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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- Wokeism: What It Is and What It's Not?
In this video, professor Moeller talks about some common misconceptions about wokeness, and discusses what being woke is really about.
(Sorry if you came early and saw our glitchy video, something went wrong with the video rendering/processing)
Video mentioned: Kant’s Ethics: Homophobia, Child Killing--and Derek Chauvin:
• Kant’s Ethics: Homopho...
Related video: The Political Commodification of YOURSELF! #SELFIE Protest:
• The Political Commodif...
The Curious Philosophy of Care:
• The Care Paradox -- Wh...
Further reading: Slavoj Žižek: The difference between ‘woke’ and a true awakening
www.rt.com/op-...
Two follow up videos:
Is Wokeism Civil Religion? | A Debate with Then & Now:
• Is Wokeism Civil Relig...
Jordan Peterson: The Mirror of Wokeism:
• Jordan Peterson: The M...
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Hans-Georg Moeller is a professor at the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at the University of Macau, and, with Paul D'Ambrosio, author of "You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity" .
(If you buy this book, or any other by Hans-Georg Moeller, from the Columbia University Press website, please use the promo code CUP20 and you should get a 20% discount.)
Thanks a lot to Jim Lei Wanjun for selecting images for illustrations!
You might be interested to check this out: Slavoj Žižek: The difference between ‘woke’ and a true awakening
www.rt.com/op-ed/526235-zizek-woke-cancel-culture-awakening/
Fantastic video. Thanks! I have a lenghty comment on a particular thing: I think Zizek's critique of idpol/wokism is not so much exclusevily about "class", as you say in the video, but about universality and how idpol is used by the "bourgeoisie" (he probably would say "white liberals" to provoke) to reserved to themselves the position of universality (the position of the servant in Hegelian terms). And this is central to the conceptualisation of the "left" as a politics of universality, whereas the "right" would be a politics of particularity (private property, etc.).
What I think Zizek rightly points out is that, for instance, feminism, by focusing on the exploitation of the female body, creates a political subject (woman) that through its particularity creates a universal change. This is what "intersectional" feminism misses, the point is not that feminism should be also about men, trans, animals, etc. but that by focusing on the liberation of women (by keeping women as its political subject) the feminist struggle actually gets rid of a universal system of exploitation (gender). So universality is about a particular that changes the universal. Now, of course, this is the case as well with class struggle and what Zizek means by idpol's exclusion of class, as you say. It's a subtle but important distinction, I think, because it's not to say that class is more important that sex or race, but that by focusing on the particularity-universality dialectics of these struggles we can actually find a conection between them. Sorry for the diatribe, thanks!
In my uneducated opinion I think you might be misunderstanding when Peterson says "cultural marxism" Marxism does not advocate for the working class but advocates for the working class to rise up and abolish class entirely, so Jordan Peterson is saying the American/Canadian left uses or atleast attempts to use females and gay people to abolish the very idea of gender and uses black, Hispanic, and asian cultural groups to remove Anglo American culture from corporate and political seats of power. In this context peterson uses the word "marxism" as a shorthand for collective grievance against a common enemy
What is alt-right to you? Because I don't think you know what it means.
By far the best analysis of woke-ism comes from New Discourses, they've basically dedicated to analysing it and it's origins with very thorough research into the "academic" papers that leads to it
Edit-
Never mind, you covered them anyway in the video. However it occurs to me that everyone hates wokeism regardless of what they would otherwise disagree on, it's just annoying to absolutely everyone
I am astonished by how close our thoughts are, when I was speculating on the possible common denominators between wokeism and protestantism! It's not a coincidence that wokeism has risen up mainly at countries with strong protestant tradition!
But I'd like you to elaborate more on the relations with post-modernism. Of course post-modernism is anti-essentialist and some aspects of wokeism are essentialist, but when the debate turns against e.g biology and gender or race, they become constructivists. I think it depends more on who the ideological opponent is and then they adopt the opposite perspective.
Anyway, great analysis. Try critiquing political correctness also!
I really loved your deconstruction of wokeism, although I would argue that wokeism is not capitalist in itself, but the capitalists, being very adoptive (to markets) in itself, applied wokeism to marketing in order to surivive in the modern soc. media markets.
"the capitalists, being very adoptive (to markets) in itself, applied wokeism to marketing in order to surivive in the modern soc. media markets"
this is often why I roll my eyes when a lot of activists (especially anti-capitalist ones) act as if this isn't the case. Like they'll say that they have no power when, in reality, their views are considered good marketing to a mass audience. Then I roll my eyes even more when they support companies doing it. Wokeism can be so easily exploited by capitalists to the point where it is actually just a part of engaging well in the free market.
I go beyond: They didn't just adapt, they created it. They couldn't have simply adapted or adopted it because the social struggles of the 20th century were anti-capitalist. Modern ""progressive"" thinking (it is so just in appearance, not essence) is mandatory in the corporate world because it's inoffensive, created from their think tanks. Anyone with an office job can attest to it.
@@ottz2506 you're contradicting yourself. The hollow attempt at wokeness you exemplified is by your own admission a non-true representation of it, aside from the fact that it being refurbished under capitalism means that anything authentically non-capitalist really has no power in a capitalist society unless it's rendered harmless by slow paced immune response.
The fact that companies can use activism signifiers to do marketing doesn't make it activism nor an authentic "woke" effort. Disney /=/ civil rights associations, activists, etc.
The trivialization of activism in social media under a capitalist society is a strawman: a capitalist society that disheartens the meaning of all for profit would have already rendered anything from animals to traditional family useless and meaningless if we go that route with the same rigor you do with wokeness + the social system reinforces capitalism as the core of itself at all cost in any way possible, hence why capitalism managed to do their chick version of "rebellion" to help swallow that uncomfortable pill like a way to generate antibodies.
not much of a contradiction. Wokeism is so easily exploited by the free markets and capitalism because it is ultimately capitalist. @@AlexOrozco-Social-Pariah
@@ottz2506 lmfao like the traditional family being exploited even in milk cartons and clothing companies? You evidently know no shit of the markets or economy or anything
Thanks for all of your questions and supports! Please feel free do leave your questions and critiques, which help continuing the discussions to go deeper.
my whole lot of criticism can mostly be countered by specifying that you were talking about the extreme forms of wokeism, at the end of the video you explained that the video is not about abolishing wokeism but only fanatic versions of it, but the way you characterised wokeism sometimes made it seem as if you just equated "wokeism" with those extreme forms of it (which undoubetly exist)
@ I’d recommend President Sunday’s channel in response to that
Your claim that Cultural Marxism is an oxymoron is false since it assumes that it’s just being a fish out of water. Cultural Marxism is just the application of Marxist conflict theory to broader social structures like race, gender, etc… starting as far back as Weber and most notably with Herbert Marcuse.
I would have liked to hear you connect your thoughts here to Nietzsche's slave morality. Wokeism as an evolution of American Christianity and German guilt seems strongly related to slave morality in my eyes.
It's either ignorant or dishonest of you to deny that wokeism is cultural marxism and play dumb to the existence of cultural marxism when western marxism is a well-established movement
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism
western marxists saw that orthodox marxism's predictions failed to come true and believed that they needed to criticise the culture more.
you can see easily find many textbooks in the academic fields underlying wokeism like critical gender studies, critical queer studies, criticial colonial studies, all according to their own authors draw from cultural marxist aka western marxist influences.
for example :
"This anthology brings together various strands of contemporary theory to combine the newer insights of postmodernism, feminist, race, and queer theory, with the older ideals of a Marxist-influenced critical social theory of the first- and second-generation Frankfurt Schools. We call this new social theory New Critical Theory."
Wilkerson, William S. and Paris, Jeffrey, "Why a New Critical Theory?" Wilkerson, William S. and Paris, Jeffrey (eds.). New Critical Theory. Lantham, Maryland. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2002. Page 1.
The aim of New Critical Theory [a Rowman & Littlefield book series edited by Patricia Huntington and Martin J. Beck Matustik] is to broaden the scope of critical theory beyond its two predominant strains, one generated by the research program of Jurgen Habermas and his students, the other by postmodern cultural studies. The series will reinvigorate early critical theory as developed by Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, and others but from more decisive postcolonial and post patriarchal vantage points. New Critical Theory represents theoretical and activist concerns about class, gender, and race, seeking to learn from as well as nourish new social liberation movements.
New Critical Theory. Retrieved on May 1, 2009.
Critical Theory has a narrow and a broad meaning in philosophy and in the history of the social sciences. Critical Theory in the narrow sense designates several generations of German philosophers and social theorists in the Western European Marxist tradition known as the Frankfurt School. According to these theorists, a critical theory may be distinguished from a traditional theory according to a specific practical purpose: a theory is critical to the extent that it seeks human emancipation, to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them (Horkheimer 1982, 244 [Critical Theory. New York: Seabury Press.]).
Critical Theory. First published Tue Mar 8, 2005. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Website. Retrieved on July 31, 2009.
markfoster [d0t] net [sl4sh] struc [sl4sh] nct [d0t] html
And the link here has references for 30+ academic textbooks and papers saying the same thing, that critical theory is developed from cultural marxists aka western marxists and that critical theory underlies the academic fields of woke grievance studies like gender studies, queer studies, critical race theory, etc.
I'm very disappointed that you would play "hide the ball" like this and try to dishonestly deny cultural marxism's influence on wokeism and claim that anyone calling it cultural marxism is wrong and doesn't know what they're talking about.
You've compromised your integrity as an educator with this video. You need to make a retraction where you apologise for giving the impression that jordan peterson and others are wrong to call it cultural marxism and where you admit that the western marxist i.e. cultural marxist movement did develop critical theory which underlies the academic fields of wokeism
The comment at the end is illuminating. One of wokeism's biggest damaging effects in my opinion has been the fact that now people can advocate against justice, equality etc by implying that these are non-seperable from wokeism. We see that being done in non-western places where many radical and religious people equivocate elements of wokeism with neo-liberalism and western imperialism.
It feels like an unavoidable dilemma. Once society becomes more progressive, the powerful (non-progressive) institutions adobt and coapt superficial progressivism to keep the status quo. I wonder if this dilemma is completely unavoidable for places around the world that are still far regressive as well. Perhaps it is, which doesn't mean it can't be bypassed and adressed.
Or maybe the breakdown of a family and promoting sexual degeneracy is actually not that much of a progress...
it really sucks how this African-American colloquialism has been rebranded, tarnished, and diluted into this big mess that doesn't even mean anything anymore.
@@scrapmachine1 those are just racists. turning sour because of media rhetoric despite an issue that's clearly dire enough to act on it never had any intention of supporting the cause. But the thing is, $$$ donations is just as much slacktivism as other shit. People just donate to groups and expect things to be better rather than putting the work out there. The problem is when people do minimal research and BLM chapters were popping out of the woodwork because every source of revenue is going to collect a few grifters- but few pay out as continuously as MAGA chuds.
@@scrapmachine1 of course they love empty gestures while contributing nothing of substance
@@oku12 As a black woman, I'm stating that the founders of BLM are grifters and faux-Marxists, I don't support the org I support the cause. And I realize that the cause would be better supported in time and work rather than dollars and cents.
@@trikkinikki970 I'm not an American, but it seems to me that these "racists" might just have methodological issues with the movement. I.e., they support the aim of racial equality, but just think there are better and worse ways to go about it. In any case, the conversational atmosphere on much of social media (not least on Twitter) is clearly not doing much else but just solidifying and facilitating social divides (and there's much of empirical research in social and moral psychology to support this).
@@trikkinikki970 donating money isn't slactvisim. You are donating time to a cause just as someone would on the ground just through the proxy of labour in your 9-5.
Sometimes people don't have time to be both an "activist" and work to make their ends meet.
Wow. After all these years I finally found someone who actually tied the whole thing together. I've heard many of these elements before but never fully understood their connection and significance.
That's not the meaning of woke . There is no such thing as wokeism 🤦🏿♂️🤦🏿♂️🤦🏿♂️🤦🏿♂️. Woke is black slang that indicates consciousness and awareness . Oh have you tried that in and out burger, if you haven't you ain't woke yet . The destruction of this word is amazing
@@ajajala5081 The meaning has changed now
What’s the meaning then?
It's really refreshing and reassuring to hear someone breakdown Wokeism in a level-headed and (seemingly) non-sectarian way. By the way, I think the writers of Cynical Theories agree with you that Wokeism is very different from traditional post-modernism, and I think they do a good job of tracing the lineage, despite the current lack of resemblance.
