Francis Fukuyama's Identity Politics
On Sunday afternoon, I had the opportunity to go listen to Francis Fukuyama talk about some of the key ideas from his new book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. Using the recent rise of populism and the right as the backdrop for his ideas, Fukuyama talked about how its rise can be put, in most part, down to issues of identity.
“Every person deserves respect, because they are agents with the capacity for moral choice.” Fukuyama asserts that it is when people think that their government institutions does not respect them that we see rises in identity politics. The concept originated in the 60s when marginalized groups fought to have a voice and an impact on the country they lived in (e.g: Civil Rights Movement). Underlying all this, Fukuyama makes reference to Plato and his concept of Thumos, the human desire for respect. In all of us is an identity which we deem valuable and worthy of recognition. When this inner identity is ignored or undervalued by outside society, you have two options: to change your inner identity, or make society change their valuation. Fukuyama raised the #MeToo movement as a good example of the latter; the problem is not women’s inability to morph their identities into the box society has made for them, but a deficiency in society to recognise their value. #MeToo, like the Civil Rights Movement, is a marginalised group taking action and demanding equal respect. The problem is when social groups go from searching for equal respect, to searching for validation of their identity as superior.
The white working class of America have been subject to lower wages, unemployment, and a drug epidemic since de-industrialisation. Alongside this they have witnessed the middle classes get richer and resultantly now see themselves as a marginalised group. These are ‘the people’ that Trump claims to be speaking and fighting for, positioning himself as their sole saviour, free of political ties. Fukuyama sees two problems with this; firstly, ‘the people’ is clearly not all the people, and secondly, by posing as anti-establishment he sows distrust in democratic institutions, the very same institutions he has to uphold now he’s in power.
The larger problem that Fukuyama sees being propagated is a regression back to a sense of identity based on race, religion, and nationality. Such an outlook promotes an ‘us vs them’ attitude that stands starkly against the moral direction the rest of world wants to head in. The solution, as Fukuyama sees it, is obligatory civics lessons in schools with the aim of producing more integrated identities with the knowledge of where they stand in relation to democratic institutions. In this way, the humanities are essential to a prosperous country. Whilst even the most refined understanding of economics might yield all sorts of accurate predictions, the humanities humanise these. In a world where divisions are re-emerging, this is more important than ever.-