We make a mistake when we classify the woke as part of the "left." It’s not: it’s an urban middle-class movement stoking the ressentiment of a populist base.
>"And in the meantime, it will tell one part of the poor that they are oppressed by the other part. That part, the part that cannot afford to “prove they are anti-racists,” will eventually give up any attempt at conforming to the rigged moral game. They’ll look to people who can help them make sense of this nightmare, give them false hope of a better life, and assure them they are not the problem they are being told they are."
This is so exactly right, thank you for being another voice of sanity.
(I am a new subscriber, per the recommendation of Paul Kingsnorth. I think of myself as an old fashioned liberal, but marxist Freddie deBoer says that's not what a liberal is anymore, so I what do I know.)
Hi, thanks for coming! And yes, I understand what that's like, to find the political co-ordinates all changed though you didn't go anywhere. As I mention in my essay "Ideological Abandonment and Declining Sperm Counts," this happened to me and many other leftists who suddenly find we're now being labeled "far-right" or even "fascist." So, solidarity!
That Jozua guy is full of shit though. Zionism is not an ephemeral phenomenon in anyone's head. It's part of actual imperialism that is actually destroying lifes as we speak, and being against it seems pretty old school left to me. So is burning flags.
I have so much to say on this but no matter what I'd say, everyone would find fault with it. One thing I would say for now is that while there is both a terrifying and fucked up military and economic alliance going on between the US and Israel, US leftists often spend more time criticizing the Israeli side than the US side. We can do both, but it's rare to see anyone except the most dogmatic Marxists (solidarity, Sistersmith) do so.
On the other hand, there is a weird "diplomatic woke" push from the Israeli government that has defined some of the US woke stuff. Parading gay and lesbian Israeli youth around at US college events, or the IDF's feminist and gay push. But these are the exact same thing happening in the US government, too.
But where my critiques get super difficult is the matter of the ADF, whose work became heavily influential in the US Antifa movement. Some of the terrifying Antifa Terror moments (in which leftists like me were suddenly labeled "fascist") fit so well into the ADF's line that it would soon unsurprising to find many "antifa" leaders working for organizations supported by the ADF.
Something weird is happening there, but I'm pretty sure it's the same weird thing we see with massive neoliberal foundations funding woke and social justice projects. Identity conflict is easier to manage than class conflict, and they're all making sure we hate each other rather than looking at capitalist class.
I mean, it *is* left to to care for something other than the US working class right? Even though I personally agree that extremes of wokeness are highly suspect, I'm not saying a true leftists cares only about their own working class as class at home and nothing else.
Hah I'm glad you disagree with him on that. For me, impeccable anti-imperialism is a litmus test for two reasons.
a) because anything else just viscerally disgusts me. And b) because a lack of anti-imperialism shows to me a political worldview that is structurally unsound. If they don't get *that*, I can't trust them about anything else and I'm probably having better thoughts by myself already than they have. Therefor those thinkers/writers are dismissed from my reading lists.
Not that I'm saying that you have to apply the same standards, though.
Another good one. An observation from me though, which you can take or leave: both this post and the last spend a lot of time worrying around what 'the left' is, and whether or not the 'woke' crowd are part of it. As someone who was a fellow traveller with 'the left' for a long time in my younger days, and now tries to avoid labels as much as possible, I see this as part of the problem.
Another way of saying this is to ask: does it matter what any of these labels say? What would happen if you abandoned them all and judged ideas and people on their merits? One of the things I always found most objectionable about the 'left', even in the days when, as you say, it was actually concerned about the global corporate economy, was its obsessive tribalism. perhaps as you are just extricating yourself from this cult, this still hangs around your neck, and you worry too much about who is in or out?
While I see where you're coming from, I don't think it works to say, 'ah, wokeness isn't the left, the left is this other, better, thing.' Not least because, in reality, the left has almost always been an 'urban middle class movement'. The Sans Culottes made up perhaps 10% of the French Revolution, for example, and that revolution's leaders were mostly aristocrats. The Bolsheviks were intellectuals and immigrant agitators from well off backgrounds. Che Guevara was the son of a wealthy bourgeois doctor with a private income. 'The people' in most cases are both more conservative (small c) and more powerless than their supposed spokespeople, which is why things like the Vendee happen.
It helped me a lot when I saw that the left has always been an elite movement, mostly wanting to enact change from above. I try these days to distinguish between revolution (elite leftism) and rebellion (usually ground-up populism.) Not that 'the people' are necessarily inherently virtuous, but at least they can speak for themselves.
I look at this all the way I look at calling myself "gay." Gay describes something, but then comes with shifting connotations and then eventually a wholesale identity formation to which I eventually realized I would never be able to conform.
So am I gay? Well, sort of. If I have to describe my sexuality, it's a good word for it. But it's also a sign of the politicization of every part of our lives that sexuality needs to be defined at all.
And I could spend a lot of time trying to come up with a new term on the one hand or completely abandoned any sort of sexuality labels altogether. Both would be noble projects, probably, but utterly exhausting.
