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I appreciate your thoughtful response. As others have mentioned, a similar, but less pointed question came up last week, and several of the responses seemed to be incredibly open ended, as these discussions tend to go, (ex communism is when the government does stuff I don't particularly care for). That is my primary intention for asking this question more directly. To answer your question of some instances of this occurring previously here, here are a few quotes from last week's thread:
Here is the next one:
One poster even had the self-awareness to state the following:
The left wing identitarianism and the definition you provided is good and concrete, as I am more interested in what wokeness is, rather than what wokeness does. Once we get into the latter, I feel that we get caught up into identity politics in a way that is not that dissimilar to the thing that that is being derided in the first place. After all, in a banal sense, wokeness is to the right what capitalism is to the left: the source of bad things and an object of scorn.
To me, wokism or calling things woke is a catch all term that someone right of center calls a social activity or value that someone left of center espouses. For instance, I don't think I have ever heard in person or seen online someone left of center that uses it to describe an action or an ideology. When the term is used, it does the following things in the process:
I would define socially conscious as the ability to identify differences in race/ethnicity, class, religion, etc, in addition to individual differences. Generally in the last 20+ years, that generally results in moving toward left wing ideology. The field of sociology being probably the most prescient example. How many right of center sociologists do you know?
It does sometimes get used that way, but I don't know why you would elect to espouse the least clear and useful version of the word as the archetype of the concept. Most people, right or left, are kind of stupid, and when they say political things they are mostly just signalling virtue by parroting something they heard somewhere. Children use words they can't define, sometimes properly, sometimes not; this does not actually muddy the underlying concepts.
So I can't figure out why you're in one breath complaining about people using the word in vague or merely pejorative ways, and in the next breath saying that, to you, that actually is what "woke" means. Any time you see the word in the wild, just substitute "left wing identitarianism" and it should be pretty easy to see whether the person speaking is using the word meaningfully, or just as an empty sneer. In the examples you pulled for me, I don't see any use of the word "woke" as a "nebulous bogeyman." The first two are pretty clear and direct criticisms of left wing identitarianism and the political activities of left wing identitarians. The third is just one person admitting that they aren't sure what "woke" means, precisely, but they can see what it has accomplished.
Then you haven't been paying attention (or maybe you're just late to the party). "#StayWoke" was a pretty early example of hashtag activism, circa 2012. The Wikipedia entry on "Woke" has a 2018 picture of former U.S. Representative Marcia Fudge holding a shirt that says "Stay Woke: Vote." The term itself originated back in the mid-20th century and was very much tied to the identity politics of black Americans, and its circuitous path to "viral hashtag meme" generalized rapidly to leftist identity politics generally. None of this is mysterious, and every news article out there complaining about the vagueness of "woke" ignores the well-established history of the meme in an attempt to muddy the waters of discourse, exactly as the political left has always done with words that capture its essence and expose its ridiculousness.
If that is your definition, then no, "woke" does not mean "socially conscious." To be "woke" requires a particular political attitude toward those differences; the ability to identify them is not sufficient, for the reasons I already outlined. Specifically, the identitarian right is definitely able to identify such differences, and is definitely not "woke."
I defined it that way, simply because that is the way it is most commonly used. The most common usage of any idea would be by definition archetypal, would it not? But yes, that usage would be "dumbing down" any sort of academic understanding of the word being used.
That is why I appreciate your definition of "left wing identitarianism" as a suitable replacement for "woke". It is much more descriptive and is less likely to be misused, mainly because multi word descriptors are harder to massage into extraneous meanings.
Those are good examples, but I can provide hundreds if not thousands of counter examples where it is folks right of center using the term to describe progressive or anti-racist ideas, policies, goals or activities. Furthermore, if we look in the last 5 years or so, this is almost exclusively the case. If there has been a muddying of the waters of the term since the mid-20th century or even 2018 to now, would that not be by the folks who are constantly referencing, writing and talking about it and not those who have nearly ceased using the term?
Fair. I think you have made a good point here.
I don't think so. In your previous comment you suggested two examples of people using "woke" as a mere sneer, when in fact those were both perfectly coherent criticisms of left wing identitarianism.
I suspect you might, and yet so far you have failed to even provide one clear example. In particular, I would be interested to see an example of someone using the word "woke" to describe something, anything, that is not at all plausibly left wing identitarianism. Like, someone taking a bite of pistachio ice cream and then saying, "ugh, disgusting, this ice cream is so woke." That would be pure pejorative, and is probably too much to ask, but so far the closest you've gotten is an example, not of someone using the term as a pure pejorative, but using it to describe left wing identitarianism without apparently knowing a better phrase than "woke" to describe it.
