The Right is trying their best to invent imaginary enemies. They’ve been whining about Antifa™ for a while now, worrying over their growing membership rolls, and how their leadership was scheming to overthrow everything they love, when antifa is actually nothing but a loose sentiment, with no formal structure and no hierarchy of bosses running the show. Conservatives just can’t imagine any movement without a rigid hierarchy, so they conjure one up in their fever dreams.
It makes me wonder…would the atheist movement be in better shape if no one had tried to pretend it was at all structured? No President of Atheism, no Four Horsemen, just people who thought for themselves? As soon as a pretense of leadership appeared, they formed a target and started exposing themselves and everything went downhill.
Anyway, the increasingly ridiculous James Lindsay has started blaming everything on a scary phantasm, The Woke or Wokeness.
James Lindsay is supposed to be the noble warrior against the “woke” but has been crying in the corner, shitting his pants for the last 24 hours over the most milquetoast Democrats possible pic.twitter.com/UNOAhnhjE6
— Kevin Bird (@itsbirdemic) November 5, 2020
He thinks that if Joe Biden gets the presidency, it will be an expansion of the Woke’s tentacles of power. Joe Biden. I don’t know. If I were trying to imagine a King of the Wokes, it wouldn’t be an old white centrist Democrat who has been grasping for the presidency for decades. He isn’t even a Jewish billionaire! How are you going to motivate your legion of neo-Nazis if the figurehead you’re targeting is as cluelessly Aryan as they are?
Lindsay also thinks The Woke are a concrete, formal organization with finances and funding run by religious fanatics.
Also reminder that this guy is literally funded by Christian Nationalist dark money. The projection is absurd pic.twitter.com/ej3ofjQC2I
— Kevin Bird (@itsbirdemic) November 5, 2020
Yeah, right. That’s simply palpable paranoia and projection, and it’s ironic that Lindsay himself is a bought and paid for tool of Michael O’Fallon, Catholic reactionary, and his Sovereign Nations grift.
I wonder…have I been triple-dipping as a Captain (ret.) of Atheism™, foot soldier of Antifa™, and now, Padre of Wokeism™? Why aren’t I rich yet? Maybe my salary is just late this decade. I hope it gets here in time for the Raging Twenties, coming soon!
Has anyone ever actually identified themselves as Woke?
It is all conspiracy confirmation bias thinking (I refuse to use theory anymore in this context).Of course no one would identify as Woke, that’s all part of their cunning plan to overthrow the American way of life.
As for leaders, surely we don’t have those in a democracy, we have representatives? So maybe you can have thought representatives, but anyone who calls themselves a thought leader has probably revealed themselves as someone who shouldn’t be trusted.
And there was i thinking the rhythm was going to get me ,you did done lied to me Gloria .
My ANTIFA™ membership card still hasn’t arrived!
I blame the Trump USPS.
mailliw @1
Yes, but not with a capital W. My first memories of the word at the start of this context were Black women talking about how you have to be woke. I don’t remember much of it taking off as a word used by the left before conservatives started to use it in place of or in addition to “political correctness”, “virtue signalling”, and “SJWs” as the big scary thing that’s going to destroy our lives because… people are demanding a better world.
If the Woke had any sort of power, the Democrats would have done a lot better in the last election on Tuesday.
I’m still at New Left, Counterculture, and Pagan.
Works for me.
Social Justice Warrior and Progressive also works and brings me from the 1970’s to the 21st century.
Dear Prof. Myers:
The check is in the mail.
Respectfully,
George Soros
Ego and hierarchy go well together, and atheism was a very ego-fuelled movement.
I wonder if the movement had turned different if it had some sort of levelling mechanism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveling_mechanism
Such mechanism are used extensively in Rojava by all organisations at all levels, including academia.
(For the curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDnenjIdnnE but it’s a long video)
OT
Some good news to start day 3 of the US Hellscape.
The margins are so close here, that you don’t want to read too much into this.
@5 Raven
I’ll stick with socialist, of the democratic socialist Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Kurt Eisner school of thought, rather than Lenin.
Talking of Rosa Luxemburg ,isn’t it about time Meryl Streep portrayed her in a movie ,before she gats too old ?
@10 davidc1
There’s already a film directed by Margarethe von Trotta with Barbara Sukowa as Rosa.
Why Meryl Streep?
