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This is like saying communism must be winding down, because I'm not hearing about as many shootings of kulaks and imperialist agents. No Shit. Who the fuck is left to cancel? This is what complete victory looks like. You don't need to hit people over the head because everyone agrees with you they just want you to shut up about it already. Yes, communism might be entirely antithetical to human nature and party officials, together with everyone else might cynically use the black market on the side, but no one will openly question government ownership of everything and everyone will claim to hate the capitalist parasites.
And this time around there is no Western World for dissidents to point to and say, this is a better way to live, or BBC radio to tell them about it.
The tech layoffs, outside of twitter, didn't disproportionately target DEI departments. There is some pushback against the complete destruction of liberals who joke about or reservedly oppose trans people getting exactly the privileges of women. Nearly all criticism of wokeness on both sides of the political spectrum must punch near exclusively at white woke liberals/white woke liberal women, white being the understood ecumenical slur that makes someone a legitimate target.
Every bloody media company in the country spent the 90s aggressively telling the free spirited teenagers you are talking about; "Hey aren't your parents and elders boring, repressive shits..." Who, is telling them that now? Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro?
Yes, worlds rarely end, things can go on and get eternally worse forever - Do "rest easy"!
Well, didn't it though?
Communism--revolution of the proletariat, utopia around the corner, full employment, 3-hour work week--were all the rage in the beginning of the 20th century. Even after WW2, there were still many people, many fellow travelers, championing the cause despite more and more reports about the purges and gulags coming out of Soviet Russia or Communist China. And yet, but the end of that century, communism had few open supporters. Sure, you had the Noami Kleins and other angry activists, but they were mostly selling tired tropes to angry teenagers. Also, true, today there seems to be a revival of anti-capitalist sentiment, but it seems to be mainly a side dish to the main course that is identity politics. No one is starting communes, no one is talking about seizing the means of production--except a bunch of hipsters trying to organize a "May Day" that attracts a total of, what, 100 people out a metropolis like New York that numbers over 8 million residents?
I don't know. I don't hang with teenagers. But I can make out movements of large masses of popculture and it looks like woke-filled pieces like Velma or Rings of Power aren't really getting much of a following. What appears to be gaining popularity is the dirty grungy style of the 90's. Of course, this could be a fad. Maybe it's all just about the aesthetics and not about the substance. But if it's not, we should see more stuff like Tarantino's movies, more heavy music--and an increasingly strong resistance to the morally pure elders that make up such a large chunk of millennials.
I'd rather rest easy than get carried away by the rapacious currents of dooming.
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This has been a recurring trend since the Baby Boomers, who's to say it won't happen again with Zoomers or Alphas? Sure, it probably won't be Walsh or Shapiro, but there probably will be an effective figure for any counter-woke/counter-safetyist/counter-softness wave that may come.
It could easily happen in the 50 Stalins way: the problem with your hyper-woke parents is that they aren't woke enough.
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