Wokeism

[@ThenNow]

Script & sources at: www.thenandnow.co/2023/04/14/wokeism/ ► Sign up for the newsletter to get concise digestible summaries: www.thenandnow.co/the-newsletter/ ► Why Support Then & Now? www.patreon.com/user/about?u=3517018

[@michigan2400]

You dont know shit.. people complaining about wokeism is conservative idiots not wanting to acknowledge the rights of marginalized people .

[@HighlandRooted-ul4rv]

Man… when you talked about courage. Just wanna smash your head in. You critised that guy and described what courage is. Yeah? Each and every one of your points is literally wokeism. Cry and throw your toy out the pram rather. It’s the right that actually does things. The left/woke culture only tears down.

[@johnpauladlawan9753]

Thank you for the sources

[@hpalpha7323]

the terms "woke" and "redpilled" originally had the exact same meaning (being aware of the inconvenient truth about society), but depending on who adopted the terms their meanings changed into mocking insults

[@namjoonie936]

alot of things lose their meaning once they become political buzzwords

[@masonvegas4336]

Thanks Einstein

[@farzanamughal5933]

Yeah thats funny

[@StrayGod10]

The red pill was initially an allegory for hormone blockers.

[@REO_Speedweed]

The way I always saw it was, people started using woke as an insult, because people would say "stay woke" after sincerely saying the stupidest, most uninformed bs that they heard on the internet.

[@chewygal69]

Conversation has disappeared and now all I see is everyone raging and reacting. I don't think people should be canceled, these incidents should be seen as a teachable moment. We need to sit down with each other and have a conversation and listen to each other.

[@Prodigi50]

I get what you’re saying but people are getting tired of talking to people about the same things over and over again.

[@Marz859]

People aren’t owed support, if they’re cancelled then so be it. It’s truly not the end of the world. Conversations can be had all day but people esp those using public platforms should know support is fickle and things done or said can affect how people feel about supporting you.

[@erickforsyth3793]

@@Prodigi50 That can (and has) always been said by every side. There's never a point when the conversations are over. The work is never "done" but always ongoing. Now is not the time to get lazy and give up on people. Yesterday it may have been the black and brown woman, today it could be the poor white Southerner-- there is always someone being told "You're not worthy of being listened to" and that is not only bad citizenship, but a recipe for radicalization.

[@wowcplayer3]

@@erickforsyth3793 lol, it's also a recipe for defendable and well-articulated political positions, but these people aren't being told they're not worth listening to, they're being told only to speak freely within their agreeable circle. That's a recipe for radicalization. Primarily those unwilling to fight for their ideas are a problem, this culture ubiquitously allows and even encourages the carefree mouth, of course both the west coast carpet bagger would be just as good to shut up as the southern confederate.

[@wowcplayer3]

@@erickforsyth3793 I'm not sure how damaged you think American politics is, but it's every level, and every motive that we see touched by political snake oil. This is the consequence of several useless generations of ziplips "no politics as the dinner table" 🙄

[@giniwelle]

Maybe true wokeism is the friends we made along the way.

[@vodkaboy]

haha

[@jeffengel2607]

Pretty sure anti-wokeism is the enemies we make along the way, so there's symmetry!

[@JDdr86]

@@jeffengel2607 Touche!👍

[@inb4play167]

Which video is this one from?

[@alistair4909]

Don’t you mean the friends we WOKE UP along the way lol

[@Jimdixon1953]

I can’t believe the English cancelled Joan of Arc by burning her at the stake. That’s one campus debate that went wrong.

[@drumcorps0junkie]

Insanity

[@michaelmcclure3383]

In a new movie on her she is portrayed as a woke non-binary person who struggled with the patriarchy or something...

[@elizabethhazel6039]

Poor Joan was burned by the French, not the English.

[@melodi_bunniez]

@@michaelmcclure3383 She wasn't non-binary but she did struggle with patriarchy You're saying this like you know anything about the Hundred Years' War or history in general

[@melodi_bunniez]

@@elizabethhazel6039 Those damn Fr*nch! They can never be trusted, not even by their own kind!

[@DoctorZomboo]

Watching this one year later and it's only been getting worse and more confusingly used! I saw a menopause awareness campaign labelled as "woke" the other day!

[@MS-il3ht]

To be fair, that's the postmodern left's primary target group.

[@user-ez7ls2du9c]

Its all 100% ret**ded. Including this channel, he tried to deboooonk the bell curve eevn though after decades and decades not a single part of the book by Charles Murray has been disproven. So in one video he cries about wokeism and in the next he cries about the bell curve and lies about it... Seems like the channel owner himself is a woke reta***

[@michaelduguay7698]

Yeah, menapause is pretty woke if you ask me. Should definitely end it!!!

[@YoshiTheOreo]

Did it use the term "woman" or "birthing people"?

[@genghischan69]

Nice, never heard of this but my gut tells me it's related to some karenisms and indeed woke obnoxiousness being characteristic with women currently at that menopause age. It does seem that wokeness has their demographics and that seems like it could be one of the bigger ones. But that's just my *wild* guess going off your vaguely written one sentence claim.

[@penjorebhutia2815]

While I agree with the origin of wokeism relating to the habermasian concept of 'public sphere' but the fact is that wokeism has its limitations. Wokeism as taking place currently, has become a form of performative act, a trend. That's why all these multinationals who don't give a shit about minorities or transgender people, will be so eager to co-opt the rhetoric of pride and diversity. Amazon can play the woke rhetoric of racial diversity, all the while destroying union efforts by its own employees, the most vulnerable of whom are the racial minorities themselves. In short, the problem with wokeism is that its superficial and not honest regarding the problems and its solutions.

[@romanmanner]

Do you feel the same way about past corporate displays of 'patriotism?' I highly doubt the NFL cares much about the military, 'American values,' or 'spreading the American way of life' (beyond gaining more viewers). Do you really think that The North Face is really all that interested in environmentalism? Their recent collaboration with Gucci indicates the opposite. Do you think that 'conservative companies' like Black Rifle Coffee care more about veteran's issues or their quarterly outlooks? I'd argue they identified a market they wanted to sell to (veterans and social conservatives) and then created an easily obtainable product to sell that market (coffee). Corporations exist to make money for their shareholders. They've read the room and calculated that it costs less to signal their acceptance of the more progressive worldview of those who will buy their products or services than to fight against it. Again, why should they? If the social conservatives were 'winning the culture war' these same corporations would 'embrace' those values with public displays. Frankly, what's superficial here is your apparent belief that corporations actually 'believe; in anything beyond increasing their value to their shareholders.

[@netrunner36]

@@romanmanner his point still stands

[@maxr.k.pravus9518]

@@romanmanner Your statement does not contradict the above comment.

[@penjorebhutia2815]

@@romanmanner My post was exactly about this - that the corporations don't actually believe in any of these rhetorics and are their to make profits for their shareholders. This is why it's so easy for the corporations to co-opt the rhetoric of pride and diversity. The fact is that unless the woke politics is grounded and rooted in a material, socio-economic analysis of the issues plaguing our capitalist societies, none more than the corporations and governments will be happy. Coz they are well aware that these woke politics without any substantial socio-economic analysis is really easy to be co-opted without rocking the boat much.

[@larryhall2805]

Wow! You stated that so eloquently! It's something I felt for a long time but couldn't articulate. Than you.

[@Songriquole]

The passage on Goerg Moeller is odd, given that it's preceded by a bit which mostly agrees with his analysis, the bit on political ideas, moral stances, being part of social mechanisms much like those ruing fashion, meaning it's part of a performance. Your analysis and that of Moeller largely overlap in this sense, with the bourdieusian (if that's a word) perspective. Of course you focus on Moeller's claim on civil religion, but this claim he's making is supported by this bourdieusian/sociological analysis of political ideas also being performances, appearances presented to the public sphere. To me it never seemed like Moeller was critizing wokeism by punching down (especially given he makes the same critique about conservatives - in this sense he'd be punching "up" as well, if he was punching at all).

[@social-ize]

Fully agree

[@meskita106]

I disagree! Wokeism is reflexive, it is a performance. Capitalism has relativised the public sphere, anyone can adopt the objects/signs/language of distinction through money. The moment anyone plays out these diferences it is to an audience and not for their own self realisation; it reaffirms there’s status, their differences, even when this distinction is based on superiority, wealth or privilege, the performance is only as valid as the longevity of their capital. We are becoming increasingly middle class, literate and cultural omnivores. It’s fair play until it is unjust.

[@jaked5144]

One of the main and biggest issues Möller takes is that woke-ism promotes “guilt pride”, a sort of hallow moral superiority complex. When he says he takes issue with it being individualistic, it’s in that it is performative and self serving, and tying back into the civil religious aspect, it plays on the western ideal of redemption. This can often be less helpful than say a pragmatic approach to social justice.

[@HxH2011DRA]

Really all it comes down to is the fact that pop-philosophy tube (no relation to philosophytube) is a tribe like any other and they don't appreciate Moeller cutting into their market share as it were. I have yet to seen a critique of Moeller's video from the less that isn't vague or an extremely minor quibble but the tone of people like Tom Nichols to Then & Now ranges from dismissive to extremely hostile like he insulted them personally. The only logic reason that makes sense to me is that he hasn't done the correct signalling/use the correct signifiers to be accepted so they're trying to gatekeep

[@maxr.k.pravus9518]

Yeah, I came to comment that Moeller is not wrong, and in fact does not say wokeism ought to be rejected on the grounds of it functioning like a religion, but to recognize its limits, specifically, the conditions of its possibility. Hence, one cannot ignore the broader socio-economic primacy of individualism and bourgeois morality, which perfectly ties in with wokeism, in fact, it enables it. However, conservatism, the opposite of wokeism, is just as stamped with bourgeois individualism and morality. The only difference is that it's a separate sphere of cultural/moral "tastes", but still growing from the same grounds as wokeism does, and that is capitalism. Noteworthy, the discussion is implicitly US-centric, and to a lesser extent eurocentric, so this makes me think our understanding of the issue is somewhat limited without reference to non-western forms of public discourse/(civil) religion. That bit on the Cultural Revolution in China is somewhat short and surface-level, it'd be interesting to see what extent its legacy survives in China today and what is the current mode of public discourse in China. Not just China, but any other great non-western country such as India, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia etc.

[@garysantos7053]

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. Any attack on intellectual liberty, and on the concept of objective truth, threatens, in the long run, every department of thought.” -George Orwell

[@brunods4560]

Orwell went Spain to kill fascists. He wasn't too keen on listening to their bollocks.

[@connorhart7597]

He said some smart things every now and again, but he was all but a supporter of hitler and the NSDAP, among other absolutely fucked things.

[@neco5740]

This can just be applied to both sides.

[@tomsnowden6201]

@@neco5740that’s the point

[@imacmill]

​@@chheinrich8486You must be French-Canadian, since I can't understand what you wrote.

[@spiffenage1]

I The Americans had a spate of "cancel culture" going in the 1950s. Senator McCarthy s witchhunting against so called communists drove many talented artists from the USA. Charlie Chaplin had to live in Switzerland . The musician Larry Adler and singer Paul Robeson had to go into exile in Britain Many talented performers and directors left for Europe due to the anti communist paranoia. Why isn't John Cleese called a woke for his fundraising for Amnesty International? He probably regrets his 1970s support for human rights.

[@intellectually_lazy]

sometimes i feel like the people who told me i was wrong for doing or saying shitty things helped me to become a better person

[@billhicks8]

I think if someone tells you such a thing in real life it means a lot more and speaks better of the person than those who do it so much more easily - and often so much more cowardly - online.