The same thing of course happens with calling myself "pagan." It describes something about me, but it also is used to describe some really ridiculous cosplay and commercialism.
That's how I feel about the "left." It denotes something, an egalitarian tendency. But it was also a word crafted based on a seating arrangement in French national assemblies, and is now used to describe everything from technofuturist "cyborg feminism" and terrifying industrialized authoritarian regimes to anti-modern anarchist and autonomous Marxist movements.
I could find another word, or abandon the categories altogether. But while I am often given to edgewalking and delving into the world without forms to find new ways of making meaning, I'd rather save such work for more mystical experiences.
On the other hand (and I intend to write a lot about this eventually), looking at "left" and "right" as religious tendencies rather than secular political formations is worth that sort of effort for me.
We just experienced this in New York when limousine liberals became pissed off that many Black people voted for Eric Adams, a gun toting cop, for mayor, instead of progressive candidates.
One of the most startling things for many "progressives" is how many black folk tend to vote for law and order candidates. But of course, those progressives have never been to those neighborhoods and seen the intense heartbreak that occurs because of crime.
For part of my time in Seattle, I lived in a heavily black district where the residents were often complaining not that the cops were oppressive, but that they rarely showed up when they needed them. It took an average of 15 minutes longer for the police to respond to shots fired calls there than it did in white neighborhoods. Many of the people there wanted the cops to come faster and more often, not less.
So it makes perfect sense that so many black folk vote for candidates who promise stronger police presence (even though they rarely deliver). The alternative is being completely abandoned to really violent crime and feeling even more helpless in the face of it.
John Michael Greer has also pointed out that, as is the habit of aging empires, we have overproduced people educated to be part of the professional managerial class. This produces extreme competition for employment and promotion within universities, government offices and companies that want to be seen as progressive. Being more WOKE and dragging down others in the culture wars is a strategy for those struggling for a place at the overcrowded table.
Oh, God, yes. Observing these changes, experiencing these changes, has sometimes made me wonder whether I'm just a crotchety old lesbo with an axe to grind. But reading other, articulate and incisive views like this makes me think I am onto something. I remember thinking, thirty years ago, that the education system was going to create problems when the uneducated graduates of it began to assume positions of authority in the culture. Of course it's much more than the education system, but the general sentiment was fairly prescient.
>"And in the meantime, it will tell one part of the poor that they are oppressed by the other part. That part, the part that cannot afford to “prove they are anti-racists,” will eventually give up any attempt at conforming to the rigged moral game. They’ll look to people who can help them make sense of this nightmare, give them false hope of a better life, and assure them they are not the problem they are being told they are."
This is so exactly right, thank you for being another voice of sanity.
(I am a new subscriber, per the recommendation of Paul Kingsnorth. I think of myself as an old fashioned liberal, but marxist Freddie deBoer says that's not what a liberal is anymore, so I what do I know.)
Hi, thanks for coming! And yes, I understand what that's like, to find the political co-ordinates all changed though you didn't go anywhere. As I mention in my essay "Ideological Abandonment and Declining Sperm Counts," this happened to me and many other leftists who suddenly find we're now being labeled "far-right" or even "fascist." So, solidarity!
That Jozua guy is full of shit though. Zionism is not an ephemeral phenomenon in anyone's head. It's part of actual imperialism that is actually destroying lifes as we speak, and being against it seems pretty old school left to me. So is burning flags.
I have so much to say on this but no matter what I'd say, everyone would find fault with it. One thing I would say for now is that while there is both a terrifying and fucked up military and economic alliance going on between the US and Israel, US leftists often spend more time criticizing the Israeli side than the US side. We can do both, but it's rare to see anyone except the most dogmatic Marxists (solidarity, Sistersmith) do so.
On the other hand, there is a weird "diplomatic woke" push from the Israeli government that has defined some of the US woke stuff. Parading gay and lesbian Israeli youth around at US college events, or the IDF's feminist and gay push. But these are the exact same thing happening in the US government, too.
But where my critiques get super difficult is the matter of the ADF, whose work became heavily influential in the US Antifa movement. Some of the terrifying Antifa Terror moments (in which leftists like me were suddenly labeled "fascist") fit so well into the ADF's line that it would soon unsurprising to find many "antifa" leaders working for organizations supported by the ADF.
Something weird is happening there, but I'm pretty sure it's the same weird thing we see with massive neoliberal foundations funding woke and social justice projects. Identity conflict is easier to manage than class conflict, and they're all making sure we hate each other rather than looking at capitalist class.
>"I have so much to say on this but no matter what I'd say, everyone would find fault with it."
All the more reason to say it, IMO.
I mean, it *is* left to to care for something other than the US working class right? Even though I personally agree that extremes of wokeness are highly suspect, I'm not saying a true leftists cares only about their own working class as class at home and nothing else.
