Virtue Signaling in Minneapolis

It is is performative and divisive

A headline in a recent article in the Minnesota Star Tribune read: “How the Israel-Hamas war became an issue in the Minneapolis mayoral race.”  I recently wrote about what I am looking for in the various Minneapolis municipal candidates, and one of my items was to “focus on Minneapolis” (as opposed to national and international issues). I wrote:

“Focus on Minneapolis – In 2024, the Minneapolis City Council passed a resolution (that was vetoed by the Mayor and then that veto was overridden by the Council) calling for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, and the release of hostages on both sides. The City Council has no business weighing in on international and, in many cases, national politics. This kind of stuff is performative and divisive. City elected officials need to stick to their knitting.”

For me, when a candidate for a municipal office, like the mayor or city council, gives their position on an international situation like the war in Gaza, they are virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character, social conscience, or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue. I find virtue signaling extremely annoying. In a mayoral election where five of the fifteen candidates describe themselves as DFL (and the two most prominent candidates are DFL), virtue signaling is an annoying and irrelevant method of showing the differences between the candidates (will the real DFLer please come forward). It is also a way to stir up biases of the electorate towards the candidates that typically we don’t like to talk about in polite society, for example, that Jacob Frey is Jewish and Omar Fateh is Muslim.

With about three weeks to go before the Minneapolis municipal election, the top story in the leading newspaper for Minneapolis is the mayoral candidates position on the war in Gaza and not on Minneapolis public safety, affordability, homelessness, taxes, or a host of other issues that the mayoral candidates can genuinely impact and should be what they are evaluated on.

I realize that sometimes it is impossible to avoid international politics, for example, recently, on the anniversary of the war in Gaza, vandals tagged the Jewish synagogue Temple Israel with graffiti referencing the war in Gaza that was antisemitic. Both Frey and Fateh condemned the graffiti, which should be enough.

Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America included a pro-Palestinian stance as a litmus test for its endorsement – Fateh and several City Council canidates are DSA-endorsed. It is not helpful when political parties get into the virtue-signaling business.

I will repeat myself, virtue signaling is performative and divisive. City elected officials and candidates need to stick to their knitting, and we, the electorate, need to focus on Minneapolis-related issues when evaluating the candidates.

This article originally appeared in Catchgroove Gets Political