[@joshuagharis9017]

Nah...jkjk

[@rasheed7934]

The thing is you shouldn't think everyone wants to hear the shitty things you have to say. If you are going to say something expect a response.

[@IndependentFckr]

Ok, if they say 2+2=4, not 5 which is what the “woke” are proselytizing. You have to admit you can take PC too far.

[@intellectually_lazy]

@@IndependentFckr if you take a look at the way things are going it's the extreme right that's criminalizing teaching the truth, and both woke and pc are terms predominantly used by the right

[@lordtugboat]

I've been such a huge admirer of your channel ever since you put out your video on Derrida/post structuralism, and (back when I had the funds), supported you on Patreon. This is the first time I've seen you post a video that didn't engage with the arguments being critiqued. I don't know who two out of the three of KZbinrs being criticized, but I did watch the carefree wandering video and nowhere in this did you engage the main problem with wokeness, as he sees it--it's that it's a language game that anyone can perform. The CIA example was used to point out that this language game is being used to gloss over an institution that has been responsible for untold atrocities that should make any leftist feel compelled to oppose it--but instead, by associating itself with this woman who checks all the right identity boxes, the CIA gets a pass. An example from American politics is when Bernie Sanders was competing with Hilary Clinton for the Democratic nomination and a big part of his platform was to break up the big banks. Hilary critiqued this by saying, "if we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that end racism? Would it end transphobia?" She received huge applause for this, but ultimately, it was used by right wing media outlets to tear her apart, so not only did this empty posturing undermine the true leftist (Bernie) in the short run, but in the long run, it helped undermine her own viability as a candidate as well.

[@HxH2011DRA]

Anarchist have no answer for when the establishment co-ops their language.

[@snoopy_peanuts_77]

its not "wokeness" its simply PANDERING and using real movements for cynical purposes....like corporations appropriating language to sell batteries ...its not new

[@iraholden3606]

@@snoopy_peanuts_77 'ReAl MoVeMeNtS' they're not co-opted they're preincorporated and impotent, their whole origional purpose and that of post left and postructuralist literature is to defend capital

[@ψευδάνερ]

@@snoopy_peanuts_77 ALL movements end over taken with time by the opposition, and at any moment can be seen as detrimental instead to the people they are trying to help, take for example the womens right to vote and work movement, now some say that it was all a tactic to disintegrate families and home values, having both parents at work most of the day and kids without supervision seek to social media for attention and guidance. The societal benefits of women being able be to given the same opportunities are evident but consequences cannot be expected since it is imposible to know what factors will influence the decisions we make today in the future

[@justinlacek1481]

Does the left really give the CIA a 'pass'? I don't know of any big leftist influencer who's a fan of the CIA. I don't think anybody particularly cares for the CIA.

[@stephenbedford1395]

I used to think 'woke' was a state you entered after finishing sleeping for the night. Now I'm just confused...

[@comrade7324]

same, I cant even read the word the same way anymore. "Jimmy woke up."

[@bdarecords_]

@@comrade7324 Waking up is woke.

[@derp195]

I'm autistic, and half of this video was an explanation of why I get in trouble with other progressive people even though we hold the same opinions on the actual issues.

[@3brenm]

Some people seem to use 'woke' in what seems like an ironic way to me. As they just call anything that they find personally wrong or unjust 'woke'. Woke often

[@alecward895]

While I broadly agree with your analysis, I would love for you to dig deeper on the concept of "wokeism as religion." Here you posit it as a pejorative charge made by reactionaries to imply dogmatic, insular thinking - and that's true. But if we put those negative perceptions aside, there is something valid to the idea that people in an increasingly atheist society are finding in social justice communities many of the same benefits of religion: e.g. community, shared morality, and even some ritualistic behavior. Acknowledging this does not detract from the necessity or urgency of social justice goals.

[@WhiteScorpio2]

Those are not the benefits of religion, those are benefits of communities.

[@OjoRojo40]

This is proper to any group, not only religions.

[@dana_____]

I disagree on the ritual part. To me, it looks to come from either fandoms or communities. I know that fandom studies is now it’s own field so it would be interesting to see how much of the ‘religion’ aspect is just a community thing.

[@LeFlamel]

I think the "religiosity" or "communalism," however it's construed, can detract from the achievement of social goals. Namely, once the ideology becomes an effect of group membership, it becomes difficult to critique a movement from the inside, short-circuited by tribal us-vs-them dynamics.

[@DaseinClimbs]

@@WhiteScorpio2 I understand what you are getting at, however I think it doesn't give proper historical context to the role of religion in communities as a force for directing these activities.

[@SeekingApatheia]

Your interpretation of Moeller is far more "bizarre" than anything he said.

[@HxH2011DRA]

LOL for real, felt out of place with what he was saying earlier

[@tim290280]

I've got a few criticisms of Moeller's take on Wokeism, but I agree with other commenters that you've kinda gotten his argument wrong (if I remember correctly, it wasn't just a "religious" thing, but a tribal thing, so in group/out group signalling). That said, I agree that wokeism criticism is just a rebrand of a very old tactic to play the victim card and avoid criticism of bad ideas from (generally) terrible people.

[@larryconcepts]

Those with a conceptual framework based on religion think that all conceptual frameworks are religions. There's no room in their mindset for alternatives.

[@raymondlane6947]

Woke is a SATANIC ideology. I'm a father and whatever or whoever agrees with dismantling the family structure or feels that my children belong to a community of anykind issuing the fu$% out...get ya arms legally or illegally because a socialist-communist nation is being prepared for America...BLM,ANTIFA,ANARCHISM,ANTI CONSTITUTION,ANTI CHRIST,ANTI FAMILY SYMPATHYSERS,WILL BE JUDGED BY THE ALMIGHTY CREATOR. FOLKS WITH EVIL PITS AND SEEDS IN THEIR HEARTS WILL BE DESTROYED AN SENT TO A PLACE WHERE SUFFERING NEVER CEASE.

[@MCArt25]

Anti-wokeness is simply a tribal thing, an in group/out group signalling. It is a modern religion, trying to ostracize, cancel and suppress speech. It is like the crusades.

[@tim290280]

@@MCArt25, interesting that you'd bother commenting without having watched either video.

[@pendejo6466]

Yes, victims are pathetic.

[@Alex-mn1fb]

The undeniable right-wing fearmongering aside, to pretend that progressive politics have not "jumped the shark" in a lot of ways, is very unwise at this point. No matter its admirable goals, it became in a lot of ways performative, dishonest, and routinely abused for personal and selfish goals. It needs a lot of course correction, and more then a bit of internal criticism, which it does not allow. To be woke in its originality means to "be aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues and to be alert to racial prejudice and discrimination. It has been a critique of society we live in. And was and still is, absolutely needed. But it has morphed into something else, and shows a worrying lack of ability to sometimes look internally and thus both critique and allow critique of itself. Wokeism is this "my way or the highway" attitude and "I know best, and anyone who says otherwise is a bigot and a hater". And its supposed to be the people who are ostensibly the smarter, more informed, empathic and attentive side of society.

[@abrr2000]

As someone who lived through the 90's, I can catagorically say, that we are not free er to say what we want, as certain topics and opinions have been made, either tabo, or extremely risky, and in some cases outright criminalized on the basis of someones emotional reaction to what has been said. Gas lighting, faulse equivilencies, morral grand standing, straw manning and accusations of bigotry have taken the place of rational debate. While censorship has risen dramatically. Opposing political opinions no longer get together in a room to discuss the topic to determine who'se right any more, but instead attempted to "win" the arugment. Reguardless of who started this trend, the result is that both sides now errect straw men to stand in for an opposing point of view who see no point in turning up to be insulted, ignored and shouted over. The fact that our platforms have a bigger reach, does not mean we have more or better freedom to speak and be heard. Especially if those platforms direct you into an empty room.

[@ianbrizell8587]

I totally agree. Maybe it's because I'm out of touch with these seemingly modern idiocracies or the whole thing confuses me to the point that I get brain freeze but free speech it appears is only free speech if you agree with the person you are speaking with or about. I constantly hear of people being called a bigot if they say anything against an opposing viewpoint. Surely it can work both ways. Someone who is calling someone a bigot is being a bigot for insulting the other persons viewpoint. Also, I regularly hear of people being arrested or losing their job for so called hate speech which is often no more than stating that their opinion is that their are only two biological sexes.

[@jay4you853]

​@@ianbrizell8587 I'll start by saying: You're full of it. Let's be clear, no one gets arrested for an opinion, however facing consequences for your actions and words is nothing new only in recent years, do fascists and far-right propagandists pretend that all opinion (ironically, particularly the one they like), are equal and theirs shouldn't be challenged otherwise it's "cancel culture" or the so-called "death of free soeech", when it's simply accountability. We live in polarized world, words have consequences and when you live in the public you can't just say everything and anything without any push back. That's not the real world. Even in kindergarten we learn that we can't say everything we want and there are consequences. Timothy McVeigh attacked America based on the same rampant lie that free speech was in danger, the far-right plays on fear. Free speech has never been unlimited, you're free to speak, I'm to call you out. Period. Also, no one gets called a bigot over a simple opinion. That's a typical lie we often hear from...bigots who say bigoted things but can't handle the push backs. Saying there are two biological sexes is irrelevant, hardly anyone has ever contested that. It's the way or context this lazy platitude is being used that changes everything. If it's used for instance, to deny Trans rights or/and existence,we have a serious problem because as much as I don't care about trans, I despise entitled people trying to control others and demonize them for political gains. Trying to control others genitals or bodies is creepy. Period. Maybe if everyone minded their business they'd be less calls for cancellation or accusations of bigotry 🤷🏾‍♂️

[@jay4you853]

I partially agree. However, no one said you can't speak,you simply can't roam around saying anything and everything you want expecting no push backs. That's not a thing. The world is changing and younger generations are less accepting of "hurt feelings" politics🤷🏾‍♂️ I think if you have nothing nice to say, sometimes you shouldn't always say it, I was raised this way. No point in hurting others to sound "tough",but that's just me. You can never please everyone and someone will always dislike something, but why antagonizing when you can just walk away? Lastly, there are things we must say a loud and resounding "no" to. For instance, what conversation you want to have neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, election deniers or domestic terrorists? A conversation requires that both individuals are grounded and live on the same planet, then we can discuss policy differences, not if Jew-ish space lasers changed votes. Platitudes don't always reflect reality.

[@abrr2000]

@@jay4you853 You miss the point. The ability to speak to an empty room is meaningless, and the push back you speak of gets so rediculously out of proportion as to be legitimately monsterous. People loose their jobs, get socially ostrosized, become unable of earning money and have their lives destroyed so utterly that they are driven to suicide... for what? for stating an opinion, a scientific fact, or simply pressing the like button on a tweet. The mechanism through which this is achieved, is called being canceled, but what it really is, is a hate mob attempting digitally lynching someone in the name of compassion and tollerence. Authoritarian laws have been passed sending people to jail for litteraly making someone feel bad by posting a tweet in the name of tollerence. There is a genuine fear over simply expressing opinions or facts, as the consiquences are in some cases, extreme. A fear that simply did not exist in the 90's. the "push back" IS the problem, and unless brought back to a sane level, will cause the very authoritarian ragime those creating it wish to avoid.

