{"id":52163,"date":"2020-11-17T06:00:27","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=52163"},"modified":"2020-11-14T18:15:50","modified_gmt":"2020-11-14T23:15:50","slug":"the-fatherless-identity-politics-violent-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2020\/11\/the-fatherless-identity-politics-violent-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fatherless, Identity Politics, & Violent Protests"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"\"<\/a>Mary Eberstadt has written an important article in First Things\u00a0<\/em>entitled\u00a0The Fury of the Fatherless.<\/a><\/p>\n

She is the author of two books on the impact on children of growing up without a father in their lives:\u00a0\u00a0Primal Scre<\/a>ams:\u00a0 How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics<\/a> and\u00a0\u00a0How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

In this new article, she applies those insights to today\u2019s identity politics and violent protests.\u00a0 The latter, she says, are quite different from other protests, even other violent protests.\u00a0 We have not seen before the tactic of protesters harassing families as they are eating together at restaurants or descending upon the homes of individuals whose views they are protesting.<\/p>\n

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Eberstadt notes the repudiation of the nuclear family in the Black Lives Matter manifesto and how a common thread among the mostly-white members of Antifa is coming from a broken home.\u00a0 She argues that the lack of a father figure in young people\u2019s lives manifests itself in the search for a replacement that can create a sense of psychological identity, as fathers and family life used to.\u00a0 This substitute can come from the macho world of gangs, from adherence to a radical ideology, or from embracing some identity group, whether based on ethnicity, sex, or gender.\u00a0 This phenomenon can be seen not only on the Left but on the Right, with White Supremacists and Alt.right extremists.<\/p>\n

She says that the experience of having been abandoned by one\u2019s father\u2013which is almost the norm in all of these groups, whether because of divorce, desertion, or never knowing one\u2019s father at all\u2013can manifest itself in rage against fatherhood itself, along with traditional families, and in the demonization of \u201cpatriarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former English professor that I am, I especially appreciated Eberstadt\u2019s use of the character Edgar in Shakespeare\u2019s King Lear<\/em>, the illegitimate son of Gloucester.\u00a0 He responds to the lack of his father\u2019s affection by taking a horrible vengeance on the old man and on the family that he yearns to be a part of.<\/p>\n

There is much more to the article, which defies excerpting.\u00a0 I urge you to read it in its entirety.\u00a0 This is from the opening.\u00a0 Start here and then click \u201ckeep reading\u201d:<\/p>\n

The ritualistic exhibition of destructive behaviors in city after city is without precedent in America. Neither the civil rights demonstrations nor the protests against the war in Vietnam looked remotely like this. The differences demand explanation. Blame what you will on the usual b\u00eate noirs: \u00adDonald Trump, cancel culture, police brutality, political tribalism, the coronavirus pandemic, far-right militias, BLM, antifa. All these factors feed the \u201c\u00addemand\u201d side of the protests and rioting, the \u00adreasons\u00a0<\/em>for the ritualistic enactment. But what about the \u201csupply\u201d side\u2014the ready and apparently inexhaustible ranks of demonstrators themselves? What explains them?<\/p>\n

The answer cannot be \u201cracism.\u201d The spectacle of often-white protesters screaming at sometimes-black policemen undercuts anything dreamed of by Critical Race Theory. So do the actual statistics concerning cop-on-black crime. So do public attitudes. In 2017, according to Pew Research, 52 percent of respondents said that race \u201cdoesn\u2019t make much difference\u201d in marriage, and another 39 percent said that interracial marriage is \u201ca good thing.\u201d When 91 percent of the public shrugs at or applauds interracial marriage, it is absurd to speak of a spectral racism that permanently and irredeemably poisons society.<\/p>\n

So, here\u2019s a new theory: The explosive events of 2020 are but the latest eruption along a fault line running through our already unstable lives. That eruption exposes the threefold crisis of filial attachment that has beset the Western world for more than half a century. Deprived of father, Father, and\u00a0patrium<\/em>, a critical mass of humanity has become socially dysfunctional on a scale not seen before.<\/p>\n

[Keep reading. . .]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I want to stress, though, that it doesn\u2019t have to be this way.\u00a0 For those without a father, God Himself can fill that void:<\/p>\n

Father of the fatherless and\u00a0protector of widows<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>is God in his holy habitation.<\/span><\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/sup>God\u00a0settles the solitary in a home;<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>he\u00a0leads out the prisoners to prosperity,<\/span><\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>but\u00a0the rebellious dwell in\u00a0a parched land.\u00a0 (Psalm 68:5-6)<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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