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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   17671 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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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?

Naraburns probably said it the best, including how this question of "define woke" is often used as a trolling technique to derail discussion. In fact these rhetorical techniques are often very useful to certain strains of woke, as naraburns said woke stems from so called Critical Theory, which functions best when it well - criticizing - as opposed to explaining. So using some form of rhetorical judo in discussions is used quite often to have opponents on back foot and in defense, where they are the ones asking questions and criticizing all answers. While at the same time they do not subject their own terms to the same scrutiny.

Two can play the same game of gish gallop: define racism, define systemic racism, define whiteness, define white supremacy, define heteronormativity, define gender etc. We can also play the same game with much older terms such as: define capitalism, define socialism, define communism, define neoliberalism. All of these can and were used as "boogeymen", however they continue to be used and they capture something.

Might also be useful to apply it to more general terms. Define Problematic. Define Toxic.

One of the problems is that some people just seem to use "woke" as a synonym for "authoritarian" or "illiberal" - usually authoritarian and illiberal leftism (chiefly forms that aren't Soviet communism), but in case of people talking about "woke right" it's obvious that they're liberal types who first got frightened of authoritarian tendencies in leftist communities, moved sharply to the right and then noted similar authoritarian and illiberal strains in their new right-wing communities.

Of course the problem here is that liberalism is taken as something of a given when the vast majority of people ever living in the world during the history of humanity have believed in authoritarian ideologies, it takes genuine work to make people truly believe in things like "you should let people speak even if they're wrong" or "people have the right to advance religious ideals even if you think they are rank heresy or mere superstition" or "innocent until proven guilty even if they really really seem shifty in an obviously guilty way" or a dozen other things basic things underpinning liberal democracy.

When it comes to "woke" itself beyond the whole authoritarianism thing, it's really a combination of multiple things and ideologies, within the US chiefly progressive African-American nationalism (and other ethnic minority nationalisms usually deriving from the ideological work already done by progressive African-American nationalists, with "progressive" separating this ideological straing from non-progressive African-American nationalisms variously advanced by Marcus Garvey, NOI/Black Hebrewites/other cults or these days by black manosphere types like Tariq Nasheed), second- and third-wave feminism, and to some degree the sexual revolution and the related groups.

The whole "intersectionalism" things is an attempt to tie these, particularly progressive African-American nationalism and feminism, together to a coherent combination, but since there still is friction related to the importances of various causes, the coalition is straining all the time and wokeness doesn't seem to have that much staying power, as shown by the developments after Trump's election.

The "woke right" doesn't exist. It doesn't make sense. It's incoherent. It's an enemy anti-concept designed to derail the conversation.

The left noticed how useful it was for the right to be able to name their political project and has been fighting tooth and nail to destroy the word "woke", whether by endless isolated demands for rigor asking for a perfect definition (as in the OP) or by embracing, extending, and extinguishing the term into uselessness (as in "woke right").

Don't fall for it.

Everyone I've seen using the term "woke right" has belonged to the right-oriented anti-woke group themselves.

It makes plenty enough sense if one just interprets "woke" to mean authoritarianism. There certainly are plenty of authoritarian right-wingers.

The left noticed how useful it was for the right to be able to name their political project.

That's not what happened. We've been on a years, if not decades, long loop if Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand, until play progressives started using "woke" in a self a descriptive manner, when they were feeling particularly strong. Their opponents pounced, as they say, figuring they won't be able to wriggle out of a term they unironically used themselves, which they tried to do anyway.

Now that the liberals feel they were mostly done with progressives they're trying to redirect some of the anti-woke momentum against the illiberal right.

The whole "intersectionalism" things is an attempt to tie these, particularly progressive African-American nationalism and feminism, together to a coherent combination, but since there still is friction related to the importances of various causes

I think they have a coherence by, as you say, deriving from the same ideological work. How would you think this is only among the ethnic movements? And while there are questions of priorities, committed activists for one are still generally positive about the others. Thats more than you can say about the "dissident right", and noone seems to have much of a problem acknowleding that as a thing that exists.

Every movement looks more coherent from the outside than from the inside.

But yes, there is some coherence, but it's still not enough to make it a fully coherent ideology.

I'm not sure there were many people calling it that. In fact a large part of it's criticism consisted of pointing out it's incoherence and inner tensions.