The term hasn't been particularly muddied in the last 5 years, it has just been used to accurately describe the ridiculous policies that result from left wing identitarianism. The absurd response (your response, here!) has been to try to argue that it doesn't mean anything in particular at all, and that it is just an empty smear. But it's not; it's a word that left wing identitarians used to describe themselves, and so it became a pejorative because left wing identitarianism is (it seems to me, and many others) objectively terrible.
It's like... imagine you meet someone who wishes to restore Germany to nationalistic glory, in part by stripping Jews of citizenship, socializing the German economy, et cetera. And you say... "damn, fella, you sound like a Nazi!" And he responds, "oh, get out of here with your nebulous bogeyman terms. People just use 'Nazi' as an empty smear. Sure, maybe it was once used to describe certain political beliefs, but in the last fifty years, the most common usage has just been to tar your political opponents."
I don't know about you, but I feel like the appropriate response would be, "well, true, I would like to see fewer people using the word 'Nazi' as an empty smear. But it does have an actual meaning, and expelling Jews from Germany is kind of a key aspect of that. In fact, it seems like you don't want me to call you what you are because you know that this will probably help some people realize that they do not like your policies and do not wish to vote for you."
To be frank: I think your engagement on this issue is disingenuous. I think you are very much like a Nazi who is complaining about people misusing the word Nazi. Yes, there is a motte here: the word "Nazi" definitely gets used as a nebulous bogeyman! And yet when actual Nazis use that argument, I think it is reasonable to be very suspicious of their true motivations! Because the bailey is that it's more difficult to criticize a political coalition that is constantly shifting its identity in an attempt to evade accountability and criticism.
So it is with "woke." Are there problems with how the word gets used? Sure, that's reasonable. Does that mean that all or even most use of the word "woke" is just empty rhetoric? I have seen (and you have provided) no actual evidence of that.
Federal Reserve Fox Business host Charles Payne criticized the “woke Fed” for failing to raise interest rates to curb inflation. [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 1/14/22]
Silicon Valley Bank Asman claimed the Silicon Valley Bank failure “was caused by adherence to woke beliefs and policies. The woke belief that you can just print money without consequence.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 3/13/23]
Kym Worthy During a report on a man accused of setting his girlfriend on fire, Shimkus mentioned that “the woke Democrat DA in Wayne County Kym Worthy” wanted a higher bond despite her support for bail reform. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/24/22]
There are many more in that source along that are used as as primarily a "sneer". Give me an example of it being used as a "sneer" before 2010--which I think you are going to have a lot harder time doing. Why? Because the definition has had significant "creep" since then, which is my point. What is more common us the use of the word as primarily a sneer, but a smaller amount of truth to deride that person, object, idea, or company. We even have beer companies self-styling as "anti-woke"
Furthermore, we have the labeling of green energy as "woke energy" when there is an 81 member Conservative Climate Caucus in the House of Representatives. How do you reconcile the two?
Wouldn't a political coalition be shifting for other reasons than just to evade accountability, but to adjust based on criticism, lack of performance or encountering unintended circumstances? I think
Now you have evidence of that. All use cases? No, certainly not. But its primary use today (January 2025) is to tar and feather others, before finding out more about what is being described. It is shorthand for something, someone or some entity that deserves our ridicule and opposition. In some cases, maybe that is warranted. Increasingly in others, maybe not. And this last bit in your response is an excellent demonstration of what I am talking about, and it looks like the person getting the pejorative treatment is me.
Thanks for those examples. I think they are okay. Certainly they are better than your examples from this space. What I would say I see happening in the "woke Fed" example is wokism getting generalized to leftism-writ-large, rather than applying to leftist identitarianism. It's guilt-by-association, basically. Not really a "nebulous bogeyman" but certainly a sloppy use.
The "woke Democrat DA" I would need to know more about. Leftist identitarianism often has a lot to say about criminal justice through a racial lens; was this such a case? I don't know. Certainly this could also be a sloppy case.
