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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   36644 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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I am a longtime lurker on the site and wanted to pose a question to those that commonly post on the evils of wokeism. I have noticed that many posts seem to point to an increasingly nebulous boogeyman--one that could really use to be defined.

What is woke? What do you define as woke? Is there a difference between one that is socially conscious and someone who is woke?

  • -20

In light of the stupid Elon hand gesture thing that still won’t die, let me offer a slightly different definition based on something I was just thinking about. A lot of what separates “woke” from run of the mill identity politics and/or ingroup-outgroup bias is the imposition of rules on the outgroup. This is where it takes on a somewhat religious tone ( slogans like “silence is violence” are analogous to the “convert or die” sentiment of the Muslim conquests or early crusades ).

What makes woke particularly insufferable is the rule creation mechanism. It doesn’t come from a canonical text, but rather, it’s an ever growing list of words or actions that were previously done by bad people. Racial slurs? – can’t say those, bad people used them a long time ago. Black facepaint? - can’t use that. Bad people did it a long time ago. Raising your straight arm at an angle above 90 degrees from the resting position? - can’t do that. You guessed it, because bad people did that a long time ago. Hell, you can’t even make the okay sign in some circles anymore because bad people did it on the internet. In addition, the rules are different depending on how “bad” your particular group is seen as being.

So, back to the Elon hand gesture. He’s not allowed to make it apparently. Why? Because it was done by the Nazis. It doesn’t matter that that is barely still in living memory. It doesn’t matter that none of his other actions are particularly Nazi-like. It doesn’t matter that it is a salute that comes naturally to humans and has been practiced by countless groups over the millennia. No, the gesture is verboten, now and forever. And unless you are constantly policing your actions and keeping up with the latest blacklists, you too will at some point do something that will mark you as an apostate.

And unless you are constantly policing your actions and keeping up with the latest blacklists, you too will at some point do something that will mark you as an apostate.

Emphasis added.

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