I believe that this phenomenon is rooted in the highly religious background of the United States that although a lot of its facets are highly secularized the citizens still pressure each other through the implementation of very strict social rules in which deviation from the norm is highly punished with shunning and social isolation (Hence the canceling) While posturing and virtue signaling are encouraged as a way to keep people in line. It sounds immensely stressing to live in such a society to be quite honest.
What are the social rules?
There's also an anger element. Maybe this is more present in other cultures than I suspect, but I feel US culture, more than anywhere else, emphasizes anger or frustration when it comes to disputes. I think it's gotten to the point where someone in the US will be wary of someone who _isn't_ angry, feeling as though there's some kind of manipulation afoot.
Europe is far less religious and we have the same “woke” ideas rooted in our current politics. It seems to be religious in nature but definitely not a consequence of the once prevalent religion
It is stressful to be told how you should behave and talk and think in every social situation you're put in. Did you know gay conversion therapy is still a thing? Did you know you can be killed in a lot of countries for the crime of being gay? No but I'm sure the white people being told to stop using the N word when they're trying to browse youtube have it really hard, too.
Yes there is something very calvinist about the mindset
I think there can be a similar parallel between religious zeal/dogmatic type of behavior and alt-right - meaning there can also be parallels of behavior and dogmatic thinking between alt-right and wokeism. Alt-right tends to be extremely essentialist, and displays a lot of the moral reductionism, and abusive categorical thinking that wokeism displays. Whenever there is a "conversation" between woke and alt-right people, it seems to be an impossible gap to bridge, where each blames the other with their own reductive ideological insults, meant to reduce each other into these abusive moral categories: "You're just a beta soy-boy degenerate" / "You're just a sexist/racist cis white man", as if that was enough to dismiss them, and as if it exhausted the entirety of their identity.
Woah, I really love this comment. I'm somewhat conservative and I really like your take on the alt-right and wokism's behavior.
Would just add that the 'woke' was created by the alt-right as a unifying antagonist. More than by people from disadvantage communities as a self-identifier.
What is curiously missing from this analysis is any appreciation for where the term itself originates and resultantly the cultural conditions that serve as a framework for the "movement".
It should come as no surprise that an ideal that evolves from the internal discourse of a people that were systematically locked out of material struggle and labour organisation at its zenith in the mid 20th century, is more concerned with cultural capital than political organising.
The alignment of notions of "working class" with "whiteness" readily points to a racial exclusivism that is fundamental to any historical appreciation of class and exemplifies why marginalised groups do not readily buy into class based analyses.
Millennials of the west have found themselves in a similar wilderness i.e. the post-08-crash-wasteland of broken promises and jaded futures, so once again cultural capital - easily coopted, impossible to quantify but undeniably potent, holds sway.
All this to say that it feels... odd to frame wokeism as a religion in the vein of the civil rights movement of all things on the basis that identity politics wasn't a thing in America until the 70's and American liberalism fetishises guilt???
But most civil rights activism was based in class until the 1970s. Class analysis was never seen as white-exclusive by all well-known and influential POC activists in the 21st century . Countless black civil rights leaders used the labor movement to make economic and civil rights gains.
@@danilthorstensson8902 It would completely mischaracterise the civil rights movement to describe anything other than race as foundational to it. Of course many activists and thinkers engaged in and put forward class based analyses of American society but we are talking through the prism of identity curation whereby the very existence of segregation locked black Americans out of meaningful expressions of class identity.
@@zekea7601 but many civil rights leaders thought (rightly) that the easiest and most effective way to achieve parity economically and socially was through class action. Of course race was the essential concern but it was not seen as mutually exclusive with class.
@@zekea7601 some labor unions were racist even into the 1960s but the biggest ones were not, like the AFL-CEO and the Porter’s Union. Through the 30s, 40s, and 50s, most improvements came through organized labor
Gotta say, the whole religious parallel in "wokeism" and the psychology that religiosity induces, as well as it has induced in times past, really scares me. This is only a personal issue and i don't know if someone else may have it, but it has been instilled to me that, any failure to conform or disagreement with whatever language or symbol currently adopted by it, could bring ostracism or social punishment such as isolation or censorship.
I'm really glad there is an actual possibility for discussion and criticism of current social norms.
This is the kind of critique of an ideology that I'd like to see more of on the Internet. It's not a "takedown" or a "DESTROYED WITH FACTS AND LOGIC" video, but a "let's clearly define the ideology we're discussing, look at the important contexts, and then consider what the problematic aspects of it are before we draw some reasonable conclusions, all the while considering multiple perspectives and examining the disparate responses to the ideology with minimal bias" video.
You know, a video that tries to teach us something rather than trying to make us pissed off about it.
Well done.
Thank you for sharing this video, it really pushed me to question my own beliefs which was very uncomfortable and nourishing at the same time.
I think that woke-ism does have its roots very clearly in post-modernism. It's a combination of degraded Parisian post-structuralism and American puritanism. With post-modernism, you're sceptical about meta-narratives and it became an academic fad to deconstruct things, to look at narratives and tease out the hidden biases. A whole generation learned to do this in college and when they graduated got journalism jobs, writing for websites. The combination of "intersectionality" and "deconstruction" they then applied to social commentary and something that passes for activism. By a strange contradictory process, they've translated some sort of Foucaltian liberatory script into authoritarianism, and post-modern scepticism into a new dogma.
"the personal is political" is what identity politics i.e. 1) your personal experience is important to politics not just those of the elites and 2) things you experience usually have a political reason for them. Thats just populism.
to say that identity-politics is MORE about curating identities than about struggling for a difference in the system is analogous to saying being a doctor is more about seeing and understanding different parts and traits of human bodies than about curing them. the first needs to be done in order to solve the issues in the system that exist in specific relations to those categories.
That might be true, but I think the issue here is that your analogy dismisses by proxy the possibility that the exercise of navel-gazing parts of identity can happen to the detriment of addressing an issue.
Sure, a doctor must understand the human body to cure illness, but if all a doctor does is study bodies the doctor will never get around to curing anyone.
The critique of identity politics forwarded here is precisely this point, so to glibly point out that the exercise of analyzing identities is necessary to address issues of inequity is not a response to the critique at all when the critique precisely was that the obsession with identity is distracting from actual and substantive action.
What's more, I think another issue with identity politics is the way in which it serves as a fuel for an already compromised human way of thinking about each other - namely super-imposing generalities onto concretes - which I presumed was the second part of this critique.
While the logic of intersectionality might be true and useful for a macro appreciation of society, its logic does not hold on the level of the individual which is where we all operate on in our day to day lives.
The issue of identity politics then is that it essentially hijacks people's ability to treat with individuals on a case by case basis because it lends itself to people feeling justified in judging individuals based on gross averages that may not actually apply.
The Left is mortally wounded thanks to identity politics. We've lost sigh of the collective good. No political issues get resolved with identity politics.
@@Qrtuop How can you reach egalitarian society without addressing the non class issues that prevent equality?
I think I would disagree that simply because identity politics seeks to analyse identity that it must be correct about its analysis or that the methods which it uses are sound or desirable. I would claim that the way in which identity politics understands identities is as individual phenomena rather than collective phenomena (produced by the interaction between people); seems to me that the method of analysis employed by such identity politics is necessarily individuating rather than relying on a collective understanding (that social phenomena can arise from material bases and actual human interaction). I think a better analysis of identity comes from the Marxists. It seems for Engels (and Marx) that the beginning of gendered distinctions comes about as a result of farming, early pre-class people were broadly equal (women and men both hunted and gathered and inheritance was through the mother) whilst early class society has hard gender distinctions mainly through the material interaction of marriage (ownership of women by men). With this other sexuality and gender identities are marginalised as a result of being unable to reproduce or for contradicting the norms surrounding marriage. In this way the Marxist can understand identities (and similar analyses exist for race, disablities etc.) without having to make reference to individuals and only the relations between people Marxists can understand the creation and reproduction of identity and oppression on the basis of identity without doing 'identity' politics. If you were interested in reading more, Engel's 'The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State' is great.
@@fatcomrade5046 You can address them within class struggle (and I include sex as a class in itself there), but certainly not with an oppression olympics model. Identity politics is the faithful child of American academia and their pursuit of postmodern narcissism.
Also worth mentioning. The absolute core of Wokeness is the celebration of the victim. And the origin for that metaphysical perspective begins with Rousseau.
As someone who inhabits a number of online spaces that would most likely be categorized as "woke" by Moeller, I found this portrait of so-called "wokeism" to be utterly unrecognizable. I think perhaps the first error made here is that "woke" is a slang term which has never referred to a coherent ideology - instead it originated as a descriptor for a politically aware black person, later got taken up by white liberals, and has since been co-opted by anyone with an axe to grind against identity politics. By making a video about "wokism" rather than intersectional feminism or critical race theory, Moeller gets to sidestep any of the actual concepts that underpin identity-based social movements and pretend that people who have merely adopted the aesthetics of those social movements without their substance somehow form a self-contained ideology. It's the equivalent of talking about Che Guevara shirt manufacturers as if they exist in a vacuum without ever referring to the actual history and context that the shirts are opportunistically capitalizing on.
If you look at the actual academics or activists advocating for issues that center around race, gender, disability, etc, I think you'll find that the vast majority of them are highly communitarian (after all, their work focuses on collectively improving the lives of groupings of oppressed peoples) as well as highly critical of capitalism. Additionally, I think few of them would agree with the idea that categories such as race or gender are somehow essential to to who a person is. Instead, it's the way in which society constructs those categories that makes them highly salient for people's whose group falls outside traditional power structures - blackness would not be important politically if it wasn't so closely linked with the material conditions that black people experience.
The features that Moeller identifies as composing "wokism" - using the language of diversity to prop up capitalist or neoliberal structures, identifying groups that one belongs to in a Twitter bio - these are examples of activist language being used by those in power to whitewash the fact that they are mostly ignoring the demands of actual activists. I'd be shocked if you could find me a single person who organized a Black Lives Matter protest who genuinely thinks that monument removal is more important than changing the nature of the American criminal justice system.
It's also absurd to suggest that Bernie was sidelined for not being "woke" enough - he was sidelined because he was considered too far left for the Democratic party. None of his actual policy positions were in any way less "woke" than those of more moderate Democrats.
Answers a concrete question to give a definition of this term, guess who gets triggered hahahaha
My problem with it is I just don't think it's s good way to change people's minds, like almost every 'woke' post I see I completely agree with, but I feel like people become reflexively defensive when they see something like "do better". Like when you look at Ben Shapiro's content he's really good at saying complete BS and convincing people he's a genius, I wish the left could just be better at convincing people idk? And you're completely right that Bernie didn't get the nomination cause he was too left for the democrats and he was rigged to fail.
He's not *just* defining a term here. "Woke" isn't a term like "Kantian" that has a single accepted meaning in an academic context. It's a vernacular term used in different ways by different people, and for the purpose of this video Hoeller creates his own personal definition, allowing him to decide exactly what does and doesn't fall under the "woke" umbrella. This video isn't purely informative, but rather a critique of a certain way of thinking. I also think it's a poor critique because it treats the echoes of several rigorous academic concepts as if they were a cohesive framework without ever dealing with the originating concepts themselves. It's not quite a strawman, but he conveniently defines his term in such a way that he can pretend that things like the CIA video are a self-contained phenomenon, rather than merely a tone-deaf response to a much more complex collection of movements and ideologies.
@@thetarnishedsoviet I personally prefer thinking about the phenomenons in this complex in psychopathological terms, considering them symptoms. Especially how symmetrical congruent they are on the so called "both sides" is always fascinating. The grandiosity, the conspiratorial thinking and of course first and foremost perpetual victimhood complex everywhere...
Very interesting video. I feel like a difference should be drawn between performative wokeness on the one hand and actual attempts to change society on the other. One of the most frustrating things about what you call "wokeism" is its emphasis on guilt and personal redemption, which encourages people with privilege to obsess over their own moral standing. This definitely ties with the individualistic component you mentioned, as well as the "guilt pride" as well. To me there's a massive difference between "performing wokeness" and actually trying to make a change in the world. That being said, I think that the discussion of identity and its role in politics and culture is important and even necessary, so long as identity is not taken as some marker of one's moral standing. The discourse of "vicious oppressors" and "virtuous oppressed" is not only counterproductive, but actively dehumanizing to all parties, as it reduces everyone to some sort of moral calculation within a discourse (one might even say a "game") of righteousness. I think it's still important to have serious conversations about how we talk and behave in everyday contexts, but not as a form of guilt-priding but rather as a form of critical self-reflection with the aim to improve one's behavior over time. It's the difference between Germany trying to repay its debt and priding itself in admitting that the debt is un-repayable. Even if on some level a wrong cannot be undone (a major criticism I have with retributive theories of justice), there still is the responsibility to ameliorate as much as one can-not for the sake of your own moral standing, but for the sake of those you have wronged.
