperialist, and a cop who will continue to perpetuate the same genocidal, white supremacist policies championed by Biden and Trump. This moment will expose the extent of the isolation of the core of the resistance to colonialism and capitalism within the US. It reveals the true colors of those who were never dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism and imperialism in the first place. It reveals who the true allies of the resistance are. Many of those who we’ve seen in handcuffs at symbolic, nonviolent actions were not fighting for the end of Zionism or US empire or mass incarceration, but for reforms, for tweaks in policies, for little more than a more competent imperialist. Some of the people we’ve shared jail cells with now have their knives in our backs.
I do genuinely believe that we have been part of an awakening in the past ten months. Support for Palestine and criticism of Israel have been normalized. People cannot unsee the naked brutality of our carceral system. We’ve seen a broader acceptance of more militant protest tactics. More people are rightfully disillusioned with the possibilities of electoral politics. And more people are rightfully disillusioned with the left, seeing its weakness and incapacity to challenge power, and are shifting into slow, remedial movement-building rooted in structures of mutual aid. Perhaps the nomination of a BIPOC woman as a presidential candidate will be a true test of the resilience of this awakening, a winnowing moment that exposes who is truly down to fight the status quo and who is willing to take the bribe.
This can be a good thing. It is always helpful to know who will have your back when the cops come for you, and who is going to turn you in.
