Does Identity Politics Rightly Pertain to the Proper Functioning of Democracy?

An essay the New York Review of Books published on the origin of identity politics argues that it is old. The author, Sarah Churchwell, posits that white identity politics was inflamed by sources such as Breitbart News and Fox News, and that enabled the rise of Donald Trump. That narrative holds that “the 2016 election was a populist backlash of ordinary voters against an increasingly aberrant left that has allowed itself to be distracted by narrow questions about groups whose niche concerns do not rightly pertain to the proper functioning of democracy. ..... Identity politics—according to this telling—fosters a series of peripheral grievances that, in travestying political norms, pose a dangerous threat to these values.”

Some critics on both the left and right argue that by its immersion in identity politics, the left is marginalizing and distancing itself from many Americans, leading to a whitelash reaction among many rural Americans. The author refers to an argument for a return to pre-identity liberalism from current identity politics liberalism by a prominent liberal, Mark Lilla:

“Finally, the whitelash thesis is convenient because it absolves liberals of not recognizing how their own obsession with diversity has encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being threatened or ignored… they are reacting against the omnipresent rhetoric of identity, which is what they mean by ‘political correctness.’ Liberals should bear in mind that the first identity movement in American politics was the Ku Klux Klan, which still exists.”

Churchwell points out that the KKK was not America's first identity movement. America was founded on identity politics. Grants of political, economic, and legal rights applied to only some identity groups, but not all. She further argues that nearly all major events in American history was directly caused by identity politics. The identities that drove political events included slavery, gender and national origin (immigration). In arguing against identity politics, Lilla asserts that “national politics in healthy periods is not about ‘difference,’ it is about commonality.”

Churchwell argues that the phrase identity politics itself  is a distraction and a slippery slope into Fascism:

“As a phrase, identity politics is always a red herring, leading the debate away from the real question—namely, which groups have access to political, legal, and economic power. The history of America is a history of violent battles over who gets to be counted, in every sense, as a ‘real American.’ ..... Concern with bloodlines and ‘racial stock’ is pure identity politics, and it was praised by Trump’s former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, during a 2015 radio interview with Steve Bannon. ‘In seven years, we’ll have the highest percentage of Americans, non-native born, since the founding of the Republic,’ noted Sessions. ‘… [I]t’s a radical change.’ ..... This logic is not only nativist, it is outright eugenicist, which is the slippery slope down which identity politics always risks heading. Fascist movements, too, are political projects that valorize ‘the people,’ a group bound by ancestry and region into an ur-identity that is seen as a more authentic form of national identity than that granted to other citizens. The form of nationalism that fascism takes can be political, militaristic, cultural, ethnic or some combination thereof, but it is always framed as an appeal to the ‘real’ people of the nation.”

Churchwell acknowledges that although American populist movements share similarities with European Fascism, they are not the same:

“they do share a strong family resemblance, including a nominal populism that bolsters the power of a corporate or oligarchic state, an emotional wave of personal identification with an individual leader, a faith in authoritarianism as an expression of “authentic” national identity, the demonization of “alien” groups who are said to undermine national virtue, a willingness to sacrifice the rule of law to defeat those whom it views as enemies, and a reliance upon an economy of fear.”

Churchwell concludes with this:

“..... identity politics from the left may well prove an insufficient weapon against identity politics from the right. But it is not true that identity politics are necessarily divisive. Difference is a fact of life, to which divisiveness is only one response. Inclusiveness is another: not just tolerating but celebrating difference, fighting for the rights of all, not just the few. To be a truly representative democracy, America will need to stop thinking in terms of the representative common man. Thinking in terms of common decency might be a start.”

Questions

If Churchwell is right that identity politics distracts from the real question of which groups have access to political, legal, and economic power, how should such concerns be addressed? Are Churchwell and Lilla right that the left is marginalizing itself? In view of current free speech and endless dark political rhetoric, is appeal to common decency more persuasive than appeals to groups who see and feel injustice, real or imagined? What is more responsible for perceptions of rural white Americans that they are persecuted, e.g., rhetoric and behavior by the left, the right or both roughly equally?

Finally, does identity politics rightly pertain to the proper functioning of democracy, or do all legal tactics rightly pertain?