Left-Wing Does NOT Mean Woke - Susan Neiman
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- Опубликовано: 30 май 2024
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- VIDEO NOTES
Susan Neiman is an American moral philosopher, cultural commentator, and essayist. She is the author of "Left is Not Woke", available here (affiliate link): amzn.to/3uDabTz
- TIMESTAMPS
0:00 What does it mean to be woke?
11:44 If woke isn’t left, what is it?
16:10 Where does woke go wrong?
21:20 Reducing identity to race and sex
31:12 What about class?
44.28 When we need to look through the lens of race or sex
46:55 Policing language
48:41 How to fix the left
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And for the Americans watching, 'liberal' does not mean Left.
Right you are! As our American interviewee points out.
Soo you aren't going to further explain?
@@Noise_floorxx in brief, the political spectrum is far wider than the US', meaning that the term 'liberal' is generally inferred to be centrist in the broader international spectrum, as compared to the rather insular and restricted US spectrum. The US use of the term does not equate to the generic Left, so the liberal-conservative axiom is rarely, if ever, applied outside the US. Given the mainstream US Overton range is comfortably on the right of the international spectrum, this fails to include, for example, classical liberalism as a tenet within free markets, or pluralist ideals espousing a range of competing views to arrive at a consensus.
@@Noise_floorxx the US is a two-party system, which effectively reduces the spectrum of political ideas to a polarity. In Europe the spectrum is much wider.
None of these terms mean anything.
The camera setup makes it seems like Alex is a giant.
He is.
I wish he could learn how to smile.
I don't know what it is about radical progressives, but they always seem to have the weirdest camera setup
An intellectual giant? A Titan among plebs.
No she's the one looking tiny AF 😂
Empty performative social justice is an issue, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue actual social justice.
We need to establish which social injustices actually exist first.
And after we establish which social injustices actually exist first, we need to establish what is causing them. Then we need to determine what approaches would actually target those root causes.
That's what separates you from the 'woke'
@@RaveyDavey we have done that
@@RaveyDavey Social justice is an inherently Orwellian term like "people's republic" or the other numerous socialist bullshit jargon they use to justify their opposition to actual justice and actual liberty, and actual democracy. Social justice is just a mandate for tyranny of the majority, It started with Marx's call for the dictatorship of the proletariat, leading to the Kulak's purges, the Cambodian Genocide, the famines in Ukraine, China, etc, etc, and no amount of mental gymnastics will make "social justice" anything but the justification of more group driven tyranny over the individual, as that's the point, to prioritize groups, the "social" over individual rights. And you cannot remove the rights of the atom that forms the group, and expect the group to be liberated, you can only expect tyranny, it's that simple.
Alex: "Susan Neiman, welcome to Within Reason."
Susan: "Glad to be down here."
👁👄👁
😂😂😂😂
Hilarious 😂
alex is down the rabbit hole for most of the utube viewers
😂😂😂
Your podcasts are quickly becoming the highlight of my week. Thank you Alex!
Same here 😂
Maybe you need a hobby
There is a word I learned in my university. It's called the empty signifier or floating signifier. Basically what is "christianity"? What is the "left"? What is the "right"? What is "wokeism"? Or for an popular example: what makes a sandwich? Ask different people and you get slightly different answers, sometimes completly different answers. It's like the term doesn't mean anything by itself, but is associated with other words which give it "power". When it comes to a group of people like "the left" or "the right" or "the woke", people sometimes forget that these groups by itself can not be a single actor, but instead constist of many different actors with many different beliefs which sometimes contradict each other. So you cannot just say "the woke wants this" or "the woke wants that". But in exchange you also can't say "christianity does this" or "christianity does that" (I am oversimplifying, so pardon me if I got something a little bit wrong)
Yes, Stuart Hall can help us in this regard.
'Woke' is the ethos of your opponent.😉
This might be true for the way these terms are used in everyday conversation but left and right for example have real definitions.
I’d half disagree on applying it to organised religions. Organised religions typically have a clear rule set or some holy text which people then cherry pick from based on their own beliefs, but we can still say said people are aligning them self with an ideology that promotes that view so they must support it or be indifferent on it or ignorant.
@@finleymorris04 the people in these religions enforce certain rules, not the religion by itself. Where do these rules came from, why do the people in there enforce these rules, what are these rules, again the answer will be different even in the religion. There are some similarities, yes, but compare a catholic in europe and a catholic in india and you get different way of lifes even if both are catholic. Many of these groups also habe rules based on things outside the bible, like experience or sources of other texts or how they interpret certain texts
It seems that she is imposing certain restrictions on her own speech in order to avoid being associated with the right-wing strain of anti-wokeism, but these restrictions often seem to make it difficult for her to clearly articulate her thoughts.
She seems to base all her judgements on the idea that there should be an ideal of universal justice instead of just group-struggles.
So she criticises wokeism essentially as devoid of values and just focused on portraying oneself as a victim.
Which is exactly the same as the right-wing critique.
It's hard that know if the appeal to universal justice makes any difference regarding her place on the political spectrum, because she really doesn't articulate it.
Seems like she belongs to a friend group of people who view right leaning people as trash and she's scared she'll be associated with the right leaning folk but she's making the same arguments ultimately lol.@@andreab380
Everyone hates you ppl, not just the right. Don’t flatter yourself.
Well who's fault is that? The people who want to scream and shout about how all anti-wokism is right wing and evil.
@@andreab380because the right wing critique is correct. Wokism is victim worship. Now, the right has its own brand of victim worship called Christian persecution.
Now, there is a more extreme form of right wing nutjobbery that just thinks ALL progressive values are woke, and that's certainly false, but also a minority of opinion too.
But woke isn't devoid of values. They have neomarxist values, they value emotion and safety and justice, but ONLY for specific groups.
Woke is just a common buzzword used solely in the Western culture war.
I only heard it being used in US politics and then it spread to Canada, The UK, Australia and other anglicised nations. Further it spread to nations like Germany and Argentina. I'm not really sure if it is used elsewhere however.
There is no culture war, it's an illusion of media and consumerism. Most people have pretty similar ideologies within the same nation however all we see online is the radicalised minorities which will inevitably radicalize the majority.
@@Betweoxwitegan The culture war is mostly manufactured I agree since it prevents people from talking about important material issues. It's always been a thing but it's been ramped up in the algorithm based social media dominated age we live in today
It is what we coloquially denominate as "unnecessary yapping"
Exactly. I haven't watched the podcast, but admittedly, the very premise of it I find irritating - as though the charge of being "woke" should be taken seriously, as though it's anything more than culture war nonsense.
And only by the right
I don’t think she answered most of Alex’s questions
I was thinking the same thing the whole time! She said a lot of words, but I couldnt really glean anything from her message? Maybe if I watch it again, I'll get something out of it
Then you were watching with too narrow expectations on what the answers could be. The problem was more that Alex didn't get her points. This was most obvious when he doubled down on asking for a definition of "woke" after she explained multiple aspects of why that doesn't make sense.
@@jake10373 Sigh... Maybe you should indeed watch it again, because her message was pretty clear to me, or I wouldn't have watched all of it. (And for clarity, I don't say that because I agree with her on everything, in fact there were some ideas in the second half which I would have queried further than Alex did, and in different directions than he did.)
@@Daneelro I watched this several days ago, and I have come around to the fact that her inability to define wokeness is a failure on the part of her analysis. If you're going to inveigh against something, you have to be able to say what it is. It's not enough to say "I know it when I see it."
Just because something is incoherent or even self-contradictory does not mean that it cannot be defined. Certainly this is true of any significant social movement. Why not simply use a definition provided within the movement? This would be standard practice.
If you asked me to define Christianity or libertarianism, it would not be enough for me to say that you can't define these things because they are inconsistent and illogical. That's just doubling down on criticism without answering a necessary question. I would be rightly criticized for saying this within a supposedly academic analysis.
Admittedly, it's not always _easy_ to define something rigorously. But if you need to take a few chapters to do it, take a few chapters. In the end, if you can't define what you're talking about, then what are you even talking about?
Typically of Leftists, when you don't know how to address something make it difficult and complicated to understand.
Color blindness is a metaphor for not letting skin tone be a factor and how you deal with another human being.
She’s aware of that. I assume she was just insinuating to encourage the idea of being ‘colour-blind’ can sometimes lead people to fail to acknowledge the differences of experience in our society which are influenced by race.
