Left-wing identitarianism
A brief follow-up
Readers of this Substack know that many of my posts are designed to work out some ideas that may translate to peer-reviewed journal articles. This post is a brief follow-up for one of those past Substack posts.
In August, I wrote about a new form of identitarianism from the political left. As a reminder, identitarianism is typically associated with far-right-wing political ideologies and focuses on racial and ethnic purity. The impetus for that post was a growing recognition of a hostile and exclusionary climate for professionals who might speak out against prevailing left-wing political orthodoxies.
There are numerous ways these political pressures are exerted, and collectively, scientific progress is being distorted and diminished in favor of ideology. One of the particularly virulent ways this has emerged is through inaccurate conceptualizations of Zionism as a white supremacist colonial project. This characterization in professional psychology has accelerated in the past two years, frequently appearing in professional journals1.
The silencing of medical professionals was addressed last week, as Dr. Eveline Shekhman, the CEO of the American Jewish Medical Association, testified directly before Congress about the professional climate in medical settings. In her testimony, she described hostility toward Jewish medical doctors for their support of Israel and a professional climate where other professionals who might defend their colleagues would likewise face workplace consequences. The insistence on absolute adherence to the prevailing political viewpoints represents the worst excesses of identitarianism. Specifically, failure to check every box on the political purity checklist carries risks of professional exclusion and career damage.
The seeds of the conceptualization in this Substack from last August led to a collaboration with my colleague, Miri Bar-Halpern. We published an op-ed on the issue, and Left-wing identitarianism will now be in the peer-reviewed literature2, with more work on the topic in development.
My colleagues and I have a forthcoming paper that aims to correct the record on this. Here is the reference. Interested readers can email me directly for a copy.
McKay, D., White, E.K., & Rom-Rymer, B. (in press). Fundamental epistemic discrimination in the decolonial model: Commentary on Kivell et al. (2025) and the legacy of their predecessors. American Psychologist.
Interested readers can contact me directly for our forthcoming article on left-wing identitarianism. Here is the reference:
McKay, D., & Bar-Halpern, M. (in press). The new Identitarians: How the cognitive-behavioral movement and psychology in general have been ideologically captured. Current Opinion in Psychology.