[@gwils7879]

@@abrr2000 So... when you get pushed back on for saying bigoted things, that's a problem... but calling everyone who doesn't agree with you "woke" isn't. Got it. Free speech DOES NOT and has NEVER meant society cannot ostracize you, or even cuss you out, or that your boss can't shitcan you, for voicing your shitty opinions. That's life. Grow up.

[@jonathanboram7858]

Thanks for making this. I think something a lot of people miss is that every political group has some unreasonable and dogmatic members. This does not mean that the movement is bad. Twitter just allows you to have direct contact with these people all at once so they seem like an insane mob, and the less hyperbolic voices are lost. Like Marshall McLuhan says "the medium is the message", twitter is the medium and it radically shapes the sort of discourse that can exist on it.

[@thomasmann4536]

It depends who the members are. When the president of the united states is as woke as some of the most insane twitter thugs, then you cant really make the claim that its just a few bad apples here and there.

[@nomore2001]

But the effect of the less hyperbolic becoming invisible is that fanatics end up furthering their narrative and interpretation which eventually becomes mainstream.

[@bellumthirio139]

If the best examples of woke people are the fanatics, the extremists, it has an intrinsic flaw, it thrives on a cultivated moral panic. Hyper moralisation existed prior to wokeism, and wokeism is just a symptom of the moralisation. Moreover, a fixation on adherence to subjective moral principles is innately disordered as it fluctuates, right now the moral paramount is racism, perhaps 10 years from now its transphobia, perhaps in 50 years it will be animal rights. It serves as a cultural zeitgeist which can only exist to obfuscate more pressing issues like the geopolitical and economic, because as a phenomenon it’s so provincial.

[@jonathanboram7858]

@@bellumthirio139 should I assume that all Christians are bad because the KKK exists? How about all free market capitalists because Pinochet existed? It's stupid to assume that any group or movement is characterized by it's most extreme or irrational members. "Being Woke" (for whatever meaning that designation has left after being co-opted as a beating stick by the right wing) just means recognizing systemic inequalities and thinking they should be fixed. There is a lot of diversity of opinion within the label about what constitutes these inequalities and how they should be fixed. There are a few people who act the way you say, but they are a minority of voices amplified by the way social media functions. Twitter likes things which make people angry, so the worst opinions are the ones which are pushed forward by the website. This is not an exact comparison, but think of them like the left wing version of Qanon. They are a minority of voices who get lots of attention and give everyone else on their side of politics a bad name. If you aren't looking at online phenomena through a lens critical of the medium in which it occurs, you aren't doing good analysis.

[@bellumthirio139]

@@jonathanboram7858 Extremism and fundamentalism (although the bible explicitly rejects racial politics, I won’t contest the KKK example) are an innate flaw in monotheistic religion, and fascistic seduction is also a flaw of the free market and liberalism. To accept that naturally occurring extrema informs us of the flaws of a phenomenon is necessary, woke Twitter mobs are the flaw of a cultural moralisation, therefore we should be skeptical of any moralising of culture (political correctness, historical revisionism, etc), I never castigated this moralisation explicitly, just pointed out that it has a fundamental flaw when it enables mob rule and hyperbole.

[@ignitionfrn2223]

2:00 - Chapter 1 - The awokening 12:00 - Chapter 2 - The broadening of the public sphere 17:25 - Chapter 3 - Moral tastes 21:00 - Chapter 4 - Cancelled

[@omalone1169]

@Phan⸸omS⸸ranger ⛧ nice to see pan afrikan idols

[@burlbird9786]

22:35 "unapologetically me, whatever that means" Here is the crux of your problem with Moeller and the problem with you "interpretation" of Moeller's argument - you not only misconstrued his argument, you did it on purpose, since he spent a good portion of the video pointing out the origin of this "unapologetically me" nonsense in a CIA recruitment video. Based on your (deliberate mis)representation it would seem like HE is the originator of that "unapologetically me" nonsense. This is so cringy, man.

[@HxH2011DRA]

Yeah that was very strange, like he "watched" the video just to try and shit on it here, very close minded and not very scholarly nor through

[@Bronyboy123]

Yeah, Moeller's video makes an interesting point, especially when combined with his more recent one about Jordan Peterson and how both what he calls "wokeism" and Jordan Peterson's reactionary social politics are built upon a foundation of individualism and the primacy of individual identity and action. I think where Moeller goes wrong is that he seems to collapse the entirety of the "woke" discourse into one monolith, considering plenty of people who the right would consider "woke" boogeymen place themselves in opposition to individualism and prefer systemic analyses like those developed in Marxism, Foucault's work, etc. The wokeism as a civil religion he describes seems to be primarily concentrated amongst people who are liberals, the political actors one might find within the Democrats in the U.S. It seems not to bring up the more radical strains of political thought that are present in the contemporary political discourse.

[@T.H.W.O.T.H]

For me the issue with Moeller's argument is that while he defines Wokeism as an expression of a renewed and intensified form of identity politics, predominately but not exclusively 'of the Left', by labelling it a (civic) religion he essentially dismisses it as mere dogma or doctrine; as a set of social strictures or tickbox moral requirements to which the individual must adhere if they are to be "Woke", or which they dispute or oppose if they are to be "aWoke" as it were. Similarly, by locating Wokeism within the framework of individualism he ignores it as a social phenomena within the wider public sphere. What he labels a 'civil religion' could easily be applied to the prevailing social norms and standards of any historic period. Does this mean that those who are motivated to disputed and/or oppose what they see as Wokeism are engaging in a pseudo-religious conflict - a battle of ideas in which the categorisation of individuals as "Woke" and "aWoke" defines the bounds of a kind of civil, and ultimately political sectarianism?

[@burlbird9786]

@@T.H.W.O.T.H I hear you, but locating something as a "civic religion" IS understanding it as a social phenomena. (My issue, for example, is that he never truly addresses the historical background of this so-called civic religion, which seems to be deeply rooted in Protestant, especially Puritan ideology, nor does it engage with its materialistic, class background. What we need is a good Marxist criticism of this political abomination, not attempts to negate its existence, like this channel seems to be doing.)

[@T.H.W.O.T.H]

@@burlbird9786 I don't necessarily disagree on you last point. While I understand your point about 'civic religion' being a social phenomena the point I was trying to articulate is that he uses the term within the context of the individual; that the 'Woke' are are civilly religious individuals by adherence or endorsement of a set of assumptions and/or beliefs held in accord with specific, Leftish, dogma or doctrine. I think there's far more to unpack about this than can be achieved on the bottom half of a YT video. ;)

[@SeasideDetective2]

No one is getting "cancelled" in the Orwellian sense of the term. Pointing out that a work of fiction or cultural practice is rooted in outdated social ideas is not the same thing as getting rid of those things. Regardless of what your definition of racism might be, Disney has NOT memory-holed its "racist" films (except for SONG OF THE SOUTH, and that is still available outside of North America), and it was Dr. Seuss's own publisher rather than a government entity that ceased the dissemination of his "racist" books. Conservatives just don't like it when people "call them out" or mock them, even though they do it all the time themselves. Given the amount of contempt they have for non-conservatives, they shouldn't care about these controversies anyway.

[@argontreper8524]

The one truth of life people need to be woke to. Is that life mostly isn't great, good, or even tolerable. But that we should strive to make contentment as equitable and fair as possible.

[@zwatwashdc]

Why? Many people are struggling with addictions, childhoods of abuse, poverty. They can barely get out of bed, but now the most important thing is that they struggle to make things equitable? We can see that the most powerful people, the ones who can really make a difference by not flying on their private jets and massive boats, by not having 5 empty houses, they don’t give a darn.

[@argontreper8524]

@@zwatwashdc I see what your saying, but feel you are missing the point. People of Wealth will do little to aid anyone. It is on the backs of the populous to make the world a better place. Nothing you sited gives a person an excuse. To not do the little they can to improve the world. One can be a poor junkie who suffered from child abuse. While also treating others with respect. One's own shortfalls don't justify being insufferable to others.

[@zwatwashdc]

@@argontreper8524 It is the wealthiest who use this language of ‘equity’ to control the population and to justify declining standards of living among the bottom 80%. People need to struggle for liberty and freedom from injustice. The biggest problem is not your average person’s behavior, but corruption among the ruling class.

[@argontreper8524]

@@zwatwashdc while I see truth in what you are saying to a point. If a 100 story structure is unstable with problems on the lower 80 floors. You can't hope to fix anything without work to lower 80. Equity and fair treatment regardless of the individuals quirks are a most for any society. If the bottom 80% embraced these two attributes. Our voting power could fix the problems we face. We along with our forebears have allowed things to be as they are. The wealthy do have us endentured as wage slaves. Some people are way worse off than others. The wealthy elites however do not make people abuse their children or do drug. People choose those behaviors and habits. Because as a culture when it comes to doing what is easy or what is right. A lot elect easy as a choice. I respect your right to disagree. But those of us being stepped on vastly outnumber those doing the stepping. It happens because we allow it. Equity and fairness aren't the problem, they are the solution. The elites have used the false promise of them to worsen the average persons condition for sure. Just as they have used racism and prejudice to divide people. The whole goal of their capitalist system is to divide and conquer us. Be it on the lines of race, gender, religion, ect. People fall for it and strike out at the wrong people, place, and time. In a representative democracy we the majority have power that cannot be ignored without our consent. Allowing everyone access to food, water, shelter, and education is all that needs to be done to for equity in life. In regards to fairness people need to ask themselves how what other people have going on. Is harming others before allowing themselves to get angry. People get outraged over the dumbest things. Like bathrooms, marriage right, team sports, control over one's own body, firearm ownership, government over reach, and so much more. So angry that they forget that we are all humans capable of finding solutions to near anything if we work together. Wokeness is just another false banner to rally around to divide people. Common sense and decency to others is what is needed to elevate humanity. Happiness is fleeting, contentment is the only possible constant.

[@zwatwashdc]

@@argontreper8524 we don’t live in a Christian society, we live in a Roman one. Maybe what you are saying can work among people who share the same (Christian) values, but that simply is not the case. Most people haven’t got a clue what they think or value. They don’t believe in anything, much less have respect for the less powerful. Neither did the Romans. All they respect is power, and if they have more than the next guy, they will exercise it. They look to Kim kardashian and Joe Biden to know what is right. Sadly, Kim is probably the better role model. In our reality, the fish rots from the head.

[@comradefreedom8275]

Courage is also being able to admit to being wrong, which many of these right-wing think tanks won't do, in spite of how wrong they are.

[@comradefreedom8275]

@EDUARD ȘTEFAN MALOȘ Everything about what conservatives believe is pretty anti-reality.

[@comradefreedom8275]

@EDUARD ȘTEFAN MALOȘ They deny climate change being caused by humans, when the scientific consensus says it is being caused by humans. They think that gender and sex are the same thing, despite academics proving that wrong. They love taking away human rights, in spite of having more human rights creating a better society, need I go on?

[@comradefreedom8275]

@EDUARD ȘTEFAN MALOȘ Hmm... so nature made people identify as man or woman? Man and woman aren't just constructs that people made up? Do dogs identify as men or women? I'm pretty sure they don't. Men and women are indeed social constructs. One can identify as a woman and that's what she'll be, regardless of whether or not they have a penis. It doesn't matter. It's all made up. Do you believe that people aren't happy when they're allowed to express themselves however they want as long as it doesn't hurt others? Restricting people's personal liberties has always done more harm than good. Marginalized populations commit more harm to themselves and others when they're less free. Why is this not just common sense to people? Then again, there are people who think that vaccines are microchips, so I'm not surprised.