@@ballisticfish1212 she mocks the hyper literal meaning of color blindness. Even when people say " I don't see color" Even if they don't realize it, they aren't being literal. They are usually confused about why you don't understand them.
Yeah but apparently not judging someone on skin color is racist nowadays.
@@ballisticfish1212do you even realize how racist that is? Why would I assume someone has a certain set of experiences based on their race? That's literally racism. Wokeness is racism. It's racism as a virus trying to evolve and find a survival strategy by hiding behind language of tolerance. Smh
@@JustinSwellno one has ever meant it literally. Although I often will realize minutes into talking with someone, what their race is and consciously have the thought about their race, and notice that its the first time ive thought about it. And it disappoints me because I know that thought has been conditioned into me by leftist extremists to try and make me feel sorry for them based on their appearance.
There's a difference between recalling someone's skin color as a matter if how to identify them visually, and consciously thinking about their race and the stereotypes about how they're oppressed and whatever. I would prefer to not think about people like that and just think about them as people.
Hi Alex, I appreciate you engaging with this topic but I'm a little shocked at this interview.
I feel Susan made some wild claims here about Woke being akin to right-wing, reactionary thought and that it espouses "the only people you can have genuine connections to are members of your own tribe" which went unchallenged. When pushed to define Woke you let slide her responses that the "concept is incoherent, it can't be defined" and that it's "a total confusion between emotion and reasoning" which seem incredibly dismissive and dodge defining one of the key terms in her book. Susan's anecdote of responding to German journalists "you can find them in any newspaper any day, this is boring to list them" suggests there is an existing discourse regarding her unclear definitions and lack of examples.
The definitions of left-wing and liberalism at the start also seem muddled, where she often appears to use the terms interchangeably. If I can follow her thought process then Susan defines the collective left and liberalism as championing 'Universalism, Justice and Progress' while only socialists (like her) also include social rights as a basic human right. To me, these both sound like shades of liberalism if you're not exploring the social ownership of production to some degree. Her use of terms like the 'real' left also left me perplexed.
The questioning and clarifications were better in the second half where class was discussed but Susan still dropped some real clangers which went unexamined. Comments like Woke promoting "a deep distrust or even a rejection of the idea of progress no matter how it's played" and that it encourages us to "deny common sense in ways we can reliably measure" make me wonder how much her and Jordan Peterson would get along if put in a room together.
I hope this critique is taken in good faith and not an expectation of perfection. I was just taken aback by the lack of push back on what I perceived as some pretty contentious ideas (on what is potentially quite an interesting topic). Thanks for all the engaging content, keep up the great work in future!
All great points that I wanted to get across myself. This interview overall was a rare L from Alex. The interviewee couldn't even define the topics she's claiming to have deep knowledge of and her arguments, which largely went unchallenged by Alex, were almost totally incoherent
Iron law of woke projection.
Meta woke projection.
I am not woke but what are you.
I felt somthing was off, and you've articulated that! Thankyou
I agree that she was being quite vague about the definition of the left and being woke.
But it seems to me that people who really believe in woke ideology are very tribalist since anyone who disagrees with them is cast out and shunned for having a different opinion. And it's also quite clear to me that common sense is put aside at times in the name of equality and justice.
Also just randomly name dropping Peterson doesn't mean anything, since he is also right about a few things.
"I feel Susan made some wild claims here about Woke being akin to right-wing, reactionary thought and that it espouses "the only people you can have genuine connections to are members of your own tribe" which went unchallenged." - It is an identitarian concept ('woke') concept that people need role models from their own tribe, need representation from their own tribe, and people from outside their tribe will never understand the experience of being one of the tribe. Identitarianism contains group ideologies that identify personal characteristics in order to elevate them compared to bigots who denigrate them. People should realize there are two sides to this coin and sometimes the coin can unintentionally flip.
The case is not that we must never talk about minority identities at all. It's that identity has been crazily over-emphasized in left discourse, at the expense of class, and it's time to return to class, and class analyses.
It's not even "left" discourse. More the wishy-washy surface-level media and centre-left or more often liberal political discourse. But the real problem is not what's happening on the left, not even what's happening among liberals, but what right-wingers say about it. The right doesn't want to talk about class _or_ minority identities, and fights both by caricaturing talk about minority identities. There _is_ lots of problematic talk about identity especially among US liberals, but right-wing propaganda distorts and hyper-magnifies it.
The experiences of minority identities are essential context to modern-day issues of class. "The right" has effectively lumped all class issues that intersect with minority identities into their "wokeism" scare and when pressed on class issues, they respond by becoming more vocal and more loud about identity issues.
Nobody was "cancelling Dr. Seuss" or "transing kids" or "teaching kids sexually explicit LGBTQ materials" or "promoting Critical Race Theory in public schools". These are all fake things they created for their "woke" bucket in order to over-emphasize identity to keep the conversation there.
I'd say the left should not fall for this, ignore it, and continue stressing the class issues that people on all sides of the political spectrum can recognize and be swayed by, but because "right" discourse is focusing in these places, the "left" HAS TO fight against the "right"'s book bans, anti-trans-healthcare legislation, and shifting of educational resources out of public schools, because these are all hurting real people.
@@Daneelro As more of a centrist, I observe that most of what you accuse "the right" of, actually applies just as much, if not more, to the left.
And this is a big problem. An inability to recognize glaring flaws in one's chosen "team" it seems
But an even bigger issue I see, is censorship. The overwhelming majority of the information we receive these days is so heavily biased and manipulated, and we *are not allowed* to discuss these topics fully and openly.
Any *real* attempt to do so here, and our comments will simply disappear.
The inability to share ideas and information openly, only results in harmful echo chambers, and the resentment of the unheard.
@@Daneelro As a person who is in no way right wing myself, I'd say that's a gross and ignorant mischaracterization. Most people on the right are _dying_ to talk about class identity at this point; there's just a great deal of centre-left propaganda about what the right is like. Having spent time in rooms with both groups of people, it's actually amazing how well they understand you, and how poorly you understand them.
The right will take the mantle of class politics, no need to stress about whether or not the left will champion it. We already see this transformation in the American right, with the populist right dropping fiscally conservative rhetoric outside of the Ukraine war
An excellent conversation. I particularly admire Alex's ability to engage the guest with questions that challenge some of her ideas. Too often on RUclips sites the hosts either agree with guests or just argue by denial.
To be honest, my impression was that Alex's challenges often came from Susan's arguments going over his head, but Susan was too polite to point that out explicitly.
@@DaneelroWith respect, there weren't any actual arguments to go over his head. There were just unqualified statements she made that went unchallenged by Alex
1:13 "I'm not a creature of the right, I'm a socialist and I refuse to talk to right-wingers."
4:49 "The view that you can only have genuine connections with your own tribe is a very right-wing thought."
🤣😂
Great spot. She's very confused about what left wing and right wing is.
@@MrMantis0I think she's just a textbook example of "whoever knows only their side of an argument knows little of that". "Woke" was created by leftists. I was there and I was one of those who proudly labelled themselves that way. I've shifted a bit to the centre now, but I'm still there. And I do use the term to separate myself from reactionary leftists like this woman who seen to want every brand of diversity except intellectual.
Lmao
Right wingers poison the well of intellectualism with cultural distractions. They are too stupid to argue with, or devious.
I feel Alex could have challenged or questioned her a bit more in this. She brought up some pretty questionable points
Can you please elaborate on which points you found questionable? I feel that if they were not featured in the video itself it would be great to have them referenced in the comments
@@arrownibent5980 I’d have to go over and watch it again to articulate them well sorry, I think some other comments have pretty much summed up my points well though.
I also felt a lot of questionable moments. More specifically I got the impression that she is far more "right" or dismissive of prejudice than she claims but has adopted a clever framework to disguise it. I wouldn't, as you also didn't, be able to point to anything specific without a relisten, but this was a strong impression. I kept asking myself, "Why don't I like this speaker?"
Would anyone else like to chime in if they got a similar impression? Maybe I just found her delivery or approach to the issues off putting?
@@nathanielholzgrafe5274 I don't think Professor Nieman is right wing. I think it is possible to hold differing views while being on the left. And I recognise her intuitions as being rooted in a much longer history of left politics. Nonetheless, I can try and add my own two cents about what you are perhaps feeling.
