Identity politics has the power to be meaningful. If only we stopped making it an incoherent mess

Is appointing a special envoy for combatting antisemitism an exercise in identity politics? What about the forthcoming envoy for Islamophobia?

I wouldn’t have thought of asking this a week ago, but fretting about such things has become something of a national sport since Senator Fatima Payman’s defection from the Labor Party, and the Muslim Vote movement – which seeks to mobilise Muslim voters, possibly behind pro-Palestinian independents – started making headlines. Now, presumably, it’s the frame through which all political actions must pass.

Artwork: Monique WestermannCredit: Artwork: Monique Westermann

In those cases at least, the prevailing verdict seems clear. A steady stream of editorials and opinion pieces lament Payman’s embrace of identity politics. The prime minister didn’t use that specific phrase, but he struck the same pose in warning that “faith-based political parties” would “undermine social cohesion”, and a “faith-based party system” would simply cause “minority groups to isolate themselves”.

This echoes one of the most common criticisms of identity politics: that by organising groups around one or two identities, it can only lead ultimately to separatism; that it makes building broad coalitions across society just about impossible. It is precisely in this vein that Anthony Albanese celebrates the Labor Party, whose members come from many different religions, as a better model: “That’s the way you bring cohesion.”

Which is funny, because the government now faces precisely the same style of argument against its antisemitism envoy, most notably from the Australian Jewish Council. “What does it say when only Jews are singled out?” asked a spokesperson (rhetorically) in an ABC interview earlier this week. “We really do have these concerns that this appointment will pit Jewish communities against other racialised groups and only cause further division.”

The council is, to be sure, a dissenting voice in Australian Jewry, but for now, I’m less interested in the merits of the argument than the form: it’s an argument against the idea that political decisions should be made on the basis of specifically Jewish claims and concerns. And it argues this on the idea that it compromises social cohesion.

The council fully accepts that antisemitism is on the rise; it just objects to it being treated separately. It takes the claim that antisemitism matters and replies that all racism matters – at least against minorities. That is, consciously or otherwise, an argument against Jewish identity politics. Especially since representatives from the Jewish community specifically asked for the creation of this envoy.

Albanese, I’m sure, would reject that framing. He would note that both antisemitism and Islamophobia have surged since October, and argue that corresponding envoys are necessary to do something about it; that these are particular cases. But that raises an inevitable question: what counts as a special case such that resorting to specific measures isn’t merely identity politics? What if you or your friends are seeing scores of family members die in an overseas conflict, for example? Is that a particular case? Or is organising politically around that identity politics?

It’s all a bit of an incoherent mess. And that’s because identity politics is one of those terms people tend to throw around when they want to discredit something. Don’t like the Voice to parliament? Identity politics. Object to Trumpism? It’s just white identity politics.

And if you’re miffed that Fatima Payman deserted Labor because she could no longer stomach its position on Gaza, then you emphasise her Muslim identity, and highlight quotes about how she crossed the floor for her “Muslim brothers and sisters”. You’ll probably skip over her declaration that Gaza “isn’t a Muslim and Jewish issue” but “a humanitarian matter”, or that she was offended at the suggestion she “would only care about Muslim issues”.

Which is a shame, because identity politics could be a meaningful term if we used it more precisely. Put simply, identity politics sees a world, not of citizens or compatriots, but of social groups in which some are privileged and others are oppressed. The aim is therefore for oppressed groups to demand recognition and recompense, not in spite of being such a group, but because of it. Their group membership is the very thing that allows them to make political claims. This approach ends up underwriting a good chunk of the liberation movements of the past 60 years: various waves of feminism, Indigenous activism, Black civil rights, gay liberation and, more recently, gender identity claims.

As this approach becomes more popular, the result is that politics ceases to become a contest of grand beliefs or ideas in any straightforward way. The point is not to argue for something anyone might potentially come to believe, like say, communism or capitalism. It is instead to argue from an experience of oppression which is not chosen, and which others cannot fully access. This sort of politics doesn’t require a manifesto. It requires instead a marginalised identity to assert.

Is that what’s happening with the Muslim Vote, with Payman, with the envoys? Only sort of. Certainly, each is refracted through a certain identity, but are they merely about them?

At the heart of all this is a very specific human catastrophe. If October 7 doesn’t happen, if Israel doesn’t pound Gaza in response, there are no envoys, Payman is still a Labor senator, and the Muslim Vote simply doesn’t exist. That is, each of these proceeds from something very specific.

Put another way, each of these developments is animated overwhelmingly by an issue. Identity makes that issue more visceral for these people than for others, but the starting point isn’t a need for recognition on the basis of some difference: it’s the intolerable consequences of the violence in the Middle East and Australian politics’ inability to respond.

Even the Muslim Vote movement – which gets closest to talking the language of identity politics – is expressing a very old complaint in our democracy: that their elected representatives do not listen to them and take them for granted. Here, the fact they’re Muslims is more a shorthand for their agreement on Gaza than it is an identity movement. Indeed, they might not agree on much else.

For now at least, this all seems closer to single-issue politics than to identity politics. That’s why it seems suddenly coherent. If only we could be half as coherent in describing it.

Waleed Aly is a regular columnist.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.