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In Christianity, Otherization, and Contemporary Politics, Roberto
E. Alejandro argues that the identity politics of the American
far-left follow an identity paradigm nurtured in our intellectual
history by early Christian thinkers such as Clement of Alexandra,
Origen of Alexandria, and Eusebius of Caesarea, who all claimed
that a form of “wokeness” gave them special access to truth and
thereby an exclusive right to speak it. At one time this argument
was a strike at power, but once mixed with power, it became a moral
justification for violence against non-Christians. Alejandro warns
those engaged in political practice to beware the way our
intellectual history, steeped in theological propositions, can
operate silently to steer us towards reinforcing problems we
intended to resist.
Beginning with Plato, and carried over in the Christian tradition,
western political thought has been wedded to the proposition that
justice and virtue can be achieved in history through the adoption
of proper norms. Hannah Arendt termed this "the tyranny of truth,"
and its effect is to transform politics into a religious exercise
through commitment to metaphysical propositions like truth or
goodness. The tumultuous political aftermath that formed the wake
of Freddie Gray's crucifixion in Baltimore, MD, is an example of
politics turned religious exercise. In those politics, confessional
commitments to propositions related to race, society, and structure
came to dominate the interpretation of the killing of Gray's mortal
body. But as Gray was resurrected in various forms in the weeks
after his death, one consequence is that a very poor community had
one of their sons stripped from them first by police violence, and
then again through politics whose discursive violence appropriated
Gray as proof of its own metaphysics.
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