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Assuming the US: Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left? I don't. Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against t
by clusterfish 6y ago
Assuming the US:
Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left? I don't.
Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? I know very few. Almost all of them who speak on the topic, speak in unequivocal support of "woke" ideas and talking points.
If "the left" doesn't want to be equated with the woke culture, they should publicly and consistently disown it. You know, in the same manner as they demand that conservatives disown Trump and his crowd to not be counted as racists.
It's in everyone's power to start extinguishing the extremes. Until then, I'll take silence on your nearest extreme as your tacit approval of it.
- Freak_NL 6y ago> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? Certainly. The majority really. That's in the Netherlands, but compared to the vocal internet crowd most people I know who vote on parties left of the political compass worry about climate, animal and human welfare, and inequality. Rarely will someone go all 'woke' and demand changes like this.
- blfr 6y agoThat's in the Netherlands Haha, GP specifically assumed US in the first line of his comment and then got responses from the Netherlands and twice from UK. Yeah, it's largely an American phenomenon so far but I wouldn't be too happy about it because American culture exports these things all over the world and Hollywood is among the most woke. While you're protesting this notion on HN, plenty of your countrymen are learning English from some of the wokest trash on Netflix.
- nmstoker 6y agoPerhaps they chipped in because GPs phrase "Assuming the US" is not a very clear way of saying they want to talk specifically and exclusively about the US, or they thought it fair to broaden the discussion? I don't see how your sweeping generalisation in the last paragraph adds to the considered discussion here either.
- acheron 6y agoHa I saw that too. But there’s nothing European HN users love more than commenting with their super well-informed takes about the US, so it should have been expected.
- Shacklz 6y agoYeah, the US is such an exceptional country that you can only have opinions about it when you're actually American - I hope you do see that this view is rather short sighted? Especially given that the US itself has no qualms with interfering in foreign politics all over the world.
- sremani 6y agoThe 800 pound gorilla at the edge of the world, you can have opinions.. but we are the motherfucking show!
- danielovichdk 6y agoShit show you mean
- sremani 6y agoDoesn't matter as long as you are watching. The opposite of love is not hate, its indifference. Hate is just misconfigured love.
- yta21 6y agoThe reason we chafe at this is because those opinions usually distill and treat us as a singular group. Like one of us saying “the British believe,” for example, prefaced behind something the Welsh and English disagree on. Not your fault, though. Our internal borders are meaningful. We lie to ourselves that they aren’t, and the rest of the world goes with that. Minnesota, Michigan, and Mississippi may as well be different countries for all they have in common.
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- pelasaco 6y agoSo I guess I don't even have to start with Germany, solving all issues changing the gender of all words to something more neutral, right? https://www.dw.com/en/gender-neutral-wording-is-making-german-ridiculous-asserts-association/a-47801450 https://www.dw.com/en/gender-neutral-wording-is-making-germa...
- Jenk 6y ago> Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left? I don't. I'm in the UK so maybe it is different, but lately "woke" is anyone that is seen as an enemy of the far right. Including those who are on the right of the spectrum, but just not as far as those throwing the "woke" label around.
- goatinaboat 6y agoI'm in the UK so maybe it is different, but lately "woke" is anyone that is seen as an enemy of the far right. I am also in the UK and there is lots of hand-wringing about "the extreme far right" but if you gently probe what people mean by "extreme far right" they mean "Brexit" or "not electing Jeremy Corbyn". I expect in a few months the term "ultra extreme far right" will enter the lexicon, and we'll keep adding superlatives as the term "right-wing" becomes more and more diluted and gradually encloses the entire population except for a few Momentum die-hards.
- chriswarbo 6y ago> if you gently probe what people mean by "extreme far right" they mean "Brexit" or "not electing Jeremy Corbyn" Bollocks. For starters, Brexit had support on the far-end of the left, who see the EU too liberal, e.g. https://www.ft.com/content/692f2578-fcbd-11e5-b5f5-070dca6d0a0d https://www.ft.com/content/692f2578-fcbd-11e5-b5f5-070dca6d0... (RMT comes to mind since I work in that sector) I've certainly seen many outside the Momentum bubble being labelled 'Tory' (e.g. Lib Dems as 'yellow Tories', Blair/Starmer as 'red Tories', etc.), but you're speaking pure hyperbole. "Extreme far right" is reserved for the likes of NationalFront/BNP/UKIP/BritainFirst/BrexitParty/Reform/whatever they're calling themselves these days (plus their goons like EDL, DFLA, People's Front of Judea, Judean People's Front, etc.) It saddens me to see this sort of word-muddying (especially on HN), since it makes it easier to deflect this sort of crap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_UK_Conservative_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_UK_Conservative_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia_in_the_UK_Conservative_Party_(1997%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia_in_the_UK_Conserv... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_UK_Conservative_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_UK_Conserv... (Not forgetting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_UK_Labour_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_UK_Labour_... to avoid the knee-jerks; although that's probably not dismissed as 'people call everything "extreme far right" these days')
- approxim8ion 6y ago>Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left? Yes. The majority of them are performative liberals. >Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? Yes. There is infighting to an extent but it's really not hard to find leftist critiques of what you call woke culture. >If "the left" doesn't want to be equated with the woke culture, they should publicly and consistently disown it. I highly doubt bad faith actors would care about what people on the left are doing. Sure hasn't stopped you from mischaracterizing them all this while. >You know, in the same manner as they demand that conservatives disown Trump and his crowd. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding as to who "the left" are. The majority of actual (not what passes for American left) leftists will agree that disowning "Trump and his crowd" is the same kind of performative wokeness that you accuse liberals of. Disowning and denouncing for appearances does nothing because it doesn't tackle the root cause that allowed a movement like Trump's or the larger right to come to power.