I think Nieman is correct when she diagnoses a certain set of corrosive/unproductive themes/problems that endlessly repeat themselves within a certain surface-level (rad-lib) "woke" politics (that we tend to experience on an everyday basis). But I think she relies too heavily on outright "common-sense" surface dismissals (simply implying that people are "overly" concerned with race and sex, or that they are anti-progress tout court) rather than being able to herself pinpoint how to counter their actual arguments/criticisms in a substantial theoretical manner. She basically just claims that she "doesn't want" herself (or others) to be reduced to certain labels, and/or, just assumes "of course there has been 'progress'... so they must be talking nonsense". She claims that there is nothing wrong with universalism (almost as if that is just a simple straight forward positivist category in the natural world) and not a political-theoretical project. And those responses are not accurate enough rebuttals... as any "woke" person who has given any proper theoretical thought at all to these issues... believes them to be a little more complicated that that. So, if this was a genuine attempt to address and persuade "woke" subjects... they would not even recognise her descriptions of what they are doing... and would therefore reject her premises before any conversation even begins.
By lumping everyone who might possibly intersect in some way around these concerns... and mushing them together with every RUclips video and meme of a "woke" lib you've ever seen... as if they are all one-dimensional, identity and difference obsessed hysterics... she tends to unconsciously sound like certain more conservative (or liberal-conservative) anti-woke figures (perhaps like a Dawkins or someone like that)... who simply imply that everyone they disagree with doesn't understand science, the enlightenment, reason and the world as well as they do... and that that is THE major problem with the world. I think perhaps she addresses these issues much more successfully in her book. She is an accomplished philosopher after all. But in this interview they just came across a bit shallow and dismissive. Perhaps, as the OP commenter touched upon, this was Alex's fault on this occasion for not pushing back harder.
For many nowaydays not being hypocrite is valued more than actually trying to be a good person for others
You're advocating hypocrisy? The woke will suit you well then.
Hypocrites tend to be bad people so what do you mean?
@@willjapheth23789 Saying someone is hypocrite is hypocrite. You are perfect?
@MarkCornelissen lol the "are you perfect line", classic. You going to tell me all sin is worthy of death too? Normal people understand some acts are worse and some acts are done more frequently. If someone is blatantly hypothetical and refusing to even attempt to live in line with their proclaimed values, a person has every right to not trust such a person. People don't even have to think about it. We just know such people are not to be trusted.
@@willjapheth23789 Well, in reality most people who are portrait as hypocrite actually really try to do the good they believe in, but also sometimes also cross that line because they are not perfect. Their proclaimed values as you phrase it are often an ideal image or utopia. For example, somebody fights for reducing CO2 and takes also once the airplane. In my view, the actual bad people are the once portraying their opponent as hypocrites, because they do so to comfort their conscience. In essence it is: he does it also sometimes, so I can do it as much as I want. Within the argument the person also distracts by moving from the content to this ad hominem. A smoker telling smoking is bad, is still telling the truth. So, while making this argument, hypocrites may actually be trusted :).
Maybe this was just over my head, but when you start a conversation by refusing to define the word that it's going to revolve around, I'm not going to get much out of the conversation. The parts that I did understand just seemed like overly confusing ways to explain very simple ideas. I tried, but I took nothing away. The term hasn't been around that long in it's current sense and has a different definition to different people. I wouldn't engage in a personal conversation with anyone about a buzzword until they explained to me exactly what they meant by that, otherwise we are just talking past each other.
I think one valuable thing as a definition I got from it and it might help you in thinking about it was; Woke could be labeled as a passive victimization from immutable traits out of your control (sex, ethnicity) where the anti-woke would not label identity traits like Liverpool fan, janitor and musician as victimhood due to the fact that these are chosen by yourself, in a way.
Woke is victimhood because you can't or are unwilling to change. Anti-woke is "controlling" your identity.
That being said, I am sympathetic to the woke culture because of some small guilty feeling of being super-lucky in so many things in life. It's a mindset but appreciation and gratitude helps in assessing one's own situation and in comparison to other people's lived experiences, I might just have won the lottery - straight, white, tall, man, have a child, in a relationship, never been out of work, never been really ill and I mostly like myself.
@@justanothernick3984so “woke” is “acknowledging that discrimination exists”?
Her WHOLE POINT is to define left ideas without using “woke” at all. She is saying “I do not need to define wokeism to define left ideas” that is the whole argument (in my opinion)
@@comradequestion4206
Basically yes but that seems to mean to some that there needs to be a discriminatory force and that "you" may be a part of that. And people don't want to admit to such things because the "I" is a "good person" and has certainly done nothing wrong.
We can twist this into pretzels and interpret it from many ways.
@@anainesgonzalez8868 But she failed, woke is now used in an ironic sense, like calling someone woke means they are in deep sleep and about as awake as a stone brick.
She is a good example of that.
I think we need more precise language than 'woke'. To many of the broader left, 'woke' is simply someone who not racist/sexist etc, or just a made up culture war term to denigrate the left generally.
Right now there's a whole raft of related issues on the progressive left which have all fallen under the umbrella of 'woke'. Namely, a heavy focus on immutable group identities (particularly oppressor/oppressed dynamics), deep intolerance of opposing viewpoints and generally a rejection of liberal principles in the name of equity. What are the core principles or beliefs that these behaviours are predicated on? I think the oppressor/oppressed dynamics are key to this. Once you see the world fundamentally as a battle between oppressing and oppressed groups, you can feel justified in breaking liberal norms that govern civil discourse as well as tarring people with their group identities. I think this results in much of the unpleasantness seen from the left.
There is a place for looking *carefully* at inequity across groups, we should not turn away from compelling evidence of bigotry. However, it should be balanced with a view for individual fairness and rights on one hand, and logic, evidence and reason on the other- which is definitely not what happens today.
Exactly, thank you. Both the left and the right are talking past each other on this issue, the divide has never been bigger and it permeates everywhere. In the eyes of the cultural marxist left (which is what woke is), you're either on their side, or all of the evil things (racist, homophobe, transphobe, etc.). I.E If you're not "woke" you're not left.
That is precisely the issue most people who are on the left but are not cultural marxists have with this, but they are ignored and labeled as right wing.
Any attempts to critique the identity politics and illiberal rhetoric of the woke left are met with deflecting and gaslighting and refusing to actually listen to any opposing viewpoints. It doesn't matter whether these opinions come from a gay center right media personality like Brad, or if they come from someone like Michael Knowles, as far as the woke left is concerned, they are the same thing. Yet they couldn't be farther from each other.
I thought we had a word for someone who is not racist/sexist etc. It's called "decent".
@@vindisl908pretty sure decent is a little more general than that in english
I think that's why she labels it "incoherent". In theory it's about challenging oppressive power dynamics, but in practice it often devolves into identity-based tribalism, something that has traditionally been critiqued by the Left as reactionary.
The identity centred approach to confronting oppression undermines solidarity among the Left, as each group needs their own villain, or oppressor. i.e. the Black are oppressed by the White; the Women are oppressed by the Men; the LGBTQI+ are oppressed by the Straights; the Trans are oppressed by the Cis; the Disabled are oppressed by the Able.
When combined with a crude concept of intersectionality, you get the "Oppression Olympics", where your right to be heard and the validity of your experience depend on how many oppressed identities you can claim. When people ask, "why is everyone suddenly Queer (a conveniently vague term requiring little commitment), Trans/Non-Binary and Disabled these days?", they are, perhaps unknowingly, talking about the perverse incentive that now exists to try and claim as many of these oppressed identities as possible.
The splitting of "the oppressed" into separate groups, with their own oppressors and unique experiences of oppression, excludes the idea that there is an overarching framework of oppression that is broadly applied to the majority of people, in different ways, which has been a traditionally core belief of the Left. It also places Cis, Het, White, Men into the role of universal villain (or at the very least commands them to be silent), which is why so many of them now consider the Left hostile, pushing them into the welcoming arms of the Right.
The exclusion, rejection, or sidelining of this traditionally core belief (which is based on the more inclusive concept of class oppression), along with the intense tribalism that sometimes occurs, underpins the, I think valid, argument that Left and "Woke" are not the same thing, even if they have similar aims.
@@Pushing_Pixels I agree with a lot of that. It's definitely valid (and vitally important) to not equate left and woke.
That said 'the left' is another amorphous term which everyone has a different definition of. In my view left and right are really no more than tribes that pull together a lot of loosely linked issues, hence their character constantly morphs as different issues and conditions come to the fore.