[@comradefreedom8275]

@EDUARD ȘTEFAN MALOȘ First of all, that doesn't mean that they identify themselves as man or woman. They don't call themselves anything. They're animals. They don't have the ability to create complex languages. Man and woman don't exist in their minds. Besides, the whole appeal to nature fallacy shouldn't be applicable to humans, because humans are the most intelligent animal, to the point where we basically conquered the world. Very little about human life is natural. We're quite disconnected from nature. Take for example, this pandemic. What does nature do in the face of a pandemic? It certainly don't create vaccines. It let's all creatures without a genetic resistance die, and if what's left is not a stable breeding population, a species will go extinct. That's nature. What I'm getting at is that we have the intelligence to literally say "fuck gender" and decide to live however the fuck we want to live, and still be happy, and that's one of the things that makes us unique. We should just be allowed to change ourselves to fit into whatever gender role we want. We have the ability to, we have the medical science to do so, so, it's cool. Everyone should be allowed to if it'll make them happy. What the left wants is to expand that into we, the human race, belong to the human race. We want to unite all of the world, end the rampant alienation, and allow everyone to get along as equals, live freely and peacefully, regardless of race, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, and so on. We don't need traditional values, or a traditional society for that. We need to end hierarchical power relations, and create a society where everyone cooperates and works together.

[@comradefreedom8275]

@EDUARD ȘTEFAN MALOȘ It's really not there because "nature". It's there because of how we structure our society. We've structured our societies to have these hierarchical power imbalances. A very small privileged few made it that way and then indoctrinated people into believing it. It's because they're privileged that they try to keep it that way. There are studies that show that having power over other people reduces one's ability to empathize with others. This is why when a push for equality comes about, the powerful double down, because they don't want to lose their privilege. Then they'll come up with arbitrary nonsense to justify their position. The appeal to nature fallacy is their favorite. They said it to keep women subservient to men, they said it to preserve slavery, they said it to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community. Yet all of the research shows that their arguments are bullshit. These roles only exist because we made the choice to create them. We can make the choice to destroy them. There's nothing in our brains that tells us to marginalize other human beings. There's nothing in us that tells us that men wear a 3-piece suit and that women wear dresses. Those are choices we make. Regarding gender, a man is anyone who identifies as a man. A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman. Gender is entirely made up. It has nothing to do with biology, it's all sociological/cultural. So if a person who was assigned male at birth identifies as a woman, then that's what she is, and I'll call her by she/her pronouns. Studies even show that doing that reduces their suicide rate by 94%. The scientific consensus is that treating trans women as women, trans men as men, and non-binary people as being valid is how to help trans and gender queer people. This is literally just medical practice, so to deny it is literally just anti-science. I don't aim to take away people's individuality, or their cultural heritage. I believe that cultures can evolve as they blend, and that people can achieve great things if they unite and develop great achievements, scientific, philosophical, artistic, etc. I love that. I love that stuff can grow and improve if many people of different backgrounds can put their heads together and come up with new ideas. Like, for example, in the world of music, rock 'n' roll developed from blues and slave music, which has its cultural roots in African music. Different people of different backgrounds blended different musical elements into it, from classical, to folk, hip-hop, jazz, to the point where there's so many different genres of just rock, that it becomes just so much more interesting to look through and study. If everyone just all stayed in their cultural lanes then these amazing developments wouldn't have come to be.

[@dionysianapollomarx]

Interpreting Moeller as bizarre by conflating his comparison of wokeism and religion to far right assertions ignores a religious side to things. Even Zizek does this with ideology. It's astonishing how you lump his analysis with the right for that. Sloppiest part. First time I saw no nuance in a pretty important part of one of your videos. And, the case studies are lacking as well.

[@snoopy_peanuts_77]

lacking what?.... maybe you are the one that needs to understand the entire picture.

[@nonah60]

@@snoopy_peanuts_77 or maybe... Just maybe, it could be you.

[@selimword25]

"Moeller makes many bizarre claims." I'd love to hear you dig into those claims since many of them seem to be incontrovertible. Wokism is certainly not postmodern, in the same sense that Jordan Peterson is talking nonsense when he tries to say Marxism is postmodern.

[@HxH2011DRA]

Why does the pop-philosophy left react to Moeller's video like this you think? They keep claiming he's making multiple critical errors but never call more than 2 out if that, and they're never good. Or is this just my take and I'm stupid?

[@selimword25]

@@HxH2011DRA No I think you're correct. Tom Nichols for example had a super embarrassing take on Moeller. I think it's because they don't know how to place him. Moeller is obviously a leftist, a Marxist, and they've never seen such a thoughtful critique of wokism from the left before.

[@HxH2011DRA]

@@selimword25 always nice for an outsider to come shake things up imo

[@maxr.k.pravus9518]

@@priapulida Yeah, what JP says is even worse lol Woke=/=Marxist Marxists are modernist, not post-modernist. The fact that JP couldn't name one "post-modern Marxist" in the debate with Žižek just goes to show he's talking out of his ass when it comes to politics. I respect Peterson because his books actually helped millions of people. He better stick to self-help psychology and stay out of politics and philosophy.

[@maxr.k.pravus9518]

@@priapulida It's one thing to say wokeism is influenced by Marxism, and the other is to say that all the woke univerity professors are "postmodern cultural Marxists". Apples and oranges. Can you summarize that article you linked, I can't read it rn

[@JM-us3fr]

I think “woke” is just a new word for something old. The young use it because it’s trendy and the old use it because the young use it and so is therefore scary. Tale as old as time.

[@pastycayk1998]

You know it sucks about this whole debacle this entire thing is going the way of how politically correct started it was just a term us lefties used in our inner circles and then the right picked it up and turned it into the scary word that means thing I don't like and I woke is becoming this scary word that means thing I don't like,

[@JM-us3fr]

@@pastycayk1998 Yeah pretty much. Though we can take solice is the fact that we will never run out of new words to make, and the right will never run out of outrage for new terms.

[@namjoonie936]

and they mean different things to different generations

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

That is probably the best explanation on this i have heard to date.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

@@namjoonie936 they mean different things to everyone. That is why right wing adopted it so heavilly. So they can make every angry about something else at the same time without offending none of them. Simply because all listners think the one using the word means exactly what they want it to mean and agrees with their viewpoint even though it is nothing but a vehicle for the influencer. The power of weak language open to personal intrepetation.

[@jeromewright93]

We are all Woke to our own injustices. Being Truely Woke is to be aware of the injustices others suffer.

[@Christine-j7n]

I agree and we’re all too busy being puppets to really look at the other side with empathy and walking a mile in someone else’s shoes .

[@Christine-j7n]

Just to clarify because I realize people will judge me based on which side they think I’m rooting for , I lean slightly left bit of call myself more close to center and I can see the points both sides make on certain issues as valid

[@Christine-j7n]

* but I

[@daan260]

being truely woke is being a communist and thinking you reinvented the wheel

[@galinor7]

Woke is a variation of intrasectionalism which is neon Marxism.

[@jalepezo]

woke can mean two things;: 1. "Activists" behind a keyboard who want to virtue signal 2. People who openly disrupt power structures by means of language and action. Words are a big part of power structure, Foucault mentions this.

[@TIm_Bugge]

Without a verifiable theory with which to evaluate it, the meaning of the word 'woke' is too fluid to reliably serve the purposes of those who make deliberate use of it. ... unless, of course, it's purpose is mere virtue signaling.

[@bipslone8880]

Woke is a meanless term created by hateful right wingers. The right creates monsters like Woke, Cancelled, political incorrect in order to play the victim for their anti-social and hateful actions.

[@badfriends5206]

Spreading your opinion on the internet isn't a bad thing. It's called Freedom of Speech and should celebrated.

[@bipslone8880]

@@badfriends5206 So spreading lies and hatred is a good thing? Neo-Nazi opinions are good? Do you celebrate slander? Trump spread election fraud lies on the internet and it caused an insurrection on the Capitol. Putin spread his denazification lies in order to start a war.

[@ernststravoblofeld]

Name one single human being who doesn't "virtue signal."

[@MichaelGreenOfficial]

Regardless of backlash, people losing their jobs for having opinions outside of the twitter minority, is unacceptable.

[@lindabelcher8087]

🗣️📢📢📢

[@ryanwilliams3857]

Form a union. And votes down right to work laws

[@amberr6344]

People have lost jobs over things like virulent antisemitism screamed at passing cars for hours or violently attacking other people. What societal remedy do you approve for these actions?

[@amberr6344]

I will also note that should an employee display the same behavior in the workplace (a valid concern) the employer can be sued as well.

[@ippanpedrozo1162]

corporations making private decisions to fire employees based on public sentiment, is the free market at play. the corporation makes a decision that was weighed to increase profits by freely letting go of a perceived liability. the fired person should have the skills and experience to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and find another job, no? besides, no one coerced them to voice an opinion that would get them fired. it was their free will to say something they knew was socially unacceptable, and it was their employer's freedom to decide not to associate with the bad opinion employee. it just shows that the bad opinion has lost in the free marketplace of ideas and debate. if corporations being 'at will' employment is "unacceptable", then free market capitalism is unacceptable. either people and employers have the free will to fire or hire who they want, or there must be restrictions and rules applied to the market. you cant have it both ways.

[@wordscapes5690]

The word “woke” is just a word that gets used to describe someone whose ideas you don’t like. Like any word designed to be negative, it is also used by people to identify other people whom they believe don’t like them. But, like all of these terms that pop up from time to time, it simply does not exist except in the subjective mind of its user. There is a very good reason such meme words cannot be adequately defined - they are defining something… that isn’t.

[@TheArmyofHades]

Well not really nobody calls right winged people woke. It's usually a derogatory term for left leaning people that concern themselves social justice and pc issues, that supposedly take their policies too far.

[@wordscapes5690]

@@TheArmyofHades They are unable to define these PC issues. And when they do, not one of them agrees on what is “too far” because being good, kind, decent, and well-meaning is not a villainy but a virtue. Again, there is no such thing as wokism, which is why it is indefinable.

[@Tusitala1967]

@@wordscapes5690 Wokism: An authoritarian Utopianism that masquerades as liberal humanism while subverting and annulling it from within with doctrines of group rights to equal outcome and the subordination of truth seeking to egalitarian political dogma.

[@thefuturist8864]

While I agree that ‘woke’ is often used as a catch-all term by those on the political right (often to simply refer to anything vaguely ‘left’ or even just insufficiently conservative), I disagree that there is nothing else to the word. When people try to claim that it once referred to people who were supposedly alert to specific social problems (usually racial in nature) they leave out something very important: it is an a priori theory of society, not derived from observations but rather created to structure them. In many ways such ‘alertness’ is analogous to putting on a pair of red-tinted glasses to ‘see’ that the world has a red tint. Meanwhile any liberal-minded person can have a similar vigilance without having to wear the glasses. Woke *can* be defined, despite its misuse: it is a political activist mindset which bases itself on the presumption that there are unconscious and invisible factors which structure social inequality, a mindset which requires its adherents to ‘just believe’ in the absence of any supporting evidence.

[@wordscapes5690]

@@thefuturist8864 That is not woke, it is just political ignorance. Woke is just a word conservative people use when they encounter resistance to their ideology. Sorry, you do not convince.