In this context, and being a believer in the concept of "ideologies are born to facilitate political struggles", wokism for me is the synthesis of black nationalism, third worldism and feminism that was created to improve the electoral odds and power of the Democratic Party, and then was wielded by the US Empire as an imperial ideology in order to make it easier to control the satellite states.

If we follow this definition of wokism, it is clear that it will lose importance the moment it will not be useful anymore to the US Empire (so never, for now)

It's more complicated than that. Progressive African-American nationalism, due to its status of as the main political expression of the largest minority of the most powerful country of the world (and an expression, moreover, that is well-suited for coalition building and forming a template for others), has had enormous cachet globally generally, with minorities all around the world considering their struggle to be equivalent to that of the African-Americans (including white minorities. Progressive African-American leaders, like Dubois and MLK, have been aware of the effect of publicizing repression against the movement on America's soft power and have utilized that to their advantage, so that American policies have at least as much had to do with navigating this threat as with any conscious imperial ideological designs.

Woke is intesectionality. I may be cheating a bit in that people who came up with that term aren't among the most brief and clear writers, but at list euphemism treadmill didn't advance far enough for it to not be a term of self-identification anymore.

Is there a difference between one that is socially conscious and someone who is woke?

Yes, and the answer is pretty obvious if you first ask your self "what is socially conscious"? Is it possible to be socially conscious and think black people aren't being arrested more due to discrimination, or the system being set against them? Is it possible to be socially conscious that women don't go into tech as much as men because they don't enjoy the subject matter of the field as much, rather than because they're being discriminated against, or because the system is set against them? Is it possible to be socially conscious and think that trans women aren't women, and it's a bad idea to send them into women's sports, changing rooms, prisons, and domestic abuse shelters? If the answer to these questions was "yes", then you have you example of a difference between being socially conscious and being woke. If the answer was "no" then you have smuggled an ideology into the term "socially conscious", and that ideology is Woke.

I have noticed that many posts seem to point to an increasingly nebulous boogeyman-

Do you mind if I turn the whole thing on you, and ask you to elaborate on this claim? What do you think gets unfairly branded as "woke"? Can you show that it got to the point that no one knows what "woke" originally meant anymore? If it's increasingly a nebulous boogieman, would you say there was once a point it was not nebulous and not a boogieman?

What is woke?

"Woke" applies to an individual or work for whom all of the following hold:

  • whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that this individual's actions, taken as a whole, appeal to the interest of their own class or privilege a set of protected characteristics they share;
  • whether the individual in question pursues or conducts, in an intentionally offensive way, the privileging of certain types of sexual conduct or other discriminatory functions, as specifically defined by the letter of applicable equal rights legislation; and
  • whether the works of this individual [or the work itself], taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific merit

The first category is to exclude those who are socially conscious of issues that aren't just a scheme to enrich themselves, which is a key feature of woke thought, and covers the standard "diversity over meritocracy" complaint. Compare stealing offense; they take that which isn't being given to them because it improves their social standing to do so (this is bullying/political strategy 101).

The second category serves to indict so-called "reverse" discrimination as discrimination- the "I can't be sexist, I only hire women" thing (which is usually used as an excuse for unevenhanded treatment when those who interpret the law are unwilling or unable to address it, typically because of the above). Again, if this occurs but isn't intended as nakedly self-enriching at the same time, it's more morally neutral than it is when perpetrated with intent; seeking eradication denies opportunity for education (hardened hearts and all that).

The third category must exist for free speech reasons; after all, are you truly free to possess selfish, illiberal views if you at no point are allowed to voice them? Steven Universe [for instance] thus cannot truly be considered a "woke show" even though it (and its creators) arguably satisfy (1) and (2), because it's done well and actually has something to say; compare how Lolita generally escapes the "child pornography" category.

The same principles we used to be granted offense to, and punish, obscenity serve to similarly convict wokeism and its practitioners- intentional, anti-social, and without any other mitigating merit. (Which is why I borrowed the Miller test for this definition.)

First, see who uses the word Woke. It is used by anti-Woke types to categorize practices and beliefs employed by upper class residents and aspirants to effect resource transfer from social actors that are not themselves sufficiently engaged in these practices and beliefs.