I would personally still consider myself on the left even though I strongly dislike wokism. The left wing tradition is definitely not for throwing out, but I don't think much of value can be salvaged from wokism. I hope in the future it will just be seen as a period where people went a bit mad.
I really enjoyed this discussion it helped reinforce the internal instincts I have and gave them the descriptive words to define them. Thank you !
I am politically liberal, but I can't say that I have a fear of the right and how they might come at me in a conversation. I think the right has some valid points, although even if valid, I do not necessarily agree with them. I think "woke" is a term for an anti-racism viewpoint that has gone beyond what anti-racism was just a few years ago. It could perhaps be described as not just anti-racism, but pro-black or pro-minority.
Yes, but it's also anti-white. There are lots of people in the West with a rebellious temper who have an urge to revolt against their fathers and bring down tradition and the dominant order.
What a privilege not to have to worry about white nationalists, some of us need to keep an eye on them.
@Redactedlllllllllllll As a liberal as well as a humanitarian, I am a person who has concerns for all. I do indeed keep my eye on white nationalists, the antisemitic, anti-Muslim, the discrimination against Asians, and many more.
They managed to redifine racism to include white people exclusively.
The fear of right wing backlash in conversations is definitely not unfounded, though, especially considering the historical and ongoing violence, discrimination, and marginalization faced by marginalized communities at the hands of right wing ideologies. Engaging in dialogue with the right can be challenging and potentially dangerous, particularly for those who are already vulnerable to systemic oppression. The term "woke" has indeed evolved over the years, expanding from a general awareness of social injustices to a more proactive stance in dismantling systems of oppression, particularly racism. However, labeling it as merely "pro-black" or "pro-minority" overlooks its broader goals of challenging systemic inequalities and advocating for social justice for all marginalized communities, including but not limited to Black and minority groups. While it's commendable to recognize that the right may have some valid points, it's crucial to critically evaluate those points within the context of larger social, economic, and historical systems. Often, what may seem valid on the surface can be deeply rooted in oppressive structures or perpetuate inequalities. Therefore, a nuanced analysis is necessary rather than accepting these points at face value.
Her thought align so much with mine! Great interview
That's not a good thing lol😅
@@albertcastro3500 Why not?
@@albertcastro3500yes why not? Whether you fully agree with her or not, her message is one of cooperation and careful consideration of what to fight for. It’s an overall positive message.
@@jay.u lol it's not cooperation if u think the other side is always bad and evil.
@@albertcastro3500 and nobody ever said that, she’s not on “the other side”
I think it would only be fair to have someone on who is steep in woke ideology to explain their perspectives as opposed to everyone else speaking on their behalf.
The thing is those people don't exist because "woke ideology" does not mean anything.
Well, maybe somewhat helpful. I think it'd just be like asking a Christian to define what qualifies someone as being a Christian. Most every Christian would have a different answer. Seems like it'd just devolve into a no true scottsmen fallacy. Still, one could probably pull some "woke" commonalities and generalizations from it.
Woke isn't an ideology and there aren't woke idealogues. Woke is a pejorative term and shouldn't be properly entertained.
I mean it ll be kinda hard to find that person, they all just preach and yell,most wont even accept to debate.They are pure emotion so its hard to have a serious conversation.
From what I have noticed people who are deep in woke ideology aren't the type to have an open discussion and talk about it calmly for an hour.
I am an atheist, a leftist, a supporter of woke ideas (standing up for minorities, etc.), a determinist, and a socialist. And I live in America. I am screwed. 🤣
You and I both. High-five!
What do you mean by leftist? To me, wokeness isn't standing up for minorities. It's engaging in identitarian politics. Why are you a determinist? Do you accept that modern physics doesn't support determinism? And why are you a socialist? Why support an economic system that has never been proven to work but has failed multiple times?
Compatibalism is superior.
So for example regards minorities is been few in number a virtue in itself?
@@Betweoxwitegan
Compatibilism is just an attempt to hold onto regressive notions of justice and retribution given that libertarian free will can no longer be supported.
Excellent interview, gave me a lot to consider. Thanks so much!
I don't know if wokeness is an inherently incoherent concept, but it certainly was in this chat lol
this is very interesting to me as someone who got into politics first through feminism, then Blm and lgbtq rights. Identity politics is very important to me as someone with several marginalized identities in the US, but I never been a fan of cancel culture or being reduced to my identities either and I do think class is often left out in discussions regarding intersectional analyses.
edit:
almost finished the video and it seems she doesn't have an in depth understanding of "identity politics" she says she understands there's real danger regarding discrimination and prejudice but why would someone participate in essentially the oppression Olympics. Which I agree, oppression Olympics and "political correctness" isn't helpful but that's not what the "identity" politics are all about, maybe on twitter and tumblr sure, but in the US often deals with tangible laws and realities that arent just scoring "victim points." Like the 13th Amendment and the impact on the prison system. It's not just that identity can be political but white supremacy is political.
But I also subscribe more to the belief rather than tribalism (which ill admit sometimes woke leads to) I believe all of us, oppressed and oppressor are interconnected, all oppressions are interrelated and all needs liberation. Idk, trying my best to understand what she's saying.
It's left out in the media, the conversation is framed in the media, and the powers that be are the ones who suppress conversation around class, as that is the beginnings of marxism.
I hope you don't claim you are left wing. As identity politics has absolutely no place in socialist ideology
@belfastbhoy5679 class and identity are inextricably linked in our current society.
@Doot7C what society are you referring to? Im from Ireland, and in no way are class and identity linked. This is another example of a completely anti left ideal that not only doesn't promote equality, but the opposite, it promotes division.
If class is inextricably linked to identity, it would mean that we could automatically tell what class someone belongs to solely based on gender, race, or sexual orientation, which is an absolute absurd lie, unless you're unfortunate enough to live under an apartheid regime or something equally despotic.
All in, regardless of how moronic your theory is, it still does not counter my point, in any way, that identity politics is the absolute ANTHESIS of left wing ideology, which places the collective over the individual or different subsets of people.
Did you not watch the video you're commenting on? Where the lady speaking literally says herself, that subscribing to this notion of better conditions for your 'tribe' with no broader perspective outside of that, is a right wing idea? That is exactly what identity politics does.
You really think, for example, that telling poor American white people that they have 'privilege' and poor American black people that their poverty is due to systemic racism, is in any way beneficial to either race? You realise that promoting socialist ideals to the working class will benefit that whole class? How on earth can dividing people of the same class based on the colour of their skin, in any way, be a socialist proposition?
I hope you don't also claim you are left wing, as you also, don't have a clue what you're talking about.
@@belfastbhoy5679I’d say your tone is very divisive and also part of problem of the left eating each other up for idealogical purity as this video mentions. I would say I’m left of liberal, cause as I learn more about liberalism the less aligned I am with it. cause they often seem to think that tokenism will solve our marginalization and it’s really just pathetic. Your comments also expose you have no understanding of what systemic racism in the US has done not only to black people but poor whites. Or how racism has been weaponized in the US to prevent socialist policies or to demonize welfare for example, and that harms white people as well, if they understood that we wouldn’t have to be divided, our oppressions are connected. My perspective is informed BIPOC women intellectuals who described themselves as leftists and communists and radical Buddhist dharma which offers the lens of interconnection and that the dismantling of all oppressions and prejudices is necessary for collective awakening and liberation.
If that means I don’t belong with y’all, that’s fine, I don’t really care for ideological purity, I’m just learning and evolving as I go. Alls I know is that I’m poor, my family farm-working class and my dad was a refugee and I grew up in poor bipoc neighborhood with a highway that quite literally segregated us from the richer white community built on a destroyed black neighborhood. So that also informs my perspective so you can call it whatever you like, Idc
Why such a softball interview? She dismisses 'wokism' as an incoherent concept while using said word in her book title. I wish you had pushed harder for her to answer your insightful questions.
It’s an insult used by those that fear and/or hate privilege towards marginalised peoples. Be them none white skinned, none heterosexual, none binary sex etc.
It’s sad that these people have a bee in their bonnet about these people. Much of it is religious in origin. An attack on none traditional ways to live your life. As if it’s an attack on their way of life.
Well if your way of life can only exist if everyone else has to support and follow it then you are a sad individual
@@kentonianNo thats like evangelicals explaining The reason people leave christianity is because they want to sin. Thats what people having critical theory ideas would like to think.
And drop the "them non white skinned". You sound like something you are surely very much against.
