"Yet it was, in its core commitments, correct. Even as it frequently misunderstood racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, police brutality, the problems of the carceral system, sexual assault, etc., these are real and urgent problems.
It was correct, fundamentally, because it was motivated by virtue. It was motivated by concern for the other and fairness.
There will always be movements for moral reform that are extremely irritating, obnoxious, and sometimes cruel, but which are fundamentally correct. You are morally liable if you use the irritating and destructive elements of these movements as a reason to oppose them overall."
Imagine actually believing this. The woke movement was/is a gang of narcissist bullies trying to control the narrative. They don't give a shit about the betterment of anything, which should be obvious with how they've dealt with Israel/palestine. It's insanely naive to think it is genuine virtue.
ANYONE who argues against capitalism and for socialism, knowing their histories and the history before them fully well, is an evil person. Not right, not good. Just evil and wrong.
First of all, can you even define the "woke movement"? Was the US Civil Rights movement or anti-apartheid or Iraq war protest a woke movement full of narcissists who didn't care about the betterment of anything? Or is it only movements that disagree with things that you personally believe?
Second of all, in what way are they any different to any other group for trying to "control the narrative"? In every conflict between groups there have always been attempts to suppress the other sides' arguments. This is just standard practice, and if anything pales in comparison to the ways that some groups impose their views on others (violence, threats, intimidation).
What even is your point about Israel/Palestine? How does someone pointing out that Israel's use of indiscriminate bombing and starvation in Gaza and it's illegal land seizure in the West Bank is unjust and disproportionate mean that they don't care about human rights?
Your last point about capitalism and socialism is so absolutist it borders on parody. Political ideologies aren't Marvel movies. Serious people debate economic systems all the time. Throwing around words like "evil" makes you sound just like the "woke narcissists" you say are trying to "control the narrative"
No serious economist debates the benefits of a socialist system at this point, the fact you think so means you're effectively what in economics is considered a flat farther, you aren't a serious person.
Oh boy. What do you even mean when you say 'socialist'? There term is so broad that it could include everything from social democracies like Norway, to state capitalist economies like China and Vietnam.
Most self-described socialists in the west advocate for democratic socialist policies more aligned with the Nordic model, which are well within the bounds of mainstream economics.
And yes, there are economists at leading institutions who advocate for socialist policies (as opposed to laissez-faire capitalism, deregulation, minimal intervention etc). Richard D. Wolff (University of Massachusetts) is the most prominent openly Marxist economist. Joseph Stiglitz is a prominent mainstream economist who advocates for policies that are broadly aligned with democratic socialist platforms. Thomas Picketty (London School of Economics), Branko Milanovic (CUNY), also very open about their criticism of capitalism while occupying esteemed positions at eminent universities.
I never made the claim that Nordic social democracy was not capitalist.
Your claim that I was responding to:
"ANYONE who argues against capitalism and for socialism, knowing their histories and the history before them fully well, is an evil person."
Without clearly defining the term 'socialism' here, there is no way to know whether you are including self-described democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders, AOC or Mamdani (who really only advocate for social democracy) in your criticism.
My sole claim is that social democracy and democratic socialism are mainstream positions and that most advocates of socialism (at least in the US) hold views largely consistent with them.
"Bernie Sanders, AOC or Mamdani (who really only advocate for social democracy) in your criticism." None of these only advocate social democracy, you dishonest cunt. Social democracy and "democratic" socialism are NOT the same.
I think it's pretty funny that you plowed into this comment thread using poorly defined terminology ("socialism") as a blunt-force trauma weapon, making absolute claims about the character ("evil", "narcissist", "bullies", "don't give a shit about the betterment of anything") of the people you disagree with, and trying to leverage public shame via implied ignorance ("not a serious person", "stop embarrassing yourself") as an argument tactic... all in the context of making claims about what's wrong with the woke movement.
Like.. you literally just speedran most of the the behavioral profile that people resent from the "woke movement" over the course of a handful of comments.
