@@Noise_floorxx in brief, the political spectrum is far wider than the US', meaning that the term 'liberal' is generally inferred to be centrist in the broader international spectrum, as compared to the rather insular and restricted US spectrum. The US use of the term does not equate to the generic Left, so the liberal-conservative axiom is rarely, if ever, applied outside the US. Given the mainstream US Overton range is comfortably on the right of the international spectrum, this fails to include, for example, classical liberalism as a tenet within free markets, or pluralist ideals espousing a range of competing views to arrive at a consensus.
@@Noise_floorxx the US is a two-party system, which effectively reduces the spectrum of political ideas to a polarity. In Europe the spectrum is much wider.
And after we establish which social injustices actually exist first, we need to establish what is causing them. Then we need to determine what approaches would actually target those root causes.
@@RaveyDavey Social justice is an inherently Orwellian term like "people's republic" or the other numerous socialist bullshit jargon they use to justify their opposition to actual justice and actual liberty, and actual democracy. Social justice is just a mandate for tyranny of the majority, It started with Marx's call for the dictatorship of the proletariat, leading to the Kulak's purges, the Cambodian Genocide, the famines in Ukraine, China, etc, etc, and no amount of mental gymnastics will make "social justice" anything but the justification of more group driven tyranny over the individual, as that's the point, to prioritize groups, the "social" over individual rights. And you cannot remove the rights of the atom that forms the group, and expect the group to be liberated, you can only expect tyranny, it's that simple.
I only heard it being used in US politics and then it spread to Canada, The UK, Australia and other anglicised nations. Further it spread to nations like Germany and Argentina. I'm not really sure if it is used elsewhere however. There is no culture war, it's an illusion of media and consumerism. Most people have pretty similar ideologies within the same nation however all we see online is the radicalised minorities which will inevitably radicalize the majority.
@@Betweoxwitegan The culture war is mostly manufactured I agree since it prevents people from talking about important material issues. It's always been a thing but it's been ramped up in the algorithm based social media dominated age we live in today
Exactly. I haven't watched the podcast, but admittedly, the very premise of it I find irritating - as though the charge of being "woke" should be taken seriously, as though it's anything more than culture war nonsense.
There is a word I learned in my university. It's called the empty signifier or floating signifier. Basically what is "christianity"? What is the "left"? What is the "right"? What is "wokeism"? Or for an popular example: what makes a sandwich? Ask different people and you get slightly different answers, sometimes completly different answers. It's like the term doesn't mean anything by itself, but is associated with other words which give it "power". When it comes to a group of people like "the left" or "the right" or "the woke", people sometimes forget that these groups by itself can not be a single actor, but instead constist of many different actors with many different beliefs which sometimes contradict each other. So you cannot just say "the woke wants this" or "the woke wants that". But in exchange you also can't say "christianity does this" or "christianity does that" (I am oversimplifying, so pardon me if I got something a little bit wrong)
I’d half disagree on applying it to organised religions. Organised religions typically have a clear rule set or some holy text which people then cherry pick from based on their own beliefs, but we can still say said people are aligning them self with an ideology that promotes that view so they must support it or be indifferent on it or ignorant.
@@finleymorris04 the people in these religions enforce certain rules, not the religion by itself. Where do these rules came from, why do the people in there enforce these rules, what are these rules, again the answer will be different even in the religion. There are some similarities, yes, but compare a catholic in europe and a catholic in india and you get different way of lifes even if both are catholic. Many of these groups also habe rules based on things outside the bible, like experience or sources of other texts or how they interpret certain texts
Hi Alex, I appreciate you engaging with this topic but I'm a little shocked at this interview. I feel Susan made some wild claims here about Woke being akin to right-wing, reactionary thought and that it espouses "the only people you can have genuine connections to are members of your own tribe" which went unchallenged. When pushed to define Woke you let slide her responses that the "concept is incoherent, it can't be defined" and that it's "a total confusion between emotion and reasoning" which seem incredibly dismissive and dodge defining one of the key terms in her book. Susan's anecdote of responding to German journalists "you can find them in any newspaper any day, this is boring to list them" suggests there is an existing discourse regarding her unclear definitions and lack of examples. The definitions of left-wing and liberalism at the start also seem muddled, where she often appears to use the terms interchangeably. If I can follow her thought process then Susan defines the collective left and liberalism as championing 'Universalism, Justice and Progress' while only socialists (like her) also include social rights as a basic human right. To me, these both sound like shades of liberalism if you're not exploring the social ownership of production to some degree. Her use of terms like the 'real' left also left me perplexed. The questioning and clarifications were better in the second half where class was discussed but Susan still dropped some real clangers which went unexamined. Comments like Woke promoting "a deep distrust or even a rejection of the idea of progress no matter how it's played" and that it encourages us to "deny common sense in ways we can reliably measure" make me wonder how much her and Jordan Peterson would get along if put in a room together. I hope this critique is taken in good faith and not an expectation of perfection. I was just taken aback by the lack of push back on what I perceived as some pretty contentious ideas (on what is potentially quite an interesting topic). Thanks for all the engaging content, keep up the great work in future!
