EDITORIAL: Virginia confrontation highlights the dangers of identity politics

The weekend melee in the college town of Charlottesville, Va., offers a chilling reminder about the dangers of identity politics run amok.

Three people were killed Saturday when a rally of “white nationalists” protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue clashed with counterdemonstrators. One woman died and dozens were injured when a car driven by one of the nationalists plowed into the crowd. Two state troopers were killed when their helicopter crashed as they monitored the confrontation.

The ugly and destructive ideology promoted by the self-described neo-Nazis, Klan followers and other white supremacists deserves nothing but scorn and derision. These repellent fools feast off controversy and confrontation and spit on the ideals of human rights and freedom.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced it will investigate the incident. Those found to have broken the law deserve swift and sure prosecution.

Plenty on the left jumped on the tragedy to attack the president — and they’re correct that Donald Trump should have more forcefully distanced himself from those who preach such abhorrent nonsense. But Mr. Trump didn’t invent white supremacists. And while the 24/7 news cycle and social media drive the perception that the nation today is flooded with overt bigotry, the vast majority of Americans — including those who supported the president — adamantly reject the purveyors of racial chauvinism.

If Saturday’s brutality proves anything, it’s that modern identity politics has, as Australian author Claire Lehmann noted in a February essay, “become a plague that does not discriminate.” Long a staple of the progressive playbook, the concept that one’s race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality in and of itself bestows some sort of inherent moral authority has now migrated to the sewers of the right.

“People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with,” wrote the late essayist Christopher Hitchens. “One does not banish this specter by invoking it.”

Indeed, America today is drowning in the scourge of identity politics, which erodes the notion that all human beings, regardless of their various genetic foibles, deserve to be treated equitably as individuals, not pigeonholed into pre-determined boxes sorted by skin color or some other factor. Far from advocating a recipe for empowerment, the grievance peddlers on both the left and the right push a formula that only exacerbates division and conflict — and, yes, even fosters violence.

Rather than point fingers or resort to partisan rationalizations to avoid uncomfortable truths, Americans of all political persuasions must embrace unity and individual autonomy over the corrosive politics of resentment and cheap exploitation.