We reserve the greatest contempt for those who are most uncomfortably like ourselves, eh?
That's a bit of a red herring. Outside some very specific Reddit communities, things normally considered "woke" and economic leftism have a very high correlation.
Are there some woke neoliberals and un-woke socialists/socdems? Yeah, the world is big and some people had internet access too early. But they're very small minorities.
Still, anything that depends on *identifying* social justice concern with socialism is making a huge mistake - even if there's a lot of overlap between people who talk about each of them, most of those people care much more about one than the other, and the core people in each are separate.
Are they? I guess we might disagree on who "the core people" are. If we take anything happening off-line (and off-campus), then the Squad, Mamdami, etc are pushing the Overton window leftward both socially and economically.
And ok, I appreciate that you cannot characterize a cluster? movement? ideology? from the very top. But still, with some exeptions (civil rights and immigrant advocacy give somewhat libertarian vibes at times), pretty much everything we can consider unambiguously economically lw (say, Mother Jones, or Southern Poverty Center) will also have pretty left-of-center social views, and vice versa.
Anedoctally, I've never met the fabled woke neoliberals using identity politics as a kludgel to stop workers' actions. The same people who ask you to join a union are the ones introducing themselves by their pronouns and the ones organizing the demonstration in front of the coal plant. (It's a lot less obnoxious than it sounds. Much like for vegans or Christians, the ratio of obnoxious anti-X is 10:1 to the actual obnoxious X).
Also, it's possible to be wrong about some things, even about some of the biggest things, while being fundamentally right about many, many other things.
This exactly. I keep telling people that the dumb left is super annoying, but think for a few seconds before you start declaring things like masked police executing the president's political opponents in the street is less of a threat to the republic than... a couple white guys missing out on TV writing jobs, you had to go to an ineffective DEI training at work, and the kids were super self-righteous and annoying on twitter for a while.
Especially when the motivator behind those latter downsides was trying to get people to notice that maybe we shouldn't consider our work as a society done because shit isn't nearly as bad as it used to be for disfavored groups but is still not fair or just.
Tbh I think there is a point where people are just lost. Like the conservative guy who listened religiously to Rush Limbaugh and still rants about the maculated owl is not going to vote D, let's write off the loss and focus on people with some neuroplasticity left.
last year, ten years passed since i first got a tumblr account and tumbled into the entire SJW space, right into the hair-thin crevices and most granular discourses you can imagine. i felt very seen by the profile you constructed of the average SJW. since then, my thinking has undoubtably matured, and i'm almost certain my 13-YO self would berate me for "moderating" on certain things; i guess that's the "fresh convert" part of things.
but like you, i've never been tempted by "anti-woke". in fact, these lines especially: "It would be so freeing to be able to speak of our vices, virtues, rights, wrongs, pains and pleasures honestly and with full assurance of being believed, like a weight we never knew we had removed. We would love each other a lot more, I think." really engrossed me. love will save us all! enduring to try and love despite all the baggage and reasons not to will save us! letting love be the guiding force in our actions, policy, and daily lives will save us! and it kills me how we let rational pessimism kill that instinct, supposedly in the name of "pwning the sky daddy". thank you for putting the pearl rolling around in my skull into words and sentences!
The first, in which this article is a healthy part of addressing, was an unwillingness to acknowledge and correct flaws. Worse, any effort to do so was vigorously punished, creating numerous innocent victims with no place to go except the other side.
This weakness did the movement grievous harm and obscured any truths it may have uncovered.
A second weakness, which this article doesn't address, was a reckless incredulity for taking on board ideas and positions that clearly failed any test of social justice yet became part of an 'all or nothing' package.
That would be a whole other article, but the movement does seem to be in the process of recognizing and addressing this flaw.
Only when these flaws are successfully addressed will the movement have earned the right to include justice in its name.
I think there are tomes to be written (which they shouldn't, it'd be a terrible use of everyone's time to catalogue "someone is wrong on the internet") all the idiocy that a certain cluster of left-leaning online people fell into.
