Norman Finkelstein

Norman Finkelstein discusses his forthcoming book, I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It: Politically Incorrect Thoughts on Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom (2022, Sublation Media) and the current dilemma within academia today of identity politics. Covering historical examples of people who have been punished by authority for their beliefs, Finkelstein contextualises cancel culture from McCarthyism where ruling elites on the right attempted to silence critics of US domestic policy by deradicalising the US labour movement by ridding it of Communists in addition to the suppression of domestic dissent against US global hegemony which ultimately led to massive and brutal repressions internationally. Finkelstein outlines how the current brand of cancel culture on the left is not state-driven and somewhat milder in its form than in the 1950s, noting how the Democratic Party substituted identity politics for its working-class base. He asserts that identity politics and cancel culture form the party’s reigning ideology which he characterises as a “menace.” Finkelstein elaborates his thoughts on transgender rights observing that “there is a large element of…self-indulgence by people who have a lot of time on their hands and a lot of money in their bank accounts” maintaining that this ideology is more current in elite institutions and graduate schools than at universities frequented by working-class students. He posits that identity politics are elite concerns of the 1% where pronouns—what he frames as “self-absorbed word games”—have captured headlines in the media all invented by “Martha’s Vineyard culture” that is entirely disconnected from “the real lives of real people in the real world.”