There’s a new battlefield in the culture war naming nonsense perpetual motion machine, which now argues that there is no such thing as “woke” because somebody just failed to define it. That somebody was poor Bethany Mandel, who was asked by Briahna Joy Gray to define “woke” and choked in the chokiest way since I mainlined 23 Nabisco saltine crackers with only half a teaspoon of water.
Ideology is, in many ways, a lens on how to examine issues. Liberals look out for individuals: Identitarians look out for identities. I call the 'Wokism' Egosumism (Latin for I Am). The Woke are Identitarians. if Ideology is a lens on how to look at the world, and the focus of how you order society I would classify:
Liberalism seeks to empower individuals
Communism seeks to empower class
Fascism seeks to empower the state/nation
Egosumism seeks to empower Identities
Is this imperfect? Of course. None of those definitions are complete, but it's my dumb way of making sense of all the craziness.
The people who say "woke" is undefined might want to consider the usage of "fascist". And nowadays, "Nazi".
Yes, anything left or liberal will be used by the right-wing as a term of abuse. It happened with "Communist" (but-that-would-be-Communism was an old joke), with "Socialist" (Obama-is-a-Socialist nonsense), even "Liberal" itself. Yet those words still can have reasonable meanings.
The deeper point of Freddie's essay is the part where he discusses potential motivations behind the idea that this politics is un-name-able. That's very evident in some of the responses. It also means, intrinisically, that there will never be agreement by those adhering to such politics to use any term whatsoever.
Perfect illustration of the uselessness of the term ‘woke’. I’m so pleased to see the term rendered null and void, I side strongly with Angel and TCW there.
PS my mint is still going gangbusters, slow roasted minted Greek lamb shoulder is on the menu this week 🤤
My preferred term is "Costanza politics", after the episode where George decided to do everything by opposites. A moral hierarchy that the opposite of the traditional moral hierarchy, so that whites are morally inferior to Blacks, men to women, cis to trans, Westerners to indigenous, etc.
My first experience with "woke" (although it wasn't called that at the time) was when students at my alma mater protested vigorously to get a statue of Thomas Jefferson removed from campus. They argued that the statue was representative of slavery, because TJ owned slaves. But they took it a step further, and claimed that the statue made students feel "unsafe". And while I suppose you could argue a large amount of bronze is dangerous if it fell on you, that is quite a different thing than equating the mere existence of the statue to presenting a threat of violence to non-white students.
Ultimately, I think Carl is right that it's useful to have a word or phrase to describe what was happening. And FDB's "social justice politics" seems to fit like a glove.
“Social Justice Politics” won’t work because “Social Justice Warrior” was the term first used by the New Atheists to describe the feminists who took over their movements, and then by gamers during “GamerGate”to describe the far-left moral busybodies who took over game journalism and later even game development.
Ideology is, in many ways, a lens on how to examine issues. Liberals look out for individuals: Identitarians look out for identities. I call the 'Wokism' Egosumism (Latin for I Am). The Woke are Identitarians. if Ideology is a lens on how to look at the world, and the focus of how you order society I would classify:
Liberalism seeks to empower individuals
Communism seeks to empower class
Fascism seeks to empower the state/nation
Egosumism seeks to empower Identities
Is this imperfect? Of course. None of those definitions are complete, but it's my dumb way of making sense of all the craziness.
The people who say "woke" is undefined might want to consider the usage of "fascist". And nowadays, "Nazi".
Yes, anything left or liberal will be used by the right-wing as a term of abuse. It happened with "Communist" (but-that-would-be-Communism was an old joke), with "Socialist" (Obama-is-a-Socialist nonsense), even "Liberal" itself. Yet those words still can have reasonable meanings.
The deeper point of Freddie's essay is the part where he discusses potential motivations behind the idea that this politics is un-name-able. That's very evident in some of the responses. It also means, intrinisically, that there will never be agreement by those adhering to such politics to use any term whatsoever.
“Season 1 AND Season 8 of Game of Thrones.”
Can we give the man a standing ovation?
Perfect illustration of the uselessness of the term ‘woke’. I’m so pleased to see the term rendered null and void, I side strongly with Angel and TCW there.
PS my mint is still going gangbusters, slow roasted minted Greek lamb shoulder is on the menu this week 🤤
My preferred term is "Costanza politics", after the episode where George decided to do everything by opposites. A moral hierarchy that the opposite of the traditional moral hierarchy, so that whites are morally inferior to Blacks, men to women, cis to trans, Westerners to indigenous, etc.
My first experience with "woke" (although it wasn't called that at the time) was when students at my alma mater protested vigorously to get a statue of Thomas Jefferson removed from campus. They argued that the statue was representative of slavery, because TJ owned slaves. But they took it a step further, and claimed that the statue made students feel "unsafe". And while I suppose you could argue a large amount of bronze is dangerous if it fell on you, that is quite a different thing than equating the mere existence of the statue to presenting a threat of violence to non-white students.
Ultimately, I think Carl is right that it's useful to have a word or phrase to describe what was happening. And FDB's "social justice politics" seems to fit like a glove.
“Social Justice Politics” won’t work because “Social Justice Warrior” was the term first used by the New Atheists to describe the feminists who took over their movements, and then by gamers during “GamerGate”to describe the far-left moral busybodies who took over game journalism and later even game development.