5 - Corbynism as identity politics

Summary

The starting assumption of this chapter is that Corbyn views society not as networked flows of sovereign individuals, but as demarcated societal segments defined by essentializing factors that include ethnicity, income, religion and socio-economic class, organized into a strictly hierarchical class-based system with “the people” at the bottom of the chain. The segments that make up “the people” can coexist, but are ultimately separated by temporary, strategic identity markers. This view of society is deliberate and multipurpose: dividing society into several homogeneous groups allows for the construction of juxtapositions between the “in” group and the “out” group. Once the electorate is neatly divided into labelled sections, policy and narratives can then be crafted around the assumption that these divisions between people necessarily exist, and that each group is somehow threatened by the “out” group (primarily the Conservative Party). This manifests in the political mobilization of multiple groups of citizens, each under a banner identifying their group identity, which Corbyn then brings under the umbrella of the Labour Party and prepares ideologically for a neverending war against their ideological opponents, who they frame as the actor attempting to undermine that particular group's central unifying characteristic. Corbyn's ideology therefore defines itself in opposition to the “other” (Eide 2010). Another reason to follow this “divide-and-conquer” political strategy is Corbyn's ability to craft narratives that create cohesion within his ranks and activate otherwise disenfranchised members of the polity, who subsequently coalesce around himself – giving him legitimacy, at least in his and their eyes. Corbyn's narrative devices, used to construct false memories of oppression (meaning that Corbyn's words paint a historical picture that the recipient internalizes and comes to believe), the plight of the working classes and a common enemy in the Conservative Party are topics that I will explore later in this chapter.

One of the key foundations of Corbyn's “us against them” construct is strategic essentialism: the idea that it can serve strategic purposes to exaggerate the differences and similarities between groups of people (Danius & Jonsson 1993).