😊😊😊
To really understand “wokism” in the USA a person needs to understand Christian movements of the late 19th and 20th century.
There was once an authentic “wokism” (so to speak) in Christianity in the USA. Take for example Robert Rauschenbush who fought against child labor. Or Martin Luther King Jr. who fought for civil rights and against poverty. Or Paul Tillich who confronted the Nazi and then as a us citizen spoke out against US imperialism too and other social ills.
The wokism in mainline religion was continually squashed because it was considered socialism by the McCarthyite Red Scare conservatives. People like Chris Hedges and Rev Jeremiah Wright are two contemporary examples of the tradition I am talking about and they were both trashed by liberals and conservatives.
Mainline religions were routinely ridiculed by conservative Christians and the US Right wing propped up the religious literalists conservatives who were actively against the social gospel movements and liberation theology.
At that point the mainline churches slowly became an inadequate vehicle for social change even though they were its primary progressive engine for over 100 years. The UCC church for example had openly gay pastors before homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness and decades before mainstream acceptance. They also collaborated with MLK’s civil rights campaign.
But as progressive liberal churches lost power, secular wokism took over the same tasks.
IMO secular wokism became far more vulnerable to imperialist appropriation. Because the mainline social gospel had concepts that transcended the state while secular wokism does not. Secular wokism flattens the concepts of justice, of loving thy neighbor, of helping the poor, of respecting the other and shifts it from a transcendent sacrament towards twisted ego centric identity cults which are very easy for the state and corporate power to appropriate.
I still don't understand how being critical of woke-ism is being a "grifter" when in fact all the institutions and corporations, hence power and money are pandering to woke-ism, I think if you want to "grift", the way to go is to pander to woke-ism instead of criticizing it.
New subscriber here: very good discussion. I find your explanation of the incorporation of guilt pride into identity compelling, the rejection of the idea that it incorporates elements of post modern thinking less so. The wokists certainly use the argument that identities - and for that matter everything else, including the concept of objective truth - are the product of social conditioning when it suits them. Wokist dogma seems often self contradictory on this point: but I agree that has never been a problem for people who are impelled by religious motives, as we see in Christianity and Islam.
I am not sure we need a new enlightenment: what we need is for people who trust in the values of the old enlightenment to defend themselves and their societies.
Thank you so much for your lecture.
Few things make me confused.
You said wokeism is simply not cultural Marxism because Marxism isn't about culture at all.
I saw my tiny friend run fast so I told him "You look like Usain Bolt!" then he answered "You silly, Bolt is an African tall professional runner that I'm not. I'm don't look like Bolt"
Wokeism was referred to as cultural Marxism for its dichotomized world; the oppressor vs. the opposed, not super vs. subconstructure.
Even though many would consider me a "wokeist" I still have yet to come across a specific definition. The right seem to use the word as a catch all for what they dislike. What they considered cultural marxism has now been rebranded woke.
Look up the new discourses podcast you’ll find a very thorough one there
This is a fairly crucial part of any "woke" discourse in my opinion. Just as with identity politics, there are fundamental differences between the origins of a term (e.g. identity politics as defined in the Combahee River Collective statement), the liberal co-opting of the term (diversity and inclusion politics), and conservative straw-manning of both the origin and the liberal co-opting, frequently conflating the two (in the vein of "I 'identify' as an attack helicopter, hurr durr").
A similar look into history of ideas can be enlightening when talking about "socialism" as well, for example.
did you watch the video?
I feel like it's hard not to recognize how identity affects other things such as class struggle
Identity isn't as important as ideology. For example when you join a group from religion to subculture people really care more that you agree with their ideals than individual identity. Remember the Dave Chappelle episode where he was a blind black white supremacists? Not everyone knew it, but the white supremacists that did didn't hate him. They even made him a high ranking member. They cared more that he agreed with them than the fact that he, on the surface, was everything they were against. People care more that you agree with them. Whether it's black people that want to be white or white people that want to be black, or gay people that hate gays and want to be straight, etc... People want you to believe in their ideology. Ideologies or/like cultures are like a blob, an organism made of people who act like the cells of an ameaba, and when a foreign thought is introduced the mind, the group, the ideology, the culture... Reacts the way an immune system does, to prevent the new idea from infecting and changing the DNA of the original organism... The original DNA being things like traditions, language, humor, understanding. It's a double edged sword. One that brings people together but keeps groups apart. Tribalism...
@@manoffayth individual identity isn't produced in a vacuum from society and society also feeds on individuals. You can't have one without the other to pretend there would be class without any of the other aspects that conform that class (where you live, your upbringing, your family, your race in a country that used to be racially divided and founded on racialized ideals).
Your example of Dave Chapelle is a fallacy from the moment white supremacism has had way more social acceptance even in it's "coded" forms than anything anti-racist. We still grew up with horror movies using the "blacks die first" horror unspoken cliché as a literal joke in half of the movies done in the early 2000's to pretend being this colorblind.
I like your videos, but this one seems to contradict earlier things you have said. In your video on Kant, you mentioned the paradox where the harder you try to have non-dogmatic morals, the more dogmatic you become. Here, you are saying that, despite some good aspects of wokeism, it is bad because it is dogmatic, and we should instead affirm the good aspects of it without dogma. Aren’t you then falling into that same paradox?
Nice to see an attempt at balance! Not sure that identity politics is incompatible with a class-based analysis tho. A more sympathetic reading might see it as a further elaboration of working class 'strata', since presumably the woke argument is that their marginalized categories (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc) are disproportionately affected by the capitalist system. So perhaps the difference is one of emphasis, a more targeted activism coming at the cost of a simpler, more monolithic, class solidarity. It may also not be entirely true that guilt-pride is quite so ubiquitous. Many 'woke' would possibly claim simple empathy with groups they see as historically disadvantaged. This accusation of virtue signalling (which implies some psychic insight) is easy to claim but hard to conclusively 'know', and has become something of a right wing trope; a way of fobbing off the legitimacy of claims one finds uncomfortable or threatening. And besides, people can virtue signal while at the same time being virtuous! Nevertheless, a great primer on wokeism that I enjoyed.
Very good explanation.
I am still, however, not entirely convinced that Wokeism does not contain, or at least make effective use of, elements of postmodernism. e.g. the notion that gender is entirely a social construct and infinitely fluid, yet it is somehow also an essentialist identifier.
Definition and explanation is spot-on.. the divisive nature of wokeism has made it difficult for people to think through this concept rationally and logically but instead resort to their emotions
Assuming that caring about people in minority groups and maligned groups is a good thing, how do you think people as individuals and as a society should do that, except by talking about it and trying (although often getting it wrong) to improve how we treat each other? Or is the means, not the ends, what you're critical of?
Also, is your critique of the CIA video not more a critique of marketing than a critique of wokeism?
I'd say that overall it's a good thing that we think and talk about how we treat each other, but if twitter mobs attacking anyone who makes a badly judged joke are included in your definition of wokeism, then that is a bad aspect of it. I make badly judged jokes all the time. Sometimes I make three badly judged jokes before breakfast.
Are you making the assumption that the ends of wokeism is a more just society? I don't think that's born out by what we're seeing. If the cia and corporations are the means, what are the real ends? If people are having a conversation about class divisions in america, they are already having a discussion about racial segregation and oppression.
That would be similar to my question as well. If "wokeism" is an unhelpful manifestation of white guilt, what is the movement to actually address ongoing harms caused by historical and continuing oppression?
For all the criticism of identity politics, there are still clear harms being done to people based on their identities. Some might claim that a purely class-based struggle would also fix these harms, but I don't think that matches up with the actual experiences of minorities in class-based discussions and movements.
I guess my objection to the way I understood the video is that my concern is and always has been the practical harms and possible solutions to real world problems coming from ideology. If "wokeism" is a new civil religion but it is addressing people's needs better than what we had before, what practical good is done by this criticism? I'm not really concerned about whether people are feeling guilty as much as what people are actually doing to fix problems.
Is the problem with performative "wokeness" actually with the ideology involved? Or is it that the performance is not actually having a real impact on the lives of those it is pretending to help?
@@elisabethy9743 The CIA are an entity of their own, and they are using marketing to their own ends, including using a display of wokeism. Wokeism, if such a thing exists, will have its own aims, and the definition of wokeism at the start of this video seeks to define them. That's what I was talking about.
@@elisabethy9743 Just a side note, there are a lot of examples of class politics that do not address racial problems. For example, unions in the early 20th century would strike to prevent Black workers from being allowed in their trade or factory, and a lot of strikebreakers were immigrants or people of color, since they were more easily exploited by the big businesses. And police unions would be a contemporary example, worker solidarity of police preventing accountability and racial justice. The early Nazis appropriated class politics and included some socialists (Strasserists), who were later purged in the night of the long knives.
Read Cynical Theories or New Discourses if you can't see why people reject wokeism. If you knew what is included in the package of "Critical Social Justice" I think you wouldn't embrace it at all.
He does point out the hyper reality of individualist meme’s (Jordan Peterson again), where the individual is pressed to perform, that their identity as profile is all about performing - Nike’s just do it or the ideology of ‘your altitude is your aspiration.’
The problem with both Wokeism and neoliberal individualism is that ‘performance’ - especially of the ‘transcend and include’ variant distinctly against the angry demagogue variant (GOP) - is that certain natural conditions are a priori and predominant, namely race, sex and socio-economic status. The naturalist entailments cannot be so easily eclipsed by rants to be more responsible especially when cultural factors like conventional beliefs about family and marriage - etched in legal rock - or religious notions about the presence of god or that sex is essentially binary hovers over every discourse and dialogue. Then on top of this cultural ideology which each party tries to control is the impact of macro-economics in the form of both money and fraud!
I don't know if you've read Cynical Theories, but I think you are misrepresenting the authors' claims. They do not claim that Wokism (what they call Critical Social Justice) is postmodernist, but that it has its roots in postmodernist thought. Likewise, while they don't use the term "neo-Marxist", they also describe how Marxist thinking influenced Wokism, not that Wokism is itself Marxist.
Thank you! Pretty frustrating to watch an analysis of ”wokism” that excludes the evident postmodern and marxist elements.
Yes. He makes major mistakes in that characterization and does not appear to have actually read Cynical Theories. firstly the idea of cultural Marxism is that class has been replaced with race, under a similar Marxist framework of primarily seeing society in terms of a power struggle between oppressor and oppressed. Secondly in Cynical Theories the authors go to great lengths to show that core ideas from postmodernism have been selectively and inconsistently applied by critical theorists, and others rejected, in favor of a deeply moralistic activism. It's really impossible for him to have read the book and missed that as it's a core argument.
My concept of "Left" and "Right" mostly focusses on equality. The Right has always been about pushing for more seperation of people - first by noble or royal status, then by religion, nationality, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. They generally lost the arguments on these issues, so now they're mostly down to economic inequality.
Notable parts of the right implicitly or explicitly hope for unregulated capitalism to work as a catalyst of social darwinism, causing the "bad" (e.g. other religions, ethnicities, sexualities, and nationalities) to go extinct or become uncompetitive, and the "good" to prevail, as well to order society along its "natural boundaries" (traditional gender roles). Private discrimination is a key part of their vision of how to accomplish these goals.
In this context, Wokeism is the counter to that plan on a social moreso than economic level. The trouble is that it is connected with a lot of "purity testing", which ideally identifies right wing trolls but in practice can often be counterproductive as it divides the community or turns it against people who didn't have ill intentions at all.
Essentially they're same on similar levels. The right wanted to seperate the races and cultures= segregation. While the leftist want to Establish a hierarchy of oppression and victims to counter it. There's no balance. If you fell in the mud you'd clean yourself not throw everyone else in the mud too.
@@porassrivastava8242 Most actual left policies don't need a hierarchy of victimhood to accomplish compensation. It's merely about providing certain base levels of opportunity and freedom of discrimination to everyone. There is no need to "quantify the victimhood" of a person to do so.