[@carpo719]

I appreciate your videos. I am in the middle on my feelings about 'woke' culture.... realizing that often by trying to inspire people to be more awake, and not join the mob, we end up joining a different mob, and in some views, appears like a religion the way people tell others how to feel, or speak. ' We do have more freedom of speech than ever before. But also a faster backlash, often from people who just want to be outraged, and not investigate intentions. Intention is everything

[@wowcplayer3]

intentions are God in a cell block

[@omalone1169]

@@wowcplayer3 09:30 please what film

[@wowcplayer3]

@@omalone1169 dunno, I was quoting a Cannibal Ox song tho, and I agree with the quote around that timestamp. If only because I am a will my own, and entirely disinterested by either political correctness or my chauvinist male identity.

[@erickforsyth3793]

great response.

[@NotDuncan]

With good intentions you can pave your way to hell

[@Direfloof]

The term “woke” functions as a reactionary term to discredit any critique of the status quo. You’ll never hear it used by someone who doesn’t wield systemic power or isn’t reinforcing the aesthetic of a corporate brand. “Cancel culture” doesn’t exist. If it did, it started centuries ago. The thing called cancel culture now is just what influential people call consequences for their actions in the public sphere. They don’t like being vulnerable to consequences, especially at the hands of “common” people en masse, so they victimize themselves.

[@Fr33zeBurn]

Except most things now described as woke *are* the status quo. Most news outlets, a lot of brands and companies, the government, the US army... etc.

[@noxplay4906]

Bro is so brainwashed he doesn't realize wokeism is supported by the establishment. Corporate media, the government, Silicon Valley and tech sectors, celebrity culture, movies and TV, social media, most music artists are pro-Democrat, etc. And bro, cancel culture did exist a long time ago. They were called witch burnings. You support modern-day witch burnings?

[@noxplay4906]

@@Fr33zeBurn Fr. Guess the brainwashing is strong. Like how anarchists and woke SJWs say they're fighting against the system when the system actively encourages their activity

[@noxplay4906]

I don't have a problem with calling out corrupt powerful people. It's just that the way the wokies do it is brainless. All they're doing is sowing hatred and doing exactly what those powerful people want them to do. Which is, stir up shit with each other instead of focusing on us! Most celebs being Democrat is no coincidence. Hollywood and greedy corporations like Amazon being woke is not a coincidence. Wake up bro

[@corneliuscapitalinus845]

I think you largely dropped the ball re: moeller, cosmicskeptic and the citing of the ideology being like religion claim to deflate the notion of "wokeism" as civil religion, however that last guy blabbering about MLK through Joan of arc was facepalm worthy.

[@theory_underground]

yeah that's a fair review

[@panoptos4163]

In many ways this is my favorite video of the bunch for all the debate it sparked in the comments section. You should engage the timely and controversial more often.

[@One.Zero.One101]

📌It follows the life cycle of internet buzzwords. It starts from a niche, then when it goes mainstream, inevitably there will be people who don't know the meaning of the buzzword and use it incorrectly, until the buzzwords is used to mean anything you want.

[@stephenrogers5458]

Bombarded by shallow right-wing (mis)appropriation of the term "woke", I have been studying the concept lately, to try and learn what is at the heart, what is animating all the fuss. For the right, "woke" is nothing more than a derogatory container for presenting right wing concepts in a way that ignites anger and prejudice and doesn't lead to anything other than rejection of the opponent. For the left, it is a serious, but ultimately ill-fated pursuit of boiling down complex phenomena that cannot be boiled down. Both right and left are interested in a destination, but in reality there won't be one. It is the wild journey that we will be stuck with. Lots of skirmishes but no ultimate victory for either side. Actual enlightenment will require much more knowledge that is tied to real truths, not just talking points.

[@time3735]

I think wokeism has been misinterpreted and turn into a conspiracy theory by the right wing media. They're putting out certain videos and news outlets targetting specific groups and brainwashing the crowd and manipulating with their emotions into thinking that wokeism is a serious problem amongst all others. A clear example of this is the Libs of Tiktok. Everyone is getting blue-pilled thinking that gender inequality is not real, they think what's happening in America and Europe is also happening in the rest of the world, they're so short sighted and live in their little ignorant worlds. They're highlighting wokeism and ignoring other real problems like gun laws etc.

[@brixan...]

The problem is that each side believes this about the other. Your opponents would say that you are focusing on "woke issues" and not what they consider "real" problems. We should just make sure we don't censor, oppress, and attack others who simply disagree with us

[@Seph0rz]

@@brixan... The real far left brings the discussion into the government agenda to rule and censor information while agreeing we are capable of being more moral and better off without them. Anarchic self governing groups exist in the very language we use and we dont need more government peddled, state funded "democracys" with a monopoly on violence and ideas. In effect the extreme left isnt even in existence...it advocates no politics.......politically choosing to not believe in politics......

[@ablanuza76]

That's exactly what they did. They twisted the original meaning of the word to downplay the plight of the oppressed and repeated it for so long that many idiots believed it and don't even know its real definition anymore.

[@briantuk3000]

I'm a "reactionary" by these terms, but a huge company like Vogue stating things like "we need the end of capitalism" is such a plain contradiction, right just before our eyes

[@africanhistory]

which highlights the most profound trait of Woke culture its superficiality.

[@btarczy5067]

I don’t know if it’s just a person writing it in one article or a message delivered „by the company“ via something impersonal like advertising. Either way it is not a contradiction. We all participate in capitalism which makes criticism from the outside pretty much impossible if one does not live completely self-sufficiently which would be the exception but also pretty irrelevant. Maybe it is posturing but the hypocrisy accusation is meaningless in this context.

[@briantuk3000]

@@btarczy5067 bro, Vogue is literally a huge enterprise which bases itself in capital investsments, and so "lives" because of capitalism, so it's a contradiction.

[@btarczy5067]

@@briantuk3000 Well, „Vogue“ didn’t write the article but probably some journalist working there who had it approved by someone else. Was all that done in good faith? Probably not. They made headlines, produced outrage etc. etc. If that was the intention I‘d call it cynical, not contradictory but… Semantics, whatever.

[@briantuk3000]

@@btarczy5067 yeah but still, what the journalist said from his company as employee counts as what the entire company thinks, at least for the common people, what really matters.

[@jamiedh3036]

Not quite sure I totally agree with the punch up not down mantra - people/views whether emanating from 'above' or 'below' you in your perceived hierarchy - if wrong, needs to be called out. I suspect that's an unpopular view lol

[@crpggamer]

There's no awoke. It's simply a different form of being controlled or controlling other people. It's also a money ticket and free power for some people and a way for corporate elites to get everyone moving and doing their bidding.

[@Mark_zist_Anonoymous]

I always love your videos. They are beautifully in-depth and appropriately educational.

[@TjBruce817]

Being woke to social problems is a good thing. Most don't give a shit weather you like that or not. There will always be a derogatory term to describe people who point out these societal issues. PC, tree hugger, or Hippie....it just doesn't matter. There will always a term for anyone advocating for social issues they will be attacked with. Counter Culture is what it is and has always been and will always be, until these social issues are addressed .

[@morocotopo3905]

I have to agree with many comments here. Your historical and theoretical approach is interesting, but you fail in the case studies. There are plenty examples of normal people losing their platforms and jobs because of their opinions and this is leading to self-censorship. It is actually interesting that from the Unheard video you chose the Mumford and Sons guy but not the other two women, who are just a regular writer and an embroiderer. They both had their employers contacted by Twitter mobs just because they gave an opinion on women's rights. Okay, they might have found different platforms and new ways of working, but other people will think twice before saying their own opinions after seeing that your employer can be contacted and you can be sacked for your own personal opinion on an unrelated matter. And fair enough that's no gulag but losing your job for political opinions in a context in which precarious work is endemic is no joke.

[@blackriver2531]

Everyone I've ever seen lose their job deserved it? Cancel culture is fake news right? 😅 a rapist being fired for raping people is GOOD yeah? And even then... if you cancel a millionaire they still have millions of dollars... Look at Louis CK? He's still doing shows he got canceled Jkr got canceled she's still strong Bill Cosby got legally canceled and even he got out of prison Trump got canceled and he BECAME PRESIDENT So I've yet to see an example as you've explained. Self censorship is amazing? You really should censor yourself if you want to hurt people... that's just part of living in society. pedophiles self censor due to being canceled and I'm glad for it. I like to live in a world where the KKK can't just participate in mainstream ideologies.

[@blackriver2531]

Let's say I run a sandwich shop, let's say one of my 5 workers comes out as an anti semite and spends all day spreading anti Semitic conspiracies making customers uncomfortable... i lose bizness. This is my company and he is affecting my profits. You're fired. There's no situation where I keep you. That's called capitalism baby~ If this causes other people to hide their bigotry that's their prerogative. Bigotry is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.

[@consentclub8431]

...so they weren't actually cancelled.

[@aryanraj6304]

Cosmicskeptic was debating against cancel culture. I think cancel culture and wokeism are intertwined but different things. Keep up the good work.

[@relaxingsounds1386]

They're both part of the same paradigm.

[@radioactivedetective6876]

Alex was for the motion "we should cancel cancel-culture"

[@kunikloy477]

@@radioactivedetective6876 He doesn't support the idea of cancel. He said we should fight against and reject cancel-culture. Cancel means shunning and deplatforming, Alex is willing to openly talk about and debate cancel-culture.

[@radioactivedetective6876]

@@kunikloy477 That's what I wrote. cancel cancel-culture means being against cancel culture. He has a video in his channel with the title "Should We Cancel Cancel Culture". Although the clip Lewis has used here is from a different debate. Alex, brilliant though he is, seems to have some warped and confused ideas about leftist political theory.

[@ArgentWolf95]

both are from the same ideology: Intersectional Social Justice.

[@MegaLuros]

Although there are a lot of people who cry out about being cancelled whle they basically have nothing to worry about, not everyone who is being cancelled is a hyper-privileged individual. It's a bit of a superficial analysis to ay "crowd is always right, target is always wrong".

[@darrenwithers3628]

It's always someone with a platform

[@davis68nf]

Within sociology, we learned from various data (longevity, health, infant mortality, wealth, education) that there are marginalized demographics. The default in the western world is white Christian. Does it have to stay the default? Can there be other modes of thought? Can we lift up those who are excluded?

[@tomfuller5585]

I confess, I used to be woke. I was constantly getting triggered. I protested everything that offended me, and demanded it all be cancelled. Finally I grew out of it, and went to preschool.

[@eorobinson3]

The Excesses of (Purifying) Pathological Righteousness: “The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’-this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” Aldous Huxley

[@miaferrari958]

One of my favorite comments on this thread that sums up perfectly my discomfort with wokeness nowadays: I may agree with your ideals, but if your methods involve dehumanizing others for you to feel morally superior, you lost me there...

[@RobbieManic]

I'm always baffled that to be a decent human being and treat everyone in an positive manner equally, judging them by their individual character, choices they make in service of themselves and their others, is such a bizarre concept. If someone advocates for love - I respect them, and would willingly share platonic love with them. If someone advocated for death, destruction, the eradication of a person due to a facet of their being (sex, orientation, gender, race, culture, nationality/ethnicity) as many people in history have done so, then I would want nothing to do with them. I would shun them, not respect them. From genocidal maniacs like Hitler, to a low-level killer like Bundy or Dahmer. Why is this core concept so hard to understand? Oh, wait...humans being human. I get it.

