Wokery is a characteristically modern scourge, laying waste all before it in pursuit of a utopian Year Zero where all ‘oppression’ of minorities is expunged. But where did it come from? Eric Kaufmann, a ‘cancelled’ Canadian academic and now Professor of Politics at Buckingham University, has written a new book trying to answer that question, and Kathleen Stock has reviewed it for the Times.
Stock begins by setting out the “contrast” account offered by Jordan Peterson, “effectively an adherent to a new version of the ‘Reds under the beds’ scare that gripped America in the 1950s”:
He believes that the repressive state of many so-called progressive institutions owes a significant debt to the ideas of the early 20th-century communist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Frustrated by the failure of economic Marxism to take root in the West, Left-wingers supposedly decided to take a cue from Gramsci and wage a cultural ‘war of position’ instead, covertly infiltrating universities and other public organisations to disseminate their radical ideas and undermine traditional social structures. ‘Wokeness’ is allegedly the result: a garbled melange of postmodernism and neo-Marxist ideas now enjoying a great vogue. The main thrust is that Western categories and values inevitably encode oppressive power relations in favour of dominant white and heterosexual interests, which therefore all must be dismantled in favour of the victimised, colonised and dispossessed.
Yet, “to anyone familiar with the chaos and corporatism of the modern university, this all sounds far too well organised”, says Stock.
Kaufmann’s rival account rings truer: wokeness, understood as the “sacralisation of historically disadvantaged race, gender and sexual identity groups”, derives from a basic emotional impulse of compassion towards the victimised underdog and guilt at past misdeeds. In other words it stems from fairly ordinary Left-liberal motivations.
Instead of a planned coup, it’s an “ecstatic leaderless revivalism”: the emotional reactions came first, and the intellectual window dressing came later. Although wokeness, interpreted in this way, has particularly flourished in elite institutions in the past 10 years, according to Kaufmann the stage was already set in the 1960s, with roots going back much further, and the trend has been waxing and waning ever since.
Kaufmann says that, rather than anything to do with more radical Marxism, the underlying political outlook is “cultural socialism”, a guilt-ridden, mostly vibe-based project with origins in American progressive culture, originally focused upon achieving equality of outcome for black people rather than mere equality of opportunity, and attempting to protect them from various kinds of emotional harm as well.
In supposed service of these two goals, he argues, there sprang up a variety of increasingly tortuous taboos around discussion of race, enforced by white Left-liberals and moving well beyond the stigmatising of intentionally racist language. Later, as sexual minorities started to be perceived as sufficiently worthy victims and got more political attention, the same goals were extended to them, with accompanying taboos prohibiting open discussion of sexual orientation, ‘gender’ and matters arising. Only a very narrow set of ideological views on racial and sexual minorities is now permissible in many workplaces, schools and universities, with any deviation viewed as a probable indicator of moral lack. Shorn of their original rational moorings, claims of ‘harassment’, ‘bullying’, ‘trauma’, ‘racism’ and ‘hate speech’ fly around far too easily.
According to Kaufmann, a Professor of Politics at Buckingham University, the cultural losses due to this unbalanced and repressive political programme have been profound: the neglect of other worthwhile goals such as “freedom, excellence, beauty, community, identity, and reason”; the suppression of information useful for human flourishing; the stigmatisation of people trying in good faith to talk about the negative impacts of unrestricted immigration, the destruction of female-only spaces and other culturally sensitive topics, monstered by the Left as bigots for doing so, and driven into the arms of “populist conservatives” to the triumphalist sneering of their critics. And there have been losses to minorities too. A society that cannot openly discuss issues such as the negative effects of the Black Lives Matter movement on black people, or of militant trans activism upon LGB people, can only bungle responses to these things and make matters worse for all concerned.
Worth reading in full. And you can buy Kaufmann’s book here.
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Woke comes from “liberals” and NOT the left.
I don’t see how that makes sense, because woke is illiberal. I don’t know who you mean by “liberals” in inverted commas. If NOT liberals without inverted commas, and NOT the left, then from whom does woke come according to you?
Can you imagine left luminaries like Dennis Skinner, Arthur Scargill, Mick Lynch etc. being “woke”?
You’ve said whom woke doesn’t come from, but woke doesn’t come from “liberals” because woke is illiberal.
You’ve managed to name three “left luminaries” who you say are not woke, two of whom are not around anymore. So that’s one current left wing personality who may not be woke. What about all the rest? Can you name any more whom you think are not woke?
Me.
Scargill was/is a Marxist.
Not from original Liberals. Those were people who believed in live and let live so long as you did not interfere with other people’s ability to freely live their life. The “Liberals” you refer to are the ones on the Progressive Left who have hijacked the word Liberal just as they hijacked the word “Progressive”. Who could argue with something that sounded very nice like “progress”? But progress to what? The answer is more and more government and more and more control of people by government.
