The Balkanisation of the United States

 

28 AUGUST 2020

BRENDAN O'NEILL EDITOR

To see the pernicious impact of the politics of identity, look no further than the US right now. The divisive and regressive identitarianism that has gripped universities, cultural institutions and sections of the political class in recent years has now exploded on to the streets. We’ve seen gangs of largely white ‘radicals’ screaming in the faces of passers-by who refuse to bow to the BLM agenda. We’ve seen pitched battles between Antifa agitators and self-styled community-protecting militias. And alarmingly, leading Democrats have been slow to condemn recent rioting, and much of the mainstream media has played it down, no doubt to try to prevent Trump from benefiting from ordinary people’s discomfort with this growing chaos. Now we can see the end result of the cult of identity and the personalisation of politics: the Balkanisation of the United States. A unifying message is urgently needed – who can provide it?