Beyond Manipulation | Why Identity Politics Reflects Real Interests
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There’s a persistent narrative in certain political circles that goes something like this: identity politics is a distraction, a tool of division that keeps the masses from recognizing their shared class interests. If only people would stop fighting over race, gender, religion, and other identity markers, they’d see that the real enemy is economic inequality, and unite as the 99% against the 1%.
This narrative is seductive in its simplicity. It offers a clean explanation for why progressive movements fracture, why solidarity proves elusive, why the Occupy Wall Street moment—with its powerful “We are 99%” framing—never coalesced into lasting structural change.
But this narrative has a fatal flaw: it assumes people are stupid.
The Incentives Problem
When we dismiss identity-based movements as pure manipulation, we’re implicitly saying that millions of people are being duped, that they’re hallucinating their interests, that they’re too foolish to see the “real” struggle. This is both condescending and wrong.
The uncomfortable truth is that identity-based organizing often delivers real, tangible benefits to participants. When marginalized groups organize around their specific identities, they frequently extract genuine concessions: policy changes, resource allocation, representation, legal protections, social recognition. These aren’t imaginary victories. They’re material improvements in people’s lives.
Consider the logic from an individual’s perspective: you can join a broad class-based movement where your specific concerns might get diluted or ignored, or you can organize with others who share your particular identity and direct experience of marginalization. The latter often proves more effective at delivering concrete results. This isn’t irrationality—it’s responding rationally to incentive structures.
The Reality of Competing Interests
The divide-and-conquer narrative also overlooks something crucial: sometimes the divisions reflect genuine competing interests, not just manufactured conflict.
Different groups within the 99% don’t always have aligned interests. Immigration policy, for instance, creates real tensions between native-born workers and migrants. Affirmative action creates real zero-sum competition for limited educational and employment slots. Religious and cultural differences generate genuine conflicts over values and social organization.
These aren’t fake problems invented by elites to distract us. They’re real tensions that exist because resources are finite, because people have different values, because integration and coexistence are genuinely difficult challenges.
The Uncomfortable Implications
If we accept that identity politics isn’t just manipulation but reflects real incentive structures and genuine competing interests, we face some uncomfortable questions:
Is class solidarity even possible? If people rationally respond to incentives that encourage identity-based organizing, and if there are real tensions within the 99%, then perhaps broad class solidarity is more utopian fantasy than achievable goal.
Are we asking people to sacrifice their interests? When we call for people to look past identity and unite on class, are we really asking some groups to sacrifice their particular interests for a nebulous greater good that might never materialize?
Is the fragmentation inevitable? If humans, like all animals, respond primarily to incentives rather than ideological appeals, then perhaps political fragmentation along identity lines is simply the natural equilibrium.
Beyond Simple Answers
None of this means that economic inequality doesn’t matter, or that class analysis is irrelevant, or that we should celebrate political fragmentation. But it does mean we need more sophisticated thinking than “identity politics is a psyop and everyone’s being played.”
The divisions are real. The incentives are real. The competing interests are real. Any political strategy that doesn’t grapple with these realities is doomed to fail—or worse, to keep blaming ordinary people for being insufficiently enlightened to see the “truth.”
Perhaps the question isn’t “how do we overcome these fake divisions?” but rather “how do we build coalitions and systems that can accommodate genuine diversity of interests while still addressing shared challenges?” That’s a much harder question, with no easy answers. But at least it’s honest about the problem we actually face.
The people aren’t stupid. They’re responding rationally to the world as it exists. If we want different outcomes, we need to change the incentive structures—not just exhort people to ignore them.