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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7852 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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What did the people who came up with it mean?

There's a lot of motte and bailey around it, but they meant it as a catchall term for the illiberal right, and/or factions of the right that stray too far from the (lowercase "l") liberal consensus. I think "anti-semitism" / skepticism of Israel would put you firmly in that category, given that the term's owner went on some bizarre "imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims, if ISIS set off a nuke"-esque rant about Epstein.

I think the term "woke right" has value to describe rightists who make arguments that sound like they've come straight from an ardent progressive but just with certain groups swapped. For example, people who believe in HBD when it comes to explaining the black/white achievment gap people on most metrics, but who come up with elaborate non-IQ related explanations for why Jews and east Asians do better than white people i.e. "in-group preference".

I think it was originally used in reference to "white identity politics," i.e. a perceived desire for white preferential treatment in a similar vein as affirmative action, DEI, etc.

There's something funny in a through-the-looking-glass sort of way about the way the term "woke" has evolved the past decade or so. In entering the mainstream, it became a way to describe old-school racism/sexism/bigotry/etc., just in a "progressive" direction, using a term that sounded nice, in a way that would be palatable to people who liked to think of themselves as against old-school racism/sexism/bigotry/etc. But it quickly became identified with that underlying thing it was describing, and now it's being used to describe the old old-school racism/sexism/bigotry/etc. in the traditional direction, as a way to denigrate it. Perhaps because terms like "racism," "sexism," etc. lost their edge due to constantly being used to describe completely innocuous and often virtuous things, while terms like "woke" kept being used to describe things that were traditionally called "racist," "sexist," etc.

I've quoted Shakespeare before, that a rose by any other name smells just as sweet, and shit by any other name stinks just as foul. Observing this real-time shuffling of words around meanings has been fascinating. It seems that activists who helped to popularize the term "woke" have a real, good faith belief that changing the words we use really, truly, actually changes the underlying thing in some real way - they get high off their own supply, so to speak.

I know I keep getting down voted for pointing it out but it is the plain truth that democrats are the real racists and always have been.

Contra the priestly caste's narrative of the "Southern Strategy" the Democrats and Republicans never really "switched sides" on the bigotry versus meritocracy debate, so much as the incentives of FPTP voting forced Democrats to switch tactics in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement.

I also agree that its been fascinating and amusing to watch the id-pol left (and right) be hoist by its own petard.

Grill-pilled normie: so you believe that a person's racial background is the most important thing to consider when evaluating thier past behavior and future prospects, and you want to abrogate portions of the US Constitution and civic canon to enable a system of racial preferences/spoils.

Id-pol Leftist: i might quibble with some of the wording but yes.

Grill-pilled normie: Isn't that kind of racist?

Id-pol Leftist: No, it is Woke. The so-called "colorblind" meritocracy must be destroyed if justice is to prevail.

Grill-pilled normie: so judging people by the color of thier skin instead of the content of thier character is "woke".

Id-pol Leftist: now you're getting it. The concept of "character" is just some bullshit invented by old dead white men as a means of oppressing women, free thinkers, and members of the LGTBQ+ community where as race is based in SCIENCE.

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