Said practices and beliefs are:

  • categorical groupings are nonoverlapping (blackness is totally separate from whiteness)
  • a categorical groupings declaration of its own outcomes are irredutable (blacks are incarcerated at higher rates than whites due to racism and not crime commitment rates)
  • unequal outcome is due only to the actions of the party which had the more positive outcomes (whites doing better than blacks is entirely due to whites which grants whites hyperagency),
  • that these categorical groupings should actually have equal outcomes (blacks being statistically equal to whites in outcomes is a first order state of reality)
  • that it is the responsibility of the agentic power to effect change on themselves to equalize the outcomes (reality is being stymied by whites so whites must take active action to assert the reality of black equality).
  • the dominance of one categorical party is defined by who the losing categorical party presents as the winner (whites are the active power keeping blacks down, not arabs funding janjaweed militias or indian H1Bs flooding jobs or asian cars destroying Detroit: the sole cause of all black woe is the white)
  • intersectionality means that the disparities suffered by other categorical groupings is concurrent and thus contributes to net disparities (white oppression of blacks is different from white oppression of latinos and thus whites are doubly agentic for disparate outcomes, and doubly responsible by transitive property)

What results is that one party can declare themselves whole and distinct from another, define its own outcomes for itself and who is responsible for it, and demand the responsible party be the one to change in order to redress the disparity. Principally, it gives license to a a party to declare its own aggrievement and thus its place in the queue for restitution.

No one actually calls themselves Woke since 2022, but instead there still is an assertion that the above principles are inalienable states of reality. Go to MSNBC, Slate, Salon, and see how it is constantly asserted that whites are responsible for the poor state of blacks, even when whites do not claim any ownership or do anything to effect black failure. And wokeness, by being definitionally nebulous, allowed everyone to label themselves as such when trendy and shed it when not.

The defitional warfare employed by anti-Woke vs the 'woke' is precisely because the 'woke' party has shed its names multiple times as the logical incongruities of the various principles get associated with a concrete term, exposing the inability of the stated principles to mesh together in reality even without active actions by the opposition these principles define themselves against. Woke was previously Social Justice, which was previously Political Correctness. Given that being Woke has fallen out of favor so rapidly all the practitioners are now claiming they never advocated woke policies, yet in observed reality there is endless proof of the presence of DEI corporate policies, thinkpieces about lesbians being transphobic for not giving blowjobs etc from the early 2010still early 2020s.

Wokism is externalizing responsibility by fiat, and appropriating high valence moral principles to effect desired outcomes. What ends up happening is not that everything turns out to truly be racism), but that racism becomes so nebulously redefined that it does not matter anymore. If everything is racist, nothing is racist. Woke crybullying started reaching a stop when everything was being declared fascist, and more practitioners started realizing people were getting increasingly alright with being called as such.

I have previously defined it here as briefly as possible, "Identity based progressivism, usually recent aggressive illiberal status seeking strains."

So, it would entirely depend on what you mean by socially conscious. If that entails identity based progressivism, they'd need to have a very unusual personality and probably a different strand of progressivism.

In modern parlance its an ironic reappropriation of a word, now used to describe a hostile intolerance to differing arguments for a more fair, just, and prosperous society, all while cowering behind the words original meaning.

For example take Ana Kasparian revealing that she was sexually assaulted by a homeless person. Brain-rotted wokies tore her to pieces for disparaging homeless people, and called her racist for some unknown reason. One of her collogues quit because Ana wanted to be called a woman, not a birthing person. Or the 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah Jones, a Pulitzer winning piece of historical revisionism. Noticing its factual errors and/or flaws reasoning got you branded as a racist Nazi by the woke. Or the coverage surrounding the shooting of Jacob Blake, who was under arrest yet tired to flee in a vehicle with children before attempting to stab an officer before being shot. If you so much as pointed out what the video showed, you were called a racist. Its worth noting that Blakes shooting precipitated the attempts to burn down sections of Kenosha WI for some reason, where Kyle Rittenhouse shot 3 people on video, the lone survivor of whom said in court that Rittenhouse did not so much as aim at him until he pointed his own gun at Rittenhouse - who was obviously a white supremacist despite shooting only white people.

In light of the stupid Elon hand gesture thing that still won’t die, let me offer a slightly different definition based on something I was just thinking about. A lot of what separates “woke” from run of the mill identity politics and/or ingroup-outgroup bias is the imposition of rules on the outgroup. This is where it takes on a somewhat religious tone ( slogans like “silence is violence” are analogous to the “convert or die” sentiment of the Muslim conquests or early crusades ).