[@juanmccoy3066]

That's a lousy and overused trope. It's a strawman argument because wokeism is NOT merely a slang term for "egalitarianism" which even if it were there ARE valid criticisms of even that. Wokeism as a postmodern tenet of the social democratic neoliberal contemporary ideology, is about actively infringing on people's rights, and associating historical sins, perceived or real and people who aren't even descendents necessarily but just because they look like them. Such as when SJWs accuse all white working class people of being racists and fascists, and demanding reparations from white workers to ALL blacks, or advocating abolition of churches because of Westboro baptists. That's wokeism. It's not truly egalitarian. And it is not social justice it's social vigilantism for u to ignore this is dishonest or ignorant. Wokeism comes from critical theory, a philosophy theorized by the Marxist Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer in particular. After the socialist revolution failed to materialized in the US after the great depression his vision was to meld Frued and Marx to create what he called wasted Fruedian Marxism. He translated orthodox Marxism to cultural terms. Replacing the proletariat with minorities and anyone he deemed as "oppressed" and casting all whites, straight people, religious people, etc as the bourgeoisie. He sparked the cultural wars and Marcuse took it to a new level. This is why orthodox Marxists distance themselves from the contemporary leftists as it's adherents are more interested in social democracy and upholding liberalism so long as cultural genocide is carried out. Horkheimer had no sympathy for workers and thought little of them when the revolution failed to materialize in his eyes and blamed them. The workers in his time mostly being straight white men, he saw to cast as an enemy. Marx himself said anyone who uses the lumpenproletariat or the petty bourgeoisie as guards are traitors to the workers. This is what the critical theorists and their disciples did and still do today they don't care about workers. If u hate killers so much ud be interested to note the worst killers in history from Mao Zedong, to Jim Jones and the Manson family were cultural Marxists. The term woke itself simply means when blac activists are alert to social injustice. It was a 70s term that ironically was culturally appropriated by bourgeoisie white academic upperclassmen and teachers. The entire movement would be silly if it wasn't inherently murderous. .if u really cared about class elimination u wouldn't back up an ideology that reinforces and remained class struggle rather than abolishing it. U would be an anarchist or a voluntaryist but ur not. Ur a social Democrat taken in by ideologies u can't even articulate. By men who've been dead for decades who said things like "we will secure the revolution by infiltrating the media, politics and universities over generations" If you really cared about ALL people you wouldn't be willing to exile people for having different private views than you so long as they did no harm. But u do. U say it yourself. This is why Horkheimer was so heavily criticized by damn near everyone in academia to the point he had to actively sieze the means of education to force students to learn his fucked up ideology. Now u fucking neo Marxists are passing this horseshit on to the poor kids, little kids. Dressing them up in drag. Teaching 1st graders the most vitriolic race politics. So "loving" why would anyone be against any of this? Obviously this is all right wing smear campaigns. Despite even radical left wingers being thoroughly shook to their core by this shit. Ur gonna learn the lesson that malcolm x and huey Newton learned. They too students of wokeism and neo Marxism thought they could mobilized the lumpen proletariat in theircommunities. Instead they were betrayed.. their unions devolving into gangs. And BLM is going through this again. The whites in antifa are castration themselves and committing suicide after losing street battles. Infighting in Chaz. This is the legacy of Wokeism. Not love. If u really love people u leave them alone and you don't force ur weird ideas on others

[@juanmccoy3066]

In my experience it's the so called reformers in society and the community organizers who end up just fucking over as many people as possible. Power corrupts. That's why I'm an anarchist. I don't want ANY classes. I don't want justice. I don't want revenge. I just want people to do for themselves and eachother without rulers lording over them. U don't need reparations when money and class is abolished. U don't need advocacy groups when the concept of ethnicity and race is abolished from all but the strictest scientific biological inquiries not by force but because that mode of thinking isn't even useful or productive in a society that just wants to build, grow and advance. Whiteness only exists because the English alone became a vast minority so they had to create this concept where they attached themselves to anyone with a similar skin color and facial features. It's just more hierarchical corporate nonsense That arises as a result of the stage. Homosexuality as an identity didn't even exist well into the industrial age because talking with a lisp and acting like a fragile sissy had nothing to do with preferring sex with men over women until the bourgeoisie social democratic elites who never worked a day in their life created this weird sub culture around their sexual preferences and then labeled themselves oppressed as if they had anything in common with gay proletarians except sexual preference. When u abolish hierarchy there's no more identity politics because there's no classes no politics and no super structure. People are just people. They either work and contribute or they exploit others by begging or stealing, either directly or through power structures. U either support hierarchy or u dont. U either support being a parasite or u don't. This idea of objective morality and love for "all human beings" is nonsense designed to keep u complacent. It doesent even make sense because it's impossible. Ur love will always come with conditions and a very high price. And those who don't get it will always get stepped on or outright oppressed. We anarchists want to abolish all of that. Take away all of ur control!

[@RobbieManic]

@@juanmccoy3066 easy to call them "weird ideas" isn't it? Also, we're not forcing kids into drag - that's a stereotype in and of itself of the Left. Also, I'm mostly an Anarchist and do welcome anyone with views/opinions opposing my own so long as they don't harm others. You're just a dick.

[@RobbieManic]

@@juanmccoy3066 the etymology of anarchy/anarchism is completely different to the typical "smash everything/burn it all down" that people instantly think of (because of media portrayal). Also - homosexuality didn't exist until the Industrial era? What do you call what the Ancient Greeks did then? Plato's Symposium ring a bell? What about the Romans and their ships to battle? And lisps and "being a sissy" are nothing to do with homosexuality - a boring clichéd stereotype at best.

[@relaxingsounds1386]

This is a low IQ take.

[@zwatwashdc]

Many regular people were canceled before it got to the powerful. They got canceled by people who were more powerful. They have gotten very bold.

[@pedrosaraiva]

Good video. I have this rule of thumb which has been working out for me: it consists of disregarding any arguments from anyone who uses "woke" or " _the_ woke" or "wokeism" in a non ironic fashion. It might leave out some nuance, but I think everyone needs some sort of filter in an age where we're bombarded with arguments 24/7.

[@thegroovypatriot]

I call BS. Censorship is real and a real threat to society.

[@dimitar4y]

he's basically a fed. not on their paycheck but worships them enough to agree with their propaganda and defend it. it creeps like a disease and turns people hostile and feral. I've seen it happen to close friends, who turn woke and censor happy. Wokeness is very alive, very evolved, and very dangerous.

[@tverdyznaqs]

While I don't disagree with most of the points in this video, I do think that the final argument came off as quite one-sided. I think we as leftists need to acknowledge that the most visible parts of our 'activism' nowadays seem to be those twitter cancellation parties for whoever the villain of the week happens to be. Sure, most of the time the targets of twitter mob justice deserve condemnation on some level, but there are way too many examples of the consequences being disproportional to the transgression, the mob simply can't be controlled when it gets started and it's not a reliable mechanism for changing people's behavior for the better. Right now, in the eyes of many, this is the face of the left and boy let me tell you, this shit does not make our political movement appealing to outsiders. Anyway, here's a video by Sarah Z that expands on my point: kzbin.info/www/bejne/e5ammmd5iNansNk

[@namjoonie936]

you cant base everything off of what happens on twitter

[@mattmcdonald7112]

@@namjoonie936 which would be fine if media didn't quote twitter in its articles, journalism is too diffuse and has become irritatingly poor.

[@namjoonie936]

@@mattmcdonald7112 thats literally what i mean, only idiots are taking tweets and twitter to heart

[@cherrycola542]

Everyone calls EVERYTHING McCarthyism now

[@anarchynow3185]

Pierre Bourdieu would have said that PC and Wokeism is a distinction practice of the educated middle class.

[@patriciahopkins8348]

Or any successful society.

[@kwxba5760]

never read a comment section where people missed the point of the video this much. the video is clearly a critique the use of "wokeism" as a term in conservative spaces, not a critique of whatever these people think wokeism is in the comments like let's be serious

[@michaelmcclure3383]

Well, you know that the inquisition wasn't always just getting burnt at the stake. Often it was just social and financial cancellation. So it's actually very analogous.

[@klutterkicker]

What I love most about this video is how you use an entire fraction of a sentence from Alex O'Connor in which he doesn't mention wokeism or religion as a "case" evidencing a widespread argument that wokeism is a type of religion. Nothing but the utmost quality of intellectual rigor. * chef's kiss *

[@michaelduguay7698]

Part of the reason I clicked on the video was to see if he was included in the video itself. Guess not in any meaninful capacity: won't waste 15 minutes of my life now, thank you

[@don860]

English is not my first language so maybe I didn't understand.But doesn't he mention it actually? He said it serves as a civil religion.

[@radioactivedetective6876]

Lewis never claims that Alex said wokeism is religion in his debate. Prof Moeller had viewed wokeism as a civil religion in his vid 'Wokeism'. 21:43- Lewis first shows a clip from Prof Moeller's vid. and spends quite some time on that. His observation is that debates about ethics and morality is not new, it has been present in civilization in one guise or another. The point he makes at 22:42 is that debates about dogmatism and political correctness have been present in some form & guise throughout history, this is not something new. He moves on to Alex at 23:45. Lewis observes that Alex views defines cancel cultre as a "new and distinct and disproportionate cultural phenomenon". - That is all Lewis says. Then he plays Alex's clip 23:57-24:25. Immediately after the clip Lewis talks about the 3rd person.

[@Rob_-dv6ei]

Brilliant work. The irony is is that in 10 years there’ll be a whole new thing in place for people to moan about.

[@bridgettjohnson7437]

It won't take "ten yesrs". It will change "a whole new thing" sooner than you think.

[@snorristurluson5849]

You say that as it's wrong for ppl to "moan" bout woke culture

[@ProfessorFish]

what exactly are people moaning about that makes it "moan" for you?

[@matthewkopp2391]

@@snorristurluson5849 If woke is a concern that a small affluent group, accumulated wealth, oligarchy, plutocracy, monopoly threatens democracy and the rights of man then Thomas Jefferson was woke. The right wing picture of woke is intentionally distorted to focus on the most ignorant, so that another „woke“ can never be heard. By conflation they can kill two birds with one stone. Interestingly enough Thomas Jefferson was canceled by the right over a century ago by hiding what Jefferson‘s political positions actually were. And the woke left recently canceled Jefferson without ever reading what he wrote. In reality Jefferson‘s real ideas are just as taboo as Marx‘s real ideas. Because both threaten power and wealth.

[@One.Zero.One101]

It follows the life cycle of internet buzzwords. It starts from a niche, then when it goes mainstream, inevitably there will be people who don't know the meaning of the buzzword and use it incorrectly, until the buzzwords is used to mean anything you want.

[@Beauweir]

It's more akin to banishment in the past than being killed

[@notofthisworld5267]

Wokeism is companies trying so hard, it's cringe. When you see a movie with a white father, black mother and the child is asian and gay...it's too much. Some wokeism you see is comedy.