All great points that I wanted to get across myself. This interview overall was a rare L from Alex. The interviewee couldn't even define the topics she's claiming to have deep knowledge of and her arguments, which largely went unchallenged by Alex, were almost totally incoherent
I agree that she was being quite vague about the definition of the left and being woke. But it seems to me that people who really believe in woke ideology are very tribalist since anyone who disagrees with them is cast out and shunned for having a different opinion. And it's also quite clear to me that common sense is put aside at times in the name of equality and justice. Also just randomly name dropping Peterson doesn't mean anything, since he is also right about a few things.
"I feel Susan made some wild claims here about Woke being akin to right-wing, reactionary thought and that it espouses "the only people you can have genuine connections to are members of your own tribe" which went unchallenged." - It is an identitarian concept ('woke') concept that people need role models from their own tribe, need representation from their own tribe, and people from outside their tribe will never understand the experience of being one of the tribe. Identitarianism contains group ideologies that identify personal characteristics in order to elevate them compared to bigots who denigrate them. People should realize there are two sides to this coin and sometimes the coin can unintentionally flip.
1:13 "I'm not a creature of the right, I'm a socialist and I refuse to talk to right-wingers." 4:49 "The view that you can only have genuine connections with your own tribe is a very right-wing thought."
@@MrMantis0I think she's just a textbook example of "whoever knows only their side of an argument knows little of that". "Woke" was created by leftists. I was there and I was one of those who proudly labelled themselves that way. I've shifted a bit to the centre now, but I'm still there. And I do use the term to separate myself from reactionary leftists like this woman who seen to want every brand of diversity except intellectual.
I was thinking the same thing the whole time! She said a lot of words, but I couldnt really glean anything from her message? Maybe if I watch it again, I'll get something out of it
Then you were watching with too narrow expectations on what the answers could be. The problem was more that Alex didn't get her points. This was most obvious when he doubled down on asking for a definition of "woke" after she explained multiple aspects of why that doesn't make sense.
@@jake10373 Sigh... Maybe you should indeed watch it again, because her message was pretty clear to me, or I wouldn't have watched all of it. (And for clarity, I don't say that because I agree with her on everything, in fact there were some ideas in the second half which I would have queried further than Alex did, and in different directions than he did.)
@@Daneelro I watched this several days ago, and I have come around to the fact that her inability to define wokeness is a failure on the part of her analysis. If you're going to inveigh against something, you have to be able to say what it is. It's not enough to say "I know it when I see it." Just because something is incoherent or even self-contradictory does not mean that it cannot be defined. Certainly this is true of any significant social movement. Why not simply use a definition provided within the movement? This would be standard practice. If you asked me to define Christianity or libertarianism, it would not be enough for me to say that you can't define these things because they are inconsistent and illogical. That's just doubling down on criticism without answering a necessary question. I would be rightly criticized for saying this within a supposedly academic analysis. Admittedly, it's not always _easy_ to define something rigorously. But if you need to take a few chapters to do it, take a few chapters. In the end, if you can't define what you're talking about, then what are you even talking about?
Why such a softball interview? She dismisses 'wokism' as an incoherent concept while using said word in her book title. I wish you had pushed harder for her to answer your insightful questions.
It’s an insult used by those that fear and/or hate privilege towards marginalised peoples. Be them none white skinned, none heterosexual, none binary sex etc. It’s sad that these people have a bee in their bonnet about these people. Much of it is religious in origin. An attack on none traditional ways to live your life. As if it’s an attack on their way of life. Well if your way of life can only exist if everyone else has to support and follow it then you are a sad individual
@@kentonianNo thats like evangelicals explaining The reason people leave christianity is because they want to sin. Thats what people having critical theory ideas would like to think. And drop the "them non white skinned". You sound like something you are surely very much against. Woke takes a look at inequity seems its Bad and then explains it by The same thing every single time. Group X does things consciously or subconsiciously which causes The inequity between X and Y. No consideration on cultural differences or anything else. And The worst part is that only thing that matters is that those numbers on paper are equal. So we are going to just trump meritocracy and introduce racial quotas like this is 1950s. Its a dogmatic attempt to see the world that then suggest policies based on that low resolution Image.
