Moving Politics Past Identity - David Pakman - #388

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is David Pakman. He's a political commentator and host of The David Pakman Show. The left and the right really aren't talking very well at the moment. It feels like if people don't have the same political leaning, they see the world in an entirely different way. Whether that's disagreements on identity, health, policy, priorities or baby making, there's not much talking going on at the moment. Expect to learn David's explanation for why communication from left to right seems so strained, whether identity politics really takes up as much focus among the left as it seems, whether Donald Trump is an own goal for conservatives, the biggest problems with political commentators refusing to communicate and much more. I wanted to bring David on to get an understanding of the internal dynamics of what's going on in the left. If you are someone that sits on the left-hand side of the aisle, what does it feel like for most of the attention online being taken up by libs of TikTok videos and crazy people with purple hair gluing their breasts to the street? What does that feel like and how representative is that of the left overall? It says a lot that I need to actually ask someone whether or not the stuff that I'm seeing on the Internet is genuinely true or representative. David does a good job today. Whether you agree with his points or not, it's really interesting to get an insight from someone who really is in the thick of it talking about these sort of issues every single day. But now it's time to learn about the internal politics of the left with David Pakman.
David Pakman, welcome to the show.

**David Pakman** (1:57)
Thank you.

**Chris Williamson** (1:59)
I wanted to bring you on to kind of try and get an idea of the landscape between left and right at the moment, and get an understanding of the internal situation on the left. I know you're someone who talks across the aisle quite a bit, so I figured you'd be a good candidate to try and help me work out what's going on.

**David Pakman** (2:17)
Sure, I mean, I guess it would be good to know maybe a little more specifically which aspects of it. I know that even what is considered to be the landscape of the left would differ depending on one's perspective as to what's part of the left and what are the goals and priorities.

**Chris Williamson** (2:38)
Yeah, so my understanding is that there's a movement on the left away from a focus on identity and some left-leaning thinkers are sort of grappling and working through the challenges that are associated with that. Do you have any sense of this?

**David Pakman** (2:52)
I think that the idea that it's a move away from it is maybe not the right framing. I think that there's been a contingent of the left that I think is actually really the bulk of it, which I consider myself a part that has never been about identity politics, et cetera, right? There's this kind of package that follows. I think that the voices that were in favor of focusing on things like identity politics and oppression Olympics, et cetera, and I understand that's a pejorative term, but I think we all sort of understand what I mean. I think they were overrepresented for a period and appeared to be far bigger than they were.
Reasonable people can disagree for sure. I know that whenever I make a commentary like this, there will be people from the right who say, you're completely wrong. The left has been completely taken over by that. And I say, no, no, you think that because of what I'm describing, but I think that particularly, I think the 2020 primary on the Democratic Party in the US was actually a really important signal to a lot of people that looking at Twitter and looking at Reddit certainly would make one believe that that wing is far bigger and far more powerful than it actually is. And for all of the great things that I've said about Bernie Sanders for a long time and supported him in primaries, I was suspecting that his level of support was much higher online than in reality. I think the 2020 primary really showed that. It was not by a little bit that Joe Biden won. And for a lot of people on the left, that started to open their eyes to the fact that the left is a little bit different than what it seems when you look at Reddit and Twitter.

**Chris Williamson** (4:50)
What the internet would tell you.