The narcissism of identity politics

I’m sure I’ll get back to my regular scheduled programming soon enough, but I’m still processing what happened last week and digesting the aftermath. These pieces are my way of trying to work through that. I welcome any thoughts or good faith arguments as you work through it as well. x

There was a time when identity politics served a purpose.

The term first appeared in a 1977 statement by the Combahee River Collective, a socialist group of Black feminist lesbians who believed that the people best positioned to speak about systems of oppression were those living inside of them. Their insight was radical and elegant: the personal is political, and structural injustice is often most visible from the margins.

Identity, in this context, wasn’t a costume or a marketing tool. It was a lens. And that lens offered clarity.

But somewhere along the way, the lens became a mirror—and then, a mask.

What began as a framework to articulate shared experience has collapsed into an infinite loop of performance, grievance, and entitlement. In the name of inclusion, identity politics has become a sorting algorithm for attention. And in the name of justice, it has replaced shared humanity with aesthetic tribalism and moral narcissism.

The result is a political and cultural environment where everything is personal, nothing is sacred, and the most offended person in the room always wins.

To be clear: group identity isn’t inherently bad. We all locate ourselves in communities—religious, ethnic, sexual, political. These categories offer belonging. They shape worldview. But in a healthy society, identity isn’t the only lens. It’s one of many. A person is not reducible to skin color, genitalia, or what boxes they tick on a census form.

What’s changed is the centrality of identity in public discourse. It’s no longer an input; it’s the input. And that shift—largely downstream of social media and academia—has created a culture where lived experience is conflated with objective truth, and where disagreement is interpreted as violence.

Worse, it’s created a culture where victimhood becomes currency. The more marginalized you claim to be, the more moral authority you’re presumed to have.

It’s a game of oppression poker. And quite frankly, everybody’s bluffing.

But this isn’t just about bad actors or internet drama. The deeper issue is structural.

We’ve built an entire cultural operating system on the logic of tribes.

The issue isn’t which tribe is the worst offender when it comes to identity politics. The issue is the tribal operating system itself. It flattens nuance. It rewards outrage. And it disables the parts of the brain that allow for humility, irony, and reflection.

enter narcissism —

What’s most egregious about identity politics today isn’t just how divisive it is—it’s how self-absorbed it’s become.

Narcissism, by definition, involves an inflated sense of self-importance, an excessive need for validation, and a lack of empathy for others. It demands to be seen, obeyed, and centered in every conversation, regardless of relevance. Sound familiar? Much of what passes for activism today—particularly online—isn’t about building coalitions, improving systems, or creating shared understanding. It’s about performance. It’s about being seen saying the right things, at the right time, to the right audience, in order to earn social currency and assert dominance.

You can see this in how quickly conversations devolve into accusations. Express concern about censorship, and someone calls you a fascist. Express grief over someone’s death, and you’re accused of ignoring a genocide. This isn’t just bad faith—it’s narcissistic fragility masquerading as moral superiority. It assumes that everything is about you, your group, your pain, your politics. And it erases the humanity of the person you’re speaking to in the process.

Under the guise of justice, we’ve normalized a kind of self-referential performance art where the only thing that matters is what something feels like to me.

And the entire culture runs on projection. The moment you speak, someone else inserts their narrative into your mouth and accuses you of denying theirs.

This isn’t empathy. It’s weaponized ego.

When your pain becomes the moral center of the universe, everyone else becomes either a threat or a prop.

That’s not politics… that’s narcissism.

enter the pendulum —

What we’re watching now is the pendulum swing. As the left doubled down on fragility and language policing, the right reacted by fetishizing bluntness and offense. Neither of these approaches fosters genuine strength, freedom, or clarity. They’re reactive poses built on grievance and fear. And they trap us in a loop where the loudest narcissists dictate the terms of debate.

We like to pretend this is all just culture war noise. But the social cost is real.

The more we reduce each other to identity labels, the harder it becomes to solve actual problems. The more we assume motives based on group affiliation, the harder it becomes to tell the truth. And the more we reward offense as a proxy for insight, the dumber and more fragile we all become.

We don’t have to agree on every issue. But we do need to recover a shared language for thinking. One that allows for grief without guilt-tripping. One that allows for disagreement without dehumanization. One that acknowledges history without demanding submission to the past.

So what now?

Maybe the path forward is a return to something deeper than identity: character. Curiosity. Discernment. A commitment to understanding people as individuals with inner lives—not avatars for their demographic.

Maybe real solidarity starts with letting go of the performance. Of not needing to win the Oppression Olympics. Of not demanding that someone else’s grief be calibrated to our own.

We can still fight for justice. We can still name systems that harm. But if we want a future that isn’t ruled by division, we have to stop treating identity as destiny.

The antidote to this isn’t apathy. It’s maturity. It’s the ability to hold multiple truths at once. To say: yes, people are shaped by systems and individuals still have agency. To believe that words matter, but intent matters too. To mourn a death without it being a political litmus test. To disagree with someone’s views while still seeing them as a person.

We are not going to think our way out of narcissism by doubling down on identities.

We’re not going to heal as a culture by breaking ourselves into factions and demanding constant affirmation for who we are.

We need something older. Something deeper. A shared identity that isn’t about flags or pronouns or even beliefs—but about the quiet contract of coexistence.

You don’t have to agree with someone to respect their right to exist. You don’t have to like their views to recognize their humanity. And you don’t have to be right to be good.

It’s not that identity doesn’t matter. It’s that weaponizing it always leads to the same place: fear, control, and collapse.

The antidote to narcissism is not more self-expression.

It’s restraint.

It’s humility.

It’s tolerance.

It’s a commitment to pluralism and liberty—not just for ourselves, but for people we don’t agree with.

These aren’t trending values. They’re civic virtues foundational to being American.

And maybe that’s the deeper identity many of us have forgotten.

—S