What makes woke particularly insufferable is the rule creation mechanism. It doesn’t come from a canonical text, but rather, it’s an ever growing list of words or actions that were previously done by bad people. Racial slurs? – can’t say those, bad people used them a long time ago. Black facepaint? - can’t use that. Bad people did it a long time ago. Raising your straight arm at an angle above 90 degrees from the resting position? - can’t do that. You guessed it, because bad people did that a long time ago. Hell, you can’t even make the okay sign in some circles anymore because bad people did it on the internet. In addition, the rules are different depending on how “bad” your particular group is seen as being.

So, back to the Elon hand gesture. He’s not allowed to make it apparently. Why? Because it was done by the Nazis. It doesn’t matter that that is barely still in living memory. It doesn’t matter that none of his other actions are particularly Nazi-like. It doesn’t matter that it is a salute that comes naturally to humans and has been practiced by countless groups over the millennia. No, the gesture is verboten, now and forever. And unless you are constantly policing your actions and keeping up with the latest blacklists, you too will at some point do something that will mark you as an apostate.

"It's impossible to keep up with all the latest blacklists" being used as a justification for "actually the Nazi salute is fine" has got to be one of the most textbook examples of motte and bailey.

In what way? What is the motte, and what is the bailey here?

The Nazi salute was, notably, not unique to the Nazis. They have no particular historical claim to inventing it, or monopoly on it at the time, or exclusivity on the meaning of 'arm outstretched, slightly elevated'- hence the many defenses of Democrat politicians being photographed in a similar outstretch being 'well, you need to look at the video for context to see otherwise,' which is not coincidentally very similar to the context of if you add what Musk was saying to the context of the image (or video) of him. Context can remove the Nazi criteria.

It would seem to me that what makes a Nazi salute a Nazi salute is if it is done for, in alignment with, or in the context of Nazi activities. If it is not done in a Nazi format, it is not a Nazi salute, just a salute (or gesture), the sort of which 'well, you just need to look at the context to see otherwise' is a valid defense.

'You just need context to see this isn't Nazi' does not seem to be the defendable motte, but the more expansive bailey- and one strong enough to not require a retreat to 'actually the Nazi salute is just fine,' which is less defensible, and thus not a motte.

Instead, the motte-and-bailey seems to be more in the accusation side of things- where 'that is a Nazi salute' is the expansive claim, which is forced to retreat into a more defensible 'well, maybe it's not actually Nazi, but it looks bad so should be condemned regardless.'

Which, coincidentally, is a very similar argument structure to the 'the OK sign is a white supremacist gesture' craze of a few years ago.

Heh. While I do think the raised-arm salute should be decriminalized (it really is a crime in Germany) because it's just plain silly to have laws against basic gestures like this, I do agree that it's a bit disingenious to pretend that it would be widely-acceptable in western society if only it weren't for the woke.

And unless you are constantly policing your actions and keeping up with the latest blacklists, you too will at some point do something that will mark you as an apostate.

Emphasis added.

imposition of rules on the outgroup

During the arguments over same-sex marriage in the aughts, the common metaphor was 'telling me that I may not eat cake because you happen to be on a diet'.

What makes woke particularly insufferable is the rule creation mechanism. It doesn’t come from a canonical text, but rather, it’s an ever growing list of words or actions that were previously done by bad people.

Many fundamentalist soi-disant Christians phrased that mechanism as "Abstain from every appearance of evil", which apparently meant

Do not wear pants with punk rock patches. Also beware the bottles of sparkling grape juice with the foil tops, they might appear to be alcohol and stay away from video rental stores, someone might think you’re there renting a movie rated PG-13

along with avoiding

drinking root beer from dark bottles, wire-rimmed glasses, facial hair, clothing designed by gay guys, any hair style ever worn by any rock group anywhere, and anything that looks like it might be enjoyed by Billy Graham, his followers, or their household pets.

(Stuff Fundies Like, March 2009)

I think there are many possible definitions that are equally good, because the term really represents a cluster of beliefs that are strongly correlated (in the sense that a big fraction of the people who believe in any one of them believe in any given other one). One possible definition that is perfectly serviceable is: the belief that

(1) there are various ways to partition society into groups of people, including but not necessary limited to "race" (as understood by Americans: "white, black, Asian, Hispanic, ..."), sex and/or gender (male, female, self-identifications that are taken by those who hold them to be of the same type such as nonbinary, ...) and sexual orientation, and the groups under each of these partitionings can be ranked by a quantity denoted as privilege (so you can identify the more and less privileged race, gender etc.), and

(2) there are certain important outcomes (income, incarceration or lack there of, occupation of high-status professions, representation in high-status media...), such that it is (a) it is normally the case that more privileged groups attain them at higher rates than the less privileged ones, (b) morally bad when/that this is the case, and (c) when this happens, the responsibility/guilt, and hence the burden of redress (by reparations, punishment or active redistribution of the object of the outcomes), lies with the respective most privileged groups.