That said, it's mostly online, and usually they're not terrible by any objective standards, they're terrible bc we had higher expectations for them. Eg not so long ago the online left managed to convince itself that Canada was carrying out Aktion T4 and that euthanasia was basically nazism based on a very dumb and motivate telephone game. It made my blood boil, both bc of the obvious bad faith and for personal reasons.
But looking at it objectively: 1. actually-existing LW parties were steadfast in supporting euthanasia, and the screechers were few and unimportant 2. Even these screechers were not worse than the median Christian on this matter.
I think this is the root of why the left is so fractious- circular firing squad is the description I remember offhand. Plus the way the various Internationales fell apart to infighting.
I'm glad you take the position that you do: we are still obligated to do the right things regardless of how irritating our allies might be. Thanks
The right often appears more unified because its core values prioritise strength and group cohesion, even when that cohesion is built around cruelty or hypocrisy. On the left, people turn on each other because they are trying to live up to principles about fairness and harm. If a left-wing organiser says something cruel or offensive, they get criticised because ignoring it would contradict the values they claim to uphold. On the right, the people harmed are more often told to tolerate it, because endurance and loyalty matter more than whether the behaviour itself is cruel.
"It was wrong about countless things, big and small, and monomaniacal even when right. Often the core of its theoretical wrongness was in regarding, e.g. men, white people, straights as beneficiaries of an alienated and discriminatory world, rather than joint victims. It also got a bunch of factual and technical points wrong.
Yet it was, in its core commitments, correct. Even as it frequently misunderstood racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, police brutality, the problems of the carceral system, sexual assault, etc., these are real and urgent problems.
It was correct, fundamentally, because it was motivated by virtue. It was motivated by concern for the other and fairness."
This seems to me to be eliding a big leap - correct in its commitments making something fundamentally correct. Someone being against secret pedophile cabals and so shooting up a random innocent pizza place; is correct in their core commitments of opposing pedophile cabals, but not fundamentally correct to shoot up a pizza place. You can be intending good but simply be wrong in your actions.
we have to police the narcissistic on our side, then other things may well fall into place, except the annoying bit
Virtues are an effort that we value, so virtues will be annoying because hell is other people, and because of this, or caused by this, it is meetings that make us human (and copying that makes each of us individually human) as we self the world among others doing the same.
While I agree with much of what you say here, I would object that the description of merely "shouting 20 and 30-somethings being rude to you on the internet" minimizes some of the problems. There was, and continue to be, efforts to get ordinary people fired from their jobs and made unemployable for median political views, as well as extensive mobbing with literal death threats:
Due to some complicated US law matters, every single person who is not self-employed is at risk of being dragged through job-risking legal-based proceeding over social media postings or similar. It's a real problem. And not much comfort to be told that if you keep quiet, you probably won't find yourself being targeted. Yes, there's a cottage industry of pundits claiming persecution. But self-serving false claims don't invalidate true risks.
The left claims to be anti-imperialist. So why do you side with Islam? It is one of the most imperialist religions and cultures to ever exist on earth. That itself is enough to dismiss anything you say. Similarily we can dismiss any leftist who believes socialism is a valid system for generating welfare relative to capitalism. The first is insanely hypocritical (per usual) and the other is just a leftist Candace Owens.
You're using the word "virtue" incorrectly.
This is good stuff. I am a member of the Greens in Australia, and we are virtuous and, yes, we can also be irritating
Narcissists do think they're the best people in the world, true.
As opposed to who?
As opposed to the typical person.
"Yet it was, in its core commitments, correct. Even as it frequently misunderstood racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, police brutality, the problems of the carceral system, sexual assault, etc., these are real and urgent problems.
It was correct, fundamentally, because it was motivated by virtue. It was motivated by concern for the other and fairness.
There will always be movements for moral reform that are extremely irritating, obnoxious, and sometimes cruel, but which are fundamentally correct. You are morally liable if you use the irritating and destructive elements of these movements as a reason to oppose them overall."
