Political pejoratives.

[Torus34]

In today's rough and tumble political linguistics, words and phrases are routinely ripped from their denotative meanings and imbued with derogatory connotations. They're then thrown about, willy-nilly.

A case in point is the current favorite within some circles: 'identity politics'.

It is entirely possible that within a given area there exists a group, defined by religious, racial, ethnic or similar general characteristic, that feels itself put upon in one way or another. It is not unreasonable for a politician, particularly one who is the recipient of votes from some of the group, to listen to the complaint. It's also not unreasonable, should the complaint be seen to have some degree of justification, for the politician's party to enter into the exploration and attempt to resolve the situation.

Given the above, the politician and his/her party has engaged in identity politics.

'Nuf said.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

 

[noonereal]

Do you have a point?

 

[Torus34]

Do you have a point?

Hi!

Yup! Several, in all probability.

One deals with the problems, linguistically, inherent in adding a connotation to a word or phrase and then using it to the extent that the original denotation becomes unusable. That necessitates the creation of neologisms, themselves another problem. Modern-day US political palaver seems particularly prone to do this.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

PS. The plain old nastiness involved in the process described above is itself worthy of censure.

 

[Craig234]

You describe one type of 'identity politics'. Another is when for example, you have propagandists push 'victim politics' on people, telling white Christians there's a 'war on Christmas' because people respectfully say 'happy holidays', or that their marriage is under attack by gays, in order to get their votes, in a funded political effort designed to take power for wealthy interests. Ironically, those same people are the ones attacking 'identity politics'.

 

[Cope]

In today's rough and tumble political linguistics, words and phrases are routinely ripped from their denotative meanings and imbued with derogatory connotations. They're then thrown about, willy-nilly.

A case in point is the current favorite within some circles: 'identity politics'.

It is entirely possible that within a given area there exists a group, defined by religious, racial, ethnic or similar general characteristic, that feels itself put upon in one way or another. It is not unreasonable for a politician, particularly one who is the recipient of votes from some of the group, to listen to the complaint. It's also not unreasonable, should the complaint be seen to have some degree of justification, for the politician's party to enter into the exploration and attempt to resolve the situation.

Given the above, the politician and his/her party has engaged in identity politics.

'Nuf said.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

Identity politics is to politics as profiling is to law enforcement.

 

[Fiddytree]

Identity politics is much like "political correctness" in that it apparently means a very specific thing, but when you think about the nuts and bolts of it, you start to realize it's a basic function of social and political behavior.

If you don't think identity politics is a thing on the right, you haven't seen enough political ads where our politicians have to pretend to be into white protestant religion, guns, hunting, wear hard hats to appeal to the working class, and rodeos to appeal to voters.

 

[Torus34]

Identity politics is much like "political correctness" in that it apparently means a very specific thing, but when you think about the nuts and bolts of it, you start to realize it's a basic function of social and political behavior.

If you don't think identity politics is a thing on the right, you haven't seen enough political ads where our politicians have to pretend to be into white protestant religion, guns, hunting, wear hard hats to appeal to the working class, and get into rodeos.

Hi!

One thing I find amusing with US political palaver these days is that anyone willing to memorize about 20 terms and phrases can appear to have far left or, depending upon which words and phrases, far right bona fides. You can hear it in the callers to the AM radio talk shows. Some of the calls are little more than those words and phrases with a few verbs and conjunctions thrown in here and there.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.