Optional but extremely typical components include, firstly, that (2a) must not inform (1) - the ranking by privilege is predetermined and fixed (e.g. in particular white>Asian) and outcome orderings that disagree with it are considered irrelevant non-examples rather than counterexamples, and secondly the notion of "intersectionality", which basically says that you should intersect the partitions to assign blame and responsibility more narrowly (with the notorious intersection of "cis white males" at the top, and "trans women, particularly trans women of color" at the bottom).

I think this does a reasonable job of capturing the core, or at least a necessary assumption, of any belief or policy that is commonly labelled as "woke"; to the extent there are things that get labelled as woke without an obvious connection (ex: COVID policy, environmentalism), it is because they have high correlation with the above beliefs. This is not unusual: for a mirror image, consider for example how rejecting modernist government buildings is taken to be "right-wing" or even "fascist" (In fact I dare any progressive to define "fascism"!), or similar assessment about opposition to vaccines.

The load-bearing part of the definition lies in the deontological moral judgement and imposition of obligation of (2bc) more than it lies in the categorisation of society in (1) and (2a) that you could perhaps call being "socially conscious" if you are sympathetic to it. Modern American alt-righters largely agree with the typical Democrat on (1~2a), and thus would arguably be equally "woke" if "woke" were about the "consciousness" part of it. You would not even be woke if you thought that black people are never depicted in a positive way in movies and were tremendously sad about this, but felt that it is immoral to compel or pressure white people to change anything about that. Someone who spends all day seething about the Pakistani rape gangs of Rotherham is, by all accounts, using a similar group analysis, and highly concerned with social issues that arise between the very same groups, but under a normal analysis they would not be "woke", as the moral obligation they want to impose is not on the group that they consider to do well on "important outcomes". (One may in fact count as woke if the beef is actually about making access to underage sex slaves more equitable.)

Given how frequently this question gets asked, I want to lob a question back at you: What gave you the impression that "woke" is nebulous or not readily defined, or that it has a meaning that is hard to distinguish from "socially conscious"?

Edit: Thinking some more about the correlate beliefs such as environmentalism, the easiest common thread to identify is probably something like a general sense that the more fortunate are morally obliged to make sacrifices for the less fortunate - affluent first-world industrialists should sacrifice for poor third-worlders who have to live off the land and are exposed to the weather, and healthy young people should sacrifice for the sick and elderly. This looks like a classical leftist sentiment; and because classical leftism has been so thoroughly taken over by the woke, it is unfortunate that the distinction between the two has become blurred in the eyes of its opposition. You can still identify distinct elements that makes some components of environmentalism, COVID policy and so on appear more "woke" than others, which is whenever the calculus of fortune and obligation is applied more at the level of (1)-like groups than at the individual, and whenever some kind of outcome score-keeping takes precedence over straight up redistribution. Carbon taxes, which hamper industry to fill social programme coffers, seem less "woke" than plastic straw bans, where the main feature seems to be to bring inconvenience to first-worlders in some vaguely climate-related way.

My short definition is "a posture of extreme or exaggerated deference to identitarian sensibilities, or to the imagined shape thereof".

Wokeness is more of an attitude or posture than it is a list of doctrines that must be accepted. That posture is one of identifying supposedly marginalised or oppressed voices, and then assigning those voices epistemological and ethical priority over other voices. Wokeness is then what happens when you self-present on this basis.

I note explicitly that wokeness does not require actually listening to or acting consistently with the preferences of a supposedly marginalised group. It is the presentation of acting as if one is doing that. The classic example is 'Latinx'. This makes it more clear that wokeness tends to be a manner that privileged or educated people adopt in order to be seen by other privileged people. You don't say 'Latinx' to actually help or engage with Latino people, but rather in order to performatively display your sensitivity to Latinos. Latinos themselves are not the audience, and so their actual feelings can be ignored.

