I think the unwillingness to take responsibility for the current situation is entirely consistent with what was bad about the woke approach in the first place, and what is bad about the trump approach. If you are unwilling to back up your position in an open forum, and instead use bullying tactics to create disincentives for people to disagree with you, that suggests that you are literally not able to persuade because you don’t rely on epistemological reality, observable evidence, etc.
I am always suspicious of anyone who gets angry before they address your criticism. It’s frustrating to me that the left endured that kind of behavior from the right for years, and then adopted it for their own use with no reservations. When I was younger, I associated this behavior with the right, but now it’s clearly being embraced by both sides.
To piggy back on to this - what was old is now new… the oppressed become the oppressors, the thought policed are now the thought policers. And as always, Helen is here distilling truths that helps me frame what is rolling around my old skull.
I think it would be great, Helen, if you eventually put all or most of these essays into a book. It will be an excellent historical record as well as a kind of guide for people to understand the complexities of what happened, and what is happening now. Just an idea!
Klion's article was incredibly weak. Mostly a bag of assertions without evidence.
As a lifelong leftist who has been screaming for years about the idiocy and illiberalism of wokeism and warning that it was going to get us another term of Trump, I'm starting to feel exhausted.
The DNC is just doubling down, so many in my circle are doing likewise (though some of them get it), and their refusal to look in a mirror is, if not surprising, awfully depressing.
These people will continue to shore up their status within a (hopefully) dwindling group of readers. In status games, it seems easier to keep whatever status you have with your audience that is used to the same tropes than risk it all by challenging it. It's the old point that Chomsky made about the BBC interviewer, paraphrasing to this situation: if the person were truly a freethinker they wouldn't be where they are in any case
As a person on the left I deplore the hypocritical right but my main concern is how we reinvigorate the left.
Scott Alexander just did a piece along these lines. It's paywalled, but apparently, by opposing wokeness, we delivered Donald Trump. I haven't read it so maybe it is compelling, but probably more like an eighth of a truth. It is what we Helenites have feared for years after all..
They refuse to acknowledge the untenability of their position, that at a minimum they significantly overstepped and at the worst that their ideas are trash. Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right.
The woke are now really showing their Stalinist face. Maybe not the mentality of stalinists in power, but of stalinist parties in western countries (quite powerful half a century ago but largely died out now). Everybody disagreeing with them was playing into the hands of the right. Other arguments weren’t necessary, and weren’t given. The main difference (unfortunately) is that then the majority of the left didn’t like them or at least were not afraid to criticise them, while nowadays most left-wing people seem to believe woke is fundamentally something good, only slandered by very evil rightists.
You can’t deny that the right weaponizes the arguments well-meaning liberals make against the left’s illiberalism to attack democrats and win elections. It is a conundrum. We can’t stop making arguments for free speech and against identity politics and we can’t expect the right to stop co-opting our ideas. It would be nice to live in a world where people exchange ideas and can then debate and compromise to make policy, but that is not the world we are living in now. We live in a polarized, paranoid world where the choices are the illiberal left or the illiberal right.
Trump is, as usual, running around like a bull in a China shop trampling on liberal values but the result might be college faculties with more diversity of ideas and a democratic party less reliant on identity politics. I don’t think progressives were going to change if we just kept trying to reason with them, they won’t change now they can only be shunted aside, and I think we should have realized that it was always going to take right-wing backlash to end woke. If we like the ends we’ll just have to live with the means, for now.
Holy shit this is incredibly frustrating. I didn't even know some progressives were making this argument. Not only are they failing to take responsibility for the real excesses of wokeism (ala Musa Al Gharbi), but they're saying it's those who pointed out the issues with wokeness who are the cause of Trump's rise? Wow.
I think they really believe it was insufficient purity from liberals on the left that got Trump elected and that if we’d all got behind the woke, we’d have managed to win the day. Now we must realise how much worse Trump is going to be and wish we had. The option for them to stop being authoritarian and pushing theories that are wrong and don’t make anything any better and possibility that this could have made more people vote against Trump cannot be countenanced.
No it can't be, despite the fact that, as you point out, there is no argument or evidence linking criticism of woke excess to Trump's election. Yet there IS evidence linking excessive wokeness to Trump's election--such as swing voter exit polls and focus groups.
I think part of the problem goes back to your book Cynical Theories: these progressives can't challenge their own views because they believe those views to be factual descriptions of how things are and how the world works. In reality these "facts" are simply pilfered, often haphazardly, from critical theory.
I think the unwillingness to take responsibility for the current situation is entirely consistent with what was bad about the woke approach in the first place, and what is bad about the trump approach. If you are unwilling to back up your position in an open forum, and instead use bullying tactics to create disincentives for people to disagree with you, that suggests that you are literally not able to persuade because you don’t rely on epistemological reality, observable evidence, etc.
