But surely identity is a force for positive equality? It can be. It should be. Identity is the "powerful moral idea that has come down to us", in the words of Canadian political theorist Charles Taylor. The demand for dignity, recognition, equality is one of the motive engines of world history. It has inspired revolutionaries from Spartacus to Gandhi. It has powered what the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has called the "rights revolutions", the historical movement that has pushed ever forward in winning recognition for the powerless. From a time when power resided only with kings and warlords, the rights revolutions have, over centuries, extended recognition and power to ordinary citizens, to slaves, to women, to indigenous peoples, to the disabled, to homosexuals, to children and, increasingly today, to animals. Illustration: Jim Pavlidis Credit: The Australian philosopher Peter Singer has pictured this force as an "expanding circle of empathy". But the way identity politics is being played today is not a quest for equality. It is about asserting not equal rights but superior rights.

The expanding circle of empathy doesn't really exist in identity politics. It is an intolerant impulse that claims greater rights for one favoured group over others. Members of outgroups are even denied the right to be heard. Loading One small example. Donald Trump wants to stop American football players when they "take a knee" during the national anthem in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The team owners should "tell those sons of bitches to get off the field", says Trump. On the other hand, the activists in the Black Lives Matter movement fume against anyone who says "black and white lives matter". Another example raged in the US this week in the Senate hearing called to consider Brett Kavanaugh as a judge for the Supreme Court. On one level it's flat-out partisan politics. A Republican president wants a reactionary judge. Democratic senators oppose him. But the moment Christine Blasey Ford emerged to claim that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her at a party, identity politics took hold. NFL players kneeling during the anthem to raise awareness of racism and social injustice. Credit:AP

White male privilege, sexism and misogny were on trial, according to the left. This was every woman demanding the dignity of being heard and having her rights protected. While the right saw the tactics of the #MeToo movement at work, once again trampling the assumption of innocence in an assertion of moral superiority and transcendent rights. "This thing [identity politics] was really motivated by the rise of populist nationalism all over the world," the noted American political scientist Francis Fukuyama tells me. Notice how Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping feed their popularity at home by stoking resentment at the way an arrogant West disrespected their countries? This is similar to the feelings of "rural voters in the US who felt that the urban bicoastal elites were similarly ignoring them and their problems", says Fukuyama, the same people who turned to Trump to "make America great again". Subdued: Francis Fukuyama still labels our current state as "the globalisation of democracy". Credit:Rob Homer "The practitioners of the politics of resentment recognise one another," writes Fukuyama in his new book on identity politics, helpfully titled Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, to be published in Australia by Profile Books.

"The sympathy that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have for each other is not just personal, but rooted in their common nationalism." Trump, of course, is the high priest of the low order of angry right-wing identity politics. Muslims are terrorists and must be banned from entry; Mexicans are rapists and must be sealed off behind a wall; women are objects that can be grabbed by the pussy; and the Ku Klux Klan aren't really all bad. Loading "You didn't have this white identity politics till the last couple of years in the US," Fukuyama says, or at least not in a mainstream political party. "It's Trump - he's basically a racist and he's encouraged others so it's not surprising they've come out of the woodwork." But just because the right's deployment of identity politics is ugly and intolerant doesn't exonerate the left. Indeed, Fukuyama says that the rise of the angry Trump-led right is partly a reaction against the excesses of the left.

The movements that emerged in the 1960s championing the rights of America's minorities came first: "After the 60s, inequality was interpreted in terms of these specific groups," and the response to those groups was seen as the neglect of the majority. "That accounts for the level of defections of the old working class because they felt the old parties had deserted them." "The populist reaction is against political correctness," says Fukuyama. Political correctness is the censorious self-righteousness of the left. It denied overlooked whites the language to protest and to make their own claims. "You are not listening to what's been happening in the last few years if you think there's no connection between the two." The Republican Party under Trump "has become the party of white people, and the Democrats increasingly are the party of minorities - that's not a good outcome", says Fukuyama, himself a Japanese American. In this way, identity politics is becoming the overwhelming force in American politics. Black Lives Matter activists can be intolerant of those who insist that other lives matter too. Credit:AP But hold on. What about that seismic event known as the global financial crisis, and the wrenching recession that followed, the ghost of Karl Marx wants to know? Marx said that history was economics in action. Isn't this a classic case?

"The global financial crisis was evidence of elite failure in the US and Europe, and in Europe it was followed by the migration crisis in 2015. They were the proximate triggers," Fukuyama concedes. "But people's reactions were expressed in identity terms, not economic terms. If it was an economic reaction they should have lined up behind the parties of the right and left" on income or class grounds. Loading Of course, the world has seen this before. The Great Depression in Europe gave rise to fascism. One of the differences this time in Europe is that, instead of targeting Jews, popular anger and fear is aimed at Muslims. "There's a fear, and it's legitimate, that some of the European countries haven't done a good job integrating Muslims into their societies. They're sitting on these angry groups that don't think they fit into society." Is it bizarre that Jews were the objects of hate last time round and Muslims today? Not really. All populism demonises elites. It's the nature of right wing populism to demonise elites, plus an out-group. It doesn't matter which out-group. Jews, Muslims, Chinese, any minority will do to fill the vacancy.

So Fukuyama doesn't deny that economic forces are at work. But he does say: "Economic grievances become much more acute when they are attached to feelings of indignity and disrespect." American politics today requires not just an economic understanding but also an understanding of the human soul. One of Fukuyama's themes for decades now is the idea of the 19th century German philosopher Hegel - that history is driven by the human craving for recognition. That it's inbuilt in the part of the soul that the ancient Greeks called thymos. Identity politics exploits that craving. In America, the major parties have absorbed and adopted identity politics. In Germany, where the major parties have resisted it, identity politics is energising the fringe parties instead. A supporter of the right-wing Alternative for Germany party. Credit:AP The rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany party has been widely noted. Less noted are signs of a corresponding surge in support for the German Greens. The Greens are on track to double their share of the vote - to 18 per cent or so - in next month's regional elections in Bavaria, for instance.

And what about Australia? To date, the major parties are flirting with identity politics. But only flirting. A minority of conservative Liberals led by Tony Abbott are calling for dramatic cuts to the immigration intake and a toughening of citizenship criteria, for example. Some in Labor are starting to use the language asserting transcendent rights for minorities. The fringe parties, right and left, seem to be stalled. One Nation and the Greens aren't polling any better than their historic peaks of years gone by. Fukuyama poses Australia as a bit of a puzzle: "Australia has a higher percentage of foreign-born than the US does. You have to explain why you haven't had a full-on Trump." He then goes on to offer two explanations. "It's probably the fact that economic conditions are holding these things back" - Australia has suffered neither a savage recession nor the shocking inequality of the US - "and that Australia has better managed immigration." "You haven't really allowed illegal immigration", whereas the US has wilfully tolerated it, partly to keep labour costs down, partly as a sop to the ethnic constituencies. "You've had a lot of criticism of putting people on Nauru and PNG, but that's lanced the boil and staunched the backlash." And Fukuyama doesn't wish virulent identity politics on Australia, or on any society. He fears for America's future. "The retreat on both sides" - left and right - "into ever narrower identities threatens the possibility of deliberation and collective action by the society as a whole. Down this road lies, ultimately, state breakdown and failure."

Are identity politics still on the rise or in the US or starting to recede? The outcome of the midterm US congressional elections in 38 days will be a telling indicator. Peter Hartcher is political editor.