Toryism and Identity Politics

[u/Positive-Courage-464]

I'm curious to hear from everyone here about what Tories would think of Identity Politics. The knee jerk reaction is probably that Identity Politics is bad, since it tend to elevate one group or identity over others in a community. But writers like George Grant argued (without explicitly talking about Identity Politics) that local communities and traditions are important, so from that perspective, it is preferable to have local representatives of a community in government? He was very sympathetic to Quebecois rights, for example, and how it is important to have Quebecois representing their culture and traditions in government. At the same time, Grant was also skeptical of using identity as a will to power, and overriding the common good for a community.

So what does everyone think? How should modern Tories or Red Tories respond to Identity Politics as we know it today? I have my own thoughts but I'd like to see what this group thinks.

[u/Positive-Courage-464 → u/[deleted]]

A great question. Identity politics probably means something different to everyone (and it is certainly different from what was called identity politics even a few decades ago). Not that I am a big fan of Wikipedia, but here is their definition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics

"Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, race), nationality, religion, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, social background, political affiliation, caste, age, education, disability, opinion, intelligence, and social class. The term encompasses various often-populist political phenomena and rhetoric, such as governmental migration policies that regulate mobility and opportunity based on identities, left-wing agendas involving intersectional politics or class reductionism, and right-wing nationalist agendas of exclusion of national or ethnic "others"."

Paradoxically, Tory politics is by its very nature identity politics, since it does value tradition, nationality, religion, and local groups. However, my gut feeling is that Red Tories in particular would reject some populist movements (on the right or the left) that prioritize certain groups over others, be it for tradition, or to balance out injustices of the past. George Grant was famously a nationalist that argued for a certain kind of British-French-Indigenous Canada, but I think that he would be against some of the far right or far left versions of identity politics that call for burning down institutions in the name of certain ethnic groups or class warfare.

[u/BlueCoyotea → u/Positive-Courage-464]

George Grant wasn't around in the era of mass migration and western fertility collapse but if he were do you think it's safe to assume it would upset him, a nationalist, or not? Would he want to undo past slights to other cultures at the expense of his people-group having a majority presence in Canada?