I think this element is helpful with regard to your last question - the difference between social consciousness and wokeness. Social consciousness is actually being aware of the feelings, concerns, and cultural norms of a particular social group. Wokeness is the performance of that awareness for the sake of intra-elite competition. Thus to pick a concrete example, a white person who goes to a majority-black church and understands their local culture, is accepted among them as a friend, etc., is likely socially conscious as to issues in the black church, but may not be woke; meanwhile a white person who goes to an all-white church but has a BLM sticker on their car and tweets about structural racism is likely woke, but probably not that socially conscious.

We discuss this almost every week. Every time we do someone posts this article from Freddie Doboer.

No one's done it yet so let me be the first.

You wouldn't also happen to have any questions about race and IQ would you?

Are you sure you didn't mean this article?

Though I find it amusing that both seemed to have been taken down because Freddie didn't like how people took them, so... take that for what it's worth?

Doesn't matter in the former case, the remaining title and subtitle are enough.

shortcut since he removed it: https://web.archive.org/web/20211108155321/https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what

Social Justice Warrior

An often mocking term for one who is seen as overly progressive

I'm not going to bother answering @Ancient_Anemone's question since naraburns has given a good one and asked the questions I'd want to. To answer before they actually substantiate their own claims would be to expend an asymmetric amount of effort, which is very common in this particular debate.

So I'll ask a question of my own to the board while I have the chance, since it doesn't seem worthy of a top level post: it seems like "SJW" disappeared when it became low-status like "woke" seems to be now. The very people who once proudly used it as a self-descriptor simply abandoned it. Why do we think that didn't happen with "woke", and instead there's an insistence that the term (when used by enemies) doesn't refer to anything?

I assumed that it has something to do with "woke" being very old and thus dear to progressives, but "social justice" is apparently very old too. Maybe because you can still claim "social justice" without the now-cringe "warrior" element while you'd have to abandon "woke" entirely? Maybe it's because "woke" is associated with black people and standpoint epistemology makes it easier to claim the anti-woke are ignorant? Is it really just that "woke" is more facially vague?

Let me steelman the common progressive snarkcasm: 'it's when brown and gay people have jobs'.

Okay. Let's accept it at its premise. You start to notice things, when BIPOCs and LGBTQs are in positions of power. How they nepotistically hire across their own communities while demanding you open up yours. How well-connected they are in terms of shutting down dissent. How curiously over-represented they are in positions of forum moderation and-

Look, no one would say that a o'l boys network didn't exist just because they didn't write down the NO GIRLS ALLOWED charter. For the same reason, you can't say that there isn't a 'woke' social network that exists to further the interest of its class. It's not conspiratorial to point organizations that actively promote and advocate for it as a movement. They actually exist. It's written into their charters, their codes of conduct.

The word gaslighting has been severely abused by narcissists in the past decade, but if anything is that, this is it.

I don't think this is actually true. A lot of wokeness, maybe most of it, consists of people who aren't BIPOC or LGBTQ white-knighting people who are.

I have noticed that many posts seem to point to an increasingly nebulous boogeyman

For our benefit, please provide an example of where you think the word "woke" was used as a "nebulous boogeyman" and explain how you think that nebulousness reflected an "increase" from previous use cases.

Because it seems to me that "define woke" is a question posed (mostly by trolls) all the time around here. I've never actually seen this community struggle, even a tiny bit, with what is or is not "woke."

What is woke?

"Woke" is a convenient handle for left wing identitarianism, broadly construed. It is often in tension with left wing materialism, so e.g. Marxists are often anti-woke leftists.

This can be confusing because "woke" is predominantly what was once called "cultural Marxism" (e.g.)--before that phrase got memory-holed into an "anti-Semitic conspiracy theory." Cultural Marxism, in turn, is the application of "critical theory" and redistributionist tendencies to "social capital" instead of monetary capital. This is one reason Marxists are often at odds with wokists; Marxism is a modernist and materialist philosophy, while wokism is postmodern and sociological. Classical Marxists will tell you that cultural Marxism is not even Marxism at all... but they still typically vote for the same people and policies.

One way in which "woke" may be somewhat evolved beyond cultural Marxism is that it seems to have incorporated a decentralized ethos impossible prior to the advent of social media; what counts as "woke" today can change rapidly depending on what is trending and who is getting cancelled. While "purity spirals" are evidenced in e.g. classical Marxist circles, "woke" (plus tech) seems to take this to unprecedented levels.