Woke takes a look at inequity seems its Bad and then explains it by The same thing every single time. Group X does things consciously or subconsiciously which causes The inequity between X and Y. No consideration on cultural differences or anything else. And The worst part is that only thing that matters is that those numbers on paper are equal. So we are going to just trump meritocracy and introduce racial quotas like this is 1950s.
Its a dogmatic attempt to see the world that then suggest policies based on that low resolution Image.
@@SonOfMorning what “cultural factors” explain the difference in “merit” between the sentencing of a white man for a crime and the 20% longer sentencing of a black man?
This is a convenient stance to take when there is some choice involved in the part of the marginalized group, like what jobs certain races/sexes etc pursue. You can hand wave this away just say it’s a difference in culture.
But that does not explain a ton of other differences. Why do the exact same resumes when they feature a traditionally black sounding name get fewer call backs than the exact same resume with a traditionally white sounding name?
You can’t hand wave these examples when “culture” is not a relevant variable.
Being non woke is just a buzzword for being insensitive towards a particular group. The reason.its used, is because one doesn't have to label themselves, you u dont have to say that youre a racist or a homophobe or whatever your flavour of bigotry is, you just have to complain about the wokes. Gay conservatives will call pro trans people woke. Black conservatives will call pro gay people woke. White conservatives will call people who care about black concerns woke. They all think that they are talking about the same thing, but it only really helps the middle, the largest group in the spectrum gain power. Also, there's seemingly no stopping it imo, it's just a push to the extreme. Eventually, people who think women should have rights may also be seen as woke.
"She dismisses 'wokism' as an incoherent concept"
It is...
...and that idea is what the book is about.
I'm a little confused why she chose to use the word 'woke' in the title of her book if she considers it an incoherent term. If that's the case, why not call it "Left Is Not Cjzxhebsqif"?
Because woke despite its incoherence is in fact a word used to characterize her position
Lmao
@@israelgulley9104 Are you calling the term incoherent, or are you calling the position incoherent?
@@SquishypuffDave I’m granting the fact that the word is incoherent for sake of argument. My personal opinion on the word is irrelevant
@@israelgulley9104 Gotcha, so if I understand you: people have applied that label to her, and she rejects the label even though she considers it to have no real definition? So to say "Left Is Not Woke" is to reject an insult rather than making a descriptive statement? (Trying to steelman here, so help me out if I'm off-track.)
My issue with this is that she goes on to give her own definition of the term even while protesting that it's undefinable. It seems like she herself is conflating the incoherence of the term with the incoherence of the position, which made her conversation with Alex less productive than it ought to have been.
Interesting discussion. Thanks for doing this podcast & introducing Susan Neiman's work.
This is a great conversation. Thanks Alex! This is why I'm a patron. 🖖
Alex, you like Trocki. I should know, I have his book in my home. "The revolution betrayed". It is a little red book with words which have to small of a font.
Thank you for this conversation, Alex. I wish you would challenge Susan one step away from defining abstract concepts towards the current culture war issues.
I understand her intention not to do interviews with 'blatently' right wring media, but what a mistake. She could go on those and intentionally lean more deeply into her issues with them, not giving them the yummy sound bites they need but reaching out to the people listening who actually are needing to hear her because they are not simply hypnotized to that particular host.
I think the big assumption here is that rightwing content channels are actually going to be charitable and honest in how they argue against their left wing guest.
She is not doing it because her ideas would not survive actual critique.
Yea, when I heard this it rubbed me the wrong way. If these right wing people are reaching out to someone clearly left wing, that strikes me as a good thing. People should seek to expose themselves to ideas that challenge them.
@@epsteindidntkillhimself69 Good username. And true, the more you think about the things she said, the less sense they make, kind of like with religion.
@@haydencarn8737She gave her reasoning for this. I completely believe her that she believes she's doing the right thing for fear of accidently bolstering right wing thought. I don't agree with her, but this is a rather popular left wing opinion. Why not take people at their word instead of coming up with conspiracies?
5:22 start of her definition of left: 1 first the belief that you can have deep connections to everyone, not just members of one s own tribe, i.e. universalism leading to human rights, 2 second the belief that it is possible to distinguish justice and power, instead of seeing power underlying everything like ideologically following evolutionary psychology says your genes are trying to multiply, 3 third the belief that it is possible to make progress, instead of believing in a golden age we have fallen from, 4 fourth the belief that social rights are genuine human rights and are every bit as important as political rights, e.g. housing etc. (That is her distinctions between left and liberal).
Deep connection to anyone who can be defined as a victim*
You summed it up perfectly. All these are... beliefs.
So shes a white supremacist
Don't forget being 100% racist. You cannot be a leftist without judging people by skin color first and foremost.
i think people forget the origin of the term. woke as it’s used in this discussion is the parody of the term as used by right wing woke bashers. when erykah badu popularized it, she was calling on her listeners to be aware of dominant paradigms and to challenge them. that’s a left wing approach to the world and its systems of power. the idea is left wing in the way neiman defined left wing. but it’s been appropriated and perverted to mean very narrow identity politics. they are two completely different ideas. the word is beyond reclaiming at this point, but i do wish left wing critics of identity politics would better acknowledge where this idea came from in black american culture and why that origin is important
Thaannnnk You!!!!!
it's like right wingers thinking they can define "capitalism" when the word wasn't theirs to define in the first place.
Origins do not matter..what the word refers to now is what matters...
Origins do not matter..what the word refers to now is what matters...
@@manofculture584 origins do matter. the word woke was created by black people for black people, and then it was appropriated by white people and turned into a slur. when we say “woke is reactionary” or “woke is not left” without being clear about what we mean, we may end up maligning the communities who originated the term and whose culture has been appropriated. doing that is not left either. we can only guard against that if we understand what words mean and where they come from. history is important.
Alex, at 45:12 Susan mentioned it’s crucial for white people to read some books by authors from other ethnicities and try to understand their views. It’s been a while since you gave a book recommendations video. Could we get a book recommendations 2024 list? I’d love to hear what you, and your guests, recommend to deal with this day and age.
00:00 why is she just a head, lmao.
Anyways, really excited for this episode!!!
Haha, just starting it and came to look for this comment.
The terms "left" and "liberal" are not accurate descriptions of our politics. People who are now considered "liberal" would have been considered moderately conservative 40 years ago.
"...had I set these policies in the 1980's I'd be considered a moderate Republican." -Barack Obama, 2014.
The Democratic Party is liberal only in respect to culture war issues.
Modern liberals are definitely NOT what would of been considered conservative 40 years ago. Not even close.
Yeah, they're neoliberals, so center-right.
Have you heard democrats talk? They are often left of center. And obviously so in an American context.
@@willjapheth23789I have heard Democrats talk, and I have watched as they accepted Republican principles on foreign and economic polices, per the quote from Barack Obama.
What do you consider "left of center." I assert that terminology based on a political spectrum map is misleading and has no real value.
@@andywomack3414 it's extra cute that you think a quote from Obama counts as evidence.
7:00 This is a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary psychology (and a very common one)
Richard Dawkins is constantly complaining that people read the "Selfish Gene" by title only. This is why. The confusion is between A) a technical evolutionary explanation which gives the backstory of how certain things came to be and B) subconscious selfish motives of conscious beings
Blue prints don't necessarily specify blue buildings and selfish genes don't necessarily code for selfish motives (conscious or unconscious)
I find this whole Left/Right thinking unhelpfull. It leads to thinking in stereotypes; placing everything positive in your own team and all negatives in the other's team. As if there are only two lenses through which we can see the world. This lady does this as well, for example stating that 'distinguishing justice from power' is a Left thing. Really? Consider CRT: there is no justice, just majority groups using power to suppress minority groups. We should approach problems with evidence, logic and reasoning. What worked and didn't work in the past or in other countries. Not starting with how would the left or right view this. Stop thinking in stereotypes.
And both of them manifest and expand this nonsense, why I avoid these neo fascists/neo communists.
Seriously. I consider myself a democratic socialist, I don't see it as helpful to lump myself in the same category as liberals or on the other hand Stalinists.
I feel like he went easy on her. Her points were generally not strong.
I think he was also just trying to make the mode of conversation less of a set of claims powering between two people and more as a younger intellectual listening and learning. Not everything has to be so combative. He might even sit there in disagreement but prefers seeing the full body of her ideas. Sometimes question showers don’t allow us to let other cook.