[@ArgentWolf95]

This is the ideology that the current idea of 'wokeness' now describes. It has it's roots in Critical Theory and the following: "In brief, “woke” means having awakened to having a particular type of “critical consciousness,” as these are understood within Critical Social Justice. To first approximation, being woke means viewing society through various critical lenses, as defined by various critical theories bent in service of an ideology most people currently call “Social Justice.” That is, being woke means having taken on the worldview of Critical Social Justice, which sees the world only in terms of unjust power dynamics and the need to dismantle problematic systems. That is, it means having adopted Theory and the worldview it conceptualizes. "Under “wokeness,” this awakened consciousness is set particularly with regard to issues of identity, like race, sex, gender, sexuality, and others. The terminology derives from the idea of having been awakened (or, “woke up”) to an awareness of the allegedly systemic nature of racism, sexism, and other oppressive power dynamics and the true nature of privilege, domination, and marginalization in society and understanding the role in dominant discourses in producing and maintaining these structural forces. Furthermore, being woke carries the imperative to become a social activist with regard to these issues and problems, again, on the terms set by Critical Social Justice. This-especially for white people-is to include a lifelong commitment to an ongoing process of self-reflection, self-criticism, and (progressive) social activism in the name of Theory and Social Justice (see also, antiracism). Historically, the term “woke” has been used somewhat extensively in slang throughout the twentieth century to refer to a state of awareness of the discrimination, disenfranchisement, and mistreatment of blacks, especially in America, and it is in that sense always had some connection to the critical mode of thought in the New Left. (See also, black liberation, liberation theology, false consciousness, and consciousness raising.) The term is alleged to have gained its first contemporary connotation in 2008 with the Erykah Badu song “Master Teacher,” in which Badu envisions and dreams of a world of racial equality and then advises genuine activism with the admonishment that listeners should “stay woke.” The term developed from there, particularly via black activism on Twitter. The term then gained particular significance and tied itself to the contemporary Social Justice movement in the mid 2010s as it became an activist watchword of the Black Lives Matter movement. There, say following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the phrase “stay woke” took on the very specific meaning of being aware of the reality (according to critical race Theory) of systemic racism in American society that activists blamed for being at the root of the incident. This has, in turn, led to the term being nearly synonymous with having a critical consciousness as provided through critical race Theory, although it has been appropriated through intersectional thought to apply to other issues of identity relevant to postcolonial Theory, queer Theory, feminism, and so on. It has since expanded and memefied further and is now seen from the outside as being wholly synonymous with having been converted to a Social Justice critical consciousness. As such, “wokeness” often refers to both critical Social Justice doctrine and the state of having accepted it. In that “wokeness” has become a term directly associated with the critical consciousness provided by applied postmodern Theories, especially critical race Theory (see also, postmodern, Marxian, Neo-Marxism, Post-Marxism, and Cultural Marxism). As such, it is centrally concerned with being aware of the intersecting systems of racism, sexism, and other forms of alleged societal oppression and analyzing these in terms of privilege. This is most often done, under woke consciousness, by engaging in discourse analysis, especially using close reading, which enables racism (or other systemic bigotries) that are assumed to be present in all situations to then be read into them. This is then treated as proof of the systemic problem that was assumed to exist in the first place (see also, mask). Being “woke” would entail being able to “see” the intersecting web of dominance and oppression that arises from the function of privilege in society and taking up efforts to challenge, disrupt, subvert, deconstruct, or overthrow the existing system in the attempt to bring those unjust intersecting power dynamics to an end (see also, Matrix of Domination). See also - Critical Consciousness, Multiple Consciousness, and Kaleidoscopic Consciousness Related Terms Antiracism; Applied postmodernism; Black liberation; Close reading; Consciousness raising; Critical; Critical Consciousness; Critical race Theory; Critical Theory; Cultural Marxism; Cultural racism; Deconstruction; Discourse; Discourse analysis; Dismantle; Disrupt; Dominance; Equality; False consciousness; Feminism; Gender; Identity; Injustice; Institutional racism; Intersectionality; Justice; Kaleidoscopic consciousness; Liberation theology; Marginalization; Marxian; Mask; Matrix of Domination; Multiple consciousness; Neo-Marxism; New Left; Oppression; Postcolonial Theory; Post-Marxism; Postmodern; Privilege; Problematic; Progressive; Queer Theory; Race; Racism (systemic); Sexism (systemic); Social Justice; Subversion; System, the; Systemic Power; Theory; White My source: New Discourses Encyclopedia of Social Justice "Translations of the Wokish." If we understand this for what it is. 'Woke' is a American version of Mao's Cultural Revolution: kzbin.info/www/bejne/opSTZ2tqi5eYoJo

[@a38226]

I've enjoyed some of your other videos but could kind of tell where this one was going from the thumbnail. It would have been great if you'd featured or referenced the likes of John Mcwhorter, Helen pluckrose, Chloe valdary, coleman hughes, Jonathan haidt, Andrew Doyle or Ayeshat Akanbi, all on the left and all of whom offer much more thoughtful and nuanced takes on the subject than anyone featured here. This might have made for a more balanced and less simplistic summary in framing all criticism of woke/cancel culture as whinging right wing reactionaries (à la Piers Morgan). Douglas Murray's scathing attacks on 'wokeism' are comparable to Hitchen's attacks on organised religion but i got the impression you just cherry picked an unflattering clip from Fox News to discredit him, presumably as he's not on the left and is highly critical of its extremities. He can be a bit jarring at first (especially if you are a commited leftist) but the man can argue a point well and is best consumed in discussion with people like Sam Harris or his recent appearance on Lex Fridman. Putting 'wokeism' in a historical context was interesting and not something I've seen done in as much detail before. However I found the justification of a young musician receiving death threats and abuse to the point where he had to leave his band in order to protect his band mates quite disturbing. The idea that this is just a fair consequence for him saying he liked a book and that it's fine becuase he has money is, well, cancellable 😉

[@hideshiseyes2804]

Really good analysis, although I don’t entirely agree with the conclusion. My main worry about “wokeism” is that it’s associated with the left (not unjustifiably although it’s not exclusive to us). As a leftist I want us to win and make real political change possible, and that takes numbers. It takes masses and masses of people. And although a great many people are on board with what could be called “wokeism”, a) a great many aren’t and unfortunately we need them too even if they have bad views, and b) of those that are, a great many disagree with each other. A lot of the punching I saw on Twitter before I deleted that evil app was not upward or downward, but lateral. Just angry people yelling at each other when, for the sake of all of us, they need to be not only uniting but GROWING their ranks.

[@holnrew]

Yep, it's all about purity, not effectiveness.

[@nicanornunez9787]

Exactly. And then and now failing yo make a honest critic of the left says alit about the problem with canceling and wokeism. The canceling of both contraptions and Lindsey Ellis I think are very telling about the woke left. Not even forgetting the attacks on Bernie for being endorse by Joe Rogan and for the alleged micromachism of Liz Warren. Tom Nichols is a more fair-minded and Better analysis, but as everyone usually forgets we are getting out of time with climate change and cancelling ppl is not gonna do anything I mean anything even to the ppl being cancel.

[@junior1388666]

Wokism pushed me away from the left. And that is so common it's even a meme The left was cool, but after gamergate it became goofy af

[@holnrew]

@@junior1388666 congrats on falling for the alt right propaganda

[@junior1388666]

@@holnrew it's not propaganda, I just hate censorship And as a comedy fan, I can't really support wokeness and cancel culture

[@Macguyverman]

I just can't agree that cancel culture invokes courage and more forethought in arguments when arguments on the right are waaaaay more likely to cause one's cancellation vs arguments on the left. If it was an even playing field and the right was also able to cancel spokespeople on the left I would agree. However, this is not the case.

[@rhythmandblues_alibi]

The right wing version of cancelling is the mainstream media completely controlling the narrative and outright silencing the perspective of the left. Left wing points of view have been forced onto social media to be heard because they don't get a look in with conventional media outlets. I also think you're overstating how powerful "cancelling" someone actually is. Name one person who has suffered materially and for a more than fleeting period of time from being cancelled. Weinstein and and Prince Andrew have retired from the public eye and are now no doubt privately enjoying their millions. Boo. Hoo. Cancelling is symbolic, nothing more.

[@joylox]

It's interesting to see the comments about religion, because I've heard many say that if Jesus came today, He'd be rejected for being too woke, and cancelled for how He loved the sinners and outcasts.

[@cranklabexplosion-labcentr8245]

I still proudly say I’m woke. If more people questioned *both* sides of their governments, hold corrupt authorities accountable, and not fall sheep to a mental mass media culling.

[@mellowmike6263]

I think it's fair to compare the idea of woke-ism with religion at least in terms of the moral paradigm, it's comparable to one of Nietzsche's critique of Christianity, the idea of slave morality in which the weak are virtuous by their very nature. I think we've forgotten the power of this morality and the fact that it's woven into the fabric of our culture in a deep meaningful way, its drives are not going to dissipate over a few generations. Thus the drive is displaced and manifests in in this form. I am not making a value judgements on wokeism or saying explicitly that it has a religious origin, I'm just saying that it is fair to compare the moral paradigm of wokeism with the moral paradigm of religion. After-all we must follow some form of moral paradigm and it's no secret that a religious attitude is waning nowadays.

[@confuciuslola]

It's really important to realise the coopting of 'woke' by the right. But there is a problem with seeing social platforms as public forums, since they are governent by corporations. Meaning that you operate on a slanted platform that tends to favour the already successful. Meaning people complaining about cancel culture can actually be quite successful. While people who are being silenced, meaning less engaging to the algorithm, can't be heard.

[@BlackMantisRed]

It’s not only the case that people in high positions of power can get cancelled, any one can be. I have seen it first hand. It’s just not brought up when it happens to normal people.

[@confuciuslola]

Well elaborate, because what is a position of power to you? And what do you see as canceled? The nomenclature is flawed and unclear.

[@Fr33zeBurn]

​@@confuciuslola A position of power is when an individual has an influence on and over other's lives. Hence why seeing all white straight men as 'in power' is as asinine as the fools who spout it. Cancelled is clearly when someone is shunned from the public forum due to their opinions on a topic and is forced to keep their opinions quiet and in choice circles. Are you being deliberately obtuse? (I know this is a late response)

[@dimadobrik4516]

And who is silenced in your opinion? Groups seen as marginal have the biggest say in online discourse. Aside from the fact that literally any regular citizen who doesn't engage in "influencing" doesn't have a strong pull in the algorithm

[@confuciuslola]

@@dimadobrik4516 I think you're right about people who don't engage being the "silenced group". I think it's only that the words we use are exactly the things that can't capture those groups. Because the language and rethoric captures the group identity and is the thing that is organized around. And any left right divide you make of it is kind of irrelevant, it is the kind of speech you have to use in order to be recommended and shared online, that determines the shape of the conversation. Hope that isn't too pretentious of an answer 😂

[@KnightofEkron]

'Woke' is one of the floatingnest signifiers ever.

[@patriciahopkins8348]

Its just another word beaten to death by rightwing media. Even repub congressmen are begging fox to dial it back. Bank crashes..blame woke. The dumbing down is real.

[@mephista55]

The unexamined life is not worth living. But I am so confused by labels today that I find myself striving for simplicity of life over anything else.

[@allenmontrasio8962]

Pushback is fine, as is dissent, but it would be so much more effective if it came from people who have a clear idea of why they are pushing back.

[@jacobprimeaux2652]

Recently discovered your channel. Wonderful. Keep up the good work.

[@susansmiles2630]

Thank you so much for your simply beautiful work!

[@patrickmcdaid862]

I just struggled to do an essay on Habermas’ Public sphere so can I just say I appreciate the breakdown

[@fafdus]

The first time I ever heard of someone saying to get your eyes opened it didn't have anything to do with identity politics necessarily. It was about seeing the world around you for what it is. Classest and molded to empower the rich... racism and prejudice played a part in it being non conformist and thinking for yourself was opening your eyes. Fight the consumer ism that is destroying the planet

[@fafdus]

I love guns and the constitution but now apparently I dont. This is tyranny.