I mean, this was ok, it shed some light on different aspects and some new perspectives from the mainstream but it felt like something was missing. Maybe the tangible disruptive solutions that would have to take place to reclaim language like "waking up" so that it does not become a sort of endless layering of false enlightenment, left or right and/or easily criticized. I think the notion that that is too much to ask is in and of itself outdated, we can do it. The "anti woke" woke is already a thing (meaning heavily developed and apparent within the last four years of woke)
I think its really worth noting the slang type language around it and what that means in terms of society and class. Many forget that during the 60s the term was being used by blacks and black panthers or activist.The earliest known examples of wokeness as a concept revolve around the idea of Black consciousness “waking up” to a new reality or activist framework and dates back to the early 20th century. In 1923, a collection of aphorisms and ideas by the Jamaican philosopher and social activist Marcus Garvey included the summons “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!” as a call to global Black citizens to become more socially and politically conscious. A few years later, the phrase “stay woke” turned up as part of a spoken afterword in the 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys,” a protest song by Blues musician Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly. The song describes the 1931 saga of a group of nine Black teenagers in Scottsboro, Arkansas, who were accused of raping two white women. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the earliest such usage to a 1962 New York Times Magazine article titled "If You're Woke You Dig It" by African-American novelist William Melvin Kelley, describing the appropriation of African American slang by white beatniks.
You haven't properly understood the movement if you think that the postmodern anti essentialism isn't a part of identity politics. Proponents reject binaries, as evident in the term 'non binary' and they embrace the idea that identity is socially constructed, they just think that social construction results in a particular lived experience that one can only understand if they are viewed and treated by society as a particular identity.
Rorty's critique of identity politics in achieving our country remains pretty apt today.
By not knowing the largely internet origins of some of the terms used, I think you've misread some things here and there, but, overall, this is very good.
For example, the modern usage of the term "cultural Marxism" does not come from the re-making of the 1930s National Socialist 'cultural Bolshevism', as many assume, nor does it come from the application of Marxist principles to culture. In fact, it comes from Jonathan Haidt's "Mill university vs Marx university" and the discussion of the "long march through the institutions".
Communism never fell in USSR. It was socialist country. Why people get it always wrong?
no.
If I try to give Peterson the benefit of the doubt (only because I appreciated his work when he stayed in his lane as a clinical depth psychologist with interesting post-Jungian theories), I might interpret the phrase "Cultural Marxism" to refer to the *manner* not the *matter* that defines it: i.e., rather than referring to actual Marxism as we know it, Peterson (right or wrong) may be saying: "this is a view which, like Marxism, divides the world into only two classes (oppressor and oppressed) and sees them everywhere it looks."
"Woke-ism" itself, is a related but different thing. I don't know if I've ever heard Peterson use that word.
I have still some reservations about the "-ism" in "wokeism", it reminds me really of our Czech rightists (Václav Klaus and his bunch of "covid is a lie" and "we didn't evolve from a monkey" crazies) and how they are talking about "homosexualism", you can be homosexual, in their book (there is this long going joke about Klaus himself being closeted gay, well it was correct with Heider...), but as soon as you ask for the system being fair towards you, you become a "homosexualist", that actively and purposefully aims to destroy the "western civilisation". I am afraid that the -ism ending supposes the same purposefulness in the phenomenon, but that is a minor criticism.
There are a few things that I totally agree with: the way the institutions flaunt their "wokeness" while they are themselves deeply imperialist, the nature of admitting past historical guilt (that as I have noticed is being used by genocidal dictatorial regimes like China, greetings to Macao, to proclaim their own moral and intelectual superiority on a racist basis), and I don't know if this was mentioned, the supreme ineffectuality of the woke politics. I am not sure how making "universities more diverse" is gonna solve anything - if we rather aimed to make the univeristies not racist or sexist (I reside now in Japan so let me just mention how racist and sexist the universities in Japan are) we might achieve better results than through public tokenism that changes nothing except the PR. I haven't been told by literally anybody how defunding the police is supposed to solve anything except to give satisfaction to the populace that hates, and rightfully, the police. It won't solve any issues plaguing either the police or those communities.
I want to say that the ritual of wokeism absolves the individual of any moral responsibility for their actions: you can treat other people horribly but as long as you post your pride flag, most people will never notice and you can feel like a good person again (this is the logical continuation of the Žižekian 10 cents for rainforests).
I would like to hear something about how the right is also using the techniques of profilacity or religiousness for example. I don't think that its exclusionary politics and political eschatology has any less religious implication than the "absolving of sins" that is present in the woke politics.
I do agree with most of what you say. The mainstream corporate woke movement confuses and angers me with its random assigning of targets to be torn down and goals to be raised up, and its utter shallowness and lack of focus on anything other than token gestures.
But just some info, the origonal idea of defunding the police has the intended outcome of diverting money from bloated police budgets and towards social support and welfare programs that have been repeatedly cut as police spending has grown (this is primarily a US issue but is also somewhat the case in the UK as well). With the aim of starting to address the root causes of poverty and crime. That message has rather gotten lost in all the shouting, although as I see it a lot of that is as a result of rightwing pundits willfully misrepresenting as wanting to get rid of police because they're all criminals and terrorists who don't like the police. Also, the grassroots BLM movement is intensely socialist. As one of its main slogans goes "There can be no racial justice without economic justice". But equally a lot of that detail and nuance gets also gets filtered out through Twitter "discourse" and slacktivism. So it does often end up as a rather meaningless term to be thrown by both sides in online arguments both feeling it's either good or bad for reasons poorly understood and little cared about by any involved.
"I am not sure how making "universities more diverse" is gonna solve anything"
Higher percentage of POC in universities mean higher increase of well educated POC who can then a) act as role-models for other POC b) act as living proofs against racial stereotypes and prejudices c) work for improvement of social situation of other POC
"if we rather aimed to make the universities not racist or sexist"
That's part of the struggle as racism may manifest as reluctance to accept POC as students or teachers - if you increase the diversity, you so to speak counter the systemic racism - or at least that's the way they think about this as far as I can tell.
" I haven't been told by literally anybody how defunding the police is supposed to solve anything "
Oh, that's pretty simple - defunding the police means directing the funds to where they used to be and where they were taken from when the "war against drugs" started - in social services and also investing in alternative ways to counter drug crime like mandatory rehabs for addicts instead of jail-time.
"I want to say that the ritual of wokeism absolves the individual of any moral responsibility for their actions: you can treat other people horribly but as long as you post your pride flag, most people will never notice"
Any example for this claim?
"I would like to hear something about how the right is also using the techniques of profilacity or religiousness for example. I don't think that its exclusionary politics and political eschatology has any less religious implication than the "absolving of sins" that is present in the woke politics."
Is that a suggestion for the channel? Because it is quite obvious that the right grows out of many ancient mythical narratives about the good ya old order being threatened by the chaos of dissolution of every category we have been used to for centuries among other things.
@@WhichDoctor1 By the defunding thing I just wanted to say just that: Nobody has yet told me the material process of defunding the police: by how many percent, how will the saved funds be redistributed, what changes in the police departments can we see... What I want to say is that the movement seems to me to have very little political programme that could be expediently implemented and neither is it very good at communicating said programme. I know very well that SWAT teams are mostly a bad idea and that police force should save a few exceptions maybe not be armed with infantry fighting vehicles, but I really miss most of the inner working of the plan, and I have to agree with you that it seems like a "rather meaningless term", that is at least my subjective feeling about it.
@@TheoEvian Surely that would depend entirely on what state, city, or even local police department you were talking about. Since police and social services funding varies so wildly from place to place. Bringing up precise granular details like that outside a specifically local setting and all the necessary context would be pretty meaningless.
@@WhichDoctor1 well, I just wanted to say that they are not very good at selling their principles as concrete programme and that is something i hate in politics. I am sympatethic but I think they could handle the communication better.
the argument about german guilt pride MIGHT be a useful interpretation for germany when it comes to some relevant group of people who shaped german society, but at the very latest it becomes pure, no more than somewhat plausible guesswork when applied to wokeism in general. hard to distinguish this description from an accusation about virtue signaling, which would be nothing more than pure speculation about the actual motives of the people involved.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 📢 The video discusses the relevance and impact of "wokism" (wokeism) in today's Western society, affecting politics, media, and daily life.
01:24 🏛️ Wokism functions as a new form of civil religion, spreading globally, with a focus on identity politics based on aspects like race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion.
04:39 🌐 Wokism is an intensified form of identity politics that permeates all sectors of Western society, including politics, media, advertising, sports, art, education, and even the military.
05:07 💼 An example of wokism is the controversial CIA recruiting video, which showcases various identity markers and values diversity.
09:40 🌍 The notion that wokism is exclusively leftist is challenged, as it is described as a "post-left" movement with neoliberal characteristics, sidelining class issues and Marxist ideas.
14:38 🚫 Wokism is not accurately described as "cultural Marxism" since it is fundamentally different from Marxism and includes elements like normativity, individualism, and a strong moralizing aspect.
16:58 🔄 Wokism is not postmodernist in essence, despite some shared jargon; it is normative and redemptive, whereas postmodernism avoids unconditional values and meta-narratives.
18:47 ✅ The term "wokism" is chosen because it implies a critique of religion, reflecting its role as a kind of secular civil religion.
28:18 🤝 Wokism incorporates elements of German guilt pride and American civil religion, with an emphasis on moral superiority through intense guilt admission, rooted in Western historical experiences.
29:40 🖼️ Vocalism focuses on identity creation through the formation of profiles for individuals and organizations, such as the CIA.
30:50 🕊️ Vocalism is a civil religion that combines American individualistic liberalism with guilt pride and is rooted in identity politics. It is penetrating various sectors of Western society.
31:18 🙏 Vocalism exhibits religious aspects like a strong emphasis on guilt and redemption, dogmatism, divisive moralism, and ritualistic conformity pressure.
32:38 🏛️ Vocalism represents a symbolic struggle between traditional American civil religion (Trumpism) and vocalism (Wokism) with guilt pride.
34:01 💰 Vocalism allows for the "woke washing" of capitalism and imperialism, serving as a moralistic profile creation tool for capitalist institutions.
35:20 ✝️ Vocalism enables personal internalization and zealotry, similar to religious fundamentalism, leading to a strong personal affiliation with its civil religious identity.
36:02 📜 Vocalism facilitates the creation of a public identity based on profiles, akin to traditional religious affiliations, but in the context of the digital age.
37:10 🔄 Just as Christianity appropriated love and peace, vocalism has similarly appropriated justice and equality. Critiquing vocalism is not against these values but against their religious monopolization.
Made with HARPA AI
Thanks for the video, now I have a better grasp on why I simultaneously don't oppose wokism and don't embrace it. There was this strange feeling of the absence of actual substance and paradox of conformist individuality, which made me wary of and distant to it. I support the practical changes to society in favour of more equality, but can't quite understand how the strange identity policy behind it is even necessary for it, while economical and class issues interwoven into it are mostly ignored. Now I know my strong distaste for anything religious keeps me wary of it.
I would love to see a conversation between this man and Jordan Peterson.
👆👆👆 real shit I would pay to see that
Hasn't JP suffered enough? Destroyed by Zizek, then by benzo addiction, the coma in Russia, and now you want him to be made a fool of again?
@@schpeak5503 Shhhh. Peterson might hear ya. Dude likes to "talk" for $$$ compensation of course.
@ I snorted with laughter thank you. Peterson would be so intense and hyperbolic as usual and almost thrives off his opponent doing the same, I think he would positively shift circuit when met with clear impartial refutations and examples.
Peterson is not anywhere near as academically or intellectually literate as this man. It would just be the Zizek vs Peterson debate 2.0- aka one intellectual elevating the conversation and Peterson embarrassing himself by struggling to keep up.
I found this video entertaining and educational at the same time. Thanks for making it.
My question for you is on the term "religion". Why do you use it?
If you could point me towards something to read on the topic I'd appreciate it.
I mean, I can definetely see the similarities (sense of belonging, norms, enemies). But do you use it for lack of a better word, or is there an academic justification?
I've lived all my life in Argentina, where identity politics -or wokeism- has won such popularity that the progressive left celebrates the fact that the newly elected president's son is a drag queen even though his politics tend towards the right (hidden behind a progressive agenda). So it's really interesting to me to listen to a clear -and... schollarly?- analysis on the topic
I apologize for my English. Also, this is one of my first approaches to schollar philosophy.
Thanks , all the way from Buenos Aires.
I wonder what the relation wokeism has with anarcho-syndacalism? Noam Chomsky talks about challenging authority that cant justify itself and dismantaling it if neccessary. I wonder how much influence Chomsky has had on this movement.
I was less than 5 mins into the video when I wrote that, perhaps you are about to answer this
Great video.
I agree with you, I am supportive of what the woke fights for, but disagree with their fanatical method.
After listening to this I have some thoughts, but very quickly,
1) does wokeism encourage zealotry or do people's innate zealotry cloak itself in a poorly understood cultural phenomenon?
2) did the CIA adopt wokeism or did it co-opt it?
3) how does wokeism want people to be?
