you can't have "a nation state" unless there is some identity that indeed characterises that nation as being that nation. — apokrisis

That part would make sense, but the part about a democracy is completely irrelevant to it. You might as well say, "You cannot have an underwear factory in a nation state without a national identity," or, "You cannot have peanut butter in a nation state without a national identity." Both would be just as relevant.

That part would make sense, but the part about a democracy is completely irrelevant to it. — Terrapin Station

OK. But how would a nation state have legitimacy unless it claims to speak for the people who constitute it? So being a democracy would seem perfectly relevant in being the most transparent possible way of legitimatising that operational sense of national identity.

Terrapin, repeating what Apokrisis said above, a democracy is "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives". So a democracy logically needs the members of the state for it to be a legitimate democracy. Those members, citizens, are in a nation state defined by nationality just as the term nation state implies. I don't think there's any problem in the logic here.

Now, one other way to create that identity at the present (that comes to my mind) is with the terrorist state IS who think they're creating a Caliphate for the muslim Ummah. They have very strict attitudes at who is a member of that state (who is a proper Muslim) and who is an infidel based on religion, not nationality or ethnicity.

Yet your argument is that either democracy doesn't need membership or that identity linking to that membership is totally irrelevant. Well, guess then I should be able then to vote in the next US elections because the actions that the US makes affects my country and me. And you pick such lousy presidents anyway. Why don't actually everybody that wants to participate in the next US elections have a chance to vote or even become a candidate?

Perhaps then the next elections in the US would be won by the Chinese Communist Party!

That was a really good read, but like alot of articles on identity politics, it doesn't seem to get to the heart of the matter, which is that identity politics is basically the logical outcome of neoliberal managerialism. Having depoliticized almost everything about society by making 'economic efficiency' the only recognizeably applicable policy metric, politics itself has more or less been forced into the straight-jacket of identity-politics, which has the advantage of basically leaving economic questions entirely untouched.

In other words, it's not just that the left abandoned economic problems in favor of identity-based ones, it's that neoliberalism has systematically defanged and deprived the people of the ability to intervene - and thus conduct politics - at the level of the economic. Having subject governments around the world to regulatory capture, while increasingly shifting decision making power away from the demos and into the hands of the already-powerful, identity politics is the only 'kind' of politics left that anyone can scrap over.

While it's easy to blame the left - and the right - for the turn to identity politics, this should also be coupled with the necessary question: what other options for political action are available, and more importantly, how viable are they? Fukuyama's proposed solution - building national identities - does nothing to address the engineered lack of political agency which is everywhere ascendant. Its no good just to attempt to 'change the discourse', as it were: the discourse will follow the institutional arrangements, and not the other way around. And precisely what is lacking are the institutional arrangements which would allow people to excercize political power in a way that isn't just the last-resort efforts of identity politics.

tl;dr: identity politics responds to a crisis of political action in general, a crisis engineered by neoliberal approaches to governance and policy.

OK. But how would a nation state have legitimacy unless it claims to speak for the people who constitute it? So being a democracy would seem perfectly relevant in being the most transparent possible way of legitimatising that operational sense of national identity. — apokrisis

I wasn't focusing on "legitimate* because one could have any arbitrary thing in mind for that term. "Legitimate power" isn't conventionally well-defined in the same way that "democracy" is.

A democracy being the "most transparent possible way . . ." is a very different idea than whether democracy is even possible without a national identity.

In other words, it's not just that the left abandoned economic problems in favor of identity-based ones, it's that neoliberalism has systematically defanged and deprived the people of the ability to intervene - and thus conduct politics - at the level of the economic. Having subject governments around the world to regulatory capture, while increasingly shifting decision making power away from the demos and into the hands of the already-powerful, identity politics is the only 'kind' of politics left that anyone can scrap over.

While it's easy to blame the left - and the right - for the turn to identity politics, this should also be coupled with the necessary question: what other options for political action are available, and more importantly, how viable are they? — StreetlightX

Good viewpoint.

The fact is that a lot of the legal agenda and objectives that various political movements have histrorically had have already been reached: universal suffrage, labour and employment laws, end of open segratation etc. For example classical liberalism, once a potent political movement in the 19th Century, has basically had all of it's basic agenda pushed through and hence liberal parties have turned into caretaker parties or have withered away as they don't have some obvious objective to fight for and hence exist.

Perhaps it is when economic needs are met (at least with the majority of voters) and globalization is working at least somewhat, parties become as I said complacent caretaker parties just running the government as usual and promoting their state in the global market. They are not thinking much about why they exist as elections are just a silly season repeated in a few years or so. Thymos has been forgotten and as you say, neoliberalism has defanged the people of the ability to intervene. Or at least it feels like it.

Perhaps the best example of how important identity is and what happens when there's a lack of it is the European Union itself. The EU basically has basically sold itself to it's member state citizens as something that will improve the economy. Sure, it has a flag, has taken one old masterpiece as it's "national" anthem and even has come up with a "Europe Day", but otherwise it has failed miserably in creating an European Identity. Or basically doesn't think it needs one. It seems that all you need is bureaucrats in Brussels and nothing else.