@@SonOfMorning what “cultural factors” explain the difference in “merit” between the sentencing of a white man for a crime and the 20% longer sentencing of a black man? This is a convenient stance to take when there is some choice involved in the part of the marginalized group, like what jobs certain races/sexes etc pursue. You can hand wave this away just say it’s a difference in culture. But that does not explain a ton of other differences. Why do the exact same resumes when they feature a traditionally black sounding name get fewer call backs than the exact same resume with a traditionally white sounding name? You can’t hand wave these examples when “culture” is not a relevant variable.
Being non woke is just a buzzword for being insensitive towards a particular group. The reason.its used, is because one doesn't have to label themselves, you u dont have to say that youre a racist or a homophobe or whatever your flavour of bigotry is, you just have to complain about the wokes. Gay conservatives will call pro trans people woke. Black conservatives will call pro gay people woke. White conservatives will call people who care about black concerns woke. They all think that they are talking about the same thing, but it only really helps the middle, the largest group in the spectrum gain power. Also, there's seemingly no stopping it imo, it's just a push to the extreme. Eventually, people who think women should have rights may also be seen as woke.
It seems that she is imposing certain restrictions on her own speech in order to avoid being associated with the right-wing strain of anti-wokeism, but these restrictions often seem to make it difficult for her to clearly articulate her thoughts.
She seems to base all her judgements on the idea that there should be an ideal of universal justice instead of just group-struggles. So she criticises wokeism essentially as devoid of values and just focused on portraying oneself as a victim. Which is exactly the same as the right-wing critique. It's hard that know if the appeal to universal justice makes any difference regarding her place on the political spectrum, because she really doesn't articulate it.
Seems like she belongs to a friend group of people who view right leaning people as trash and she's scared she'll be associated with the right leaning folk but she's making the same arguments ultimately lol.@@andreab380
@@andreab380because the right wing critique is correct. Wokism is victim worship. Now, the right has its own brand of victim worship called Christian persecution. Now, there is a more extreme form of right wing nutjobbery that just thinks ALL progressive values are woke, and that's certainly false, but also a minority of opinion too. But woke isn't devoid of values. They have neomarxist values, they value emotion and safety and justice, but ONLY for specific groups.
The case is not that we must never talk about minority identities at all. It's that identity has been crazily over-emphasized in left discourse, at the expense of class, and it's time to return to class, and class analyses.
It's not even "left" discourse. More the wishy-washy surface-level media and centre-left or more often liberal political discourse. But the real problem is not what's happening on the left, not even what's happening among liberals, but what right-wingers say about it. The right doesn't want to talk about class _or_ minority identities, and fights both by caricaturing talk about minority identities. There _is_ lots of problematic talk about identity especially among US liberals, but right-wing propaganda distorts and hyper-magnifies it.
The experiences of minority identities are essential context to modern-day issues of class. "The right" has effectively lumped all class issues that intersect with minority identities into their "wokeism" scare and when pressed on class issues, they respond by becoming more vocal and more loud about identity issues. Nobody was "cancelling Dr. Seuss" or "transing kids" or "teaching kids sexually explicit LGBTQ materials" or "promoting Critical Race Theory in public schools". These are all fake things they created for their "woke" bucket in order to over-emphasize identity to keep the conversation there. I'd say the left should not fall for this, ignore it, and continue stressing the class issues that people on all sides of the political spectrum can recognize and be swayed by, but because "right" discourse is focusing in these places, the "left" HAS TO fight against the "right"'s book bans, anti-trans-healthcare legislation, and shifting of educational resources out of public schools, because these are all hurting real people.
@@Daneelro As more of a centrist, I observe that most of what you accuse "the right" of, actually applies just as much, if not more, to the left. And this is a big problem. An inability to recognize glaring flaws in one's chosen "team" it seems But an even bigger issue I see, is censorship. The overwhelming majority of the information we receive these days is so heavily biased and manipulated, and we *are not allowed* to discuss these topics fully and openly. Any *real* attempt to do so here, and our comments will simply disappear. The inability to share ideas and information openly, only results in harmful echo chambers, and the resentment of the unheard.
