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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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The Great Awokening as a Global Phenomenon (PDF warning!)

I'm never entirely sure what to make of linguistic analysis--partly because it is very much outside my expertise. But it seems worth noticing when quantitative research is conducted on issues many of us take for granted. For one thing, there have been a couple of highly publicized "you can't even define woke!" takes injected into popular discourse recently, but the author of this study doesn't seem to have encountered any serious difficulty with the definition (though presumably not everyone will agree with the definition on offer, it strikes me as at least plausible).

For another, the timing and differences across cultures is interesting to me. I have always kind of assumed that the Great Awokening was something that happened in the U.S. and then caught on elsewhere, to varying degrees, but while that may in fact be true, it doesn't seem to show up strongly in this data. I guess one question might be whether this just shows that the Internet has really flattened the world in surprisingly strong ways.

Relatedly, the author's questions re: causation also seem important, though I have no idea where to even begin answering that. I do regard the Great Awokening as mostly just a re-re-rebranding of Marxism, focused on social relations instead of economic status, in much the way that so-called "cultural Marxism" did in the late 20th century. But then, why has it caught on now? If it's because of the long march through the institutions, shouldn't we see less of an effect in non-Anglophone nations with dramatically different political histories? Or is this again just the Internet working its dark magic?

Relatedly, the author's questions re: causation also seem important, though I have no idea where to even begin answering that.

I believe he must be lying for some reason. He can't be that blind.

Where causation flows from is rather easy to understand if you're multilingual like me and you read Steve Sailer skewering latest NYT bullshit, and then open your mom's weekly magazine next week and there it is: NYT's bullshit, packaged differently.

I even pointed this out on twitter to one of the provincial magazine editors, and I got a like for it from the editor.

"Respekt magazine is great when you want to read what WaPo or NYT wrote last week".

As an aside, how many Czech speakers do we have on here? I think I've seen two others back on Reddit, plus myself (though I've hardly used it in the last decade)

No clue. I think I've seen one or two, but mostly I've noticed georgioz who's Slovak.