I am always suspicious of anyone who gets angry before they address your criticism. It’s frustrating to me that the left endured that kind of behavior from the right for years, and then adopted it for their own use with no reservations. When I was younger, I associated this behavior with the right, but now it’s clearly being embraced by both sides.
To piggy back on to this - what was old is now new… the oppressed become the oppressors, the thought policed are now the thought policers. And as always, Helen is here distilling truths that helps me frame what is rolling around my old skull.
I’ve only just recently started noticing what Helen’s doing, but I quickly added her to my list of “people who make it easier.”
:)
I think it would be great, Helen, if you eventually put all or most of these essays into a book. It will be an excellent historical record as well as a kind of guide for people to understand the complexities of what happened, and what is happening now. Just an idea!
Alan Sokal wants me to do that and for him to write a foreword for it. Publisher says it could be worthwhile.
Seconded!
Excellent analysis, Helen.
Klion's article was incredibly weak. Mostly a bag of assertions without evidence.
As a lifelong leftist who has been screaming for years about the idiocy and illiberalism of wokeism and warning that it was going to get us another term of Trump, I'm starting to feel exhausted.
The DNC is just doubling down, so many in my circle are doing likewise (though some of them get it), and their refusal to look in a mirror is, if not surprising, awfully depressing.
These people will continue to shore up their status within a (hopefully) dwindling group of readers. In status games, it seems easier to keep whatever status you have with your audience that is used to the same tropes than risk it all by challenging it. It's the old point that Chomsky made about the BBC interviewer, paraphrasing to this situation: if the person were truly a freethinker they wouldn't be where they are in any case
As a person on the left I deplore the hypocritical right but my main concern is how we reinvigorate the left.
Very devastating. Good job.
Scott Alexander just did a piece along these lines. It's paywalled, but apparently, by opposing wokeness, we delivered Donald Trump. I haven't read it so maybe it is compelling, but probably more like an eighth of a truth. It is what we Helenites have feared for years after all..
So frustrating! (Helenites!)
They refuse to acknowledge the untenability of their position, that at a minimum they significantly overstepped and at the worst that their ideas are trash. Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right.
100% correct. And thankful to Helen for her group for those of us who were victims of cancel culture. It was a lifesaver for me.
The woke are now really showing their Stalinist face. Maybe not the mentality of stalinists in power, but of stalinist parties in western countries (quite powerful half a century ago but largely died out now). Everybody disagreeing with them was playing into the hands of the right. Other arguments weren’t necessary, and weren’t given. The main difference (unfortunately) is that then the majority of the left didn’t like them or at least were not afraid to criticise them, while nowadays most left-wing people seem to believe woke is fundamentally something good, only slandered by very evil rightists.
You can’t deny that the right weaponizes the arguments well-meaning liberals make against the left’s illiberalism to attack democrats and win elections. It is a conundrum. We can’t stop making arguments for free speech and against identity politics and we can’t expect the right to stop co-opting our ideas. It would be nice to live in a world where people exchange ideas and can then debate and compromise to make policy, but that is not the world we are living in now. We live in a polarized, paranoid world where the choices are the illiberal left or the illiberal right.
Trump is, as usual, running around like a bull in a China shop trampling on liberal values but the result might be college faculties with more diversity of ideas and a democratic party less reliant on identity politics. I don’t think progressives were going to change if we just kept trying to reason with them, they won’t change now they can only be shunted aside, and I think we should have realized that it was always going to take right-wing backlash to end woke. If we like the ends we’ll just have to live with the means, for now.
Holy shit this is incredibly frustrating. I didn't even know some progressives were making this argument. Not only are they failing to take responsibility for the real excesses of wokeism (ala Musa Al Gharbi), but they're saying it's those who pointed out the issues with wokeness who are the cause of Trump's rise? Wow.
This is gaslighting on a profound level.
I think they really believe it was insufficient purity from liberals on the left that got Trump elected and that if we’d all got behind the woke, we’d have managed to win the day. Now we must realise how much worse Trump is going to be and wish we had. The option for them to stop being authoritarian and pushing theories that are wrong and don’t make anything any better and possibility that this could have made more people vote against Trump cannot be countenanced.
No it can't be, despite the fact that, as you point out, there is no argument or evidence linking criticism of woke excess to Trump's election. Yet there IS evidence linking excessive wokeness to Trump's election--such as swing voter exit polls and focus groups.
I think part of the problem goes back to your book Cynical Theories: these progressives can't challenge their own views because they believe those views to be factual descriptions of how things are and how the world works. In reality these "facts" are simply pilfered, often haphazardly, from critical theory.