@@Daneelro As a person who is in no way right wing myself, I'd say that's a gross and ignorant mischaracterization. Most people on the right are _dying_ to talk about class identity at this point; there's just a great deal of centre-left propaganda about what the right is like. Having spent time in rooms with both groups of people, it's actually amazing how well they understand you, and how poorly you understand them.
The right will take the mantle of class politics, no need to stress about whether or not the left will champion it. We already see this transformation in the American right, with the populist right dropping fiscally conservative rhetoric outside of the Ukraine war
@MarkCornelissen lol the "are you perfect line", classic. You going to tell me all sin is worthy of death too? Normal people understand some acts are worse and some acts are done more frequently. If someone is blatantly hypothetical and refusing to even attempt to live in line with their proclaimed values, a person has every right to not trust such a person. People don't even have to think about it. We just know such people are not to be trusted.
@@willjapheth23789 Well, in reality most people who are portrait as hypocrite actually really try to do the good they believe in, but also sometimes also cross that line because they are not perfect. Their proclaimed values as you phrase it are often an ideal image or utopia. For example, somebody fights for reducing CO2 and takes also once the airplane. In my view, the actual bad people are the once portraying their opponent as hypocrites, because they do so to comfort their conscience. In essence it is: he does it also sometimes, so I can do it as much as I want. Within the argument the person also distracts by moving from the content to this ad hominem. A smoker telling smoking is bad, is still telling the truth. So, while making this argument, hypocrites may actually be trusted :).
I find this whole Left/Right thinking unhelpfull. It leads to thinking in stereotypes; placing everything positive in your own team and all negatives in the other's team. As if there are only two lenses through which we can see the world. This lady does this as well, for example stating that 'distinguishing justice from power' is a Left thing. Really? Consider CRT: there is no justice, just majority groups using power to suppress minority groups. We should approach problems with evidence, logic and reasoning. What worked and didn't work in the past or in other countries. Not starting with how would the left or right view this. Stop thinking in stereotypes.
Seriously. I consider myself a democratic socialist, I don't see it as helpful to lump myself in the same category as liberals or on the other hand Stalinists.
I am an atheist, a leftist, a supporter of woke ideas (standing up for minorities, etc.), a determinist, and a socialist. And I live in America. I am screwed. 🤣
What do you mean by leftist? To me, wokeness isn't standing up for minorities. It's engaging in identitarian politics. Why are you a determinist? Do you accept that modern physics doesn't support determinism? And why are you a socialist? Why support an economic system that has never been proven to work but has failed multiple times?
@@Betweoxwitegan Compatibilism is just an attempt to hold onto regressive notions of justice and retribution given that libertarian free will can no longer be supported.
Maybe this was just over my head, but when you start a conversation by refusing to define the word that it's going to revolve around, I'm not going to get much out of the conversation. The parts that I did understand just seemed like overly confusing ways to explain very simple ideas. I tried, but I took nothing away. The term hasn't been around that long in it's current sense and has a different definition to different people. I wouldn't engage in a personal conversation with anyone about a buzzword until they explained to me exactly what they meant by that, otherwise we are just talking past each other.
I think one valuable thing as a definition I got from it and it might help you in thinking about it was; Woke could be labeled as a passive victimization from immutable traits out of your control (sex, ethnicity) where the anti-woke would not label identity traits like Liverpool fan, janitor and musician as victimhood due to the fact that these are chosen by yourself, in a way. Woke is victimhood because you can't or are unwilling to change. Anti-woke is "controlling" your identity. That being said, I am sympathetic to the woke culture because of some small guilty feeling of being super-lucky in so many things in life. It's a mindset but appreciation and gratitude helps in assessing one's own situation and in comparison to other people's lived experiences, I might just have won the lottery - straight, white, tall, man, have a child, in a relationship, never been out of work, never been really ill and I mostly like myself.
Her WHOLE POINT is to define left ideas without using “woke” at all. She is saying “I do not need to define wokeism to define left ideas” that is the whole argument (in my opinion)
@@comradequestion4206 Basically yes but that seems to mean to some that there needs to be a discriminatory force and that "you" may be a part of that. And people don't want to admit to such things because the "I" is a "good person" and has certainly done nothing wrong. We can twist this into pretzels and interpret it from many ways.
