> I have the sneaking suspicion that "woke" has been turned into a dog whistle used by right leaning people. Maybe it's the new "uppity." Here's an article by

> I have the sneaking suspicion that "woke" has been turned into a dog whistle used by right leaning people. Maybe it's the new "uppity." Here's an article by an African-American Marxist university professor, attacking "woke": https://newrepublic.com/article/160305/beyond-great-awokening https://newrepublic.com/article/160305/beyond-great-awokenin... So it isn't true that only "right-leaning" people use the term negatively. > 1) Can anyone who freely uses the word "woke" pejoratively please define "woke" as you use it? I think, when people (either from the left or the right) attack "woke", one thing they are attacking, is a particular, very influential, form of contemporary left-wing thought, which (among other features) treats race, gender identity, and sexual orientation, as higher priorities (at least in practice) than the traditional left-wing focus on economic inequality and social class. If you read Adolph Reed's criticisms of "woke" to which I linked above, that definition is rather similar to how he defines it (although in that article he zeroes in on the race element in particular, and avoids the topics of sexual orientation and gender identity). I actually don't like the term, due to its pejorative nature – I'd much rather we have non-pejorative names for things – but I'm not sure what would be a neutral replacement. I feel like, a lot of people who object to the name, do not do so because they'd prefer a more neutral name, rather they'd prefer it not be named at all, to make it harder for people to criticise it. > 2) Can you please tell me the opposite of "woke?" Well, if we understand it as a particular, very influential, variety of contemporary left-wing thought, it doesn't have a single "opposite" as such. Right-wing thought, in all its various forms, is an example of something which isn't "woke". But, traditional Marxism, such as that of Adolph Reed, is also an example of something which isn't "woke". If you want to find other traditional Marxists taking swipes at "woke", you don't have to go far – to just give a random example, the Trotskyist International Committee of the Fourth International published a review of the sitcom Abbott Elementary, which includes the line "In fact, in its treatment of Jacob’s wokeness, Abbott Elementary refreshingly mocks the suffocating trend of racialism in American culture" https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/01/abbo-m01.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/01/abbo-m01.html – say what you like about Trotskyists, but if we are going to start calling them "conservatives" or "rightwing", then I don't think those two words have any meaning any more