Imagine actually believing this. The woke movement was/is a gang of narcissist bullies trying to control the narrative. They don't give a shit about the betterment of anything, which should be obvious with how they've dealt with Israel/palestine. It's insanely naive to think it is genuine virtue.
ANYONE who argues against capitalism and for socialism, knowing their histories and the history before them fully well, is an evil person. Not right, not good. Just evil and wrong.
First of all, can you even define the "woke movement"? Was the US Civil Rights movement or anti-apartheid or Iraq war protest a woke movement full of narcissists who didn't care about the betterment of anything? Or is it only movements that disagree with things that you personally believe?
Second of all, in what way are they any different to any other group for trying to "control the narrative"? In every conflict between groups there have always been attempts to suppress the other sides' arguments. This is just standard practice, and if anything pales in comparison to the ways that some groups impose their views on others (violence, threats, intimidation).
What even is your point about Israel/Palestine? How does someone pointing out that Israel's use of indiscriminate bombing and starvation in Gaza and it's illegal land seizure in the West Bank is unjust and disproportionate mean that they don't care about human rights?
Your last point about capitalism and socialism is so absolutist it borders on parody. Political ideologies aren't Marvel movies. Serious people debate economic systems all the time. Throwing around words like "evil" makes you sound just like the "woke narcissists" you say are trying to "control the narrative"
No serious economist debates the benefits of a socialist system at this point, the fact you think so means you're effectively what in economics is considered a flat farther, you aren't a serious person.
Oh boy. What do you even mean when you say 'socialist'? There term is so broad that it could include everything from social democracies like Norway, to state capitalist economies like China and Vietnam.
Most self-described socialists in the west advocate for democratic socialist policies more aligned with the Nordic model, which are well within the bounds of mainstream economics.
And yes, there are economists at leading institutions who advocate for socialist policies (as opposed to laissez-faire capitalism, deregulation, minimal intervention etc). Richard D. Wolff (University of Massachusetts) is the most prominent openly Marxist economist. Joseph Stiglitz is a prominent mainstream economist who advocates for policies that are broadly aligned with democratic socialist platforms. Thomas Picketty (London School of Economics), Branko Milanovic (CUNY), also very open about their criticism of capitalism while occupying esteemed positions at eminent universities.
You're really going to come here and mention socialism and pretend nordic social democracy is not capitalist. Stop embarassing yourself.
I never made the claim that Nordic social democracy was not capitalist.
Your claim that I was responding to:
"ANYONE who argues against capitalism and for socialism, knowing their histories and the history before them fully well, is an evil person."
Without clearly defining the term 'socialism' here, there is no way to know whether you are including self-described democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders, AOC or Mamdani (who really only advocate for social democracy) in your criticism.
My sole claim is that social democracy and democratic socialism are mainstream positions and that most advocates of socialism (at least in the US) hold views largely consistent with them.
"Bernie Sanders, AOC or Mamdani (who really only advocate for social democracy) in your criticism." None of these only advocate social democracy, you dishonest cunt. Social democracy and "democratic" socialism are NOT the same.
I think it's pretty funny that you plowed into this comment thread using poorly defined terminology ("socialism") as a blunt-force trauma weapon, making absolute claims about the character ("evil", "narcissist", "bullies", "don't give a shit about the betterment of anything") of the people you disagree with, and trying to leverage public shame via implied ignorance ("not a serious person", "stop embarrassing yourself") as an argument tactic... all in the context of making claims about what's wrong with the woke movement.
Like.. you literally just speedran most of the the behavioral profile that people resent from the "woke movement" over the course of a handful of comments.
We reserve the greatest contempt for those who are most uncomfortably like ourselves, eh?
That is how you deal with disgustingly dishonest socialist freaks like you. You are barely human.
... what is it that you actually think you're doing here?
Talking to the economic and cultural variants of anti-vaxxers and flat earthers.
to what end, though? This isn't dialogue. This is just emotionally lashing out.
