A question I won't be able to read about because the FTs boundary defeats my usual archive.is wall jumping.
The tl;dr here would be "it's blindingly obvious they don't have to be", and many aren't especially older ones like me who have different ties to an older world feminism, and anti racism world view which clashes with the current ones.
Hitchens (Chris, not Peter) said things in a very unwoke manner, which despite his clear non socialist world view, many on the left agree with. Of Peter his brother, the less said the better.
In his 2001 book, “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, Christopher Hitchens wrote the following as a warning:
PS: Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I’ll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of identity politics. I’ll rephrease that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying “The Personal is Political.” It began as a sort of reaction to the defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they felt, not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of small difference, because each identity group begat its subgroups and “specificities.” This tendency has often been satirised – the overweight caucuse of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs – but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance.
Anyway what you swiftly realize if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighborhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn’t change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that “humanity” (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, this way.”
Can't read the article, but I hate the title framing. Like, what do you mean by woke? If I'm against misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc, is that woke? Or does it require something special I don't know about?
I know it wasn't originally so, but nowadays it seems to be just thrown around as a generic insult.
These terms are effectively dogwhistles, with whatever meaning du jour the propaganda machine decides.
A large number of people simply use words as weapons, for effect. Expletives detached from meaning.
If you asked one of them for a meaning, you might get a real word salad, concealing the unspoken meaning basically: "someone who supports Foreigners, Minorities, Women, Socialists, Gays and Liberals" [0]
Since the Lee Atwater "Southern Strategy" days the poor have been conned into supporting the very oligarchs who take away their health care, education, jobs and opportunity.
Without reading the article (also paywall), it's helpful to be woke because that's basically now just "caring about others in general, not just selfish" but not required. You could be a selfish racist socialist, for example socialist with respect to white straight christians but at war with muslims and gays.
Author is basically very scared of DSA, because he knows that it's ready for power politics on their own terms.
When you are socially conservative but economically left wing, you are going to spend your debates arguing with a right wing / center guy who has 60 "non-partisan" studies about why liberal economics are good.
When you are in the DSA, you evacuate the question by mentioning Gaza at will. DSA is basically an American version of the french LFI, and they are constantly able to stonewall or turn any debate by going to moral issues.
> they are constantly able to stonewall or turn any debate by going to moral issues.
Only with debaters who let them. "I take that as an admission that you have no answer to all those studies that state that you're wrong economically. Let us note that well, and then move on to talking about Gaza, since you seem to want to go there."
> Ganesh was active in Labour Students, the student wing of the Labour Party, having been inspired to join when he was 17 by Tony Blair's 1999 annual Labour Party Conference speech. In a 2001 interview with The Guardian, Ganesh described himself as "essentially a Portillista", indicating views the newspaper described as "liberal on social affairs, centre-right on economics". Ganesh opted not to attend his local constituency Labour Party meetings as they were "too dominated by Trots"
> For two years, Ganesh was a researcher at Policy Exchange, a Westminster-based think tank on the political right set up by Conservative MPs Nick Boles, Michael Gove and Francis Maude.
I'm... er, not sure, were I a socialist, that I'd be taking this guy's advice.
If by woke you mean sufficiently aware the women exist that you might want to support them in defending their bodily autonomy, then yeah.
Questions like this are a dead giveaway that the person asking is a male who has more conservative male friends. That's not the way to measure effective politics. People in tech are especially susceptible to this pernicious idea. That's reflected in the current crop of effective altruism weirdos who can't see the future elite is dominated by educated women.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 40.5 ms ] threadThe tl;dr here would be "it's blindingly obvious they don't have to be", and many aren't especially older ones like me who have different ties to an older world feminism, and anti racism world view which clashes with the current ones.
Hitchens (Chris, not Peter) said things in a very unwoke manner, which despite his clear non socialist world view, many on the left agree with. Of Peter his brother, the less said the better.
In his 2001 book, “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, Christopher Hitchens wrote the following as a warning:
PS: Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I’ll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of identity politics. I’ll rephrease that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying “The Personal is Political.” It began as a sort of reaction to the defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they felt, not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of small difference, because each identity group begat its subgroups and “specificities.” This tendency has often been satirised – the overweight caucuse of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs – but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance.
Anyway what you swiftly realize if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighborhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn’t change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that “humanity” (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, this way.”
I know it wasn't originally so, but nowadays it seems to be just thrown around as a generic insult.
A large number of people simply use words as weapons, for effect. Expletives detached from meaning.
If you asked one of them for a meaning, you might get a real word salad, concealing the unspoken meaning basically: "someone who supports Foreigners, Minorities, Women, Socialists, Gays and Liberals" [0]
Since the Lee Atwater "Southern Strategy" days the poor have been conned into supporting the very oligarchs who take away their health care, education, jobs and opportunity.
[0] https://i.ibb.co/JtSWj63/Voterep-1.jpg
When you are socially conservative but economically left wing, you are going to spend your debates arguing with a right wing / center guy who has 60 "non-partisan" studies about why liberal economics are good.
When you are in the DSA, you evacuate the question by mentioning Gaza at will. DSA is basically an American version of the french LFI, and they are constantly able to stonewall or turn any debate by going to moral issues.
Only with debaters who let them. "I take that as an admission that you have no answer to all those studies that state that you're wrong economically. Let us note that well, and then move on to talking about Gaza, since you seem to want to go there."
> For two years, Ganesh was a researcher at Policy Exchange, a Westminster-based think tank on the political right set up by Conservative MPs Nick Boles, Michael Gove and Francis Maude.
I'm... er, not sure, were I a socialist, that I'd be taking this guy's advice.
Questions like this are a dead giveaway that the person asking is a male who has more conservative male friends. That's not the way to measure effective politics. People in tech are especially susceptible to this pernicious idea. That's reflected in the current crop of effective altruism weirdos who can't see the future elite is dominated by educated women.