The “omnicause”: Intersectionality on steroids

Here’s a quote from an e-mail that I received on May 28, 2024 from The Free Press:

In the months since October 7, you’ve probably seen banners with slogans that don’t make a whole lot of sense. Slogans like “Free Palestine Is a Climate Justice Issue.”   Or “Reproductive Justice Means Free Palestine.”   Or “Queers for Palestine.” All of these are examples of what the writer Alysia Ames dubbed the “omnicause” back in October. 

“It seems like where ‘intersectionality’ went wrong was assuming that anyone with any claim to oppression must be part of one omnicause + global warming for some reason,” she tweeted. 

In other words, either you back all our causes or you back none of them. 

Those of you who have been seriously involved for years in social-justice causes know what’s going on better than I do as a newcomer to climate-change activism.  I chose to get involved in Jewish climate-activism organizations specifically, in the hope of avoiding anti-Semitism.  But I carefully chose Jewish organizations that focus exclusively on climate action.  I’d been involved previously in a Jewish social-justice organization that claims to be focused on local political issues, yet, somehow, devotes an entire page of their website to the Israel/Palestine issue.  Feeling like an outsider in a social-justice organization simply by virtue of being a Zionist was uncomfortable.  Why can’t social-justice organizations simply focus on the issue at hand rather than insisting on so-called ideological purity regarding every political issue imaginable?  Is this “omnicause” approach authentic, or is it just a classic case of “virtue signaling?”