You're mistaking the social justice movement for their enemies who also happen to be on the left, the socialists.
That's a bit of a red herring. Outside some very specific Reddit communities, things normally considered "woke" and economic leftism have a very high correlation.
Are there some woke neoliberals and un-woke socialists/socdems? Yeah, the world is big and some people had internet access too early. But they're very small minorities.
Still, anything that depends on *identifying* social justice concern with socialism is making a huge mistake - even if there's a lot of overlap between people who talk about each of them, most of those people care much more about one than the other, and the core people in each are separate.
Are they? I guess we might disagree on who "the core people" are. If we take anything happening off-line (and off-campus), then the Squad, Mamdami, etc are pushing the Overton window leftward both socially and economically.
And ok, I appreciate that you cannot characterize a cluster? movement? ideology? from the very top. But still, with some exeptions (civil rights and immigrant advocacy give somewhat libertarian vibes at times), pretty much everything we can consider unambiguously economically lw (say, Mother Jones, or Southern Poverty Center) will also have pretty left-of-center social views, and vice versa.
Anedoctally, I've never met the fabled woke neoliberals using identity politics as a kludgel to stop workers' actions. The same people who ask you to join a union are the ones introducing themselves by their pronouns and the ones organizing the demonstration in front of the coal plant. (It's a lot less obnoxious than it sounds. Much like for vegans or Christians, the ratio of obnoxious anti-X is 10:1 to the actual obnoxious X).
Also, it's possible to be wrong about some things, even about some of the biggest things, while being fundamentally right about many, many other things.
The headline reminds me of the classical story about the ostracism of Aristides the Just https://www.reddit.com/r/classics/comments/ztr6uq/hilarious_anecdote_from_plutarch_about_athenian/
This exactly. I keep telling people that the dumb left is super annoying, but think for a few seconds before you start declaring things like masked police executing the president's political opponents in the street is less of a threat to the republic than... a couple white guys missing out on TV writing jobs, you had to go to an ineffective DEI training at work, and the kids were super self-righteous and annoying on twitter for a while.
Especially when the motivator behind those latter downsides was trying to get people to notice that maybe we shouldn't consider our work as a society done because shit isn't nearly as bad as it used to be for disfavored groups but is still not fair or just.
Tbh I think there is a point where people are just lost. Like the conservative guy who listened religiously to Rush Limbaugh and still rants about the maculated owl is not going to vote D, let's write off the loss and focus on people with some neuroplasticity left.
last year, ten years passed since i first got a tumblr account and tumbled into the entire SJW space, right into the hair-thin crevices and most granular discourses you can imagine. i felt very seen by the profile you constructed of the average SJW. since then, my thinking has undoubtably matured, and i'm almost certain my 13-YO self would berate me for "moderating" on certain things; i guess that's the "fresh convert" part of things.
but like you, i've never been tempted by "anti-woke". in fact, these lines especially: "It would be so freeing to be able to speak of our vices, virtues, rights, wrongs, pains and pleasures honestly and with full assurance of being believed, like a weight we never knew we had removed. We would love each other a lot more, I think." really engrossed me. love will save us all! enduring to try and love despite all the baggage and reasons not to will save us! letting love be the guiding force in our actions, policy, and daily lives will save us! and it kills me how we let rational pessimism kill that instinct, supposedly in the name of "pwning the sky daddy". thank you for putting the pearl rolling around in my skull into words and sentences!
You're confusing Virtue & Virtue Ethics with being a self-righteous, arrogant, obnoxious, mentally ill, jerk.
Or, rather, what specific Virtues are you praising?
(I'd guess Courage, but these people aren't really courageous.)
The social justice movement has two key flaws.
The first, in which this article is a healthy part of addressing, was an unwillingness to acknowledge and correct flaws. Worse, any effort to do so was vigorously punished, creating numerous innocent victims with no place to go except the other side.
This weakness did the movement grievous harm and obscured any truths it may have uncovered.
A second weakness, which this article doesn't address, was a reckless incredulity for taking on board ideas and positions that clearly failed any test of social justice yet became part of an 'all or nothing' package.
