My book: what's it all about?

My book, The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity, is being published on 1st of July, so not long to go now.

Last week a courier dropped off my copies - showing this thing that has been dominating my life for the past few years in physical form for the first time.

THE BOOK: it exists
I have already posted the backcover blurb and some of the theoretical background.

But what is it about, really? How would I sum it up?

At the most basic level, The Tribe is an attempt to explain what  on earth is going on with the politics of identity and diversity. How has it come to dominate our public sphere? And what is the role of the progressive liberal-left in this? It obviously has a major role, but how does this work? Why is this combination so powerful? And what are the consequences of it, not least on our public life?

It is not a history book. It does not attempt to find 'root causes' for what it going on or to track back in time to find a few individuals and say, 'These guys are to blame', 'They started all this'. Such a project would be very interesting no doubt, but I think would detract from what is going on in the here and now, which is what I wanted to address.

The Tribe: Contents page
Instead, The Tribe seeks to describe and explain how the politics of diversity and identity works: how it fits in with our lives and especially our public life; how it pulls us into adopting its ways, or at least not resisting them. The book also seeks to explore the limits to that success. This has a lot to do with the problems that follow from it, in the taboos that arise from identity group favouritism and the institutionalisation of these taboos - and their sometimes disastrous effects, as found in some cases of mass child sexual exploitation.

Nowadays, there seem to be several media storms bubbling away every day with these forms of identity politics at their heart - from attempts to stop Brexit to the politicisation of the Grenfell Tower disaster as a racist act and the attempts of the trans lobby to control how people speak about them.

The sheer political power on display is remarkable. If anything I think I have underplayed this power in the The Tribe. However, hopefully it will help readers to understand what is going on: how this politics works - and especially how and why it has become so powerful in our world.


 The Tribe is available now for pre-order via the publisher Imprint Academic's website here. Enter 'TRIBE' to get a nice discount on the RRP. It is also available via Amazon here.

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