Reply To: Is this what happens when the word “Woke” is used in the pejorative?

[Siderite]

I think there is an issue with group think and tribalist views among aspects of progressivism. Such tribal blindness allows questionable ideas to be supported through refusing to consider other opinions and automatic assumptions that anyone who disagrees must be a conservative. I share a dislike of conservative ideas a lot of the time, find many aspects of conservatism worrying today, but I am wary of becoming too tribal in opposing anything a conservative says or blindly supporting anything because it’s liberal coded.

There is a critique for such matters. The issue is that many who oppose such progessive over-reach don’t just want to stop the silly stuff that is more contentious, but everything liberal. Wokeness doesn’t really mean much as a result, because it’s poorly defined and could mean different things to different people. It doesn’t just mean the hyper-sensitivity to racial matters (e.g. when you have someone go on about how cultural appropriation is a plague upon society, not cultures sharing in each other’s culture) or gender ideology for some; it means opposing gay rights, women’s rights etc. Of course there will be people who disagree with such, but I am uncomfortable with the idea that the latter should be lumped in with progressive over-reach. Any meaningful critique of ‘wokeness’ has lost impact for me, because I don’t trust those who oppose it and it often seems to be just demonising of socially liberal ideas.

I lose more interest when people throw buzz words like cultural Marxism around. Ignoring the problematic origins of such terms (I do not think bpg is using it for this purpose, but there are those that still do), it just seems to be jargon aimed to sound intellectually strong, but doesn’t have much meaning behind it for many. For one, many of the people slammed as ‘cultural Marxist’ are not Marxists. I wouldn’t be surprised if bpg sees me as a ‘cultural Marxist’, yet I have no yearning for Marxism or any kind of far-left ideology. I am no fan of communism and am fully aware of the totalitarianism associated with it. I do not think we are at risk of it now either.