Awake use to mean knowing where it's at. Or What Is ... or the Truth of the Matter. So someone being WOKE would normally mean someone who has awakened to Truth. If that is true then the things they say should not be moronic and self-destructing.
Woke is fundamentally a claim to sightedness where everyone else is blind.
I can see the colour blue. I tell a blind person, the sky is blue. He disagrees. I say, you do not get to disagree you lump, you don't have eyes.
Woke is the same but applied politically and morally.
Absolute respect for what you are doing Alex.
Left is not woke
But woke is left
Perhaps in the US, where eveything is a (radical) stereotype, left is seen as woke. But in Europe, left is just left. And left is associated with intellectual honesty and progressive thinking.
Woke isn't always left either. There are groups that can be considered woke that are quite conservative. I can't remember the name, but one particular example stands out in my mind of a black militia group that's extremely in favor of unlimited gun rights and creating a separated black ethnostate within America. I watched some sort of segment on them several years ago and they were talking about privilege and the unchangeable nature of racism. Definitely woke, definitely not left.
Even still, I know *several* people who are extremely woke and talk about the importance of dismantling systems, including capitalism. But then you ask them what it means to dismantle capitalism and they start talking about identity and privilege and bias and absolutely nothing to do with capitalism or economics in any way. In other words, there appears to be a population of people that are woke and claim to be left but don't actually know the first thing about leftist politics.
Not true, Tariq Nasheed is frequently described as "woke" and he's undoubtedly right-wing.
Not all sparkling wine is champagne, but all champagne is sparkling wine. Also, non-sparkling wine is still wine, and grape juice isn't wine but it's all made from grapes. I'm terrible at analogies.
@@speakatron5634you remind me of lost in maths.
Fantastic talk!! Very well impressed by Suzan!
Great poker face Alex lol
what are you referring to? I'm relatively new here.
@frzpop yeah yeah no for sure me too
@@gravitheist5431?
@@FlashpumpClimbing probably referring to the fact that she said a lot of incoherent stuff.
@@FlashpumpClimbing I think he did well to keep a straight face
Such a fantastically straight forward and honest conversation about the, sometimes innocent sometimes motivated, distortion of language and culture into taboo and characture. Thank you Alex!
Straightforward and honest? You have to be joking. It was just an hour of her being unable to clearly articulate her position whilst repeatedly making unqualifed and often contradicting statements that went unchallenged by Alex for some reason...
@@manlikeJoe1010 I think we differ because we have different priors. I believe that "the left" signifies an emotional and sometimes reasoned preference for egality, where as "the right" is a symmetrical preference for hierarchy. With that expectation 'woke' is very very often enforced by authoritarian and hierarchical means which alienates it from the left.
@@nickbtggl4396 That doesn't seem right to me. For one thing, many of the New Left types (referred to as 'wokes') seem to signal a preference for a heirarchy, but one that is the inverse of the heirarchy they think is currently in play (i.e., 'privileged' white men at the bottom, racial minoirites at the top etc.). Of course, this is cloaked in a superficial appeal to 'egality' and 'diversity and inclusion'. In reality, they are just engaging in a kind of idolatry of power, a desire to want a particular heirarchy different from the one they currently think exists. However, these people would identify themelves as leftists and certainly not on the right, despite their implicit preference for a particular form of heirarchy.
Academics can be so bad at communicating their thoughts
@@TND.4.worldpeace Where in the interview did you read dishonesty or deceit?
@@TND.4.worldpeace Try applying Hanlon's razor. It's not like she's spewing page-long sentences filled with obscure terminology. She's just not very good at conveying her thoughts.
That is why most experts and academics you'll see in media are only the ones who can say things in an appealing way. That doesn't say anything about their actual expertise and academic and scientific status. The most genius scientist or academic, who has a very high reputation in that field, may not be asked to talk in a talkshow or for a newspaper for that reason. The average person who watches tv, internet or reads newspapers aren't interested in actual in-depth, truthful content. They just want something easy-to-grasp, hip and appealing, that also fits the agenda of 'feelings'.
@@bladdnun3016 Applying Hanlon's razor, she being deceitful is the more probable case because academics are supposed to be good at conveying their thoughts.
An excellent corrective to the conversation.
Just when she was going to talk about the enlightenment he changes the subject. I wanted to hear what she was going to say.
I typically love the podcasts Alex do and appreciate the perspectives of the guests even when it's not something I agree with. However in this instance I come away feeling as if I've wasted an hour of my life just listening to a lot of rambling.
I don't feel as I came away with any better understanding of what the left is, what woke "is" or is "seen as", and how the left is or isn't - that -.
Maybe it is just me, I'm willing to throw my hands up and accept maybe it's all gone over my head. But this was super frustrating to try and follow.
I think Alex's rebuttals are on point but she never really addresses them.
Agreed
She is full of shit thats why
I think she did pretty clearly define what it "is" a few times. She explained that it's an incoherent concept which borrows emotional assumptions from the left and ideological assumptions from the right.
The example she gave was the New York Times writing an article which suggested Biden should be more generous toward Modi because of the Vice Presidents ethnic background. The left wing emotive assumption being that he should support a minority ethnicity. The right wing philosophical assumption being that people vote in alignment of their tribe (in this case, ethnicity). But the truth is that the overwhelming majority of Modi's fiercest opposition is indian people. I think that's actually a pretty well articulated explanation of how she sees what woke "is" and, frankly, without trying to nitpick, I think it's actually a pretty reasonable expression of what it "is" today.
The idea that "the left is not woke" is pretty clear when viewed in this lens, with this example because obviously supporting Modi would not be in alignment with the left.
That said, I think there is a competing argument where you could say that the meaning of what "woke" is has changed. It didn't used to be what it is today. Originally it was a legitimately left wing thing but has been morphed and misrepresented enough to become something alien from its original meaning. A good example would be the song "redbone" by childish Gambino. The use of the word "woke" in his songs is more to do with the concept of being "aware". In this song in particular it's said for a woman to stay aware of the men who are trying to sleep with her. There are plenty of way you could interpret that with political lenses on and metaphors in the context of the song if you want but I'm not going to do that here. Music is subjective. I'm just providing this as an example of it's earlier usage to be "aware". The song isn't telling anyone to be woke in any sense of what the word means today because what it means today is something completely different.
In the political context it was used to be "aware" of the systems that oppress us or prey on us which are otherwise too subversive to notice. It is often presented in terms of systemic racial prejudice because that's one of the most obvious examples where it can be applied but the racial component isn't the central theme. The central theme is to be meticulously aware of how systems oppress us in subversive ways.
Labeling an ideology as incoherent when the word is mainly used by its detractors is also not particularly interesting. If I try to say that "fascism" is incoherent because it has been used to mean wildly different things, you would be right in assuming I'm not actually addressing the actual discussions that might be happening when people do use that word.
I'm 20 minutes in and so far I'm still struggling to gain any sort of new insight from this particular conversation.
@34:06 "Friedrich Engels" The German influence really snuck out on that word
She resides in Berlin, Germany....grew up in the US.
@@Raydensheraj Yeah she mentions it in the video
LOL. It's so Anglo-Saxon to assume that you need influence from a country/culture to correctly pronounce a name from that country/culture :-) You don't even need to learn the language to do that.
@@Daneelro Yes, as an American, I am well-suited to judge that she didn't pronounce that term like an American. If you went out of your way to do that, it would generally be considered obnoxious.
@@whitesoxMLB Considered by whom? Fellow obnoxious hillbillies?
Alex, can you please have Chris Cutrone on the show to discus this exact issue?
I think woke is anybody who feels unique in seeing societal trends.
Nice! I just picked up Susan's book Evil in Modern Thought a few weeks ago at a used bookstore. Looks really interesting.
i bet you a riot to be around
@@saxon8981Not nice! Lol
@@lavishwhisper6753 shut up simp
I didn't really understand her definition and rejection of working class as a valid position. We need to really get this as it is the seat of oppression. Its somewhat easier to point at immutable differences and overcome them, but economic oppression is just as if not more challenging. Not everyone can manifest their way out of sclavenmoral, especially if it's not even recognised.
That's the project. Blur the reality of class struggle and yap about sex and feelings as basic human rights
She doesn't see class as important or valid because she is not working class. For her, being Left-Wing is an academic position, or a thought exercise, not an existential struggle. I think people like her are the origin of Woke identity politics, as a replacement for the more inclusive class politics.
