Claire reviewed Ash Sarkar’s Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War for The House magazine
“In pre-publication interviews for her book Minority Rule, Novara Media’s sassy, left-wing firebrand Ash Sarkar came out against her own tribe’s embrace of divisive identitarian politics. It was surprising because Ms Sarkar has been one of the best-known pundits casting aspersions against those of us who made similar criticisms. Some on the receiving end of her vicious tongue-lashings were understandably irritated by this apparent volte-face. I tried to be generous over “one lost sinner who repenteth”. But then I read the book.
I wanted to like it. I too was “literally a communist” and agree we need to be “brutally honest” about what’s been happening on the left, which has promoted identitarian orthodoxies such as “an inverse hierarchy, where those most recognised as victims wield the most power”. She criticises the subjectivity of lived experience whereby “we don’t speak of the truth, but my truth” and amusingly asks her self-absorbed, grievance-mongering peers who treat sweary words as violence, “What hope of taking on the state?” But in reality, she lets the left – and herself – off the hook.”
Read the full review on the Politics Home website.