4) are there not deeper expectations than is recognized to "force" being woke on others?
5) the larger culture battle this discourse is ensconced in is not an organic monolith or in a vacuum either. It has been bought and paid for by special interests looking to find cultural divisions in an American public to solidify a voting base... some good books get into this well, most recently "Let Them Eat Tweets".
I love the dissection and explanation taken in this video, but I diverge on a few things alluded to above I'd like to see explored.
Being woke in the sense of being kind, being aware and vigilant toward dehumanization is a personal expectation that draws on deeper resources that we are culturally not prepared for
It is shocking that this hasn't got 10x nor 100x the views it has.
I'd be interested in hearing more about your idea of "civil religion". Saying "wokeism" is a civil religion sadly doesn't help me without an understanding of what that is. Looking for a definition online resulted in different contradictory definitions. Can anyone help?
This channel is a clear light in the fog
I think the postmodernism the Right ascribes to Wokeism is not post-modern philosophy, but literary tropes, the unreliable narrator in particular. The reliability of a narrator is dependent on identity. Basically, a certain narrator might be more reliable if they check certain identity boxes, so I don't have to as keenly scrutinize if the institution that more reliable narrator is representing actually conducts itself in a way I might object to.
Whist generally a very good video offering some new perspectives on the idea of Woke-ism, I think you took the same route as people like Contra Points in critiquing Jordan Peterson's idea of Woke-ism. That is instead of analyzing his argument, you seemed to look at what the terms "Postmodernism", "Marxism" and "Woke-ism" mean and note that they have irreconcilable differences.
JP's point is that Woke-ism is a *cultural phenomenon* that generally arose from ideas found in Postmodernism and Marxism NOT that Woke-ism is nested inside or is the same thing as Postmodernism or Marxism.
Though your theory on the origin of Woke-ism (at leas to me) sounds extremely plausible, I don't think there is any denying the Postmodern and Marxist influence.
Being is simply realizing you’ve been screwed
I’d also argue “woke” signposting is used by traditionally right-supporting organisations, companies etc to attempt to gain the affection of more left-leaning individuals. Change peoples opinions on the army, or Disney gaining more of an audience with their “first gay character.” All of which are often under researched and half-baked that most people see as shallow. However, they do gain some support from these groups and also, by nature of the rhetoric around Wokeism they do not lose the support of the right and often actively endorse the right in politics still. Look back at Disney as one example. They lose nothing by attempting pandering for the sake of profit, while in the rights eyes they become victims of “the woke mob” opening them up to redemption and protection. The left get the blame regardless, the company makes a profit either way.
Love the video! Thankyou so much.
Gotta defend my boy JBP though. Peterson acknowledges that the “postmodern neomarxism” “cultural marxism” label is contradictory. He’s pointing out that the ideological “activists” are incoherent. They use parts of identity politics, postmodern theory, critical theory, and even traditional theory interchangeably when it suits them with no regard for consistency.
Imo They are Marx’s “opportunists” and can emerge from the right or left.
Who is even 'they' if what we're talking about is not a movement or philosophy with shared theoretical frameworks? 'Ideological activists' doesn't mean much. Is it just anyone that gets Peterson upset?
If they are Marx's opportunists (who he severely criticized), then they aren't Marxists. Am I mistaken somehow? I think Peterson's stitching Marxism onto this thing he hates is at least partly a function of his severe anti-communism.
@@TheBeatle49 Yeah, I don't think Peterson's anti-communism is very constructive. Feel free to Criticize him all you want for that. And I don't think they're Marxists, I would be hard pressed to find a real Marxist now a-days.
I'm calling out as opportunists: the Champaign socialists who compile arsenals of arguments from philosophy, postmodern theory, critical theory, post-colonial studies, etc and use them to better their own status (like philosophytube). I'm calling the modern day activists that co-opt the protest they join for their own causes, opportunists (like the black-block takeover of Occupy). Much as Marx would call an anarchist or capitalist using socialist rhetoric to further their own agenda, an opportunist.
Another very well thought through and cogent analysis. I find your concepts to be novel and very explanatory for what I see on a daily basis among the very online leftist/liberal circles in which I lurk. I hope more people find out about these critiques and this channel.
Question: I see many people falsely conflate "Wokesim" and Intersectionality. I think these two concepts need to be disaggregated and analysed as separate yet related outgrowths of modern leftism. I think Intersectionality deserves it's own video and critical analysis. Would this be something you would be interested in producing?
I will say that personally i find Intersectionality to be more defensible as a properly "Leftist" phenomena, and i would judge it to have more philosophical utility, (both pragmatically and theoretically) than many of the concepts which fall under "Wokeism".
I learned about you from Adam Friended. I like your videos a hell of a lot more than I was expecting and I plan on getting your book on Profilicity.
I would LOVE to see you have a conversation with Peterson.
Corrections re: Corbyn being abandoned by his own party, this isn’t true. The Blairite (neo liberal) wings of the party were largely anti-woke, whereas Corbyn’s most ardent supporters, momentum were wokists. Towards the end of his reign Corbyn was starting rallies by announcing his pronouns. Most people who now use pronouns and woke symbols are those who traditionally supported Marxist or anarchist cultural positions. The British journalist Owen Jones is a prime example of that.
When Peterson talks of post modern neo marxists, yeah this term isn’t strictly correct, but it’s a short-hand to refer to a broad division in modern culture in conceptions of the world; the left generally conceive of the world where hierarchies are constructed on oppression and is therefore unjustified (hence the purpose of deconstruction to reveal what is hidden), and the right view that hierarchical structures are justified either because they are god given or because they are founded on some type of functional merit whether it be nature, competence, functionality, offsetting the destructive impulses of man (the leviathan) or some other status quo / order, preferable to the chaos of continual revolution.
Wokists may be hyper individual but they are also predicated on progressive rather than traditional modes of thought.
Thank you, this is great.
I'm a young Marxist at uni in Australia. The revolutionary socialist (Trotskyist) organisation I'm in draws a lot of ire from the left for being anti-identity politics for a lot of the reasons you state here. I really do think that there's nothing inherently left-wing about identity politics, or 'wokeism'. It seems like as class struggle is low, its perfect breeding grounds for liberal, anti-communialist, individualistic ideology, the antithesis of Marxism. It's almost impossible to dispel this dominant ideology without an increase in class struggle. While I think it's important to educate and polemise against 'wokeism', really the main task is to get out and active in organising to have practice speak for itself against this ideology.
-Treat your neighbor as yourself, whether you believe in Jesus Christ or not.
-Don't be blind to others suffering, whether you are from the left or the right.
-Don't put material things over humanity, whether you are a capitalist or anti capitalist.
-Let people decide who to spend their life's with whether you are religious or an atheist.
-Don't discriminate or treat down people whether you are woke or not.
Stop paying attention to the definitions already trying to put people into boxes and writing books about how you coin terms and sub terms playing for the red team or the blue team. Stop missing the point which is to live better and happier lifes. Just be a fucking good person.
There is plenty I disagree with in your argument, including the fact that there is a coherent ideology (let alone a religion) you can call wokeism. But I'll focus on a point that I think is provably wrong, and that is that "wokism" - admitting that there is such a thing - is individualistic. On the contrary, it seems to me that it is all about communities: the "woke" always interpret identity as the state of belonging to a community (the gay community, the black community, etc...). As you say, "wokism" derives from identity poltics. But if identity were individual, and not collective, then how could it be political? Instead, according to the woke, the individual is primarily understood as a representative of the community - to the point that the community can punish them if they act non conformingly. This is particularly evident when it comes to 'cancelling': cancelling is a communal act, it calls for all members of the community to ignore or boycott the cancelled person. So, once again, the community is central in woke dynamics.
@Tracchofyre almost no system of ideas is coherent. That said, there is overwhelming evidence so called "wokism" is far more collettivist than individualist.
That is an interesting point, however one issue I can think of with this anlaysis is that an individual's inclusion into, for example, the gay community, is based on their own identification as being gay. To contrast this with classism, someone cannot identify as being poor if they have wealth. Therefore, these "woke" community's are derived from a freedom of individual expression and identification.
@@jshx709 but you see, that is also not true: inclusion in a community is still the decision of the community. Take the example of a trans lesbian woman (i.e. an individual with XY chromosomes, who identifies as a woman and is attracted to women). Some lesbian activist communities accept that individuals' self identification, and therefore agree she is in fact a lesbian. On the other hand, some other lesbian activist communities reject that self-identification, and therefore claim that same individual is in fact a straight man.
Of course this is a matter of huge contention among the communities, but the fact remains that the decision on wether to accept self-identification as a valid criterion is itself a decision made by the community, not the individual.
@@RedAlertIt That's a very good point, which I hadn't considered. And I believe this is true on a local level, if we define community in a traditional sense. Acceptance from members of the group is indeed required in order to become part of a local community. However, I do think there is a discussion to be had about how the definition of community changes in a digital context. Many communities now exist online and are essentially global. As such, reference to, for example, "the gay community" (emphasis on the word "the") can concern a wider, national, or even global scale community. In this case, even if one is rejected by a subset group locally, the individual can still consider themselves part of the larger, online community through sheer force of identification. They continue to express this identification in the form of a profile, and through commenting on other profiles, and maintaining that they are part of said community at large, exist as such. In this sense, many of these digital communities are open door, and only require the individual to express a personal identification as a means of entry.
@@jshx709 this is a complex matter. One answer that comes to mind is that the notion of community only makes sense on a local level. If you try to extend it further than, say, national scale, then it becomes something else - a category perhaps. Community requires a certain degree of similarity of experience. Does it really make sense to say that a gay person in Sweden and a gay person in China are part of the same community? I don't think it does: more likely, there are many gay communities that are as different among each other as the local contexts they exist in.
Think for example to the Catholic Church: there you have a strong central authority enforcing common rites and beliefs on catholics all over the world - and even then, it is more than a stretch to say that catholics constitute one global community, given how far apart american catholics are ideologically from southern-americans or german ones.
This put it all together for me.
I think a problem is wide spread Creationism, in the principle sense; I mean the assumption that
if there exists an apparent structure or pattern, it is nessecarily purposely designed by consious agent.
Appart from breeding conspiracy theories, I think it also lies in the heart of wokism and blame-retribution culture:
'Rasism is due active rasists, and to get rid of it all we need to do is to root out the bad apples and certify the intent of the others.'
This is also why it becomes so individual, when you think everything that happens boil down to someones intensional choice.
Personally, I think this assumption is central to a proper identification of proper ' left' and 'right'. The fact that structures appear without being written in law, or formed by a conspiring evil group. These structures can be identified and actively mitigated. The classic such structure is of courses economic class. A proper left approach to equality etc is identifying rasist structures, not rasist individuals.
Now that was insightful, thanks for raising new thoughts (in me). Here's your comment for the almighty algorithm.
This video helps me understand Chappelles special better
For me , woke is what Terrence McKenna referred to as , " The felt presence of immediate experience " .
And I fully expect the right to attack the substance that helps evoke the awakened experience . So look out my fully awakened humans , and LGBTQIA , Community , don't let the take this away .
As a disabled lesbian of Lower income background I actually resent wokisms disinterest in class struggle. My hometown is dying and my nephews' future looks bleak, emotionly why would I ever care if pop culture has people superficially similar to me in it?
I didn't hear the word representation yet but I think you are onto it. Representation is a useful tool in some cases but it is entirely the wrong tool to solve material inequality, and by not shifting gears leads in the end to minority representation as a weapon of the ruling class. Instead of allowing people to progress together like a union does, in the current climate of wokeism representation has the opposite effect because it promotes individualism and ignores the root causes (or rather allows the root causes to be cast aside by the moral absolutism of wokeness). For example: inequality in the black community in the US is greater than in the general population, and as we know the black population is less wealthy than average, but to many black people the idea of progress has the face of the black celebrities and millionaires, which by definition most people will not reach, so any real political path of material progress is replaced by vicariously enjoying the success of others. It's not much different than medieval peasants dreaming of royalty. These dreams may have a place in personal happiness but for actual progress they are too useful as a diversion to the powerful.
@Jack Smith 🇰🇵☦️🥔 of coarse it matters to me, I'm unsure how that alters the stance in any context. I'm also unsure why you think a single comment in a single context provides any real insight into my political or personal perspectives.