Splitting the Left into specific identity groups, with unique rather than shared experiences of oppression, has been catastrophic for the Left, so there is a good reason to try and distinguish the two (or conflate them, depending on your side). But I don't think she's the right person to do it because her understanding of both is shallow.
@@ayman7797 Yep. You couldn't come up with a more self-defeating strategy if you tried. So where did it come from?
^ did you make a typo in her name?
She opens by saying you refuses to be interviewed by the right, but defining the left is being able to communicate with everyone. HOPELESS!
I wish she would have gotten to the actual issue, which is who is using the term? What do they mean by it? Because people on the left don't use the word to describe themselves
Now that I've finished the podcast, I'm vindicated in thinking she is shadowboxing with people who don't exist in any large number.
@@TheSandurz20 the term is used a million times everyday as a derogatory by millions of right wing Americans and media. It's impossible to watch ten minutes of right wing media without hearing 'woke'
It used to he w left wing term and it rapidly became such a dispised term that the only people would still use it were the right who rightfully mock them with it
The word is used a ton here on RUclips especially by right-wing youtube channels to basically mock anything they don't like (such as women or minorities in video games). Many popular channels that get hundreds of thousands to millions of views use the word "woke" to stir up hate and mockery.
I can assure you that these people exist.
People on the left use it all the time to identify themselves unironically. It's used in social justice circles to self identify as someone who is awake to the systemic issues that plague America et al.
Susan Newman’s woke anti-woke take on woke! 😂
Love your work though Alex ❤
Knocking it out of the park again, Alex
Describing the "real" left and no mention of class, workers or growing beyond capitalism? Okay 31:45 in.
She is clearly just as reactionary as the far right she is criticising
God am I glad the left has moved on from fucking marx. Leftism existed before and after him. Dump the buzzwords and the technical terms. The economy has changed since marx, and language has too. Use your knowledge of theory to modernize leftism instead of being stuck in the past.
@@Lookasm98well I have some questions but I'm not sure I'd go that far but then again I'm a just a lumpen Marxist.
THANK YOU. It’s so annoying when otherwise thoughtful and intelligent atheist content creators just straight up don’t question the status quo when it comes to politics or anything other than religion. Western propaganda machine go brrrr
@@DigitalHayds I wonder why Alex didn't ask a clearly more left knowledgeable speaker on but rather chose a liberal? Or make the interview serve the purpose of demonstrating to the audience the difference between liberal and left? After this interview, it seems...seems...that he is underscoring right wing fixation on woke junk rather than left understanding that would help people. Does he just want to be a "culture warrior" after all his hard work? People are quite confused about the basic meaning of political terms after the McCarthy violence done to this country and this sort of interview may have just confused under informed but well meaning atheists or others for that matter.
Wokes created the word woke.
Left wing politics has always included resistance to capitalism and that cannot be stressed often enough. If it's not anti-capitalist it's NOT, REPEAT, NOT Left wing, Period. Yes, really.
👏👏👏
Social democracy is left wing.
Yes broadly agree, with the degree of resistance to or limited tolerance of capitalism being what distinguishes "how left wing" as it were.
That doesn't seem to have been the case in the French Revolution. The discussions between the left and right seem to be have been more about power and privilege than wealth generation.
So you define left wing by what it is NOT? Why? What agreed upon definition makes your assertion accurate?
It's a very disturbing thought, that relativity and Zeno's Achilles Paradox. How does/could time move forward? Wherefore progression?
As a left leaning individual I can assure you that the use of the word is hardly exaggerated or derogatory.
Bring professor Richard Wolff, an actual marxist. But he talks a lot so be prepared to a 2 hours podcast.
He is such a clown lmao
He cant even give a clear defintion of socialism. He actually dont have one. He has multiple contradicting definition of socialism.
Podcasts should be discussions or at least slightly challenging Interviews, not sermons, so inviting Richard Wolff would be waste of Alex' time.
Nice tiddis.
@@AutobahnBuilder lol he uses all the contemporary definitions. And yes they do contradict, he knows that, everyone knows that.
@@chaosmonkey1595 the man have discussions all the time. What you're saying is simply not true.
16:42 This is a good description of the ideas coming from the left that are labeled woke by the right. 43:42 In reality, both would be most likely to occur in a black neighborhood.
The right didn't coin the term "woke", it's something that's been around for a hundred years in the African American culture. However, it was used by BLM during their protests and became part of the zeitgeist. The scope expanded when social justice warriors appropriated it for any perceived marginalized group.
Interesting discussion about class as identity and its relationship with left politics. A few random things that come to mind:
.It is historical, as in a sort of "tradition", originating from social movements that were galvanized especially in revolutions (the Levellers in Britain, Jacobins in France, Bolsheviks in Russia, and so on), as well as a philosophical tradition that tried to make sense of those movements in such terms.
.It has an ontological character, as in an idea of what constitutes social realities. If societies are organized in terms of power, there would be a distinction between the rulers and the ruled (or who dominates), and class has been seen by those left traditions for a long time as an overarching structuring factor in capitalist societies. From there, you can have more reductionist or mechanist views, by which the only real division that matters is class, and others who see class as the main structuring force in terms of power, and other aspects (or identities) as real, operative forms of domination, but that all ultimately connect to class in the "last instance".
.There is a pragmatic-political aspect to it: fragmentation. Class is (or was) thought of as a more universal identity ("workers of the world, unite!"), that allowed for huge coalitions of potentially organized masses. And that can be seen as more politically effective to enact social change. Other identities, such as gender and ethnicity are more fragmentary. One could argue that gender would be a pretty big one, but it still has no potential of complete universalization, whereas class (or the prospect of a classless, or non-class-dominated society) can be absolutely universalized. That's a pragmatic argument. Ethically, class would be just an identity as legitimate as any other, but only a more effective one.
Woke in its original Afro-American usage meant alert to the workings of the racist power structure.
Recently, it’s been more widely adopted to mean - regarding more than just ‘white’ supremacy - not unconscious enough to go out of one’s way to be a bigoted a-hole; an old-fashioned term for that is ‘courteous’.
It’s certainly _part_ of what leftism implies, but it’s been a long time ere the latter properly denoted the anti-monarchy faction of the French bourgeoisie. For some time, the left has been defined by opposition to the capitalist system.
In the USA, that’s become a very marginal phenomenon. Our partisan duopoly is basically two faces of a single party of plutocracy. Within that, the radical far right has taken to calling the more conservative center right “the left.”
(That’s when they’re not literally calling them simultaneously Marxists and Satanists for a tour de force of incoherence.)
What's wrong with being awake to injustice?
Not a thing which is why the right tries to turn "being alert to injustice" into an insult. They want to defend their bigotry.
We all wish we represented the best form of the word that we identify with, but that doesn't take away from how it is negatively perceived due to the actions of others who also represent the word. That should be easy to understand if you've even met someone with a different identity or worldview.
@@willjapheth23789 : You're right and the right-wing extremists have based their entire movement on marginalizing women and minority groups. They demean and vilify them persistently and cry "woke" when someone calls them out on their bigotry and injustice.
Standing up for equality under the law for everyone as opposed to the feelings of a few bigots demanding conformity is the basis of the Constitution.
I would rather be woke than eepy.
12:25 Alex is spot on here. When I saw the title my assumption was "Oh dear, a TERF" but I was pleasantly surprised by Susan.
Good interview. I’ll have to check out her’s book.
I feel like this episode is a good example of what a strawman argument is.
Interesting that you subjectively feel that rather than objectively observe it. Probably says more about you.
@@paulsmith7579 after carefully and objectively observing this video, I have objectively concluded it is a good example of a strawman argument.
@@mrthirty2704 yet when the argument against Christianity is put forward as it basically being incoherent and you cant really argue against it because people will move the goalposts or say "I don't believe that bit", it ceases to be a strawman. The concept of identification with established groups is regressive. The concept of self identification with established and invented groups is frankly ridiculous. Theres nothing strawman about that.
@@paulsmith7579 this comment is also objectively a strawman after objective observation
@@mrthirty2704 well its not really is it, as youre not providing any argument at all other than insisting I take your pseudo-objective pseudoanalysis on faith.
Alix should make a video with Ash sarker, that would be interesting 😅
The term "woke" is 100 years old this year and the current usage in our culture is less than 10 years.
