Identity politics meets an English accent in criticism of Steve Hilton | Opinion
As an Englishman born and raised in Nigeria, I’m hardly in a position to claim immunity from jokes about accents or indigenous food. I also appreciate fully the absurdity of ending up in California arguing about tacos and Britishness. But absurdity, these days, is rather the point.
There is something oddly revealing about watching progressive editors lecture SLO County about diversity and inclusion, only to start nudging readers about the amusing foreign chap the moment a conservative arrives with the wrong accent and leading in the polls.
That is precisely what happened in Stephanie Finucane’s latest broadside against Steve Hilton.
Accent politics
The column begins with Hilton being mocked for referring to a Del Taco taco as a “street taco.”
Fair enough. Political candidates thrive on ridicule.
But instead of simply attacking his policies, Finucane could not resist repeatedly framing Hilton’s Britishness and foreignness as part of the joke.
“He probably spells ‘color’ with a ‘u’ and may even say ‘loo’ when he’s looking for a restroom,” she writes.
That is not policy criticism. It is identity-based caricature.
It is difficult to imagine a mainstream California newspaper treating the cultural quirks, pronunciation and inherited habits of a Mexican, Nigerian, Chinese or Indian candidate with the same breezy rhetorical familiarity.
Rightly so.
Because reducing people through accent, ancestry or cultural identity is lazy politics and inflammatory.
What makes Finucane’s approach especially strange is that she already had plenty of substantive material available. Her column criticizes Hilton’s abortion stance, support for cooperating with ICE, opposition to wind and solar subsidies and alignment with the Trump administration.
Fine. Debate those issues. That is what informed political commentary is supposed to do.
However, if Hilton’s policies are truly as dangerous and extreme as she claims, why the need for the warm-up routine about “loo,” “colour” and British manners? Why repeatedly lean on foreignness for comic effect at all?
If the policy critique was already strong enough to stand on its own, the little cultural warm-up routine seems rather unnecessary.
Identity politics for some
Yes, satire has always played with accents, tribes, quirks and national stereotypes. Wolfe, Twain, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and PJ O’Rourke made entire careers out of it.
Yet the modern progressive argument is precisely that identity framing carries cultural and political weight. If that principle is going to be invoked seriously, it ought to survive symmetrical application. Increasingly, we seem to operate under a bizarre hierarchy where identity politics only protects approved identities.
Hilton, meanwhile, is not even ethnically English in the simplistic way implied by the caricature. His family name is Hircsák. His heritage Hungarian. His parents came to Britain from Hungary to escape an Eastern Europe shaped by Soviet domination and authoritarianism. Like millions of immigrants seeking freedom and opportunity in the West.
Under California’s usual identity frameworks, the child of immigrants who built a successful life in the West would normally be treated as an inspiring multicultural story rather than an outsider curiosity.
Instead, because he challenges one-party rule in California, he gets treated like an amusing foreign exchange student who accidentally wandered into a governor’s race.
The last refuge of a failing argument
Perhaps the nervousness is understandable. Hilton is being taken more seriously than many in California’s political establishment expected, while public trust in both parties is collapsing.
Seven in 10 likely voters now view the Republican Party unfavorably, but remarkably six in 10 feel the same way about the Democrats. Nearly a quarter of registered voters refuse to align with either party at all. Trust in Sacramento sits at just 44%. Trust in Washington has collapsed to 29%.
That is not the profile of a confident political culture. It is the profile of an exhausted one.
Meanwhile, history rather undermines the idea that Californians are somehow incapable of embracing leaders with foreign accents or immigrant backgrounds.
Arnold Schwarzenegger arrived from Austria with an accent so thick it occasionally sounded like he was ordering heavy machinery rather than delivering public policy. Californians elected him twice because voters cared more about leadership than pronunciation.
California voters are perfectly entitled to reject Hilton’s politics. They can disagree with him on abortion, immigration, energy or Trump. That is democracy.
However, progressives also spent the last decade insisting that identity framing and rhetorical “othering” carry social and political meaning. If that principle matters, it cannot suddenly be suspended when the target is politically unfashionable or threatening.
It may be easier to sneer at Hilton’s Britishness than explain why trust in California’s political establishment is collapsing.
However, when the rules only apply to politically approved tribes, that is the tell.
Clive Pinder is an Englishman, hosts “CeaseFire” on KVEC 920AM/96.5 FM and writes at clivepinder.substack.com. He believes voters should care slightly less about how politicians pronounce “bathroom” and slightly more about whether the state is functioning.