The capitalist spectacle of LGBT* Pride is the death cry of radical politics

Many cities around the world now celebrate the LGBT Pride event. Here in the UK we have events not only in London but Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Brighton as well as others. In the last few years we are increasingly seeing big business jumping on the band wagon. This year in London, sponsors included Barclays, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Starbucks, Tesco, Virgin, Vodafone and NBC Universal. At first glance you may think this is corporations cashing in on the pink pound. The problem with this is that the pink pound has been around for a long time. In Brendan O'Neill's excellent piece, he gives a plausable alternative as to why big business is so interested in the LGBT community.

A few snippets:

Pride is an increasingly bizarre spectacle of self-regard ... but in recent years it has become more about identity than autonomy; more a therapeutic demand for validation than a political cry for liberation; more an exercise in collective narcissism than collective agitation. And it’s one the bourgeoisie has completely fallen in love with.

It’s not that Pride has been hijacked by big business keen to tap into the Pink Pound. It’s that in playing a key role in institutionalising the politics of self-regard, in assisting with the shifting of the radical political focus from the economy to identity, from questions of power to issues of esteem, Pride lends itself beautifully to the reorganisation of 21st-century capitalist society in a way that benefits those in power. Pride and its participants haven’t simply become the targets of capitalism; Pride is capitalism. Pride is the new face of capitalism, a glossy, pink manifestation of a new bourgeois ideology that seeks to pacify the populous through depoliticising the economy and politicising lifestyle and culture.

Brendan believes the politics of identity commodifies oppression rather than challenging it making it into a must-have.

Oppression is no longer a state of being that must be overthrown but rather is a condition people envy and desire.

Brendan refers to and quotes political theorist Wendy Brown who authored 'States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity'

Victim sensibility is now a highly prized asset, or commodity, in late capitalist society. To such an extent that this new victim-oriented identity politics doesn’t seek to overcome ‘pain’ but rather welcomes it (or invents it). ‘Politicised identity… makes claims for itself only by entrenching, restating, dramatising and inscribing its pain in politics; it can hold out no future — for itself or others — that triumphs over this pain’. A perverse consequence of this pain-maintaining identity politics is that it ‘naturalises capitalism’, says Brown, and in fact becomes reliant on what she refers to as capitalism’s ‘wounded attachments’.

From this Brendan goes on to suggest that the politics of identity are explicitly anti-change and even anti-progress.

to overhaul those aspects of capitalist society that put pressure on certain groups would mean robbing those groups of the pain that they continually restate and dramatise, and through which they garner moral authority in the therapeutic era. Bizarrely, oppression must now be preserved — or sought out, even where it does not exist — rather than defeated.

Brendan believes this is the reason why the capitalist class loves the politics of identity and LGBT* Pride as they pose no threat to the economic and political status quo, in fact they are very committed to the maintenance of the status quo.

The capitalist elite is more than happy to support the annual demonstration of self-regard and dramatised oppression that is Pride because flattering this new, pseudo-leftish politics of victimhood is a small price to pay for the new order in which questions of class, wealth and power have been utterly demoted by politicised identity. And so we reach the perverse situation where the identity politics of middle-class progressives is funded by capitalists who continue to exploit the working class. They recognise that the key dynamic of the politics of identity is its decommissioning — or rather its superseding — of a politics that they found genuinely disturbing and dangerous: class politics.

Brendan believes the key difference between the old and new radical politics is the question of transcendence. Historically the radical left was concerned not with celebrating or even maintaining the working-class identity but rather with ending it.

This was a way of life that could be overcome through the radical transformation of society. The new identitarian left has no such vision of transcendence and instead devotes itself to managing relations and speech between individuals and groups so that no one’s wounds are ever made worse than they need to be.

And towards the future, the working class becoming another identity group.

the historic decommissioning of class through its treatment of the working class itself as just another identity group whose wounds must be tended to — by the welfare state, by therapeutic intervention, by institutionalised recognition of their ‘vulnerablity’. And this will be a final victory, for the time being at least, for a capitalist class delighted that questions of power have been replaced by a new elitist imperative of managing social- and self-esteem.

The capitalist spectacle of Pride is the death cry of radical politics

Wendy Brown (political theorist)

a reply to: Morrad

Brendan sounds like a right loon to me. Not to offend loons...

a reply to: TacSite18

Please expand on your comment. This isn't Twitter.

That's a good OP and an interesting article. It is basically confirmation of what many have been saying for a long time. Special interest groups are nothing more than a governmental narrative control tool. LGBT/Feminism/etc is just the red menace in drag. It never went away it just went mainstream and adopted "soft mission creep" as its method of infiltration.

a reply to: Morrad

Brendan is a smart man.

Brendan will also trigger a lot of people here.

Welcome to 2017, the age of narcissism and entitlement.

originally posted by: knowledgehunter0986
a reply to: Morrad

Brendan is a smart man.

Brendan will also trigger a lot of people here.

Welcome to 2017, the age of narcissism and entitlement.

Can I get a heyall to the yeeeeeaaah.

a reply to: Morrad

A very shrewd chap Mr O'Neill, worth a read.

