Observations about the world, part twenty-four

Photograph of the Atlas globe

Identity politics |
Monday – February 23, 2026

The preponderance of what has been labeled "identity politics" or "identity discourse" seems to have reached a kind of crescendo in the Western world, particularly within the dying American Empire, which seems curious in light of the supposedly "enlightened" and individualistic ideals of that society; more about that in my post about the "American Empire" that I linked to above. If you're also interested in understanding identity then I direct you to my "Collectivism & Individualism series", where I dwell on the concepts of identity and collectivist politics in greater detail. So, I do not intend on rehashing or repeating what I have stated elsewhere in this post.

    What is identity politics and has it really reached a peak? Well, I will start by dispelling the last part of that question: I do not believe that the phenomena of identity discourse has peaked nor do I believe that antagonisms of this kind will cease in the future, but yes I do believe that within the American political discourse in particular that this kind of discourse has reached a local peak, but it is likely that societies such as America will see more and more of this kind of antagonism in the future and the current moderation of this kind of discourse within the American context seems to largely be due to a determined strategy rather than something organic. But enough about the political mess that is America or really the western world at large: identity based politics is really nothing but an expressly modern phenomenon that finds its roots in the multiculturalism of the cosmopolitan elite running the show, so to speak, in the West, and this makes the whole thing even more curious since these same liberal men claim to seek unity through great numbers; this "unity through great numbers" is perhaps best captured by the motto of the American congress: "E. Pluribus Unum", which thusly translates into what I previously stated. Of course, multiculturalism and identity based politics are no strangers to the modern deviation, that is the multiplication and division of matter, and this modern notion of the supremacy of quantity is just in keeping with that tendency; the entirety of the material order is basically a giant ponzi scheme, something that I covered here. But again, I do not intend to dwell on subjects previously described; I do want to add however that there are a great many people that seem to believe that "identity politics" is somehow some kind of human default, and that the Western worlds obsession with individualism and profane blindness is what has hidden away this part of humanity, but really nothing could be further from the truth, and increasingly there are many confused and as usual happily misinformed and stupidly ignorant people that refer to themselves as "conservatives" in this connection.

    In a properly traditional society there was no such thing as "personal identity", because "identity" is really a word that is misused by the moderns in the first place: the etymological roots of the word "identity" has nothing to do with personal or individualistic descriptions; the word identity, which is derived from the Latin "identitās" has until quite recently always referred to identity as in a sacred union between that which describes the manifestation and the essence, in other words sameness or oneness; this conception of identity has nothing with preferred adjectives or labels in the political arena. What then can be said to be "default" by the antagonism inherent in the modern deviation? Nothing, because there's nothing default about antagonism in the first place; only in a society that has sunken to a very remote place place, away from the unity of the primordial tradition, can such a thing as social antagonism be observed, and this social antagonism is really the essence or the raison d'être of democracy, for without continual strife between people at different levels of authority there could be no such thing as politics in the first place; essentially antagonism, constant conflict, and violence are all necessarily parts of democracy and the social chaos that is the modern world. What then in the latest iteration of modernity has come to be called "identity discourse" or "politics" is just the latest expression of this continual antagonism away from true unity; what this multiculturalism and pluralism offers is nothing but liberal uniformity based on the continual and further descent to ever lower states, away from the primordial and the true unity, and this is expressed most aggressively as imperialism and "nation-building". The liberals will not rest until every people has been compartmentalized into their own nation-states, because after all the United Nations claims that it is the "right" for every people to exercise self determination and "popular sovereignty", while at the same time perhaps paradoxically promoting "diversification" across all domains. Of course, there's nothing paradoxical about this, since the imposition of nation-states are the best tool in the humanist framework; as can be demonstrated by a merely surface level and rather shallow exercise in history: the nationalization of culture, tradition, and authority–the creation of nation-states—have only and can only lead to great strife and conflict between what are essentially corporeally distinct peoples, as if every people share that same aptitude for action as does Westerners.

    In light of this: how is identity politics supposed to be understood? Well, since moderns have a distinctively determined blindness when it comes to certain metaphysical truths that serve to describe the quality of the temporal domain, they are unable to understand anything other than the laws of further quantification of otherwise strictly qualitative differences; this is why moderns with such overwhelming force oppose such things as the Hindu caste system. This blindness to quality is why things things such as "xenophobia", "racism", and "discrimination" are so prevalent in the the Western world, both outwardly and increasingly within, because the supposed "equality" or unity between every individual is a manifestly absurd assertion and when this untruth is compartmentalized into "political objects" beyond the individual, in the way that they have been in the West, nothing but antagonism is left; truly identity politics is just politics, metaphysical warfare, and increasingly the limits of this warfare is approaching the individual as individualism becomes increasingly prevalent, because after all the only thing left that can serve to extend meaning and assert differentiation are political labels that can satiate the particular and momentary "preference" of the individual. This "preference" of the individual is of course the main source behind the monstrosity that is "genderism".

    Lastly, why are traditional societies of the East not "xenophobic"? Well, because racism—which is a form of politicisation, or quantification, of quality—is a purely western phenomena that attempts to conscript into these aforementioned "political labels" the very essence of the quality that serves to meaningfully differentiate peoples and individuals, and when these political labels are applied to each individual, again, nothing but antagonism may proceed – which is the very being of politics extended to the domain of each individual. If in the past politics was an abstraction of power differentials between at first the cartels of the knights and the bourgeois and later between the cartels of the bourgeois and the laborers, today politics is almost approaching the ontological limit of the corporeal domain – which is the individual himself. Identity politics is therefore merely the intensification of material strife, and in the modern world you can be sure that this will be brought to your doorstep—identity politics is the veritable erasure of anonymity, really the final stage of the permanent revolution, the crusade against nature. In this social chaos, without boundaries, without meaning, and without placement within the metaphysical order of things, politics must be understood for what it is – permanent war.

Reginald Drax – February 23, 2026.