- clusterfish 6y agoI didn't mean "disowning" as performative act but as an honest expression of preferences, including in-person and online discussions and voting choices. The general population publicly expressing their honest moderate views and opposing the extremes is not "for appearances". It's the core of what's missing in today's public debate, dominated by far left/right activists, bot farms, and personalities/celebs. My point is, the (American) left is justly associated with wokeness because they are its primary visible supporters. Maybe it's because those on the left who don't support it just don't speak up, in which case, my message is: please do. I'm not just going to assume your existence.
- justinclift 6y ago> ... but as an honest expression of preferences, including in-person and online discussions and voting choices. Isn't that really dangerous though? eg if you're unlucky enough to become targeted by some of the more "out there" people, they can do career-and-effectively-life ending things by blowing it out of proportion, getting it in the media, etc.
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- Veen 6y ago> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? I know of quite a few prominient anti-woke left-leaning people in the UK: Helen Pluckrose, Andrew Doyle, Nick Cohen, Kathleen Stock, and so on.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago>Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left? The best I've seen is sentiments along the lines of "yeah that's overkill" which is about equivalent to what fiscal conservatives and libertarians were saying about the moralizing christian right back when those clowns ran the show. People don't generally speak out against people who make their positions look like a reasonable middle ground. Woke crap makes basically every mainstream left position look reasonable by comparison so of course they don't want it to die. It makes them look good.
- Scarblac 6y agoWell everything in the US currently is extremely polarized. Very few people on either side are going to criticize groups on their side, as they are spending all their energy fighting the other side.
- vmception 6y agoand even pointing out even that overlapping similarity will get you ostracized from ..... both sides (but neither side seems to know the other has even that little bit in common)
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoHmmm. You typed a whole comment without disavowing the extremists on the right. Should we take your silence as tacit approval? Of course we shouldn’t. That’s not how any of us should think about other people.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agostress is known to make systems less fragile. The way to improve things is to speak "truth to power", and the moral way to do it is to always "punch upwards". I've been riling against Trump, Bannon & Co for the past 4 years. Before that I've been vocal about Obama's reign of terror, his broken promises of closing gitmo, and his drone wars. No doubt in my next 4 years I'll be hurling insults against Biden. There is no need to add disclaimers or enumerating all things that a comment doesn't stand for. Doing so not only makes for "boring reading" but also looks like the person feels very insecure.
- bogomipz 6y agoEDIT: >" Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?" Bill Maher is a fairly prominent liberal who has been vehemently anti-woke. This is regular fodder on his Friday night HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher as well in his regular standup comedy.
- bobthechef 6y agoThe question wasn't "Do you know any people on the left who aren't woke?" The question was "Do you know of anyone NOT on the left who is woke?" I.e., wokeness is a problem of the left.
- bogomipz 6y agoI pasted the wrong quote from the OP, fixed.
- _-david-_ 6y agoBill Maher would often be considered on the left based on the US paradigm.
- viraptor 6y ago> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? There's a lot of them. But do you really expect them to do it all the time? Disavow every single misinformed but loud person? (Why don't you actively speak against Ted Bundy - are you supporting serial killers?) For example I can argue with my mom who says she's a feminist because women are better than men. Or I can spend that time preparing a lesson for the local programming club for kids. Why would I choose the first option? Who would benefit? Disavowing Trump is massively different - a single, elected person with power. Taking that position and bringing it to their local representatives would be worth the effort.
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- JansjoFromIkea 6y agoWhat is this "the left"? Bernie Sanders, by far the most left leaning of the democratic presidential candidates was hugely against the narrative that Trump voters were racists. Noam Chomsky has an extremely long track record of being extremely consistent in his support of free speech and open debate in a way that the most obsessive first amendment types would rarely stick to. Amongst the more left leaning people I know there was a hugely negative attitude towards the CNN/MSNBC style coverage of the past 4 years that fixated on Trump and conspiracy theories and gotcha stories. Every side is gonna be smeared, it's much more important to look at what they're actually trying to offer people. And offering nothing but vague platitudes tends to be worse than offering lies, as Hillary's pretty vapid 2016 campaign showed. This move by github seemed to bring more attention to them working with ICE and the like than anything else that I could see. $15 min wage was super popular in Florida, Trump won Florida by a significant margin. Had the dems actually offered this obviously popular thing and stood by it that state could've turned out very differently as it'd force Trump to take a side on something that mattered to people.
- Miner49er 6y agoEven this article that we are commenting on seems to me to be a _leftist_ critique of liberal/moderate virtual signalling, and is calling for them to actually do things that matter for anti-racism.
- _emacsomancer_ 6y agoAnd the majority of the comments implicitly conflate left and liberal (and thus seem to assume that Joe Biden and Bill Gates are leftists).
- chriswarbo 6y ago> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? Yes. The "healthcare pls" meme springs to mind as a trivial, but very widespread, example https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=healthcare%20pls%20meme&tbs=imgo:1 https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=healthcare%20pls%20...
- Miner49er 6y ago> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? I know very few. Almost all of them who speak on the topic, speak in unequivocal support of "woke" ideas and talking points. This article we are commenting on is an example of this.
- tremon 6y agoDo you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? Yes, some big names here: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ (cue the no-true-scotsman argument how e.g. Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker or Margaret Atwood aren't really "left"). Many of them have gotten flak for signing it, too.
- Aunche 6y agoThere is this letter that criticizes cancel culture: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ Of course, the woke left views somehow views this as infighting, and somehow trying to primary away more conservative Democrats somehow is not.