That is one reason why societal problems are hard to solve. I do not know what exactly the problem of your hometown is. If I know it, because i read about them or seen them on the media or social network. The media know about the media. The people who cried for "woke", either working in the media (as advertisers or political analyst) or they are in college (where are they supposed to be critical) or youtube (another part of media). Wokism is the media policing itself, at least to me. I could not give a shit about it. My role models are mostly dead people. I am autistic, and the protrayals of autistic people is often too ignorant, too stupid or too boring for me to even be offended. Rather read about the real ones.
as the video said, being woke is basically a left wing of the neo liberal party. basically its an illusion of change, where people are busy fighting each other, while the rulling class is untouched. i see it as a huge misdirection of resources, directed by the elites, so that the energy of woke people is spent on unimportant things, where as before they would fight for unions, vacation pay, living wage, housing thats affordable for all, etc.
@@clairestark9024
I think this Jack Smith fellow is a 'third way-ist'. Let's see.
"Wokism is the left wing of the neo liberal ideology."
I have never heard that idea before but it makes so so much sense
Or it could just be people who feel others should see and realize the ways in which certain groups are disadvantaged and marginalized and have been for a very long time. "Be woke", "wake up", these are terms that pertain to that and that's all it is. It isn't some religious or menacing thing that some people ascribe to it due to their own constructed idea of "wokeness"
@@Scoring57 The problem is that the traditional left (class struggle, unions, worker rights) has be replaced by this new woke left. and by calling it a left wing of a neo liberal as he did, you realize that this movement fits in perfectly to the corporations, and even to the cia. We are fighting against each other while we are all going to the poor house. Housing in canada went up 25% in one year, and that hits both poor whites and poor blacks, but no one gives a f, as we are all woke and divided
Capitalism co-opts everything. Radicalism is sanitised and sold back to us. From the conspicuously absent socialism of MLK to corporate pride, to Che Guevara t-shirts, capital removes anything that actually threatens it and turns into a new avenue for profit.
@@RaunienTheFirst Yep. Rly sad also. I hope I'll see the day when capitalism will be overcome, but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime and I'm quite young..
@@RaunienTheFirst thats well put. co-opting is they key take home message here. Example: Here in canada we co-opted the native people by integrating few of their songs on the radio, renaming few schools (de-colonilizing) but we are still here and more immigrants are coming over without asking the natives what they want. By co-opting the native story we in fact take ownership of them and put them under our wing.
This is so good. When other philosophers talk about this topic, it sounds like some cryptic wisdom. This explaination is much more analytical and easy to understand. Thank you!
Yes, the way they explain things is extremely clear, more people need to know about their videos and style of explaining things clearly, I hope more people adopt this clear manner as well, please promote this videos widely if you can, I really hope people learn from these and how to be like this regardless of their views, simply explaining things in a clear way without rhetoric and hostility and attacks riddled throughout, is such a better experience for dealing with all kinds of information, and they introduce extremely sophisticated and nuanced ideas without any difficulty at all throughout their videos.
I'm irritated by some of the comments (very few luckily so far) which seem to not even recognize the tremendous value even the "style" of these videos or the "manner" in which he speaks is of extreme importance in improving the way all sorts of people might discuss things and how they might discuss things.
I really hope that people might bring these videos to the attention of other more popular RUclips channels and shows so that they might invite them to speak on there and get cross promotion and bring more people to this channel and these videos. One that I've suggested is Triggernometry, but there are certainly many more and I'm probably not that informed overall about the popular channels which may happily host the professor for interviews discussing all sorts of things. Maybe even Russel Brand might like to talk to them, but I think they would have to make some rounds on smaller channels that keep end up getting more and more attention to their way of discussing ideas.
I'm utterly unimpressed with extremely popular speakers like "Jordan Peterson" is who is fully of vacuous mumblings and hypnotizing people with his scatter-brained demeanor, while the professor here is so entirely precise and clear, the content is real, repeatable, it is not like how I've asked so many obsessed fans of Jordan Peterson "What can you repeat from their lecture? What did you take from it or learn?" and they are unable to explain or repeat anything, have not extracted anything, have sat there for hours without learning a thing and just coming away thinking that they are smarter or something. A humungous difference honestly.
I agree. I can't really stress how good it is. The way the whole discourse is handled, the critique of particular topics and ideas. I think it is logical and each point is well-argued. Regarding the topic itself - just whoa... I think it hits the jackpot. The idea of "wokeism" being a kind of a religious movement is mind-blowing to me, but at the same time, it really filled some gaps I had with all the earlier explanations.
It seems almost like people keep it intentionally vague cuz specific definitions would lead to people not being able to use the term loosely to refer to stuff they don't like.
@@aFoxyFox. Absolutely. So important to have these discussions beyond ‘us vs them’. But that’s not easy when we struggle to occupy a shared mental world and even a shared fact world.
that’s because they’re not engaging in philosophy, they’re engaging in sophistry
Curiously, wokeism never seems to extend to class consciousness.
It plays along the edges but always disingenuously. Wokeism will bring class in the discussion but only if it can twist it to talk about another axis of oppression. Like, they'll talk about poverty but not on its own merit and will instead devote time to musings like "How poverty affects women of color?" and thus the entire debate is dominated by unproductive rants against boogeymen such as "the patriarchy" and "whiteness".
"Curiously, wokeism never seems to extend to class consciousness.
"
Curiously, the Marxist will not take this as a point against Marxism, but a point confirming the cunning power of the upper class to "obfuscate the real problem", thus confirming marxist theory. Race is a more powerful social force then money in this society. This is the obvious truth that for the life of me I cant understand why radical Leftists don't understand. If this radical racial consciousness continues we are going to end up opening a can of worms that we wish we hadn't.
Are you sure?
You don't think it takes into account the economical and societal grouping of Black people in western society?
I don't know why you guys are so opposed to the idea that for them race is another kind of class, is it that hard to accept??
@@fgc_rewind "Race is a more powerful social force then money in this society" The irony of Oprah and British royalty discussing this in idyllic villa to millions on international media.
@@fgc_rewind You have no idea what you’re talking about. Have you even read Marx?
"To not abolish Wokeism, but to critically shed light on it. To question it. So that it does not turn to a fundamentalist frenzy"
I think more people need to see the final words of the general talk(well the whole thing but the internets attention span is short), just in general. Sadly critical thinking and debate are definitely not emphasized where they should be. Great video
Isn't it ironic the output of Critical Theory is thinking uncritically?
@@redryan20000
How so?
@@redryan20000 what lol
@@thanatos_0. What criteria for an explanation are you looking for?
@@redryan20000
A 'critical' one.
I enjoyed this video a lot but it is definitely not the case that Corbyn was replaced by a more 'woke' candidate: Starmer has been gesturing towards cultural conservativism in an effort to appeal to the working class voters he lost in 2019.
Corbyn was ousted because he wasn't conservative enough!
That example of him and Sanders was just wrong. Love the rest of the video though!
Hard to parse the difference as the Labour Party is institutionally paralysed by identity politics. Starmer is aware of the problem, but it isn’t clear to him how the party can be moved out of this state.
@Jack Smith 🇰🇵☦️🥔 Yup, pretty convinced now. You're on one bud.
Starmer is a psychopath so it is hard to know what (if anything) he sincerely believes in, right now his only concern is power so he is trying to move the party back towards the centre.
The irony in the mentality of "Unapologetically Me." is that these people are often viciously unforgiving.
I misheard that as "unapologetically mean" and I didn't miss a beat. The second time it was brought up I heard it correctly.
@@emanuellandeholm5657 no, you heard it correctly the first time.
It's a free pass to act only in your own interest.
Why is this ironic?
The mentality of "Unapologetically Me." is a response and defiance to bigots who would condemn others for being themselves. But this is not born of a desire to be forgiven by bigots or forgiven for being themselves. If Bigots were to also adopt the mentality of "Unapologetically Me" I don't see why it would be ironic for them to not be forgiven for it. Being "Unapologetically Me" does not come with a desire or interest in being forgiven.
@@Taniseth in the eyes of these people, everyone's a bigot to the right of chairman Mao.
"... if you'll allow the pun, is in essence non-essentialist"
Hmmm. Yes, allowed.
Its a logical step for neoliberalism to market itself while disempowering actual radicalism in marginal communities. It is an osmosis being done by neoliberalism, thats why criticism of wokism when not contextualized historically bears a vague reactionary appearance.
What internet memes do to a mf
@@boringname3657 expound
I disagree. Wokeism empowers radicalism among marginalized communities (especially minority groups). The ideal scenario for neoliberalism is that of continuous conflict (even war) and social unrest by fragmenting society and eliminating the ethical substance of the state itself. Also, since in this era radical armed groups can be easily crushed by the state in any situation, armed radicalism can even be encouraged without repercussion on ruling elites, actually increasing neoliberal power in the state. All this while ignoring the material reality for the majority of the people (regardless of identity).
guy ?
Well if they were simply criticisms and people questioning things rather than rejecting the ideas and changes certain people want it wouldn't seem 'reactionary'. But when people seem to come to conclusions like, any and every instance of non-whyte representation is "woke" or even "tokenism" and mustn't exist, then they sort of *are* reactionaries at that point. And probably aligned with their whyte identity more than they realized or would like to admit
@@Scoring57 "Woke people are bad and harmful! Also marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman and the black character they added to marvel movie was ugly and annoying and I hated looking at them." If you disagree with this statement you're probably in a cult.
I would love to see a video about the disparity between the way we treat the material and the ideal. How people don't seem to be able to tell the difference as they switch between referencing material reality and idealogical "truths" so fluidly they don't even know that they are doing it. It seems to me this particular characteristic of modern humans lies at the heart of our problems, because it allows us to so easily be mislead by those who exploit it.
The same thing is described as 'symbol vs substance', as well. It links to Wittgenstein's ruler about how, if you don't have complete 100% trust in the ruler you're using to measure a table, you might was well be measuring the ruler with the table. At least that's my understanding of it.
I agree with your proposition. I'd love to hear Dr. Moeller's discussion on this topic :)
@@GnaeusScipio Saw this comment and clicked to see replies hoping someone had invoked Wittgenstein, and lo and behold :)
I really struggled to follow this one. I think your definition and analysis is all over the place. You state that wokeism is an "intensified form of identity politics" but also state that Jeremy Corbyn was replaced by a "more woke" politician. Only... all of the policies from Corbyn's manifesto which could be viewed under the umbrella of identity politics (of which there were many) have been dropped by Starmer. Secondly, you state that wokeism is in a sense closer to the left, but an early example you give of wokeism is a CIA ad, which received torrential criticism from the left and not really anything from the right.
I think, ultimately, you are flipping between two different phenomena. One being the fight against various perceived social injustices, and the other being insincere gestures towards that fight for social standing. Your attempts to treat these distinct things as one has lead to a confused and confusing analysis, and most of the bizarre contradictions in the video stem from this.
Agreed, his view that wokism is extreme individualism ( ie being me) when really seems more about classifying people into identity groups ( each group being varying degrees of oppressor or victim) and hen treating then accordingly
I agree
I think you're forgetting that wokeism is primarily about aesthetics (or profile building); I'm not so familiar with Corbyn/Starmer but in the case of Sanders/Clinton, Sanders is obviously the more progressive candidate, but less "woke" than Clinton (this is an aesthetic difference between the old white man and the potentially first female president.)
Similarly when he says wokeism is closer to the left, it is the aesthetics of wokeism that are more aligned with progressive politics; the CIA used these "woke" aesthetics to market themselves as a more progressive organisation (and received a lot of criticism from the left because of the cognitive dissonance this causes.)
I believe there is an academic wokeism which does have roots in marxist theory and used postmodern ideas and is a full blown attack on individualist and modernist beliefs. And then on top of that emerged a popular movement which draws from academic wokeism and combines it with civil religion and guilt pride as was described. And then once more on top of that are all the useful idiots who rationalise the ideas into something their liberal minds can agree with and the capitalists who, as you said, insincerely gesture to wokeism without ever truly understanding any of it.
The main problem in the analysis in this video, beside what you already said, is his seeming unwillingness to look into the ways wokeism might have ties to for example marxist theory. The reason he gets away with that is that he in fact barely said a word about what wokeism actually says, does and believes.
"CIA ad, which received torrential criticism from the left and not really anything from the right" - I was only aware of this add because of online right-wing analysis and condemnation... May I ask for some links to left-wing criticisms?
Mostly agree. One detail: I'd say that the second 'shift' is far more drastic than the first one, b/c there has been a very natural continuity between the constitutional 1789 left/right and the 19-20th century economic left/right. Basically, the demands for egalitarian and populist changes were extended from the constitutional to the economic sphere. The dominance and privilege of capitalists were naturally seen as similar to those of aristocrats and kings. A socialist and a Marxist was also self-evidently opposed to aristocracy and monarchy, s/he was basically a more extreme version of a republican, a hyper-republican or 'Republican+' as it were.
