There is a weird disjunction between the radical liberal/“left” moral panic over slurs in 2019/20 vs. rad-libs’ and “leftists”’ willingness to use those same slurs to denigrate minorities who step out of line with cultural-liberal hegemony.

In the past couple of days, we’ve seen Glenn Greenwald hit with a wave of homophobia from the “left” over The Intercept. Thomas Chatterton-Williams vs. readers of Current Affairs was similar, only with race.

Why do “leftists” and rad-libs instinctively reach for the slurs and stereotypes they otherwise stigmatise as soon as they want to punish a member of a minority group for disloyalty or disobedience?

The phenomenon really throws a harshly revealing light on the coercive and disciplinary nature of identity categories themselves.

Identity politics (as it’s come to exist) functions as a kind of protection racket. The “left” lobbies or cajoles states and institutions to “recognise” ever more minority identities, bringing more and more people under the umbrella of these identity categories.

In return, the “left” promises to “protect” these supposedly “vulnerable” groups from harm; to empathise with them and bring them under their loving care.

But the relationship itself is fundamentally toxic and controlling—the “empathy” of the “left” is indistinguishable from the professional interests of the caring classes or the narcissism of the self-identified “privileged” person who “sympathises with all the innocent victims.”

The toxicity of the relationship is revealed in the act of splitting that occurs when a member of a defined minority resists the care and empathy (which is to say, the controlling interest) of the “left”—this is when the slurs come out.

It’s as though rad-libs and “leftists” themselves want to enact the harsh Real of bigotry and abuse they imagine occupies the full spectrum of experience outside the protective boundaries of the identity category.

In doing so, they get to experience the arcane or stigmatised thrill of using the slurs themselves in a ritualised moment of carnivalesque release, one which confirms the cohesion of the identity group through the execration of an apostate.