I think you're maybe underestimating the rapid timeline on the pejoration process. Circa 2010 it was "social justice warriors," not "woke." Before that, I'm not sure... "cultural Marxism" probably, though my memory is that was more of a 1990s thing, driven in large measure by Pat Buchanan. I think maybe the first decade of the 2000s was sufficiently focused on "Islamophobia" and "Islamofascism" that maybe we didn't have a dominant shorthand meme for leftist identitarianism then? (Right now, "DEI" seems to be rising to the top as the preferred nomenclature of leftist identitarians, which is why it, too, has become something centrists and rightists mock. Once it was just called "affirmative action," and that became a bit of a sneer, too. New viral memes meet cultural immune systems every day!)
I don't really get why you're so fixated on this. I've granted that it gets used as a sneer, sometimes. But you're insisting the sneer is the "real" or "primary" definition or use, and as far as I can tell that simply isn't true. "Woke" means "leftist identitarianism" and sometimes overgeneralizes to "leftism" and rarely overgeneralizes to simply "bad." What's surprising about that? We could say similar things about "Nazi" ("German national socialist" overgeneralizes to "fascist/racist/authoritarian" overgeneralizes to "bad") or any of a host of other political identifiers.
This is just false--especially here on the Motte. The primary use of "woke" today is to describe leftist identitarians in a single syllable. Personally, I don't blame anyone for feeling bad if they are leftist identitarians; on my view, they should feel bad, and should repent! So sure, right wingers and centrists and Marxists all probably say "woke" with a sneer, but that's because they find leftist identitarianism genuinely awful.
Look, you are a "new" account that fits the MO of certain ban evaders and known trolls. You show up saying you're a "long time lurker" and immediately pick a super common topic of discussion, on which the Motte has a much, much better handle than the wider world of so-called journalists writing on the topic. Then you steadfastly insist that the stupidest possible interpretation of "woke" is the "real" one, which is exactly the position woke people are taking right now, because the word has become an effective way to limit their political power--in the face of multiple well-considered explanations for why you're mistaken.
If you are not yourself a leftist identitarian, then I don't know why you would take that position--unless you are trying to make a particularly pedantic argument about language, in which case I would expect you to bite the bullet and also argue that "Nazi" and "alt right" and "Communist" and "Neoliberal" and the like are all just meaningless slurs, given their common deployments, despite the possibility that they once had analytic content. But you don't appear to have found that angle interesting.
Conversely, if you are a leftist identitarian, then several people have given you very clear answers to your question which defuse your complaints entirely; you would be better off learning from those responses, I think, than stubbornly sticking to the current dogma as promulgated by MSNBCNN.
I think you are being overly charitable here by calling it writ-large. The Fed and/or monetary policy has never been a part of the Social Justice movement, DEI or left wing itentitarianism. The purpose of the use of the word "woke" is to cause the audience to write off the Fed's actions and to spur anger and outrage. Despite the fact the fed has been a bipartisan neokeynesian entity since the end of Bretton-Woods. So it is being used as pejorative in a use case that doesn't match a single definition that has been provided on this thread. Which is my point--there was a time when the word meant something, but now it is used . In an earlier post, you mentioned the word Nazi being used in the same way. And I absolutely agree. In fact, when it is used today, it is most likely not being used to describe a literal Nazi.
Fair, but the term "social justice warriors" never saw the meaning creep that "woke" has seen. In my opinion, SJW is a pretty apt description of the movement. Cultural marxism also saw some meaning creep, but it did not get the traction in broader culture that "woke" did. Is this because it has more than two syllables and is more specific? I think that is likely.
We could, and if you made that case I would completely agree with you. The word Nazi is overgeneralized to the point that its most common use today is "someone I don't like on the internet". Is that the official definition of the word? No it is not, there are incredibly few nazis today, and even those few on the far right in western countries largely do not fit the bill. But that is its most common use case and that is the point I am making with "woke". In your words, it is rapidly developing so it has not quite lost its luster yet, but we are closer to that point than we are to the start of it.
Fair, and I expected some grief since I picked "the" hot button topic as my first post and asked for definitions to start with instead of leading with my own. Hopefully my willingness to converse on this and other topics over time will build trust. I appreciate the dialogue on this, as I learn much more when I am in the fray versus others. In full transparency, I am somewhere between a libertarian (this is been my political ideology most of my adult life, but I have been drifting a bit as of late) and a progressive (which I share many social goals with, but disagree on means). I got accused of being "woke" over the holidays by some right leaning family members and figured y'all would better be able to define what that meant. And you (and others), provided some excellent and useful definitions, which I appreciate.
I'll define fascism in next week's culture war thread to continue the dialogue.
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