Are the Occupy protests composed of douchey hipsters, professional activist types, and hard-left outcasts who have such a core sense of self-righteous self-importance that they have a contempt for the people whose petty lives inhibit their own participation? I was thinking about this as I was sitting in the crowd at a Columbia University lecture hall for the Jacobin and Dissent magazines OWS panel discussion, scanning the room and feeling customarily insecure. Sometimes I think I want to believe the worst about protesters because it would exempt me from having to do more. Other times, though, I am nearly persuaded by arguments like this one from Julian Sanchez and this one from Will Wilkinson that, as Wilkinson puts it, “the Occupy movement fails to take pluralism seriously.” That is, a “self-selecting community” of protesters by and large arrogantly and myopically believes that everyone in their right mind agrees with its methods and its message, so it doesn’t acknowledge the need for persuading those who don’t enter into their orbit. This leads to tactics that alienate the real people out there, the ones who show up in polling figures, who live outside urban centers. I start to worry about being one of the myopic people, not being real.

One of the key narratives about the Occupy movement is its effective framing: We are the 99%, regardless of whatever else we are. But sometimes the cynicism creeps in and I wonder if that’s merely a sham, masking a different sort of cultural identity politics.