I only remember James Lindsay at that guy who did the poorly designed, poorly interpreted, and deeply unethical “sokal squared” hoax. You’re telling me that he’s rooting for Trump as well? Shockers.
Oh look, he’s chatting it up with Richard Spencer too.
Ok, so I don’t keep up. I thought “woke” was a coffee guzzling hipster avocado toast kind of thing.
One thing Trump America has taught me is that my Reagan-loving friends in the 80s who I could joke around with and “debate” were just as bad. A few years ago, it shocked me for “social justice” to be a term of derision. I already knew the term from Catholic education years back, and I thought everyone was at least pretending to support the concept whether they did or not. When “SJW” started getting tossed around, I really wondered, like, what are you guys proud of working against a just, equitable, and compassionate society?
But in retrospect, it’s the same people who thought South African apartheid was just fine and the Coca Cola boycott was a cardinal sin against capitalism, who thought interfering Nicaragua was part of the great fight against communism, who thought AIDS was a “punishment” for being gay, and who thought the increasing homeless population were just getting what they deserve.
The “alt-right” has sort of moved from the banality of evil to a palpably grotesque degree of evil, but I’m not sure the main players are any different or even worse in practice.
@mailliw #1:
All I can say is that as of 0430 GMT today I haven’t been Asleep.
I thought so. Someone posted a Harris interview somewhere maybe 6 months ago and they were using “Woke” this way. I asked to see examples of the Woke while refusing to stop talking about Harris’s sexism. Of course they would not show examples of the Woke. They are the new evolution of the SJW.
Now that I think about it SJW and Woke might be targeting different things. SJW has an action focus because of warrior, Woke seems more about belief. A political insult for actions and a political insult for beliefs.
Insults have some depth.
First Biden was too sleepy, and now he’s not sleepy enough?
One of the bogey-bashing fear-mongers of Woke ideology over at another blog WEIT had noted Lindsay was leaning toward Trump.
Pluckrose not. She seems less possessed and more academic of the two. His stance on PoMo/critical theory/critical social justice comes across as an ever evolving work in progress. I find it interesting and illuminating in parts (for entirely perlocutionary reasons on my end) but overall a lumping together associative mess. Has anyone listened to his Motte and Bailey podcast? Did a SJW pee in his cereal? Because I don’t get his “man on fire” retributiveness.
I watched the Cordial Curiosity and Unregistered podcasts with Lindsay and (Pluckrose included in the latter). At 1.75X Lindsay seems really animated. Pluckrose still dry and academic. I know nothing of Thaddeus Russell and from his Unregistered podcast I hold reservations, but his attempted pushback against Lindsay and Pluckrose on generalizations about Postmodernism set the stage for lively discussion. Pluckrose and Lindsay don’t see eye to eye on everything.
At some point I think they started entertaining a notion of pomo as a tool to use against alleged totalizing ideology of critical SJW construct.
Tabby @4, you are so correct. I read an etymology of “woke” recently, and it started as a Black word that meant “Be careful, keep your eyes open.” “Staying woke” meant watching your back, as white racists were always out there.
When black women took it up and talked about the importance of staying woke, and if they meant “having your eyes open about social justice”, it is not for a bunch of whiny white people, whether conservative or liberal, to question that use. White guys are not the police of what black people are allowed to say (they just think that they are.) And, I haven’t ever seen white people use it to refer to themselves: I regard that, and the use as a term of disparagement by whiny white guys, as linguistic cultural appropriation. Just what you’d expect from a bunch of whiny white guys!
PaulBC @14, also so correct. I thought back when I first heard the term "SJW" that it is not a good idea to try to use as a perjorative a term that is actually a compliment. "Justice": who is against that? Anyone? "Social justice": is there any other kind? I mean, does anyone think that cosmic justice is a thing? As for legal justice, that is a branch of social.And as for "warrior": I was rather flattered, as I don't actually do all that much! Not to put too fine a point on it, my activities in this area are confined to talking to acquaintances, donating small amounts of money, and voting. Certainly could not be described as a "warrior".
“SJW “is too psychologically revealing of those who invented it, like “cuck”, which exposes deep realms of information about how those whiny white guys unconsciously think and/or feel about themselves.
Sorrry for the highlighting, my kitten walked on the keyboard!
@20 garnetstar
Thank you for the explanation.
@11 I was struck why how she looks like Rosa Luxemburg ,is the film out on DVD ?
Just bought a copy of the DVD ,thanks for putting me on to the film .