@@anainesgonzalez8868 But she failed, woke is now used in an ironic sense, like calling someone woke means they are in deep sleep and about as awake as a stone brick. She is a good example of that.
Can you please elaborate on which points you found questionable? I feel that if they were not featured in the video itself it would be great to have them referenced in the comments
@@arrownibent5980 I’d have to go over and watch it again to articulate them well sorry, I think some other comments have pretty much summed up my points well though.
I also felt a lot of questionable moments. More specifically I got the impression that she is far more "right" or dismissive of prejudice than she claims but has adopted a clever framework to disguise it. I wouldn't, as you also didn't, be able to point to anything specific without a relisten, but this was a strong impression. I kept asking myself, "Why don't I like this speaker?" Would anyone else like to chime in if they got a similar impression? Maybe I just found her delivery or approach to the issues off putting?
@@nathanielholzgrafe5274 I don't think Professor Nieman is right wing. I think it is possible to hold differing views while being on the left. And I recognise her intuitions as being rooted in a much longer history of left politics. Nonetheless, I can try and add my own two cents about what you are perhaps feeling. I think Nieman is correct when she diagnoses a certain set of corrosive/unproductive themes/problems that endlessly repeat themselves within a certain surface-level (rad-lib) "woke" politics (that we tend to experience on an everyday basis). But I think she relies too heavily on outright "common-sense" surface dismissals (simply implying that people are "overly" concerned with race and sex, or that they are anti-progress tout court) rather than being able to herself pinpoint how to counter their actual arguments/criticisms in a substantial theoretical manner. She basically just claims that she "doesn't want" herself (or others) to be reduced to certain labels, and/or, just assumes "of course there has been 'progress'... so they must be talking nonsense". She claims that there is nothing wrong with universalism (almost as if that is just a simple straight forward positivist category in the natural world) and not a political-theoretical project. And those responses are not accurate enough rebuttals... as any "woke" person who has given any proper theoretical thought at all to these issues... believes them to be a little more complicated that that. So, if this was a genuine attempt to address and persuade "woke" subjects... they would not even recognise her descriptions of what they are doing... and would therefore reject her premises before any conversation even begins. By lumping everyone who might possibly intersect in some way around these concerns... and mushing them together with every RU-vid video and meme of a "woke" lib you've ever seen... as if they are all one-dimensional, identity and difference obsessed hysterics... she tends to unconsciously sound like certain more conservative (or liberal-conservative) anti-woke figures (perhaps like a Dawkins or someone like that)... who simply imply that everyone they disagree with doesn't understand science, the enlightenment, reason and the world as well as they do... and that that is THE major problem with the world. I think perhaps she addresses these issues much more successfully in her book. She is an accomplished philosopher after all. But in this interview they just came across a bit shallow and dismissive. Perhaps, as the OP commenter touched upon, this was Alex's fault on this occasion for not pushing back harder.
I think we need more precise language than 'woke'. To many of the broader left, 'woke' is simply someone who not racist/sexist etc, or just a made up culture war term to denigrate the left generally. Right now there's a whole raft of related issues on the progressive left which have all fallen under the umbrella of 'woke'. Namely, a heavy focus on immutable group identities (particularly oppressor/oppressed dynamics), deep intolerance of opposing viewpoints and generally a rejection of liberal principles in the name of equity. What are the core principles or beliefs that these behaviours are predicated on? I think the oppressor/oppressed dynamics are key to this. Once you see the world fundamentally as a battle between oppressing and oppressed groups, you can feel justified in breaking liberal norms that govern civil discourse as well as tarring people with their group identities. I think this results in much of the unpleasantness seen from the left. There is a place for looking *carefully* at inequity across groups, we should not turn away from compelling evidence of bigotry. However, it should be balanced with a view for individual fairness and rights on one hand, and logic, evidence and reason on the other- which is definitely not what happens today.
Exactly, thank you. Both the left and the right are talking past each other on this issue, the divide has never been bigger and it permeates everywhere. In the eyes of the cultural marxist left (which is what woke is), you're either on their side, or all of the evil things (racist, homophobe, transphobe, etc.). I.E If you're not "woke" you're not left. That is precisely the issue most people who are on the left but are not cultural marxists have with this, but they are ignored and labeled as right wing. Any attempts to critique the identity politics and illiberal rhetoric of the woke left are met with deflecting and gaslighting and refusing to actually listen to any opposing viewpoints. It doesn't matter whether these opinions come from a gay center right media personality like Brad, or if they come from someone like Michael Knowles, as far as the woke left is concerned, they are the same thing. Yet they couldn't be farther from each other.
