Derry Girl is a fun series about a group of teenagers living in Derry, Northern Ireland to Problem, the conflict between trade unions and republicans over relations with Britain. A fiction set in a place where identities are the result of constant conflict, but where they are treated with sweetness, humor, and empathy. In one sequence, one of the teens meets his friends before going to school wearing a denim jacket over his uniform. Looking at them, he noticed that all his friends were wearing uniforms without jackets and asked them what was the reason why they didn’t bring denim jackets like they did to “express their individuality”, but they replied that their mother didn’t allow it. they. . “Well, I’m not going to express my own individuality,” he said, and took off his denim outfit, keeping the uniform like his friends. The need to have feel part of a group or community is part of the construction of individuals and it is futile to deny the extent of its relevance to the formation of political identity.

We all want to keep our identities safe from coercion. We like what it is because it is the result of the formation of our memories, desires, experiences, beliefs, and love. It would be foolish to talk about identity in a derogatory way just because someone else uses it exclusively. It’s not an identity issue, but an exception that can be made; to impose yours on the rest when life dissolves it and you believe it is in danger. You can’t blame those who love their neighborhood, town, city, or country as they’ve always known., with its ways, traditions and customs. This is a human desire, understandable, but it cannot be used to subjugate the identities of those who have equal or more rights to inhabit the same spaces we occupy, but which are not ours. Identity is modular, tied to the philosophy of Heraclitus when he coined his maxim: “No man can cross the same river twice, for neither man nor water will be the same.” The river is an identity and anyone who crosses it changes it with its simple presence.

Identity is part of human nature and we are disturbed by changes that can alter what has shaped our identity. We tend to think of identity as an entity that overrides change, but it can be something beautiful that appeals to the public and solidarity. Cultural studies researcher Raymond Williams talks about “feeling structures” to explain why we feel uprooted when our towns or cities mutate into homogeneous entities. The structure of this feeling is places that function as spaces of socialization and the fabric of collective identity for the working class. What makes a nursery area recognizable and makes it a home. Places that are recognizable by emotion, that make those who inhabit them feel comfortable, and which help to feel familiar when visiting collective spaces associated with their own social class, regardless of the country they are in. They are at home.

There is no social group that does not struggle to maintain its identity and the spaces in which it develops. It may be a neighborhood persecuted by bookies who have distorted its essence or a minority language struggling to stay afloat against the majority. But progressive projects essentially escape identity politics as the core entity of political action, historian Eric Hobsbwam puts it this way: “What does identity politics have to do with the left? Let me say unequivocally what shouldn’t need to be repeated. The political project of the left is universalist: it is aimed at all human beings. However we interpret the words, it’s not about freedom for shareholders or black people, but freedom for everyone.”

Identity essentialism is the real problem of coexistence. A position of exclusion from difference that has reached any movement fostered by digital dynamics that values ​​togetherness and excludes differences of opinion. Social networks act as bunker created identities and channels for the creation of new ones in the absence of reliable analogical and social structures. Bubbles create parallel realities that prevent finding points of agreement and nuance with those who don’t share their own identities. It only serves to impose our identity on others and Anyone who does not act as an identified identity is an enemy. There is no room for dissent, it is all or nothing that degrades coexistence to the point of turning the digital space into tribal wars. The essentialism of identity promoted by the digital ecosystem creates intractable problems for friendly processes on the left. Failure has left the digital identity bubble as the only militant process to channel failure and frustration over defeat as a way out. .

This process of creating a sectarian digital identity has been a consequence of the previous lack of political culture that exists in the rare militancy left for those perceived as forces of change. The new parties that emerged as a result of the 15M evanescence were unable to consolidate a solid structure and has been reduced to an algorithmic trench that works on trumpet calls on Telegram. It is no coincidence that this attitude has become hegemonic among new parties who want to question the superiority of bipartisanship. The only tool they have to make themselves present is to act as invasive actors in the digital public space because they need to replace the others. The parties of change first, and the extreme right later, are the ones who use the digital space the most to penetrate debates and have done so in aggressive, sometimes violent ways, which have helped shift the political space towards particular interests by use intimidation digital as a tool lobby.

Physical militancy in the region is a thankless activity at the time of withdrawal. There is no possibility of success, it is viewed with suspicion, it implies a lot of wear and tear and a lot of ungrateful tasks to be done. That’s why a lot of real commitment is needed with ideas that go beyond a set of slogans to make proclamations on the network or auto-spread memes in the direction management sets as goals. However, the creation of a sectarian digital identity does not imply commitment, it does not result in wear and tear and it is not even necessary to give up one’s self-image to be associated with political ideology. It only serves as the achievement of a series of stimuli that help to immediately feel useful, even though it has no transforming or distracting capacity.

The Left suffered a collective trauma with defeats after 1989, but also with incomplete wins and with the imminent presence of collapse. It could be said, in the past 35 years, he lived in a catatonic state of acceptance of their impotence with constant rhetoric about impossibility. It creates wounds and forges an identity and, going back to Raymond Williams’ “feeling structure,” it is the concrete essence of left thinking that connects its ideas and values ​​with the emotion of persistent grievance. For this reason, there is no more authentic left than the falsified identity, not the digital sectarian, in hatred of failure with a need for revenge against those held responsible for its defeat. The moment of sublimation in which the defeated soldier retreats to immerse himself in the throbbing paranoia that only allows him to see the enemy is the sweet moment of the cultural militant who has shaped the sectarian digital identity. Pure and aggressive, harmless and ineffective.