In order to take on Bill Maher and Milo Yiannopoulos’s set of points, let me say: I am a leftist. One of the things I am passionately for is examining the politics of class. This stuff is important to me, as it is for many. But I don’t think that’s something that should ever cost marginalized people. For me, “class v. identity” is a stupid battle. We shouldn’t ever move away from the issues affecting trans people and Muslims for class issues. We should simply add class politics to the American Left’s collective concerns.

“PC culture” is not something I care for or about. It means nothing to me. I advocate having a basic level of respect for people. Don’t just shit on folks automatically — like, say,for who they are. If you want me to say “the left has gotten a little too restrictive and finger pointy,” I’ll happily agree, but with a caveat: we have to be talking about the mainstream left.

The mainstream left is essentially a few media and political figures (generally white) who depend on various aspects of white supremacy and capitalism to maintain their societal positions. I would suggest that some of the most visible people in the media are not there because of their pedigree, but rather their effectiveness at developing a perpetually correct position that effectively engages in lifestyle marketing that’s represented as social justice advocacy.

Everyone from Bill Maher to the most fervent Anti-Feminist Internet Man hate these folks — but they don’t bother to look in to the things these people are talking about. If you do, it’s pretty easy to figure out they are not engaging in “identity politics,” and that the term itself is not the right one for the performance-oriented white feminists and white liberals of the world.

Politically-oriented cultivated identity, however, explains exactly what they are doing pretty well — it’s obsessive fandom. That is to say, it’s hyperconsumptive lifestyle marketing for people who like politics instead of Steven Universe. It’s not identity politics.

Reading up on the philosophical ideas these aggressive white feminists/white liberals (the ones who make no effort to back up their assertions, but represent themselves as experts) assert makes it obvious that they aren’t interested in the ideas themselves. They’re interested in representing themselves as associated with these ideas.

The problem with calling this very-hated thing “identity politics” is that the Civil Rights Movement is identity politics and has been since it started mid-1900s. That’s what identity politics is: people’s political concerns relative to their identity. People who are marginalized systematically should not require some kind of authorization to be taken seriously.

What these jackasses on their premium cable TV shows they get paid MILLIONS to do is pontificate about lifestyle marketing without understanding that the term they use to refer to it actually means “civil rights.”

These bigoted fools like Milo and Bill Maher think “identity politics” is “political cultivated identity.” Of course they hate it — it’s annoying as hell. Many out there just think feminism, for instance, is just a “Kill All Men Fandom” and that’s how they treat it. That’s the level of maturity on display. Not to say there are not many that do treat feminism as a fandom, but the main effect of that is just giving “The Rationals” people to point and scream at. This is a problem, not the problem.

Things people become love knife-level fans of: feminism, anti-feminism, liberalism, conservatism, veganism, meat eating, whatever, and everything. It’s not the real argument — but even if it were, the argument about which category of political concern is best is an unintelligent and unproductive one.

Then there’s the fact that the aspect of the left Bill Maher is angry about is the aspect of the left he is a part of. like it or not, Maher is part of the mainstream left. When he talks about something, he helps to mainstream it.

Still, Bill Maher goes out of his way to attack ideas he might call “identity politics” — again, like many in the supposedly “rational” wing of the mainstream left improperly calling political lifestyle marketing “identity politics.” But when Yiannopoulos brought up Lena Dunham to take cheap shots at (I’m no fan of Ms. Dunham’s but am unwilling to criticize her for anything other than her often-harmful views), Maher went out of his way to defend her because she’s on HBO (as in, he actually said that).

So I guess your ideology is flexible, then, Billy Boy?