Ancient_Anemone
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User ID: 2728
Ancient_Anemone
1hr ago
I think this is a very insightful post. In particular, the research you conducted and the use of the Nolan Chart to define different political values and where they fall in the grid. If I am understanding you correctly, if one is left of center, tender minded/idealistic, but libertarian, in they would not be defined as woke, correct?
But if I'm also allowed to speculate with everybody else, I'd say what makes the woke so terrifying is that they have an uncompromising moral vision that no one is really allowed to attack. "Fairness is good, racism is bad" is a blank check America has spent the last several decades writing the woke that allows them to drive civilization to complete bankruptcy. (Where "bankruptcy" here is a metaphor for whatever you think it is, including, heck, not having any money.)
I would argue that the financial bankruptcy is thanks to modern monetary policy and the Triffin Dilemna, but I digress. We can agree that fairness is good and racism is bad, but the devil is in the details, no?
Ancient_Anemone
1hr ago
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 signaling 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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."
Fair. I think you have made a good point here.
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:
Michael Reinoehl was enforcing wokeness when he murdered a Trump supporter in cold blood on the streets of Portland following a pro-trump demonstration. His allies were enforcing wokeness when they publicly celebrated their ally's murder later that evening. Would you agree that these two examples are, in fact, people enforcing wokeness? If not, what would be your disagreement with that framing?
Here is the next one:
Broadly the biggest issue with wokeness is the introduction of thought terminating cliches that only require self-invocation to exercise, as opposed to collective consensus. Terms have been assigned significant valence without need for review, and at peak wokeness it was necessary to grovel in advance at the mere prospect of a new term being theoretically introduced at an unspecified future date, leading to pre-emptive self-abasement and outgroup preference signaling to convey ideological purity. The keystone logic allowing this subversion of logical order is the attribution of all disparate outcomes to external factors, placing the burden of responsibility on others who are presumed able to exercise power. This incentivizes weakening of self to force others to exercise their power and resources for yourself, and this is the defining presentation of wokeness.
One poster even had the self-awareness to state the following:
I fear I am succumbing to a temptation to label anything bad as woke, and related yet good ideas as something else. But that is pretty much my stance on the word: while there are positive contributions to be made to the world in the name of social justice, much of what has happened in the last 10 years has been major, predictable failure modes instead, and that collection of failure modes is "wokeness."
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:
- It identifies a value, idea or activity that one disagrees with.
- It is always used as a pejorative to what is being described.
- It is a virtue signal to those right of center and also identifies one as a right wing ideologue to other right wing ideologues.
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?
Ancient_Anemone
1d ago
I am a longtime lurker on the site and wanted to pose a question to those that commonly post on the evils of wokeism. I have noticed that many posts seem to point to an increasingly nebulous boogeyman--one that could really use to be defined.
What is woke? What do you define as woke? Is there a difference between one that is socially conscious and someone who is woke?
Ancient_Anemone
1d ago
Is this really that surprising? They are too busy fighting imaginary antisemitism--criticism of a democratically elected government of a country and probably see the need to not alienate the owner of one of the largest social media companies.
This is a very fair critique, as there is always an asymmetric amount of effort put for by those looking to define a term versus one providing a critique. That being said, how does one ensure that a discussion is not two people talking past one another without defining terms?
This effort discrepancy isn't lost on me, in next week's thread I will put forward a definition of fascism for you and others to critique in the spirit of fairness and to continue the dialogue.
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