Here's an idpol thread that isn't really about idpol. Because what's often referred to derisively as "idpol", better called representation politics or tokenism, is not any sort of modern development. The Roman Empire used it extensively, for example.

And the Romans weren't even the first ones to use it, just the ones that documented it in ways most accessible to English speakers today. It's a universal way to exercise power over a population because it plays on universal mental shortcuts.

When the Romans wanted to expand territory into, say, tribal lands in modern day Germany, they'd push local "barbarian" chieftains into fostering programs. Young children might be raised in Rome, taught Latin and Roman values. Then given power back in their native lands.

A tribe that might have rebelled if their native ruler had been replaced by a Roman could be pacified and brought into the imperial fold wielding that kind of soft power. Their new ruler was native enough to be accepted, but held Roman values and advanced Roman interests.

Humans use a kind of synecdoche (taking the part to represent the whole) when it comes to predicting the future behavior of another human. This is both a strength and a weakness. It leads to quick and agile decisions: it also leads to frequent mistakes.

A shared cultural identity is often a reliable indicator that a person shares interests with you, and that they'll represent your shared interests. It's not a perfect indicator, but it's better than most. So with limited information, people extrapolate from the part to the whole.

The Romans, being super practical, recognized and took advantage of this. Their ruling class also already knew a lot about representation manipulation from the electoral political rituals of the Republic, many of which carried over into the Empire.

So for the Romans, representation politics was wielded by the imperial core over colonized provinces. This was all based on ethnic identity, not racial identity, as race hadn't even been invented yet. But later on, racial caste systems invented by Europeans added another layer.

This is where we get into Frantz Fanon, who outlines that racialized dynamic brilliantly. But backing up to the Romans, I just want to stress that this was not a secret or a conspiracy. It was out in the open. Contemporaries discussed it, like Tacitus. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183pb5x.9?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Representation manipulation works to exercise soft power in interlocking systems of exploitation: imperial/provincial, white/Black, rich/poor, capitalist/proletariat. It can be completely naked and open, or papered over with promises and lies. More often than not, it works.

The only way to fight it? Increase the ability of people to make decisions based on information beyond shared identity. Two thousand years ago good information was hard to come by. Today it's still hard to come by, but for different reasons, like information overload.

So "idpol" is not a new development. It's ancient. It's not getting worse, it's a steady state, and there is no secret cabal responsible.

Ironically enough, the framework of "identity politics" as invented by Black feminists merely 50 years ago, is a way to think beyond it.

Identity politics is a liberatory framework complementary to socialism (not surprising, since so many of the Black feminists in question were socialists) that works from the margin to the center, not the center to the margin.

In conjunction with intersectionality, an identity politics framework can encourage people to be more conscious about how shared identity can be used in both repressive and liberatory ways, and how to tell the difference. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/

While the framework doesn't guarantee that people will always make better decisions about who really represents their interest, it can increase the possibility that people will be more critical and seek out more information when making those decisions.

To sum up, representation politics is the "one weird trick" of soft power. We're all vulnerable to getting our brains hacked by it. And the worst thing to do is point the finger at people who got taken in and call them suckers. Today it was them, tomorrow it could be you!

We should strive to be compassionate, pragmatic, and always try to increase the amount of useful information so people can make better decisions and represent themselves in a more authentic and liberatory way. Otherwise we're not helping, we're just mystifying. That's all.