I think that's why she labels it "incoherent". In theory it's about challenging oppressive power dynamics, but in practice it often devolves into identity-based tribalism, something that has traditionally been critiqued by the Left as reactionary. The identity centred approach to confronting oppression undermines solidarity among the Left, as each group needs their own villain, or oppressor. i.e. the Black are oppressed by the White; the Women are oppressed by the Men; the LGBTQI+ are oppressed by the Straights; the Trans are oppressed by the Cis; the Disabled are oppressed by the Able. When combined with a crude concept of intersectionality, you get the "Oppression Olympics", where your right to be heard and the validity of your experience depend on how many oppressed identities you can claim. When people ask, "why is everyone suddenly Queer (a conveniently vague term requiring little commitment), Trans/Non-Binary and Disabled these days?", they are, perhaps unknowingly, talking about the perverse incentive that now exists to try and claim as many of these oppressed identities as possible. The splitting of "the oppressed" into separate groups, with their own oppressors and unique experiences of oppression, excludes the idea that there is an overarching framework of oppression that is broadly applied to the majority of people, in different ways, which has been a traditionally core belief of the Left. It also places Cis, Het, White, Men into the role of universal villain (or at the very least commands them to be silent), which is why so many of them now consider the Left hostile, pushing them into the welcoming arms of the Right. The exclusion, rejection, or sidelining of this traditionally core belief (which is based on the more inclusive concept of class oppression), along with the intense tribalism that sometimes occurs, underpins the, I think valid, argument that Left and "Woke" are not the same thing, even if they have similar aims.
@@Pushing_Pixels I agree with a lot of that. It's definitely valid (and vitally important) to not equate left and woke. That said 'the left' is another amorphous term which everyone has a different definition of. In my view left and right are really no more than tribes that pull together a lot of loosely linked issues, hence their character constantly morphs as different issues and conditions come to the fore. I would personally still consider myself on the left even though I strongly dislike wokism. The left wing tradition is definitely not for throwing out, but I don't think much of value can be salvaged from wokism. I hope in the future it will just be seen as a period where people went a bit mad.
As someone who considers themselves more right leaning, I had a hard time being talked about as so simple-minded. When she talked about the left, it was so elegent, understanding, and supportive, and the right was all power tripping and tribalism. Speaking for myself personally, I never think about race or sex or anything until i see it on the news or youtube. My mind is always on how to improve my life and my family's. Anyone who is like minded with their family or just wants to improve in any way I can relate to and these are the only people I consider as a part of my "tribe" and that can be any race or people. I respect these people who are smart and think a lot on stuff, but at the very least, they are not talking about me when they speak that way about the "right." Most people on the "right" I meet are the most accepting people I have met towards anyone. The left seems to be the tyrants and angry power seeking people to me. I do believe at the core it comes from a good starting place but quickly becomes some crazy mentality that can't live with someone who sees things differently.
@radiofloyd2359 no opinion. See them the same as anyone else. I'm not gonna change anything about me for them, though, and I don't expect them to change anything about themselves for me either. Would be nice if we could just both want everyone to succeed equally to what they put into the world. Ultimately, my relationships are just work relationships since I don't really do anything with anyone. So my only opinion with anyone is that you aren't lazy, try to learn, and are team minded and I can work with anyone.
@@rememberabc then how do you reconcile that you (assumedly) align yourself politically with people's for whom one of the core projects is to entirely illegalize those people?
Illegalize those people? You mean by not saying the pronouns they want or letting them compete in sports against biological women? Or is there something else I'm missing?
@@rememberabc I mean by banning them from bathrooms where they can be safe, I mean preventing them from accessing healthcare that demonstrably saves their lives. I mean supporting campaigns running on rhetoric meant to put their lives in danger through indirect means. I mean trying to control the ability for people to recognize their experiences on others, through the censorship of information related to LGBTQ+ people. Trans people are criminalized, shunned, and rejected under the Republican platform.
I typically love the podcasts Alex do and appreciate the perspectives of the guests even when it's not something I agree with. However in this instance I come away feeling as if I've wasted an hour of my life just listening to a lot of rambling. I don't feel as I came away with any better understanding of what the left is, what woke "is" or is "seen as", and how the left is or isn't - that -. Maybe it is just me, I'm willing to throw my hands up and accept maybe it's all gone over my head. But this was super frustrating to try and follow.