Most modern woke people, in contrast, are not self-evidently opposed to aristocracy and monarchy, let alone to capitalism and plutocracy. To them, a black or female king / duchess / CEO / billionaire / CIA agent are something to celebrate, not oppose. The woke do not *extend* the sphere of egalitarianism, they *replace* the groups in whose favour they primarily claim to be struggling. Even the theoretically 'intersectional' ones in practice deprioritise class and economic issues to a degree that is far from warranted by their relevant urgency. Furthermore, since most of them do accept capitalist and even pre-capitalist inequality and do not advocate general equality between humans in all respects, their demand isn't for *all* members of 'oppressed' groups to be equal to each other or to all members of the 'oppressor' groups; it is for an equal statistical percentage of these groups in good or bad social positions in proportion to their percentage of the population. In fact, they often even demand compensatory privilege for the groups they claim to be fighting for, rather than just equality. In these respects, their identity-based strife resembles ethnic nationalism. In addition, they also require great attention to small details of personal behaviour, gestures, private life, rather than primarily on a specific programme for institutional and social change, making wokeism similar to a religion. A related difference is that while the old 'lefts' were rationalistic (anti-religious and anti-traditionalist) in outlook, wokeism tends to be at best suspicious of rationalism and reasoned discussion and at worst hostile to them and to favour, instead, spontaneous expressions of authentic feeling and subjectivity, as well as traditions, as long as they belong to oppressed identities.
Any way you could do an in depth video on post-modernism? I really like your content, and it is difficult to find objective commentary on this subject.
You are right about the paucity of quality coverage online.
yeah please do this
Read Cynical Theories, which he mischaracterizes badly, for an excellent summary of postmodern thought and the aspects applied and denied by critical theorists.
@@AlexADalton I argue that wokeism is very postmodern indeed, but I am in agreement with Hans Georg that calling it Marxist is a stretch. Overall Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay did well with some (though not all) of the book.
Please do not read Cynical Theory, at least not as an introduction to Critical Theory since it is extremely ideological charged, confuses several philosophical and theoretical schools and movements with one and other and is therefore either badly researched or just intelectually dishonest. You can read it since it overexaggerates problematic aspects of critical theory (which are also brought up by advocates of critical Theory such as Rick Roderick). But to cut through the bullshit you better familiarise yourself with Critical Theory. Now to your actual question: How to familiarise oneself with Critical Theory? Tough task since it’s getting harder to distinguish what the term Critical Theory actually means. The actual Critical Theorists who actually described their works as Critical Theory were authors of the later called Frankfurt School, they all worked at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt (Max Horkheimer, the director of the institute at the time coined the term Critical Theory in his Essay „Traditional and Critical Theory“). Famous authors of the Frankfurt School are Max Horkheimer, Theodor W Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal. Unofficial members of the Institute, at least in it‘s early stages were Walter Benjamin and Erich Fromm. Later people started to talk about different generations of the Frankfurt School, an other name you might wanna look up is Jürgen Habermas, he was a student of Adorno and later became the director of the Institute. First recommendation: search for Rick Roderick on RUclips. He was a Professor for Philosophy and gives brillant introductions to Philosophy. He gave one to Marcuse and to Habermas and he also published a book on Critical Theory. His lectures on poststructuralist and postmodern authors are great too! A friend told me „Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction“ by Stephen Bronner is also a pretty nice read. Now to a big problem of the American reception of Critical Theory: In the US Critical Theory is often inflated with several other theoretical approaches, for example Feminism, Queer Theory, Critical Race Theory, Poststructuralism or Postmodernism. Now of course there are ties between these approaches. For example Judith Butler, the famous Queer Theorist draws heavely on Poststructuralist authors such as Foucault. Angela Davis, the famous black Feminist and Anti-Racist Activist was a student of Marcuse and even spend some time abroad to study Philosophy in Frankfurt in seminars given by none other but Adorno. Lyotard, a french philosopher who‘s one of the only people who actually talks about Postmodernism in his actual writings also draws on Adorno and his aesthetic theory. The feminist Nancy Fraser also describes herself as a Critical Theorist and has even published books with Axel Honneth who used to be the director of the Institute for Social Research. So, there are definitely ties between these different disciplines and they all share this basic notion of criticizing the status quo, ideology, unwritten rules or common sense arguments. But they‘re are definitely not the same and should not be confused.
I just wanted to say that I think you're doing some very important work here. This channel and philosophy in motion is some of the most enlightening content I've seen on youtube and the warnings that you provide after your videos remind me that I should spend less time on the platform in general. Thank you!
Okay, serious on topic question this time:
When are you finally going to get around to BLAME! 2?
The thing that strikes me as someone who's spent huge amounts of time in woke internet spaces is how much of it is about building personal legitimacy, to the point that it starts to bleed into the way you talk without even trying. If you're trying to criticize something that is hurting people you of course mention that, but the *even better* formulation is when you mention that it is "disproportionately effecting black people" or gay people or whatever. If you can tie something into woke causes, even tangentially, you tend to do it. It's where you really see the neoliberal disposition of public wokeness, because the great crime of neoliberal woke discourse is not that people suffer, but that people suffer disproportionately or "unfairly" (with fairness being assessed almost solely as a matter of disproportionate harm to minority groups). COVID-19 killing half a million Americans is bad, but COVID-19 killing Black Americans in disproportionate numbers is racist and therefore a moral emergency of a different kind.
Even if you're a more traditional, economics-focused social democrat or socialist, you're actively encouraged to reframe all of your class-based observations as race-based ones. So you want to implement Medicare For All? Sure it's bad that there are so many uninsured and underinsured people, but if we point out those uninsured and underinsured people are disproportionately people of color, now we're cooking with gas. Even though this is implicit - in the United States, poor people just *means* disproportionately black people, latino people, etc. because of the nature of the way the country is stratified - you shouldn't just advocate for poor people because poor people without the modifier of an identity group is a non-entity within neoliberal woke discourse.
I remember an attempt to brand the phrase "working class" as being implicitly white by some woke or woke-adjacent liberal writers. And you can see how that happened and even sympathize with it: there is indeed a right-wing usage of working class that refers to disproportionately white cultural grouping rather than class grouping, the hard-hat rebellion, billionaire-in-blue-jeans vision of "working class". But it really shows how apart this discourse is from traditional left-wing politics that such a thing could even be proposed.
Brain M
So if something disproportionately effects a group we shouldn't be concerned about it? If something effects a group especially we shouldn't take special care and put special attention on it to alleviate that? Whyte people's logic seems to get all weird when it comes to aiding and helping particular groups. Racism and identity based discrimination has been a huge problem in the united states and pretty much the story of the country. To have any analysis of any kind, right wing or left wing, that leaves this out is crazy to me. And something only a person who doesn't actually care could ignore. But more and more we're hearing whyte people cry out as they have also become the subject of discussion, the objects of criticism and examination, and complaining that there is "anti-whyteness" or that teaching about whyte people doing bad things in history might harm their kids. Odd hw whyte people can suddenly see how your identity can effect you and that things need to be addressed on that basis when they're the ones affected. But if it's anybody else then it's "woke" or somehow their reaction is fundamentally wrong, unnatural or illegitimate
Also as far as words are concerned, they're understood by how they're used and you've basically admitted that yourself. "Working class" is almost always used separately from black americans or any other group, even outside of right-wing spaces. All contexts around the word when it's being used usually fit particular groups of people. Just like we understand what "urban" is usually implying when it's used as far as identity goes. When we're discussing whyte people the word "metropolitan" rather than 'urban' seems to be what's preferred. Or famously, "sub-urban". So what you might think is an issue with the left might simply be society at large reacting to these things and how they're understood. There are many non-political people who would still see these words in the same way and don't necessarily subscribe to left wing or right wing politics. What I find curios is how a lot of leftists seem to assume the politics of particular people or groups and think everything is ideologically involved. Some people might just be picking up on the discourse at large
@@Scoring57 you missed his point and ended up what he was describing.
@@juststop7335 describe how he did that
@@leonardotavaresdardenne9955 He took a point about how wokeism forces particular groups to the forefront of an issue and put a particular group as the forefront of the issues he gave examples for.
Honestly why am I even bothering? You see him spell white people as "whyte" and then engage in the same exact divisive rhetoric the video and the original comment is complaining about. If you can't reason it out on your own with even this little bit you might be a plant.
Well said. That "disproportionately affecting x" qualifier totally reminds me of John Oliver
My first instinct is to say that it's cynical to characterise wokism as mainly comprising of dogma, virtue signaling and profile curation. On the other hand, I cannot think of a single time in my life that I've actually helped a minority in any tangible way, which is why I try to avoid being explicitly progressive or woke on my social media. I do not feel comfortable labeling myself as an "ally" if all this means is saying some nice sounding stuff in a Tweet - help has to be about concrete action, not hollow shows of faux solidarity. However, I will not dismiss or condemn people who do show vocal support for minorities, because I don't know them and it'd be unfair of me to assume they're only doing it for clout. I feel most people outspoken on these issues DO care genuinely, because speaking out makes you part of the discourse and much more of a target than someone with milktoast views or no expressed views at all.
The thing is: Speaking out is action
Sure it is great to do work in impoverished communities, however, if you are working in a soup kitchen but never publicly speak out against the system that makes the soup kitchen necessary in the first place, you are not fighting but aiding the system. However, the day has only 24h for every person and every single person has to see where to go with their time and energy. Therefore, having people who are doing the practical work and people who are doing the talking can be extremely helpful, as long as both are willing to view the action of the other person as complementary to their own actions.
The problem here is: In the digital age public discourse is cheap; it always seems to be the "easy way out" and it has a very bad reputation. People who take part in public discourse are characterised as having no life.
The weirder problem is: If a privileged person, like myself, starts to talk in favour of marginalised groups, that person can very fast be part of voices which silence the actual voices of the groups they tried to support. Thus leading to less and not more representation. At the same time, not being vocal can be just as bad because it creates an environment in which people who are part of marginalised groups can't know the extent of the backlash they would have to face. Thus leading to less and not more representation.
Besides that, being vocal can pretty fast become self-serving in the sense of the civil religion concept. A "woke tweet" can just be the equivalent of a "letter of indulgence". Johann Tetzel supposedly said: "Wenn das Geld im Kasten klingt, die Seele aus dem Fegefeuer springt." - When the money clinks in the box, the soul will jump out of purgatory. The modern version could be: When the thumb presses send the tweet, your soul's salvation will be complete.
It is not like I would have a solution for that problem at the moment. And to be honest: If participation in this kind of "civil religion" is practically unavoidable I would much rather be part of the woke denomination of this religion.
Nevertheless, the ideas in this video are more than valuable, especially because it is very difficult to always critically question one's own behaviour.
Well, I am a right wing ethno nationalist and proud of it and if I don't get represented in the media I really don't care. My identity is that of my forefathers and will never change.
@@Hoonter101 So your playing identity politics. I mean I'm not calling out I'm just pointing that what you are doing.
Also not represented? Have you watched Tucker Carlson in a while?
I would argue that wokism is absolutely a cult or neo-religion. It is not convincing and yet you cannot argue against it without being stigmatized. I really do recent living in a world in which I have to pay lip service to such utter trash.
It's an interesting comment in light of the guilt pride concept presented. You don't feel like you've done enough to be properly woke, but still have an inclination to defend wokism on some level. Also not an attempt at a callout, I get how you feel. It just struck me as salient in light of the video.
This channel is actually brilliant.
So glad there is a serious philosopher talking about this stuff.
You should talk to Ben Burgis in the US.
I don’t know if you have done any crossovers, but it does help build viewership
I'm glad I woke up for this.
Good pun, not gonna lie.
pun allowed 😅
I think it’s important to recognize the term’s origins in black culture/AAVE for context. It refers to a form of racial consciousness among African Americans. You provide a good discussion regarding the contemporary adoption (and co-option) of it by white people (and institutions), but that larger context is really missing, and you risk erasing/dismissing that understanding by not addressing it
The commonplace definition has shifted radically from referring to black racial consciousness, so I feel although it should be necessary to mention, it’s omission doesn’t really detract from the video?
@@bellumthirio139 No it doesn’t terribly detract from the video as a whole, it’s just a key point that, forgotten, leads to a lesser understanding of the issue as a whole. The video makes excellent points otherwise
@@bellumthirio139 Is there a term for anachronism, in which the the erroneous arrow of cause and effect points forward? This may sound convoluted, but for example, calling the Lollards (a proto-Protestant movement in England) Protestants would be anachronistic, because the Lollards originated a century or so before Martin Luther. And calling the emerging English Protestants as Lollards sounds equally erroneous, but the error isn’t retrograde. This latter erroneous labelling sounds similar to calling modern activists Woke, because although there are similarities, the developmental differences seem to warrant a new name that doesn’t muddy the jargon used in discourse and provides a clearer definition.