I've long thought of SJW as entrepreneurs, though with a more cynical and less systematic agenda.

originally posted by: Morrad
a reply to: TacSite18

Please expand on your comment. This isn't Twitter.

Ok, O'Neill:

1) Argues against victims of sexual abuse by high-profile individuals coming forward. "I think there is more virtuSourcee in keeping the abuse as a firm part of your past, rather than offering it up to a scandal-hungry media and abuse-obsessed society that are desperate for more episodes of perversion to pore over."
2) Has criticized the notion of tackling global warming by solely reducing carbon emissions, and instead advocates technological progress as a method of overcoming any side effects of climate change.
3) He considers efforts to combat racism in football to be "a class war" driven by "elites' utter incomprehension of the mass passions that get aired at football matches".
4) Referring to high-profile cases of racial abuse and alleged racial abuse, he argued, "these incidents and alleged incidents are not racism at all, in the true meaning of the word", due to the levels of passion involved,
5) He described anti-racism efforts as "a pretty poisonous desire to police the ... working classes".
6) Has described himself as "an atheistic libertarian" but is opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage, arguing that it has been "attended by authoritarianism wherever it’s been introduced".
Source
For starters

Number of SJWs triggered so far in this thread by Brendan = 0.

Number of anti-SJWs triggered in this thread = 2.

# Doesn't even know why SJWs got mentioned here anyway.



I think the thing with Pride is much simpler than the article makes out. Large numbers of people now go to Pride events, big businesses realised they were terrific advertising opportunities, so big money started to flow in to sponsor them.

And is it not basically as simple as that?

a reply to: Morrad

A lot of commentators seek to politicise and intellectualise the presence of gay culture in the media. People in general don't care and everyone knows someone who's gay and accepts them without so much as a shrug.

Many intellectual social theorists expose themselves as strangers to the working classes. They can pass judgement and identify with workers, but don't really have a clue. Labels and distinctions don't count for much to the millions who will never read a word of the Terry Eagletons, Chomskeys or O' Neils.

a reply to: TacSite18

You need to address the statements in the article. You called Brendan a loon and when challenged, attempted a quick search to make you appear an expert but came back with a Wikipedia page. This means you have no idea who Brendan O'Neill is.

Since you appear to love throwing Wikipedia pages here's one for you.

Quoting out of context

Quoting out of context (sometimes referred to as contextomy or quote mining) is an informal fallacy and a type of false attribution[citation needed] in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
a reply to: Morrad

A lot of commentators seek to politicise and intellectualise the presence of gay culture in the media. People in general don't care and everyone knows someone who's gay and accepts them without so much as a shrug.

I've said it before but it keeps coming up. The only people shoving the "gay agenda" down my throat are conservatives. Hell, I don't even think of my own placement under the LGBT+ umbrella until some transaphobe or triggered conservative reminds me of it.

originally posted by: Morrad
a reply to: TacSite18

You need to address the statements in the article. You called Brendan a loon and when challenged, attempted a quick search to make you appear an expert but came back with a Wikipedia page. This means you have no idea who Brendan O'Neill is.

Since you appear to love throwing Wikipedia pages here's one for you.

Quoting out of context

Quoting out of context (sometimes referred to as contextomy or quote mining) is an informal fallacy and a type of false attribution[citation needed] in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.

You asked for the proof. I said he was a loon because he sounded like a loon. Turns out I was right. He is a loon.

Sorry that you hold loons in such high esteem, when a ten second Google search turns up abundant evidence that this fella needs some serious alone time with a shrink - may 8 - 15 years to resolve all the issues he has going on.

I still stand by my initial impression - loon.

a reply to: Painterz

It is if we follow Occam's razor. I personally like the capitalist elite conspiracy angle.

originally posted by: knowledgehunter0986
a reply to: Morrad

Brendan is a smart man.

Brendan will also trigger a lot of people here.

Welcome to 2017, the age of narcissism and entitlement.

Only if you view it that way. And if you put it that way humans have always been like that. In fact, go back not even 50 years and entitlement was far more important to people than it is today.

a reply to: strongfp

Except now the entire world is connected socially with a simple push of a button, in real time, in a time where selfies and self profiles are more important than reality and self awareness.. where likes and comments are more addictive than the drugs on the street and the only way to be content and secure with oneself, is to hear it from others..


I could go on and on, but this is a totally different topic and I'm getting way too deep with it..

a reply to: TacSite18

Either address the statements or stop littering my thread.

originally posted by: knowledgehunter0986
a reply to: strongfp

Except now the entire world is connected socially with a simple push of a button, in real time, in a time where selfies and self profiles are more important than reality and self awareness.. where likes and comments are more addictive than the drugs on the street and the only way to be content and secure with oneself, is to hear it from others..


I could go on and on, but this is a totally different topic and I'm getting way too deep with it..

The majority of people who use social media do not use it for likes and comments. They are the people who like and comment.

But at the end of the day those who are the supposed 'self entitled' seem to get a lot of attention. Why is that?

originally posted by: Morrad
a reply to: Painterz

It is if we follow Occam's razor. I personally like the capitalist elite conspiracy angle.

You make a fair point. I like it too.