Oh, I absolutely disagree with Jozua on some things, including that. But I read him anyway. :)
Hah I'm glad you disagree with him on that. For me, impeccable anti-imperialism is a litmus test for two reasons.
a) because anything else just viscerally disgusts me. And b) because a lack of anti-imperialism shows to me a political worldview that is structurally unsound. If they don't get *that*, I can't trust them about anything else and I'm probably having better thoughts by myself already than they have. Therefor those thinkers/writers are dismissed from my reading lists.
Not that I'm saying that you have to apply the same standards, though.
Another excellent post.
thanks!
Another good one. An observation from me though, which you can take or leave: both this post and the last spend a lot of time worrying around what 'the left' is, and whether or not the 'woke' crowd are part of it. As someone who was a fellow traveller with 'the left' for a long time in my younger days, and now tries to avoid labels as much as possible, I see this as part of the problem.
Another way of saying this is to ask: does it matter what any of these labels say? What would happen if you abandoned them all and judged ideas and people on their merits? One of the things I always found most objectionable about the 'left', even in the days when, as you say, it was actually concerned about the global corporate economy, was its obsessive tribalism. perhaps as you are just extricating yourself from this cult, this still hangs around your neck, and you worry too much about who is in or out?
While I see where you're coming from, I don't think it works to say, 'ah, wokeness isn't the left, the left is this other, better, thing.' Not least because, in reality, the left has almost always been an 'urban middle class movement'. The Sans Culottes made up perhaps 10% of the French Revolution, for example, and that revolution's leaders were mostly aristocrats. The Bolsheviks were intellectuals and immigrant agitators from well off backgrounds. Che Guevara was the son of a wealthy bourgeois doctor with a private income. 'The people' in most cases are both more conservative (small c) and more powerless than their supposed spokespeople, which is why things like the Vendee happen.
It helped me a lot when I saw that the left has always been an elite movement, mostly wanting to enact change from above. I try these days to distinguish between revolution (elite leftism) and rebellion (usually ground-up populism.) Not that 'the people' are necessarily inherently virtuous, but at least they can speak for themselves.
Maybe the left are part of the problem too.
I look at this all the way I look at calling myself "gay." Gay describes something, but then comes with shifting connotations and then eventually a wholesale identity formation to which I eventually realized I would never be able to conform.
So am I gay? Well, sort of. If I have to describe my sexuality, it's a good word for it. But it's also a sign of the politicization of every part of our lives that sexuality needs to be defined at all.
And I could spend a lot of time trying to come up with a new term on the one hand or completely abandoned any sort of sexuality labels altogether. Both would be noble projects, probably, but utterly exhausting.
The same thing of course happens with calling myself "pagan." It describes something about me, but it also is used to describe some really ridiculous cosplay and commercialism.
That's how I feel about the "left." It denotes something, an egalitarian tendency. But it was also a word crafted based on a seating arrangement in French national assemblies, and is now used to describe everything from technofuturist "cyborg feminism" and terrifying industrialized authoritarian regimes to anti-modern anarchist and autonomous Marxist movements.
I could find another word, or abandon the categories altogether. But while I am often given to edgewalking and delving into the world without forms to find new ways of making meaning, I'd rather save such work for more mystical experiences.
On the other hand (and I intend to write a lot about this eventually), looking at "left" and "right" as religious tendencies rather than secular political formations is worth that sort of effort for me.
When a wolf wants to kill me and eat me, I don't care why.
I care if I can get away or kill it first.
We just experienced this in New York when limousine liberals became pissed off that many Black people voted for Eric Adams, a gun toting cop, for mayor, instead of progressive candidates.
One of the most startling things for many "progressives" is how many black folk tend to vote for law and order candidates. But of course, those progressives have never been to those neighborhoods and seen the intense heartbreak that occurs because of crime.
For part of my time in Seattle, I lived in a heavily black district where the residents were often complaining not that the cops were oppressive, but that they rarely showed up when they needed them. It took an average of 15 minutes longer for the police to respond to shots fired calls there than it did in white neighborhoods. Many of the people there wanted the cops to come faster and more often, not less.
So it makes perfect sense that so many black folk vote for candidates who promise stronger police presence (even though they rarely deliver). The alternative is being completely abandoned to really violent crime and feeling even more helpless in the face of it.
John Michael Greer has also pointed out that, as is the habit of aging empires, we have overproduced people educated to be part of the professional managerial class. This produces extreme competition for employment and promotion within universities, government offices and companies that want to be seen as progressive. Being more WOKE and dragging down others in the culture wars is a strategy for those struggling for a place at the overcrowded table.
Rita
Oh, God, yes. Observing these changes, experiencing these changes, has sometimes made me wonder whether I'm just a crotchety old lesbo with an axe to grind. But reading other, articulate and incisive views like this makes me think I am onto something. I remember thinking, thirty years ago, that the education system was going to create problems when the uneducated graduates of it began to assume positions of authority in the culture. Of course it's much more than the education system, but the general sentiment was fairly prescient.
You might find some actionable items here.
Woke Self-Defense 101
Fight Wokeness & Be the Life of the Party
https://yourunclepedro.substack.com/p/woke-self-defense-101