Is there a difference between one that is socially conscious and someone who is woke?

How would you define "socially conscious?" I am definitely conscious of the social issues that consume wokist thought, and yet it would clearly be a mistake to identify me as "woke," because I am not a left wing identitarian. Most people who are obsessed with issues of race or gender, and who regard those differences as central to all political questions, are left wing identitarians, but some are right wing identitarians, and those are not "woke" either--that's the "alt right"--or, better, the "identitarian right."

I wouldn't mind too terribly if the word "woke" went away, but in my experience the only people who would benefit from having it go away, and who really want it to go away, are left wing identitarians, and "left wing identitarian" is admittedly something of a mouthful.

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:

  1. It identifies a value, idea or activity that one disagrees with.
  2. It is always used as a pejorative to what is being described.
  3. 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

I would define socially conscious as the ability to identify differences in race/ethnicity, class, religion, etc, in addition to individual differences.

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."

We’ve had several posters trying to get people to define woke in the past couple weeks — is this just the current meme again? It seems like there’s been a large increase in trolls and insincere posters as well.

There is no greater troll than baiting out earnest replies on The Motte. Plus, if you ever stop replying to low effort bait posts this can be taken as a sure sign that justice has prevailed. Proof positive that The Motte will crumble under the weight of its many contradictions. Its depravity proven too much to bear for the wicked souls trapped within its walls.

While this small act of sabotage may appear to be a minor disturbance it lays the groundwork for a more virtuous future. Only afterward, comrade, can the real work of the revolution commence.

The point of the motte is to promote interesting conversation. If a troll post manages to be interesting enough to lead to a good conversation, I would say it made a contribution, even if unintentionally.

Thinking someone got the best of us by creating conversation in a place designed to create conversation is odd, a thought that could only occur to someone who thinks in-depth intellectual conversations is unfun. But in fact they are fun, and a troll running with glee about how he "really got us" by giving us a chance to do what we love is like a guy who hands out Harris/Walz fliers and thinks he's campaigning for Trump.

The motte isn't a springboard for political action, just a discussion space. If trolls think they're distracting us from "real politics" by making us talk to each other, I'm just reminded of -- and I rarely use this term -- losers like KulakRevolt, who think they're going to start a race war from their basement. We're not trying to change the world, just trying to change our minds through exposure to new ideas.

I don't like trolls because of their insincerity, but they certainly do serve a purpose sometimes. If they're pathogens, maybe we can think of them as part of the site microbiome.

The point of the motte is to promote interesting conversation. If a troll post manages to be interesting enough to lead to a good conversation, I would say it made a contribution, even if unintentionally.

This is vacuous. I could believe that trolls never lead to good conversation and I'd still have to assent to this statement!

Trolls lead to bad conversations, except quokkas here tend not to understand that. A conversation can be free of obscenities and obvious insults and still not be "good". I could go onto many forums and post "Star Wars is better than Star Trek" and get 100 responses. That would not be making a contribution.

We probably should gather a couple of responses to "what is woke", put them in a FAQ, and require that all posts about this must specifically acknowledge where they disagree with the FAQ. Otherwise, ban them.

We probably should gather a couple of responses to "what is woke", put them in a FAQ, and require that all posts about this must specvifically acknowledge where they disagree with the FAQ. Otherwise, ban them.

Hard pass. That's how you get 'do the homework, scum' style dickwaving on reddit. Nobody has to engage with OP unless they want to, and sometimes it's enlightening to rediscuss settled subjects. Individual posters may not have thought about it before.

If we were getting hundreds of trolls a day and they were obviously killing the site, it would be different. Thankfully we're not there yet and can still (mostly) afford to keep this place a quokka reservation.

We’ve had several posters trying to get people to define woke in the past couple weeks — is this just the current meme again?

Seems to be. I assume that the leftist prospiracy is working to muddy the waters on "woke" because it has become a useful cudgel for rightists, which is a pattern that has been repeated for a while now.

It seems like there’s been a large increase in trolls and insincere posters as well.

I haven't noticed this, myself, but I haven't been able to spend as much time here lately as I used to.

I figured a lot of people who previously felt extremely secure and sure of themselves have had that upturned by the election of Trump, and now feel defensive, and if they aren't social media users (or don't want to taint their feed) they need to go somewhere they can talk to the other tribe, and there aren't a lot of those left these days.

Here's a thread on the subject from last week, with a bunch of people offering their own answers to that question.

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