It’s the woke mind virus, enabled and pushed by the Leftards, that has ensured the below example could happen. Apparently it’s the new norm to sympathise with terrorists, deny facts ( or at least don’t say them out loud. Certain peeps get triggered ) and if you oppose it you’re the enemy, offending and oppressing one of the biggest groups of ‘victim card’ holders in society;
”School apologizes for teaching that ISIS is a terrorist group:
Islamist group @muslimteach
launched a harassment campaign against Schuyler Colfax Middle School in Wayne, N.J.
over a lesson that taught ISIS is a terrorist organization with a strict enforcement of Sharia. Heather Weinstein, the school’s principal, apologized and said the lesson violated diversity rules.
Many Muslims believe in the use of terrorism in the furtherance of Islam (see global and national polling data) and seek to silence those who teach about Islamic extremism.”
https://x.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1803903239802458594
It would be remiss of me to not mention the other largest group of ‘victim card’ holders in society, which is the trans ideology folk. This woman ( oops, just misgendered ) and her mother ( I think ) are just classic stereotypes of the people sucked in by this heinous train wreck of a movement. The kicker is that she’s a biologist. She also sounds like a life-long customer of Big Pharmer. Absolute cringefest. We really do have problems with these ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ imposters walking among us. *Spoiler* They really don’t like the Cass review;
”A biologist just asked me, “If children cannot consent to puberty blockers, how are they supposed to consent to puberty?”
https://x.com/BillboardChris/status/1803300052309565527
Correct, and I have come across people who rather than condemn terrorism by Islamists, would instead try to deflect away from that by saying there are far right terrorists as well and often point to people like Timothy McVeigh, as if that balances everything up and therefore there isn’t so much of an Islamist problem after all. ——This wokery type of outlook is rife and you see eg this leftist tosh that criminals are really only a product of the society they live in and the fact they are criminals is therefore the fault of society rather than their fault. ——It makes you vomit.
Yes but no.
Peterson describes the people pushing the agenda.
Kaufman describes the useful idiots that enable the pushers.
Useful idiots are an essential feature of these apparently well meaning but ultimately tyrannical movements.
The entire covid nightmare, lockdowns, masks, jabs etc, depended heavily on a population full of frightened, gullible useful idiots.
But useful idiots aren’t ever the cause.or driving force.
Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion eg are the governments useful, idiots doing their dirty work for them on the issue of climate. ——-Government don’t come down hard on their illegal activities because they are essentially batting for the same team as government.
You take an idea, just the growing expansion of liberalism. You then get it mixed up with another idea – a definition of anarchism as a perputual assault on illegitimate power. The greatness and the weakness of the Western mythos is the desire for ever greater transcendence. In the end this just resolves itself into absurdity. Survival requires an acknowledgment of the limits of rationality and very few are equipped to go there these days.
Honestly in a few months time this will seem like late empire nonsense. You need to jolt yourself out of this way of thinking anto the new that will be required. If you are too tired then do nothing. I wish that it didn’t have to come to this but it does and at that point any weakness in your character will shine out and you can switch on your television or radio and they won’t say a word to support you because they are even more cowardly than you. Nothing to lean on no support network no culture saying it is alright to be a dimwit. You will either sharpen up very quickly or you will die.
My personal hypothesis is that wokeism was a peripheral agenda until the early 2010’s. Following the financial crash of 2008 the Leftists created the Occupy movement, which was perceived as an existential threat by the oligarchs such as Zuckerberg, Gates,Soros and Bezos, since their obscene wealth and power was correctly identified for what it was and still is.
Their solution to this was to throw their money at all other righteous Leftists causes, initially #MeToo and latterly Trans and BLM nonsense, along with the slow burner climate stuff. Leftists have completely forgotten their core agenda (ie economic injustice), their virtuousness so buoyed up that they inevitably fell for the clever Covid hoax.
Now the activists and metropolitan progressives, wokeists one and all, slavishly support the elitist agenda, oblivious to the reality that they are facilitating their own demise, as well as that of the rest of us.
Very good comment, but ofcourse the “slow burner climate stuff” started long before 2010. It goes away back to 1972 with Club of Rome and “Limits to Growth” and then onto the setting up of the IPCC in 1998. ——–But I know what you mean in that we have seen the growth of Environmental activist groups, like Greenpeace moving away from genuine environmental concerns into the climate area and the emergence of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil etc etc all coming to the fore and thinking everyone should listen to brainwashed dreamers like them or they will terrorise us all, lay down in the street, attack works of Art and throw paint and soup at things. Notice government are relatively tolerant of these groups, mainly because they are spreading the same message of climate alarm that government want to spread.
Agree. Nearly all revolutions are sponsored and shaped by rich and powerful people/corporations for their own personal benefit.
Just be aware that these social media pages are viewed as holding pens by the establishment. Let them spout off and we can keep an eye on them. I am just saying this nonsense won’t be aroun If you lea for more than a few more weeks. After that you will have to deal with jellyfish of all sorts and all ages. The boomers have had sufficient instruction if they still show weakness then just throw them to the dogs. Give the younguns a one off chance and then just cast them aside. You won’t need me to tell you that in a few weeks time. If you lead a sugary life then you are going to be disabused of it in the next few days.
Not sure if Kathleen has the distinction correct: Eric looks through the Social
Science lens and Jordan through the Psychological lens. In this interview they discuss the book together and find common ground on their perspectives:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast/id1184022695?i=1000658097527