That would be a whole other article, but the movement does seem to be in the process of recognizing and addressing this flaw.
Only when these flaws are successfully addressed will the movement have earned the right to include justice in its name.
I think there are tomes to be written (which they shouldn't, it'd be a terrible use of everyone's time to catalogue "someone is wrong on the internet") all the idiocy that a certain cluster of left-leaning online people fell into.
That said, it's mostly online, and usually they're not terrible by any objective standards, they're terrible bc we had higher expectations for them. Eg not so long ago the online left managed to convince itself that Canada was carrying out Aktion T4 and that euthanasia was basically nazism based on a very dumb and motivate telephone game. It made my blood boil, both bc of the obvious bad faith and for personal reasons.
But looking at it objectively: 1. actually-existing LW parties were steadfast in supporting euthanasia, and the screechers were few and unimportant 2. Even these screechers were not worse than the median Christian on this matter.
I would feel pretty good about telling the Christians to shut up and worship Caesar tbh
I think this is the root of why the left is so fractious- circular firing squad is the description I remember offhand. Plus the way the various Internationales fell apart to infighting.
I'm glad you take the position that you do: we are still obligated to do the right things regardless of how irritating our allies might be. Thanks
The right often appears more unified because its core values prioritise strength and group cohesion, even when that cohesion is built around cruelty or hypocrisy. On the left, people turn on each other because they are trying to live up to principles about fairness and harm. If a left-wing organiser says something cruel or offensive, they get criticised because ignoring it would contradict the values they claim to uphold. On the right, the people harmed are more often told to tolerate it, because endurance and loyalty matter more than whether the behaviour itself is cruel.
"It was wrong about countless things, big and small, and monomaniacal even when right. Often the core of its theoretical wrongness was in regarding, e.g. men, white people, straights as beneficiaries of an alienated and discriminatory world, rather than joint victims. It also got a bunch of factual and technical points wrong.
Yet it was, in its core commitments, correct. Even as it frequently misunderstood racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, police brutality, the problems of the carceral system, sexual assault, etc., these are real and urgent problems.
It was correct, fundamentally, because it was motivated by virtue. It was motivated by concern for the other and fairness."
This seems to me to be eliding a big leap - correct in its commitments making something fundamentally correct. Someone being against secret pedophile cabals and so shooting up a random innocent pizza place; is correct in their core commitments of opposing pedophile cabals, but not fundamentally correct to shoot up a pizza place. You can be intending good but simply be wrong in your actions.
we have to police the narcissistic on our side, then other things may well fall into place, except the annoying bit
Virtues are an effort that we value, so virtues will be annoying because hell is other people, and because of this, or caused by this, it is meetings that make us human (and copying that makes each of us individually human) as we self the world among others doing the same.
While I agree with much of what you say here, I would object that the description of merely "shouting 20 and 30-somethings being rude to you on the internet" minimizes some of the problems. There was, and continue to be, efforts to get ordinary people fired from their jobs and made unemployable for median political views, as well as extensive mobbing with literal death threats:
https://www.thefp.com/p/jesse-singal-bluesky-has-a-death-threat-problem
Fair, but I guess the point is that for 90 percent of people who make these complaints, that's the worst they’ve faced
Due to some complicated US law matters, every single person who is not self-employed is at risk of being dragged through job-risking legal-based proceeding over social media postings or similar. It's a real problem. And not much comfort to be told that if you keep quiet, you probably won't find yourself being targeted. Yes, there's a cottage industry of pundits claiming persecution. But self-serving false claims don't invalidate true risks.
Very insightful!
The left claims to be anti-imperialist. So why do you side with Islam? It is one of the most imperialist religions and cultures to ever exist on earth. That itself is enough to dismiss anything you say. Similarily we can dismiss any leftist who believes socialism is a valid system for generating welfare relative to capitalism. The first is insanely hypocritical (per usual) and the other is just a leftist Candace Owens.