[@fafdus]

15 years latter I think there's levels to this like free masonry. Now when I watch movies like conan I see history more than fiction lol. The sons of Hercules. Aryans indo Europeans. The sea people. I think they have rewritten history why were germans called huns in ww1

[@monchile15]

Wokeism takes over this central Marxist theme and simply replaces economic status with race, sex, sexual orientation, and the like as the keys to demarcating oppressed and oppressing classes. Where the traditional Marxist focuses on the conflict between capitalists and the proletariat, the wokester speaks instead of “white supremacy” versus people of color, “patriarchy” versus women, “heteronormativity” versus LGBTQ, and so on. But the emphasis on group identity rather than individualism carries over from Marxism and marks a break with liberalism. Furthermore, wokeism’s disdain for norms of rational discourse and inclination to cancel and censor opponents rather than engage their arguments differs from the liberal tradition’s idealization of free debate.

[@Densoro]

Your closing thoughts about the risk of wading into 'public opinion' made me realize -- the status quo tells minorities, 'welcome to the internet, you should know you can't post anything without getting death threats,' but suddenly clutches its pearls whenever somebody gets 'cancelled.' If they truly believed in being tolerant and civil, this double-standard wouldn't exist, and they'd abandon any cause which supports discrimination.

[@konstantinosvassiliadis6853]

That's a very generalised statement , as on the one hand the status quo could be used to suppress minorities and on the other hand it could be used to suppress those who argue against minorities. my take is that status quo shouldn't be used in either way,

[@LukeMcGuireoides]

This totally sums up the conservatives relationship with free speech

[@mjleger]

This is a liberal take on woketivism that leaves out the left perspective. I could be wrong but my guess is that Moeller got his Robert Bellah (civil religion) idea from Zamora and Dean. McWhorter makes a similar claim but there too class analysis of woketivism is missing, as it is also missing from Pluckrose and Lindsay, though their idea of applied postmodernism has some merit, which, contra Lindsay, has no bearing on Hegel. My Bourdieusian "welcome to the cultural goodwill revolution" take on this is available in Brave New Avant Garde. Punching up/down is limited as a formalistic and dualist substitute for critical social theory. Liberals and fascists also punch up. See Zizek's essay "Against the Populist Temptation." Zizek's concept of the waning of symbolic efficiency is relevant to woke culture wars. The reference to Shirky is valuable but otherwise incomplete as a question of technological determinism. On that last point, who owns these platforms? Do we not have a plutocracy problem today? Are they powerless against our KZbin comments? A word to the woke: ICTs reinforce dominant political tendencies.

[@nomore2001]

The video was surprisingly naive in many respects, not what I've come to expect from the channel

[@BobBogaert]

The bit from 26:40 till the end I watched twice. Brilliant.

[@Lowequay]

Calling someone woke is often used to avoid having a discussion and just dismissing a point of view without having to engage in conversation. You’re woke so all your points can be ignored. It’s used in a similar way to calling someone racist or a transphobe when trying to avoid talking things through without critical thought.

[@adekaiwamisou]

Would you say it is similarly used to demonize the oposition without hearing them out as "alt-right", "conspiracy theorist", "homophobe", "transphobe", "fascist" and other such popular words?

[@Lowequay]

@@adekaiwamisou Indeed it is. Just shuts down conversation.

[@adekaiwamisou]

@@Lowequay Still, for the sake of argument, could "woke" be seen as posisbly a retaliation by some towards the afforamentioned terms and those who use them in modern discourse?

[@Lowequay]

@@adekaiwamisou Possibly. But also could be completely separate. But not sure speculating about this helps. I have a similar conversation with my kids about who did it first. Not found a time yet when entertaining that conversation has been productive.

[@adekaiwamisou]

@@Lowequay Speculation invites conversation, different opinions and perspectives. Also a conclusion gives perspective to teh current situation and can pull one out of an amorphous neutrality that paralyzes and prevents action.

[@louisronan5903]

I’m not sure if I like your tone to be honest. And when it comes to consequences for speech, yes. There are always consequences SOCIALLY. But the problem is that there are now legal consequences for “offending” people. It’s literally fascism.

[@erickforsyth3793]

For someone that did such a wonderful Foucault video, I'm surprised how much this misses the mark. Seems almost ideologically blind. Particularly on the Moeller critique-- for something that supposedly makes "bizarre" claims, the video does not take the arguments on directly. Again, for such an apt reader of Foucault, ignoring that tactics of speech management throughout history does not mean they function the same (or are the same) is itself "bizarre". Management of "selves" in a corporate internet based culture of recognition is not, and could not be compared responsibly to "Cromwell's commonwealth." My biggest issue is the focus on a few privileged celebrity "cancellations". That's a red herring for the panicked conservative; the real issue of what is being called wokeism has little to do with celebrity cancellation but a setting of norms for EVERYONE'S discourse; one that is censorious and dogmatically aimed at particular political agendas. That being said, there are some great points about the big picture struggle for language and the "like it or not" context of democratic media here.

[@avelinaferreira6387]

For a long time I have been disturbed by the derogatory comments about “political correctness” when it’s simply a mode of inclusion and an attitude of respect. Why would a person deliberately try to offend others? Political correctness is simply good manners and politeness.

[@bartmullin8018]

The problem i have with 'Wokeism' is that nuance, fine logic, and critical thinking get thrown out the window and is replaced by brutal dogmaticism and shunning if one thoughtfully analyzes or criticizes a problematic aspect(s) of what is being posited. The push-back is based in/on unthinking mob-mentality and irrationality and is Just as bad as what is being opposed. Additionally, as with any (mostly) leaderless movement, there isn't a group of leaders to guide and moderate the excesses of the movement. The implication of this is that you get a metaphorical runaway semi Destroying Any good that might arise from being awoken and it's wider, hopefully Positive implications upon society as a whole.

[@itt2055]

So wokeisum is basically just being a modern human that wants the human race to evolve rather than stagnate. But it can basically just be used as an insult like calling someone stupid because they don't share your views on society. As for the so called cancel culture that is just being human. Those people who complain about the cancel culture the most seem to be the ones who are cancelling more than the people they are complaining about. Unfortunately we humans have divided ourselves into countries, races, religions and genders but we are all the same species and must work together to avoid the extinction of humans, the biggest threat to the human race are humans themselves.

[@ruthdevisser2526]

Woke:Alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination.What is so hard about that way of thinking? It’s not about talking about doing good ,you have to be SEEN doing good .

[@Kyle_Warweave]

"Woke" is exactly that. I prefer to be awake, in the present.

[@IvanValance]

You're far from that

[@Kyle_Warweave]

@@IvanValance Someone got woken up. And sadly slumbered back. Hopefully and temporarily in(to) the realm of misunderstanding one another.

[@morpheuskrueger8535]

Superbly written: some of your best best monologues good sir. Keep it up with these longer formats and that end with a punch

[@johnsmith-v9t8o]

I always thought woke simply meant being wise to corporate control and/or not trusting the government.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

Wokism (by another definition perhaps) is in many cases promoted by governments and corporations

[@aaronsmith1474]

@@user-hu3iy9gz5j or it's a BS term that has no meaning anymore.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

@@aaronsmith1474 We are all well aware of the phenomena. The word may be used in a range of contexts, by a variety of different voices, but this doesn't dismantle any conception of meaning which we can attribute to it

[@walkabout16]

Wokeism, a term of debate and strife, Stirs conversations in the tapestry of life. Some see its aims as noble and just, While others are skeptical, filled with mistrust. To some, it's a beacon, a call to reform, A push for justice in a world still stormy and warm. A voice for the marginalized, the oppressed, A movement that aims to address. But in the eyes of some, it's gone too far, An overreach, they say, leaving deep scars. They worry of cancel culture's might, And freedom of speech veiled in the night. Is wokeism good or bad, the question persists, A matter of perspective, on which many insist. It's vital to seek understanding and debate, To navigate these waters, it's not too late. In this complex world, where views collide, Let's strive for empathy, and bridges wide. For progress comes from dialogue, it's true, Finding common ground, where we can all renew.

[@RG-gw2sp]

One of the problems of mass communication through social media platforms is that we lose a sense of perspective. The so called mob may consist of let's say 5000 people, but when an "Elite" has an audience of over a million, are they then actually responding to their audience? You hear this all the time by content creators when they release videos, music or other forms of art, they can get hurt or stressed due to the negative reactions, even if these reactions only amount to a measly 0.5% of their audience. Imo this is a very human reaction, we lack the ability to comprehend the scale of the amount of people we can reach through the internet. Do not get me wrong I fully agree that the struggle we find ourselves in has always been this way. The internet indeed broadens the scope and presents new opportunities but unfortunately it brings new obstacles with it.

[@rleddy1]

I just watched this just after watching a pretty well thought out dive into what is fascism. Yes, they were very clear on picking the terms, slogans, symbols needed to create a populist statist context. When I hear this and the conclusion that we have progressed into a time of greater free speech, I can guess the narrator has never been to San Francisco. Free? Like a religion? Have you ever been inside a classroom in which the teacher has symbols everywhere and find that the students have all learned to use a new set of pronouns? And, was Twitter truly free? Guess not really. It seems more that the original idea of being "woke" has been co-opted and redefined by a collectivist movement. It doesn't seem that it was distorted by people called the "right", who these days are just the sort of people who might have been called "centrist" in other times. The narrator has probably never been verbally attacked or threatened with violence for misusing terms that never had any alternative life style connotations. How is that free speech? The internet should be about free speech, many points of view. But, it does seem that people have gone to great lengths to make sure that it isn't. Then again, the original idea of the world wide web would be that no monolithic business would dominate it. But, instead monolithic businesses do dominate it. People are pinning their hopes on Web3, the blockchain, etc. That has such a potential for freedom that governments are trying to get rid of it. What if it doesn't allow for people to get canceled when they point out obvious truths about events or obvious flaws in collectivist propaganda? Do we start trying to throw those Web3 innovators in jail? China does. India makes some of that illegal. Spain makes IPFS illegal, and that's just file storage. It has been proposed in the USA.

[@Swittersism]

The comments on cancel culture are very selective and do not address situations such as people who are not celebrities eg. academics, whose livelihoods are at risk for not adapting certain language or opinions. Yes people who voice their opinions on public platforms should be ready for negative feedback and debate but should KZbin channels be demonized, censored or removed for presenting heterodox views?

[@thegrandlord2914]

Political correctness can be very racist if foreign language being censored just because it is sounds like something inapropriate word in american english. For example. There is words in Indonesian (my nationality) that is used to be forbidden in US because of political correctness due to it sounds like inapropriate word in american english Example 1. "ngga" this is shorter version of slang word enggak. Formal word for enggak is Tidak. In english, ngga means "NO" 2. "Adik" this is become forbidden because the way it spoke, sounds like "a dick". While in english, adik means younger sibling 3. "Nasi" you might know why it is forbidden. Because it's sounds like nazi. no, it means Rice (cooked)

[@simonh6371]

Lol I love Nasi and Bami too. Their loss in the USA if they are not able to enjoy this.

[@peppermint7884]

This analyses is good up to a point. As long as it refers to history. The interpretation of the real time current consequences is not really correct . A "get on with it " or "if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen " ignores that critics of woke can actually lose their jobs and social footing. That's what makes it so dangerous. However, maybe we are over the worst by now. There is always hope. Thanks for the work that went into this.

[@Jburrell01videos]

I wonder, however, if it is true that those who are doing the cancelling are necessarily the oppressed? Additionally, is cancelling speech a way of feeling like one is effecting change without actually changing the cultural and economic power dynamics?