The English could form a unifying identity with "British" above the older national identities and was accepted by the Scots and the Welsh (yet it failed with the Irish). Being British didn't make them less Scotsmen or Welshmen, which is notable. Likely the EU simply doesn't have the stomach or the will to push through a new identity that would unite people under a common European (Union) Identity. Now in the US, perhaps if you put in a glass cup a New Yorker, a Texan and a Californian and shake the glass, they will start fighting each other, but I would argue that they would find a common identity of being American even if they differ a lot otherwise. In Europe, we differ a lot and don't have a strong common identity.

When this promise of economic prosperity hasn't worked (at least not for all) in the EU and there isn't that common identity, then unfortunately the EU has chosen a path that one European philosopher warned in a lecture (and I've forgotten the name) and that is to vilify nationalism and hint that critique of the EU is this ugly nationalism. Of course those that think their nation state is important doesn't mean that they are jingoists or extreme-nationalists. Add the fact that some countries in the Eurozone have acted more irresponsibly and recklessly than other (notably Greece) and you get a bit of hostility with the different countries (of "why we should pay for their lousy faults").

I'm not familiar with your definition of "public shared space". But I take it to be an idealised notion of a commons where we all get serviced by a standard civic infrastructure and show some standard balance of tolerance~consideration. So get up close, and does this public shared space rightfully carry the higher demand that we recognise, celebrate and even perhaps love all our differences? Doesn't this in itself undermine the public right to form your own communities or in-groups in the "usual way" - the usual way involving what you as a community stand against, as well as what you stand for? — apokrisis

In terms of the Establishment of Religion clause, the shared commons is the absence of a state religion in any civic capacity. In that context, we do not need to celebrate a difference to permit it. Nor is permitting a form of self identification a celebration of it.
When Fukuyama says:
"Marginalized groups increasingly demanded not only that laws and institutions treat them as equal to dominant groups but also that the broader society recognize and even celebrate the intrinsic differences that set them apart",
how is the distinction between the "institutions" and "broader society" to be understood? The intention behind setting up our polity to create a secular commons is that those two spheres of activity have a lot to do with each other. Any distinction to made here puts some burden of proof upon the distinction maker if that maker is basing their entire argument upon it. Fukuyama speaks as if the difference is self evident.

In regards to your questions, the lack of distinction given in the matter makes it impossible for me to imagine what Fukuyama is saying when he says marginalized groups are demanding more than equality. This is why I said in my first response to ssu that:
"What Fukuyama leaves out of this account is whether the demands to be treated equally were met. It also leaves out the unpleasant fact that a "celebration of intrinsic differences" is what the "dominant" group has been doing for centuries."
Where can I find this "broader society"? If the "marginalized group" is both an equal part of it and outside of it at the same time, this discussion of motives that Fukuyama embarks upon seems like a blame game about an invisible offense.

In regards to your questions, the lack of distinction given in the matter makes it impossible for me to imagine what Fukuyama is saying when he says marginalized groups are demanding more than equality. This is why I said in my first response to ssu that:
"What Fukuyama leaves out of this account is whether the demands to be treated equally were met. It also leaves out the unpleasant fact that a "celebration of intrinsic differences" is what the "dominant" group has been doing for centuries."
Where can I find this "broader society"? If the "marginalized group" is both an equal part of it and outside of it at the same time, this discussion of motives that Fukuyama embarks upon seems like a blame game about an invisible offense. — Valentinus

I think the reasoning goes that when obvious institutional and legal discrimination, like women not being able to vote or homosexuality being illegal, is done away with (through universal suffrage and abolition of the sodomy laws etc.), then one can argue that you have equality on the legal/institutional level. However, this obviously doesn't mean that everything was great after women got to vote and homosexuals weren't put into jail or treated as mentally ill. Attitudes take more time to change. Yet one can make the argument that playing the victimhood card and arguing that one is being discriminated can go a little too far and that simply be employed as a political method.

Perhaps this can be seen from the example of the far-right when it has adapted in it's identity politics of victimhood the idea of "reverse racism" and the lunatic "white genocide" argument.

It is reasonable to expect time and a lot of problems to unwind between changes of legal status and changes in how we live together. Your observation weakens Fukuyama's argument that an entirely new desire has replaced the original one for equality and inclusion in the broader society. With the introduction of the element of time, it is reasonable to ask when the change in motive occurred. My asking whether the demands to be treated equally have been met is not a challenge outside of Fukuyama's argument, it is the missing piece he uses without mentioning. I am not the one trying to prove why people are doing things.

In regards to changes in law, per se, it should be noted that this itself is no simple thing and also takes place over long periods of time. I don't want to become verbose on this topic because I am not trained in the law but there is much to be learned in looking into toleration as a point of constitutional law and how it relates to equal treatment of people under the law. As a matter of full disclosure, I am strongly influenced by David A.J. Richards' Toleration and the Constitution.

One thing that is very clear in Fukuyama's approach is that his table of motives is not helping clear up what is a legitimate demand compared to one that has "gone too far." He cites Black Lives Matters as an example. Without arguing the validity or necessity of their political methods, I don't understand how any outcome of that debate relates to the initial and primary objective of having less unarmed black people getting shot. When Fukuyama describes a change in their motives, an insinuation of betrayal to their own cause appears. No politics there, right?

On the general topic of too much "victim-hood", it is not a dismissal of the topic to ask just how that is an assault upon inclusion and cohesiveness. That is not self evident to me.

One of the real genius judo moves of the "identity politics" meme is that it allows people to say that efforts toward a diverse society based upon equal opportunity taught white people how to self identify. I am not even going to bother refuting the idea. Some things are self evident.