Working Class History12 Feb 2025

E101: [TEASER] Radical Reads – ‘Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics’

This is a teaser preview of one of our Radical Reads episodes, made exclusively for our supporters on patreon. You can listen to the full 87-minute episode without ads and support our work at https://www.patreon.com/posts/e101-radical-and-120598405

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:

E101: Radical Reads – ‘Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics’

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/

Acknowledgements

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

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