E101: [TEASER] Radical Reads – ‘Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics’
Working Class History
Working Class History
5.0 • 813 Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, we speak to Alex Charnley and Michael Richmond about their excellent book, Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics. The book pushes back against the idea of 'identity politics' as a vaguely defined and universal bogeyman for both left and right-wing politics.
Instead, they show how 'identity' is not just a ‘subjective’ idea in people’s heads, but the result of real, material ways the working class is structured according to race, gender, nationality etc by the various divisions of labour, immigration laws, etc. And, as we discuss in the episode, what often gets called ‘identity politics’ is actually an attempt to think through how class functions, and is acted upon, in the reality through which it’s lived.
Listen to the full episode here:
More information:
- Buy Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics from an independent bookshop
- 'Aliens at the Border' – a lightly edited version of Chapter Four from Fractured, looking at Jewish immigration to Britain from Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century
- 'Fascism and the Women's Cause: Gender Critical Feminism, Suffragettes and the Women's KKK' – piece by Alex and Michael looking at the link between contemporary transphobic feminists and the far-right by placing it against reactionary elements within the women's suffrage movement, and trajectories which led some into the Ku Klux Klan and British Union of Fascists
- Listen to an earlier Radical Reads episode with Michael, discussing David Baddiel's hilariously terrible book, Jews Don't Count
- Books and merch related to Black history and struggle
- Books and merch related to women's history and struggle
- Books and merch related to LGBTQ history and struggle
- Webpage for the episode is available here: https://workingclasshistory.com/blog/e101-radical-reads-fractured-race-class-gender-and-the-hatred-of-identity-politics/
- Thanks to our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Jamison D. Saltsman, Fernando López Ojeda, Jeremy Cusimano, and Nick Williams.
- The episode image of a London Black Lives Matter protest, 2020. Credit: Katie Crampton, Wikimedia UK (with additional design by WCH). CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Edited by Louise Barry
- Our theme tune is Montaigne’s version of the classic labour movement anthem, ‘Bread and Roses’, performed by Montaigne and Nick Harriott, and mixed by Wave Racer. Download the song here, with all proceeds going to Medical Aid for Palestinians. More from Montaigne: website, Instagram, YouTube
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone. As you might know, we don't get any sort of funding from any wealthy benefactors, academic institutions, governments or political parties. |
| 0:09.0 | Our work is funded by you, our listeners and readers, on Patreon. |
| 0:13.3 | In return, our supporters on Patreon get access to exclusive content and benefits like ad-free episodes, bonus podcast episodes and two exclusive patron-only |
| 0:22.9 | podcast series, fireside chats and radical reads. So here's a little preview of our latest |
| 0:29.1 | patron-only episode. You can join us, help support our work and listen to the full episode today |
| 0:34.6 | at patreon.com slash working class history. Link in the show notes. |
| 0:43.4 | As we come marching marching in the beauty of the day. A million darkened in kitchens, a thousand mill |
| 0:53.2 | off screys, are brightened by beauties, sun and sun discloses. |
| 0:59.6 | And the people here are seeing bread and roses, bread and roses. |
| 1:08.3 | Just to begin, I guess maybe if we just talk a little bit about, you know, |
| 1:12.8 | why you decided to write this book, you know, what were or what are the debates |
| 1:18.5 | that you were kind of responding to or inserting yourself into and how you felt |
| 1:25.3 | this book would kind of contribute? |
| 1:27.4 | I think it's a book that book would kind of contribute. |
| 1:32.8 | I think it's a book that we were kind of thinking through, a lot of the ideas that came through in the book, |
| 1:34.5 | we were thinking together through the kind of work we were organizing around. |
| 1:38.6 | In London, I met Mike around the time of the Occupy movement, |
| 1:43.0 | and we were part of an editorial collective of the Occupy |
| 1:46.5 | Times there and post-occupy that editorial collective was very engaged with, you know, being a media |
| 1:54.4 | outlet for the kind of movements that happened at the time all the way up to, I would say, |
| 1:59.4 | a signal point being to 2016, 2017. |
| 2:03.5 | And I suppose at that point, you know, as we all know, a lot of the energy changed towards |
... |
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