I think she did pretty clearly define what it "is" a few times. She explained that it's an incoherent concept which borrows emotional assumptions from the left and ideological assumptions from the right. The example she gave was the New York Times writing an article which suggested Biden should be more generous toward Modi because of the Vice Presidents ethnic background. The left wing emotive assumption being that he should support a minority ethnicity. The right wing philosophical assumption being that people vote in alignment of their tribe (in this case, ethnicity). But the truth is that the overwhelming majority of Modi's fiercest opposition is indian people. I think that's actually a pretty well articulated explanation of how she sees what woke "is" and, frankly, without trying to nitpick, I think it's actually a pretty reasonable expression of what it "is" today. The idea that "the left is not woke" is pretty clear when viewed in this lens, with this example because obviously supporting Modi would not be in alignment with the left. That said, I think there is a competing argument where you could say that the meaning of what "woke" is has changed. It didn't used to be what it is today. Originally it was a legitimately left wing thing but has been morphed and misrepresented enough to become something alien from its original meaning. A good example would be the song "redbone" by childish Gambino. The use of the word "woke" in his songs is more to do with the concept of being "aware". In this song in particular it's said for a woman to stay aware of the men who are trying to sleep with her. There are plenty of way you could interpret that with political lenses on and metaphors in the context of the song if you want but I'm not going to do that here. Music is subjective. I'm just providing this as an example of it's earlier usage to be "aware". The song isn't telling anyone to be woke in any sense of what the word means today because what it means today is something completely different. In the political context it was used to be "aware" of the systems that oppress us or prey on us which are otherwise too subversive to notice. It is often presented in terms of systemic racial prejudice because that's one of the most obvious examples where it can be applied but the racial component isn't the central theme. The central theme is to be meticulously aware of how systems oppress us in subversive ways.
Labeling an ideology as incoherent when the word is mainly used by its detractors is also not particularly interesting. If I try to say that "fascism" is incoherent because it has been used to mean wildly different things, you would be right in assuming I'm not actually addressing the actual discussions that might be happening when people do use that word. I'm 20 minutes in and so far I'm still struggling to gain any sort of new insight from this particular conversation.
It’s funny that these two talk about Joe Biden like he’s not severely cognitively impaired 😂 Is anyone else just grossed out by this conversation. Zero challenge to her garbage stances.
I understand her intention not to do interviews with 'blatently' right wring media, but what a mistake. She could go on those and intentionally lean more deeply into her issues with them, not giving them the yummy sound bites they need but reaching out to the people listening who actually are needing to hear her because they are not simply hypnotized to that particular host.
I think the big assumption here is that rightwing content channels are actually going to be charitable and honest in how they argue against their left wing guest.
Yea, when I heard this it rubbed me the wrong way. If these right wing people are reaching out to someone clearly left wing, that strikes me as a good thing. People should seek to expose themselves to ideas that challenge them.
@@epsteindidntkillhimself69 Good username. And true, the more you think about the things she said, the less sense they make, kind of like with religion.
@@haydencarn8737She gave her reasoning for this. I completely believe her that she believes she's doing the right thing for fear of accidently bolstering right wing thought. I don't agree with her, but this is a rather popular left wing opinion. Why not take people at their word instead of coming up with conspiracies?
Woke is actually a label that was originally self applied, wokeists stop using it because it became a term of mockery. It is also very easy to define, that immutable characteristics are the most important part of people paired with a belief that everything needs to be analysed through the oppressor v oppressed lens.
this is very interesting to me as someone who got into politics first through feminism, then Blm and lgbtq rights. Identity politics is very important to me as someone with several marginalized identities in the US, but I never been a fan of cancel culture or being reduced to my identities either and I do think class is often left out in discussions regarding intersectional analyses. edit: almost finished the video and it seems she doesn't have an in depth understanding of "identity politics" she says she understands there's real danger regarding discrimination and prejudice but why would someone participate in essentially the oppression Olympics. Which I agree, oppression Olympics and "political correctness" isn't helpful but that's not what the "identity" politics are all about, maybe on twitter and tumblr sure, but in the US often deals with tangible laws and realities that arent just scoring "victim points." Like the 13th Amendment and the impact on the prison system. It's not just that identity can be political but white supremacy is political. But I also subscribe more to the belief rather than tribalism (which ill admit sometimes woke leads to) I believe all of us, oppressed and oppressor are interconnected, all oppressions are interrelated and all needs liberation. Idk, trying my best to understand what she's saying.
