On the Cause Ownership Complex | Kris Hicks

In a recent article, Spike’s Brendan O’Neill noted the visceral hatred directed at Home Secretary Priti Patel by those of a leftist political bent. O’Neil says, “when a borderline aristocrat is sneering at a girl-done-good from a Ugandan-Indian family you know this isn’t normal politics. It’s prejudice.” O’Neill is right, but from where does this prejudice derive, and how could it be? After all, doesn’t the left consider prejudice verboten, and meritocratic equality to be sacrosanct? Think again.

The phenomenon of leftist prejudice against racial minorities is by no means confined to the Patel example. In the United States, Candace Owens, a conservative commentator who happens to be of African American descent, receives similar levels of derision from the left. Owens’ claim that black Americans aren’t obliged to support the Democratic Party isn’t radical, or shouldn’t be. Yet, it has caused much of the American left to go into meltdown, with Owens labelled a “black sellout” and a “puppet” by commentators who assume that an African American can only voice conservative opinions if she is morally compromised, or controlled by others. This ignoble tradition extends backwards for decades, with practically every black American conservative receiving similar treatment. While the narrative of the racial sellout has, as Michelle Malkin says, “become boring, unfunny, and ineffectual”, leftists plough on with it regardless.

Photo by Gage Skidmore on Flickr.

Why is this happening? Because the left believes that it owns particular identities and by extension, that their causes are uniform and likewise owned. It has a cause ownership complex. The UK left is far from immune to it, but expressed it in an understated, typically British manner, until now.

The cause ownership complex is a political psychosis which assumes a monopoly over particular racial and social groups and their corresponding political positions. This cause ownership complex is not limited to race but extends to gender, sexuality, age, body weight, and any other differences between people and things.

The cause ownership complex is also found on the political right, and explicitly among far-right white nationalists. Like the left, white nationalists believe that they ‘own’ particular identities (in this case, white people) and their corresponding political expression. Like the left, white nationalists brand whites as “race traitors” when they advocate multiracial democracy or anything else they consider to be against the owned identity.

One key difference between the right and the left on the cause ownership complex is that on the political right it is thankfully confined to the far-right, whereas on the left it surges inwards from the far-left, and is found in mainstream leftist discourse. Why is this? Because the western political right has retained a sense of individualism. In contrast, leftist individualism has taken a battering in recent years with the rise of the collectivist identitarian ‘woke’ left. It is almost invisible and drowned out by the collective bleatings of the left side of the cause ownership complex.

With the cause ownership complex, the circle is complete – the political ouroboros reveals itself where the far-left and far-right meet – in the ugly spectacle of racial ownership.

Photo by Policy Exchange on Flickr. 

You may also like...

Leave a Reply