While there may be some genuine criticism that aligns with the criticisms against "wokeism", these often make unwarranted assumptions such as it's the "woke left" who are sole (or even _primary_) perpetrators of "cancel culture", "identity politics", and the inability to change one's position when faced with evidence.
Distilling that away, the "anti-woke" movement is a form of moral panic (and/or scare). It is a useful rhetorical element to dismiss any social justice efforts, stall any civil rights movements, villanize inclusivity, and stop all discussions of class (especially as it intersects with minority identities). Further evidence that this is a moral panic is the number of falsehoods and conspiracy theories associated with "anti-wokeness" (such as the moral panics against "Critical Race Theories", against "Drag Queens", against "Explicit Sexual LGBTQ materials" in schools and libraries, against "Litter Boxes")
The intersection of "anti-wokeness" with the current gay and trans scare, CRT moral panic, and others should be a huge red flag to distrust anyone who criticizes "wokeness" unironically. And Neiman's work seems to be a further way to redefine "woke" through a philosophical framework to distance herself from it, while playing into the same framework that has turned it into a bogeyman.
Our discourse on issues will be improved drastically by dropping the thought-stopping mechanism "woke" from our lexicon.
Is the new book readable for learned laypersons?
This one was really boring. She was very rambly while making very few points and the constant complaining and strawmanning left such a downer vibe with no intellectual excitement.
exactly
"woke" has no definition because otherwise, you could fact-check it when it's being used as an insult
It's been defined in court as "aware of social injustice" lol, who wouldn't want to be that
Most people use it much like cult, also, this is how words develop, it's a new term, but it can be applied correctly and fittingly.
Often, it refers to cult like behavior, or open agendas that are of the left political side.
I think left and right are equally demented. Both utterly lacking in common sense.
no natural language words 'have' fixed, stable definitions. math & logic, yes. ordinary language which evolved, no. dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.
@@real_pattern Yeah, true, but I am afraid that they can be very logical when it comes to how silly the idea of god is, but with their own religion/cult stuff, they tend to be as blind as a cave-fish.
@@haydencarn8737 i agree that there are some kooky extreme views that can be associated with any orientation. but it's rare that the people holding or reporting to hold these extreme views are in positions of actual power. usually just high school/college students without good critical thinking skills with a lack of intellectual honesty and humility.
definitely not a civilization destroying superthreat like rightwing media empires and bad faith status-quo apologists often like to to frame the woke folk.
Alex, aybe you should explain you are part of the work left at the start of the podcast as you babysit her through much of her view points.
I think that what we used to call stereotyping (identifying people by the group they appear to belong to) is just the same as today's identity politics which places people on a spectrum of Victimhood . Privilege. We are all individuals who are not superior to another individual but have free choice about the way we behave and the words we choose to communicate with.
Woke is just a label we place on certain people and groups. Actually, everyone is a lot more nuanced than that.
It is a direct parallel to calling anyone or thing right-wing "fascist" or "nazi".
No, when you talk like Hitler, you should be called a fascist.
Is the right wing party in the Uk or US not “fascist”?
@@plasmanip3998 The majority of the left wing in the U.S. is also fascist, as seen in their relationship with social media corporations.
@@plasmanip3998does it truly matter? They’re all right of capital.
@@plasmanip3998no they're not
Great start, this is what the right really think/mean. Ignore what they say.
And she won't speak to anyone on the right? That's not a concern at all, just goes to show she has no confidence in her own beliefs standing up to scrutiny.
Or maybe she just doesn’t like to be bullied by men who use straw man tactics and have no empathy?
@@ionasmith1998 I fear that the irony of your comment is probably lost on you.
@@ionasmith1998 she straw manned the right by telling us what they mean.
Plus there are plenty of woman she could be interviewed by.
@@haydencarn8737 yeah probably
@@haydencarn8737 Was gonna say that... it probl'y is.
I don’t think people choose their sports teams. I picked the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 30yrs ago as a child. They were in the same division as the Green Bay Packers, my brothers team. I picked them, only because I was really into pirates at the time. If it was a couple years earlier it would’ve been the Vikings. 😂
sometimes they are picked. but i can agree that people are often quite literally indoctrinated into a sports team😅. take ajax amsterdam and feyenoord rotterdam. people have literally killed others for supporting the opposite club. its actually insane
I picked number 13 as my favorite number because I watched a series that had a pirate gang called "The Wild 13". So that's the first I picked.
I later picked St Pauli as my favorite football club, assuming because they also gave pirate branding.
Ironically it turned out that I agree with their political values, but developed them completely separately, which is funny.
I enjoyed the conversation. Though when she said sharing a couple of chromosomes with Netanyahu doesn’t mean she agrees with him she skips over that in the current situation both Israeli Jews and Jews elsewhere overwhelmingly do agree with him and more so than their other countrymen (
Susan should change her name so I can read her book
Hey snarky, just read the book. (Then you can tell me whether I should read it too) 😜
Geez the assumptions she makes about people leaning right are terrible. It's like left and right is like good and evil in her eyes.
Stereotypes and dichotomous thinking are killling this world.
it is. who my people you think were left in middle ages. all were right.
Modi example seems a bit twisted? I mean could what she said not be a woke callout of racist assumptions in NYT sentence? Can someone clarify?
WTF? The phrase colour blond is not used literally. In social settings colour blind means to see someone's race and it not being important in any way and that is a good thing. This would be the same for sex, or any other political affiliation. If everyone would be colour blind in all of these cases then the world would be the best possible version of it.
I remember a time when skin colour wasn't an issue and you didn't notice it.
Not if there are already systems in place that are not colour blind. In fact colour blindness would make it impossible to find and fix the issue
@@jothamstickings4773 What enemies of colour blindness fail to grasp is that colour blindness is an ideal, a goal to strive for. It does not prevent you from seeing that the world is not colour blind right now. Abandoning the concept althogether ensures that nothing fundamental will ever change, cementing racism and all other tribalism and excusing it. That's one of the core tenets of what is called wokeness today and it's devestating for society and the world.
@@jothamstickings4773 Bullshit. People who do not discriminate also see the problems existing. It's just that we can't do much about it. It's a problem coming from majorities and those will kill you if they have to rather than make changes that are fair for everyone.
> If everyone would be colour blind in all of these cases then the world would be the best possible version of it.
Only if everyone's starting line is the same but thats not the case in any multiracial country.
20:00: Gah, maybe I don't read all the woke discourse but I'd like some concrete examples from so writings of the actual woke.
No one's saying left means woke. It just so happens that for the most part the ideals line up. Doesn't take an hour podcast to figure that one out.
I tend to agree.
The word "woke" has leftwing origins, it addresses the awareness of social injustice. The right has turned it into a hateful buzzword.
Left = Woke. Woke is simply the social ideas of the left, as most people don't have enough understanding of economics to realize their economic ideas are just as crazy.
Only Jordan Peterson or Boris Johnson types say that left is woke. On the contrary, some woke types may say that right is fascist. Both sides of the spectrum are wrong with stating and feeling this.
Plenty of people are saying or assuming it.
Doesn't like being lumped in with "the woke" and considers it a slur but happy to dismiss all opposition as "the right".
I think you should have pressed on a tension between her saying
"I know when I've been picked for being a woman"
and
"some men make the mistake of not reading books by women".
The tension here is, well, should we seek out womens perspectives or not?
Similarly, she tells us not to give victim points for race, but also that it is crucial to read books by some black authors.
Now, perhaps she can resolve this (perhaps the former is including women regardless of merit, and the latter is excluding good books by women despite merit).
But I think hearing precisely what the resolution is and discussing it would have been good, since it seems right on the line between the value she finds in social justice, but also the "woke bashing" that we were investigating here.
Thank you for this
She rejected interview invitations by "right-wing" media? That's so ironical given her book title.
It's really not. How many times have you seen rightwing channels invite people on their show and gave them an honest platform?
Woke is actually a label that was originally self applied, wokeists stop using it because it became a term of mockery. It is also very easy to define, that immutable characteristics are the most important part of people paired with a belief that everything needs to be analysed through the oppressor v oppressed lens.
I like Susan's vibe, but I still find it hard to pin down what her actual point is. It feels a bit fuzzy as to what she's actually trying to say. Like, if we can't define what woke is, then how can we in fact say that being Left aligned isn't woke? It seems to me that she's pointing to how some people, in their pursuit of being left wing, have adopted attitudes that are unintentionally regressive because they adhere so strongly to identity and other things. But I'm not 100% sure what the ultimate take away is from all of that.