Amidst the outrage from leftwing Twitter yesterday afternoon — following President Trump’s announcement that he plans to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord — several progressive groups seized the moment as a chance to harp on the importance of “intersectionality.”

Intersectionality is, of course, the concept that the oppression of minority groups stems not from discrete instances of bias but rather is the direct result of an amalgam of interwoven social and cultural relationships.


Or, in plain English, it’s a buzzword that the left uses to amass political power, binding together interest groups that have no business being allies, in order to wield more social influence.

The response to Trump’s announcement yesterday was another example of how progressives use the idea of intersectionality to capitalize on anti-Trump momentum and thereby gain influence. For example, here are a few of yesterday’s tweets from prominent leftwing organizations:

Pulling out of the Paris Agreement would be a massive step back for racial justice, and an assault on communities of color across the U.S. — ACLU (@ACLU) June 1, 2017

Meanwhile, the radical activist group Black Lives Matter shared an article from the website Mic entitled “5 ways Trump’s Paris Climate accord decision will hurt people of color the most.” The piece asserted that factors such as “structural inequalities” and “racially discriminatory housing practices” cause “climate change injustice” to disproportionately harm minority communities.


These far-fetched assertions do little to convince rational people that climate change is somehow an issue of racial justice or “gender equity,” but they do illustrate an important point. The American Left is increasingly split into tiny subdivisions of minority interest groups, each of which wants particular attention and special treatment from society and the government.


This puts them in direct competition with one another for the title of America’s “Biggest Victim,” and they can’t all be crowned champion. To resolve this tension, progressives attempt to conscript these rival groups into one clumsily assembled clan, allies in the fight for social justice.

The only trouble — aside from the fact that this coalition makes little sense, as evident in the gibberish above — is that when those interests eventually collide, the coalition will crumble. And when it does, the left will lose the political capital it gained by forcing that coalition together.