To be fair, Finkelstein does define what he means by ‘identity politics’: ‘At its core it’s about representation: a competition within the group as to who best exemplifies it, and a competition between the group and the broader community as to the former’s legitimate claims for greater representation in the latter’. Along the way, Finkelstein recalls his own life in radical politics and his close encounters with cancel culture, which left him unemployed and unemployable. He situates his personal story within broader debates on academic freedom and poignantly concludes that, although occasionally bitter, he harbors no regrets about the choices he made.

During the Obama presidency, US drones are estimated to have killed over 3,000 people in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, including upwards of 400 civilians. Despite this, Power’s 2019 memoir, The Education of an Idealist, fails to even mention the existence of these silent wars – or the devastating war in Yemen, where US arms and intelligence supplied during Power’s ambassadorship helped to create one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. The cover, on the other hand, is hideous. I could also have done without the running joke about Obama’s acolytes and adulators all lusting after him (‘Although he professes that he and his students blissfully contemplated together the “curvature” of the Constitution, it’s more probable that Tribe was contemplating the curvature of his student’s constitution.’). I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It! : Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom Second, Finkelstein appears to have a blindspot when it comes to trans people and is apparently unable to draw the meaningful distinction between sex and gender. So, while Finkelstein writes that transgender people deserve ‘maximum compassion, for sure’, his book nonetheless contains a small number of passages on these topics that some people are going to find very offensive.The university's purpose is to search for truth, not the imposition of 'correct' ideas. It's also nearly impossible to physically stamp out an 'incorrect' idea, while, once gaining traction, it will spread with ease among a population ignorant of the arguments against it and consequently mentally disarmed to counter it" (421). As Finkelstein explains in the foreword, the book had its origins in the ‘Letter on Justice and Open Debate’, decrying the excesses of ‘cancel culture’, that appeared in Harper’s magazine in 2020. This is also, undeniably, a book of digressions, as well as a book that is (in Finkelstein’s own words) ‘laced with vitriol’. In the next chapter, Obama is condemned for being ‘a stupefying narcissist’ who ‘stood for nothing except himself’ – and was therefore the ‘perfected and perfect instrument’ of the form of identity politics that is the focus of Finkelstein’s justifiable wrath. Finkelstein is furious that this ‘has distracted from and, when need be, outright sabotaged a class-based movement that promised profound social change’ – namely the mass grassroots movement supporting Bernie Sanders’ presidential bids in 2016 and 2020.

Finkelstein himself was hounded out of academia for having exposed a series of frauds and hoaxes relating to the Israel- Palestine conflict, most notably Alan Dershowitz’s 2003 book The Case for Israel. Definitely worth a read. I have to admit that I felt a little guilty reading it, as it felt sort of masturbatory to just watch someone destroy these people I already rant against anyway. But it did give me arguments against their theories that are more articulate than anything I ever could have come up with on my own. And anyway, 50% of this sub is circlejerking about idpol anyway.This phrase is what is sometimes known as a malaphor or a mixed idiom, which is a phrase that blends two similar figures of speech to create a new one, that may or may not make much sense. In the malaphor we have chosen this week, there are two conventional idioms at play- “to burn one’s bridges” and “I’ll/we’ll cross that bridge when I/we get to it”. To make (some) sense of what blending these two expressions might mean, let us first look at what they mean on their own.

If Kendi is currently feted in charmed circles,’ Finkelstein notes ‘it’s because, for all his fire and brimstone rhetoric, his hip and hyped public persona, his militant preening and macho posturing, the only substantial demand he makes on the one percent – reconfigure the exploiting class to include a fair percentage of us – they’re already prepared to concede’. However, it would be a shame if this were to deprive the book of the wide audience that it deserves. Likewise, Power is ‘thunderously silent’ on the August 2013 massacre of over 900 protesters in Egypt (‘one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history’, according to Human Rights Watch), though the supply of US military equipment to the coup regime restarted in 2015, again during her tenure. So, when someone says that they will “burn that bridge when [they] get to it”, they expect to deal with an upcoming difficulty badly which will result in permanently cutting ties or alienating other people involved. In a nutshell, you are setting yourself up to fail in dealing with a future problem. Power also has ‘not one word’ to say about Israel’s murderous assaults on Gaza during the Obama presidency, though she ‘worked assiduously behind the scenes after each massacre to shield Israel from accountability’. (In 2014, Operation Protective Edge systematically targeted and destroyed 18,000 Gazan homes, killing 1,500 Gazan civilians, including 550 children.)I’m sure that I won’t be the only reader who finished the book eager to read more of both Douglass and Du Bois. In addition to the man himself, Finkelstein also examines the memoirs of a ‘supporting cast’ that includes two of Obama’s chief speech writers; his senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett; his gofer, Reggie Love; and White House deputy chief of staff Alyssa Mastromonaco. Here are my thoughts on our favorite academic with a Kermit voice who got cancelled and hates woke politics. No, not that one. The ‘[s]elf-styled public conscience of the Obama administration’, Power had previously written the 2003 Pulitzer-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.