@@NightDoge prolepsis or prochronism, the placing of an event or object into a future which does not include it
@@bellumthirio139 rightists will explicitly attack black American racial awareness as “woke” in this derogatory sense.
Wow, this religious element to Wokeism is really interesting. That explaines, why many (religious) conservatives hate the movement so much: It is basically ursurping their place in society.
It also highlights all of the negative parts of a religion. It explains why the non-religious leftists for some reason, inadvertently invented a new religion as a replacement.
@@whoised603 This is basically the "atheism is just anothef religion" argument.
@@whoised603 Maybe because humans are susceptible to "religion-inventing" or something functionally-equivalent to it…
@@whoised603 I think the term you are looking for is ideology. All religions are ideologies, but not all ideologies are a religion.
Not really usurping as much as it is in a bloodthirsty rampage to destroy every single foundational element for a functioning society.
Let's make men women, let's destroy children's innocence, let's destroy the institution of marriage, let's make women promiscuous and hate men, let's pit everyone against each other because of the color of our skin, the list goes on... All the while real problems like infrastructure, purchasing power and education go unnoticed. The owners of CNN are laughing their a--e- off because people are tunnel-visioned on fabricated problems that don't matter, whilst they get richer and richer, at our expense.
Wokeism as a religion is not the issue, it's Wokeism as a smokescreen.
As a "traditional leftist" (probably more center-left, but whatever), my biggest issue with wokeism is that it seems to create more divisiveness than it manages to solve real issues of inequality. The rich and powerful are more than happy to hear us arguing about race, class, gender, sexuality, etc., because talking about inequality from that perspective does little to address the much more important class differences. At the same time, they're happy to put out diversity statements while continuing to exploit their workers without meaningful change. If I were a selfish billionaire, I'd be paying off both left and right wing media to continue talking about toppling 100 year old statues and diversity quotas. I'm sure a lot of real billionaires have figured that out too.
With that said, I don't think wokeism is an entirely useless movement. Historical classist victories have traditionally benefited white men almost exclusively. I doubt a black slave cared much whether they lived in a republic or a monarchy. It's worth taking a multifaceted perspective to equality. Wokeism captures some aspects of this, but misses others.
I would argue that race, class and gender are fundamentally not less important than class, but that wokeism discusses race, class, gender while neglecting! class. I don't think it is helpful to devalue racism in favor of discourse about class.
Wouldn't class distinction itself be a form of 'wokeism'? If, as OP suggests, wokeism is a more radical version of idpol.. then one of the axis along which identity politics exists (I would argue the most important one) would be socioeconomic status, which relates intimately with class struggle.
@@DepressionAlgorithm Theoretically, perhaps. But nobody defines themselves that way. Or at least not in the same way someone defines their gender/race/etc. Also, it'd be really hard to criticize a company that started paying a living wage, even if they only did it to appear "woke". The same can't necessarily be said for Nike's current wokeism.
@@macht4turbo I can see your perspective, and I probably commented too quickly. I'd say though, in my opinion, class is *currently* a bigger issue in the US / a lot of the west, although it's talked about far less. A lot of issues of racism and sexism fall into issues of classism as well. (Rich women will never not be able to get an abortion, for example.) Also, just because something is a bigger issue doesn't mean we don't have to work on smaller issues too.
@@DepressionAlgorithm Class as a concept is hopelessly misunderstood by most people nowadays. If you were to interview people and ask them "what class do you belong to?" most would fail miserably to properly identify which economic class they belong to. Countless privileged upper class and upper middle class kids studying in prestigious universities really believe they are members of the working class simply because they adopt leftist ideals. Meanwhile several despoiled working class people believe they are the representatives of "The Middle Class" or "The Bourgeoisie" and therefore keep voting for right wing politicians who support neoliberal policies that only further despoils them. When people are ignorant of their own class, they will inevitably vote against their "class interest". If anything Wokeism is a key element in our culture nowadays that obscures class distinctions. Personally I would go further and state that class distinctions are not contained within identity politics and that identity politics very intentionally swerves away from class in order to focus on other individual distinctions. Blame it on the Frankfurt school.
Wow, i have never heard anyone so sane speak about this topic is such clarity before. Thanks a lot for the new perspective
Im liking your red hair's struggle against capitalism. Its a very real and individual effort. Bravo.
He's being unapologetically himself to inspire the rest of us, red-haired. I feel so represented.
It also chains him to biases.
The video has a significant part of it dedicated to ascribing the ills that Wokism is bringing to Capitalism in order to relieve the Left and Marxism of their guilt.
And that smells a bit like partisanship..
I'm from Brazil and in the last couple of years I've seen an emergence of Wokeism here,
mostly in student activism. They used to be stereotypically socialist. Some still are, but they try to reconcile socialism and wokenism, and it always results in an awkard and forced effort.
It seems that Wokeism is something poorly imported from the USA. I mean, we do have racial issues here that have never been properly addressed, in part because left politics here has always been "socially conservative" and it has always sabotaged these issues.
I do understand that, as american liberalism became more urban and less working class, it became more focused on cultural issues rather than economical issues (or it tied economcal issues to identities, turning poor (and potentialy racist) whites away). The fact that it is spreading worldwide reveals how culturally powerful the US is.
This is probably the best video on the subject that I've seen at least. Thank you for your channel, it's brilliant and it's great to see that you've somehow combined academy & RUclips in a seamless fashion. The idea of guilt pride being at the heart (or, rather, one of the main instigators) of wokeism is fascinating, so often the whole critique of the matter is extremely U.S.-centristic that you don't even look for relatively "outside" factors.
Unapologetically _Ginger!_
I'm afraid he'll be race bent soon
Intersectionality as I understood it ALWAYS involved class. One of the biggest negative impacts of "wokeism" is that it has removed class as an important "intersection", and the fact that "wokeism" is championed by the corporate and capitalist class is certainly part of this negative impact.
Well said
Naw, you ain’t woke if you ain’t class conscious buddy
Thats the big problem: Class isnt just ONE random aspect of an intersectional world, which doesnt exist by the way. Class is everything and explaining everything perfectly. There isnt classism next to racism, ableism or whatsoever. Its not an aspect equal to the colour of your skin, which remains relatively insignificant for your order in society. Think of two situations and tell me which one would change more radically: being black turning white, or being black turning rich.
That's it basically...
@@Шелсометотнераяту "There isnt classism next to racism, ableism or whatsoever. Its not an aspect equal to the colour of your skin, which remains relatively insignificant for your order in society." - this is the very OPPOSITE of intersectionalism wtf
@@AlexOrozco-Social-Pariah Yes, there is no intersectionalism. its just victimisation.
9:39 I am afraid that the term "post-left" is already taken - just for sake of being precise with notions ;)
'Marxism has never been about the cultural superstructure...' stares in gramsci and situationist
Not to mention marcuse.
Look. I feel like you (and alot of orthodox marxists) have fallen into the trap of conflating liberal recuperation of leftist terms theories aesthetics and strategies. This trap is LAID by both the right and the libs. But if you leave the office, if you listen to speeches at blm rallies, you're going to hear structural critiques left and right. ALOT of the analysis that is co-opted into 'wokeism' is entirely based in trying to demonstrate how the identities we have maintain economic systems. Read Caliban and the witch and the half has never been told to get a more historical view of how these 'superstructural' axes of oppression allowed the accumulation of capital at the birth of capitalism. There are nuanced differences between 'wokism' or liberal idpol and a leftist analysis that incorporates an understanding of intersecting systems of oppression. Just like there's a difference between aoc dems play acting as Marxists and the Marxists in the 3rd world that are in direct opposition to the systemof exploitation that allows soc-dem countries play act.
@@simmerslodraw Bingo!
Gramsci and situationalists theorists are a very small minority of the left. That is only read when perusing a masters degree in academia. Ive met several leftists in person and online and I have yet to find anyone who has read Gramsci and Marcus or what ever his name is.
I was thinking the same thing. Hegemony
Not nearly to the same level
You're an amazing speaker professor. I know nothing about wokeism but it really felt like a heartfelt conversation. It's like a teacher who only wants to teach you and nothing else, which is rare in my experience. You have my subscription.
I agree, wish I could take some of his classes
ive noticed that the position of the first volume of "BLAME!" that you own seems to change such as to ensure that it stays in frame on each of your videos. is there a reason for this? what is the relevancy of "BLAME!" to the general themes of this channel, if there is any? i greatly enjoyed the series and would be curious to hear about this.
Tom Holland's Dominion makes a similar point that wokeism is inherited from Christianity. Would recommend.
I recommend giving Nietzsche a read. There are salient insights to these religious modes in On the Genealogy of Morals.
Its a question that is not so easy to answer: What transcendent religion has huge impact on civil or social religion?
It can be interesting but it need not to be. The most important thing is to acknowledge when a movement or idea becomes in its ideological approach like a religion. So has dogmas and tries to approach more to feelings and tends to have a straight black-white-structure.
What really disturbing for me is: Several famous intellectuals from both left and right - especially from northern america - have religious approaches. Like Sam Harris or Jordan Peterson. Peterson admits it directly and open and is therefor even more authentic than Harris.
But I really diskike it A LOT when intellectuals try to hijack terms and put them into a corner where it does not quite belong just to give their target audience a good feeling. The idea that "wokeism" is left, is for me really ridiculous cause left means to question the distribution of power and property. Of course there is a lot other stuff around being left - but this is the core idea. It was back in the french revolution and was the question Marx raised when he analyzied capitalism.
And so often liberals and conservatives seem to do everything to NOT argue these core tpoics but try to deviate. To put a huge emphasize an "wokeism" is for me such a try - to deviate from the core questions left have. Especially in the last decade it was so important in america to deviate from those topics that e.g. Bernie Sanders tried to put on the table cause its a huge issue in american society how bad normal people and workers are actually treated, yet still believe america is the greatest country in the world.
To make wokeism as a huge enemy deviates from the core issues and tries to make people believe its more important to fight about a third toilette for gender people then for a better health care system or free education and put away money from the ridiculous rich and the industrialized-military complex to normal people and the infrastructure of the country. And the woke-liberals seem to be happy to stand in the focus... and just give a shit to be called leftist or even strangely agree alhough they often are economically pure liberals.
But... to come back to your thought about christianity - of course especial in the USA there is a lot hardcore christians that try to influence the politics by their religion and fight agains identities their religion tells them to be "sinful". Maybe that is a reason that several people who dedicate themselves for identity politics going quite opposite... so just with a different religious approach against hardcore christianity.
I watch sometimes american atheism videos... and they also tend to be really strict cause they feel they have to.
@Jack Smith 🇰🇵☦️🥔 Sure it does have a bit of christian influence...
So ?
Thats exactly the point people seem to miss, something takes influence of something else, doesnt mean that its that something else, or that "something else" is inherently bad.
Heck, Proudhon influenced the fascist movement A LOT... does that mean Proudhon is fash ? or that anything that its influenced by him is bad... etc etc...
@Jack Smith 🇰🇵☦️🥔 Sure, i wasnt implying that to be honest, i agree, i even liked your comment because of that.
It's inherited from the Abrahamic duality between absolute good and absolute evil, with no middle ever allowed. This in turn originated in Zoroastrianism.
as a trans woman very tired of the moralistic and sometimes authoritarians connotations of "wokenes" to the point of feeling alienated to the point of sometimes not wanting to be consider one i really loved this video, i hope it has a good reception 💜
It's a solid point. When being trans begins to alienate people because of the "wokeness" typically associated with the community. You don't end up being judged for your personality or accomplishments, you don't even get judged for being trans, you get judged for being associated with identity politics group. Interesting
The horrible thing I've noticed is that transphobia has increased for the trans people in the LGBT community when they say something that's not "politically correct" They're labeled as 'pick mes' or simply dismissed because they're white.
Transguy here, totally agree with you! I feel like "wokeism" really made things turn for the worse. "Wokeism" cares too much about being "right" and all morally superior, but it only alienated otherwise sensible people who might have been accepting enough of LGBT in general. They're certainly not making themselves any allies.
@@porassrivastava8242 it depends on what you mean by “not politically correct”. If they are right wing advocating against the trans community’s interests so as to be accepted by some conservatives that very much is a pick me attitude. Like women who will be misogynistic for male approval. It’s a real thing and it’s corrosive
@@kstar1489
So similar to white liberals who will act toxically anti-white in order to « please » minorities?