Wokeism

Script & sources at: www.thenandnow.co/2023/04/14/wokeism/ ► Sign up for the newsletter to get concise digestible summaries: www.thenandnow.co/the-newsletter/ ► Why Support Then & Now? www.patreon.com/user/about?u=3517018

the terms "woke" and "redpilled" originally had the exact same meaning (being aware of the inconvenient truth about society), but depending on who adopted the terms their meanings changed into mocking insults

Maybe true wokeism is the friends we made along the way.

Conversation has disappeared and now all I see is everyone raging and reacting. I don't think people should be canceled, these incidents should be seen as a teachable moment. We need to sit down with each other and have a conversation and listen to each other.

I can’t believe the English cancelled Joan of Arc by burning her at the stake. That’s one campus debate that went wrong.

While I agree with the origin of wokeism relating to the habermasian concept of 'public sphere' but the fact is that wokeism has its limitations. Wokeism as taking place currently, has become a form of performative act, a trend. That's why all these multinationals who don't give a shit about minorities or transgender people, will be so eager to co-opt the rhetoric of pride and diversity. Amazon can play the woke rhetoric of racial diversity, all the while destroying union efforts by its own employees, the most vulnerable of whom are the racial minorities themselves. In short, the problem with wokeism is that its superficial and not honest regarding the problems and its solutions.

Watching this one year later and it's only been getting worse and more confusingly used! I saw a menopause awareness campaign labelled as "woke" the other day!

I used to think 'woke' was a state you entered after finishing sleeping for the night. Now I'm just confused...

sometimes i feel like the people who told me i was wrong for doing or saying shitty things helped me to become a better person

The passage on Goerg Moeller is odd, given that it's preceded by a bit which mostly agrees with his analysis, the bit on political ideas, moral stances, being part of social mechanisms much like those ruing fashion, meaning it's part of a performance. Your analysis and that of Moeller largely overlap in this sense, with the bourdieusian (if that's a word) perspective. Of course you focus on Moeller's claim on civil religion, but this claim he's making is supported by this bourdieusian/sociological analysis of political ideas also being performances, appearances presented to the public sphere. To me it never seemed like Moeller was critizing wokeism by punching down (especially given he makes the same critique about conservatives - in this sense he'd be punching "up" as well, if he was punching at all).

I've been such a huge admirer of your channel ever since you put out your video on Derrida/post structuralism, and (back when I had the funds), supported you on Patreon. This is the first time I've seen you post a video that didn't engage with the arguments being critiqued. I don't know who two out of the three of YouTubers being criticized, but I did watch the carefree wandering video and nowhere in this did you engage the main problem with wokeness, as he sees it--it's that it's a language game that anyone can perform. The CIA example was used to point out that this language game is being used to gloss over an institution that has been responsible for untold atrocities that should make any leftist feel compelled to oppose it--but instead, by associating itself with this woman who checks all the right identity boxes, the CIA gets a pass. An example from American politics is when Bernie Sanders was competing with Hilary Clinton for the Democratic nomination and a big part of his platform was to break up the big banks. Hilary critiqued this by saying, "if we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that end racism? Would it end transphobia?" She received huge applause for this, but ultimately, it was used by right wing media outlets to tear her apart, so not only did this empty posturing undermine the true leftist (Bernie) in the short run, but in the long run, it helped undermine her own viability as a candidate as well.

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. Any attack on intellectual liberty, and on the concept of objective truth, threatens, in the long run, every department of thought.” –George Orwell

I think “woke” is just a new word for something old. The young use it because it’s trendy and the old use it because the young use it and so is therefore scary. Tale as old as time.

Your interpretation of Moeller is far more "bizarre" than anything he said.

The undeniable right-wing fearmongering aside, to pretend that progressive politics have not "jumped the shark" in a lot of ways, is very unwise at this point. No matter its admirable goals, it became in a lot of ways performative, dishonest, and routinely abused for personal and selfish goals. It needs a lot of course correction, and more then a bit of internal criticism, which it does not allow. To be woke in its originality means to "be aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues and to be alert to racial prejudice and discrimination. It has been a critique of society we live in. And was and still is, absolutely needed. But it has morphed into something else, and shows a worrying lack of ability to sometimes look internally and thus both critique and allow critique of itself. Wokeism is this "my way or the highway" attitude and "I know best, and anyone who says otherwise is a bigot and a hater". And its supposed to be the people who are ostensibly the smarter, more informed, empathic and attentive side of society.

As someone who lived through the 90's, I can catagorically say, that we are not free er to say what we want, as certain topics and opinions have been made, either tabo, or extremely risky, and in some cases outright criminalized on the basis of someones emotional reaction to what has been said. Gas lighting, faulse equivilencies, morral grand standing, straw manning and accusations of bigotry have taken the place of rational debate. While censorship has risen dramatically. Opposing political opinions no longer get together in a room to discuss the topic to determine who'se right any more, but instead attempted to "win" the arugment. Reguardless of who started this trend, the result is that both sides now errect straw men to stand in for an opposing point of view who see no point in turning up to be insulted, ignored and shouted over. The fact that our platforms have a bigger reach, does not mean we have more or better freedom to speak and be heard. Especially if those platforms direct you into an empty room.

Thanks for making this. I think something a lot of people miss is that every political group has some unreasonable and dogmatic members. This does not mean that the movement is bad. Twitter just allows you to have direct contact with these people all at once so they seem like an insane mob, and the less hyperbolic voices are lost. Like Marshall McLuhan says "the medium is the message", twitter is the medium and it radically shapes the sort of discourse that can exist on it.

While I broadly agree with your analysis, I would love for you to dig deeper on the concept of "wokeism as religion." Here you posit it as a pejorative charge made by reactionaries to imply dogmatic, insular thinking - and that's true. But if we put those negative perceptions aside, there is something valid to the idea that people in an increasingly atheist society are finding in social justice communities many of the same benefits of religion: e.g. community, shared morality, and even some ritualistic behavior. Acknowledging this does not detract from the necessity or urgency of social justice goals.

I The Americans had a spate of "cancel culture" going in the 1950s. Senator McCarthy s witchhunting against so called communists drove many talented artists from the USA. Charlie Chaplin had to live in Switzerland . The musician Larry Adler and singer Paul Robeson had to go into exile in Britain Many talented performers and directors left for Europe due to the anti communist paranoia. Why isn't John Cleese called a woke for his fundraising for Amnesty International? He probably regrets his 1970s support for human rights.

The one truth of life people need to be woke to. Is that life mostly isn't great, good, or even tolerable. But that we should strive to make contentment as equitable and fair as possible.