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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?
One of the problems is that some people just seem to use "woke" as a synonym for "authoritarian" or "illiberal" - usually authoritarian and illiberal leftism (chiefly forms that aren't Soviet communism), but in case of people talking about "woke right" it's obvious that they're liberal types who first got frightened of authoritarian tendencies in leftist communities, moved sharply to the right and then noted similar authoritarian and illiberal strains in their new right-wing communities.
Of course the problem here is that liberalism is taken as something of a given when the vast majority of people ever living in the world during the history of humanity have believed in authoritarian ideologies, it takes genuine work to make people truly believe in things like "you should let people speak even if they're wrong" or "people have the right to advance religious ideals even if you think they are rank heresy or mere superstition" or "innocent until proven guilty even if they really really seem shifty in an obviously guilty way" or a dozen other basic things underpinning liberal democracy.
When it comes to "woke" itself beyond the whole authoritarianism thing, it's really a combination of multiple things and ideologies, within the US chiefly progressive African-American nationalism (and other ethnic minority nationalisms usually deriving from the ideological work already done by progressive African-American nationalists, with "progressive" separating this ideological straing from non-progressive African-American nationalisms variously advanced by Marcus Garvey, NOI/Black Hebrewites/other cults or these days by black manosphere types like Tariq Nasheed), second- and third-wave feminism, and to some degree the sexual revolution and the related groups.
The whole "intersectionalism" things is an attempt to tie these, particularly progressive African-American nationalism and feminism, together to a coherent combination, but since there still is friction related to the importances of various causes, the coalition is straining all the time and wokeness doesn't seem to have that much staying power, as shown by the developments after Trump's election.
The "woke right" doesn't exist. It doesn't make sense. It's incoherent. It's an enemy anti-concept designed to derail the conversation.
The left noticed how useful it was for the right to be able to name their political project and has been fighting tooth and nail to destroy the word "woke", whether by endless isolated demands for rigor asking for a perfect definition (as in the OP) or by embracing, extending, and extinguishing the term into uselessness (as in "woke right").
Don't fall for it.
There is something to the concept of the "woke right". To simplify, they accept all the woke theories, but just switch the morality on its head - sometimes trying to even to flip the narrative of oppression. Yes, men did form patriarchy to oppress women and it was is a good thing - just look how shit the world looks like when they rule now. We should go back and repeal the 19th. Yes white supremacy is the boogeyman that woke activists describe. And we can become powerful again and rule the world, even woke people envy that power and want to take it for themselves. Why give them that?
This was always the problem with any victim-victimized ideology, especially if it wins the culture war: why assume that people will sympathize with victims? It is just slave morality, embrace the narrative and reclaim the power from the rabble.
This makes sense, provided you believe yourself to not be the rabble.
Slave morality won because people did the math and figured out that there are a lot more slaves than masters.
See, this is the point of many of these ideologies that divide people into the groups and believe in some divine struggle. They need to portrait the enemy as very powerful and almost impossible force to counter, which puts them squarely into the victim category. But at the same time they need to provide some alternative and make their side of the conflict as powerful enough to overcome that adversity. It reminds me of the old joke:
It is 1935 and Kohn and Goldberg are taking a tram in Berlin. And Kohn sees that Goldberg is reading the latest issue of Der Angriff
Kohn: Hey, why are you reading that Nazi slop?
Goldberg: We are hounded all the time, our businesses are confiscated and I feel all powerless. This is the only place where I can read how Jews are awesome and how they actually control everything. It keeps my spirits high.
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