It's left out in the media, the conversation is framed in the media, and the powers that be are the ones who suppress conversation around class, as that is the beginnings of marxism.
@Doot7C what society are you referring to? Im from Ireland, and in no way are class and identity linked. This is another example of a completely anti left ideal that not only doesn't promote equality, but the opposite, it promotes division. If class is inextricably linked to identity, it would mean that we could automatically tell what class someone belongs to solely based on gender, race, or sexual orientation, which is an absolute absurd lie, unless you're unfortunate enough to live under an apartheid regime or something equally despotic. All in, regardless of how moronic your theory is, it still does not counter my point, in any way, that identity politics is the absolute ANTHESIS of left wing ideology, which places the collective over the individual or different subsets of people. Did you not watch the video you're commenting on? Where the lady speaking literally says herself, that subscribing to this notion of better conditions for your 'tribe' with no broader perspective outside of that, is a right wing idea? That is exactly what identity politics does. You really think, for example, that telling poor American white people that they have 'privilege' and poor American black people that their poverty is due to systemic racism, is in any way beneficial to either race? You realise that promoting socialist ideals to the working class will benefit that whole class? How on earth can dividing people of the same class based on the colour of their skin, in any way, be a socialist proposition? I hope you don't also claim you are left wing, as you also, don't have a clue what you're talking about.
@@belfastbhoy5679I’d say your tone is very divisive and also part of problem of the left eating each other up for idealogical purity as this video mentions. I would say I’m left of liberal, cause as I learn more about liberalism the less aligned I am with it. cause they often seem to think that tokenism will solve our marginalization and it’s really just pathetic. Your comments also expose you have no understanding of what systemic racism in the US has done not only to black people but poor whites. Or how racism has been weaponized in the US to prevent socialist policies or to demonize welfare for example, and that harms white people as well, if they understood that we wouldn’t have to be divided, our oppressions are connected. My perspective is informed BIPOC women intellectuals who described themselves as leftists and communists and radical Buddhist dharma which offers the lens of interconnection and that the dismantling of all oppressions and prejudices is necessary for collective awakening and liberation. If that means I don’t belong with y’all, that’s fine, I don’t really care for ideological purity, I’m just learning and evolving as I go. Alls I know is that I’m poor, my family farm-working class and my dad was a refugee and I grew up in poor bipoc neighborhood with a highway that quite literally segregated us from the richer white community built on a destroyed black neighborhood. So that also informs my perspective so you can call it whatever you like, Idc
6:22 "The right tends to call any claim for human rights just about power". Yeah, that's because the core principle of leftism is about furthering equality, and where does inequality come from? It comes from power imbalances. Susan, your whole political ideology is about rectifying power imbalances, and you're telling me it's not about power?
I think she means specifically about power for the champions of the ideology, not power for the victims; like if you're doing charity youre (supposedly) only doing it to look more charitable and attractive to other people -> social capital -> power
@@ReclusiveAsta yeah, and it's true that it is very common, but I do also agree with Susan that there is really more to it than virtue signaling. Some right-wings might object to that (like Nietzsche's philosophy of slave morality kinda thing)
Left wing politics has always included resistance to capitalism and that cannot be stressed often enough. If it's not anti-capitalist it's NOT, REPEAT, NOT Left wing, Period. Yes, really.
That doesn't seem to have been the case in the French Revolution. The discussions between the left and right seem to be have been more about power and privilege than wealth generation.
We all wish we represented the best form of the word that we identify with, but that doesn't take away from how it is negatively perceived due to the actions of others who also represent the word. That should be easy to understand if you've even met someone with a different identity or worldview.
@@willjapheth23789 : You're right and the right-wing extremists have based their entire movement on marginalizing women and minority groups. They demean and vilify them persistently and cry "woke" when someone calls them out on their bigotry and injustice. Standing up for equality under the law for everyone as opposed to the feelings of a few bigots demanding conformity is the basis of the Constitution.
i think people forget the origin of the term. woke as it’s used in this discussion is the parody of the term as used by right wing woke bashers. when erykah badu popularized it, she was calling on her listeners to be aware of dominant paradigms and to challenge them. that’s a left wing approach to the world and its systems of power. the idea is left wing in the way neiman defined left wing. but it’s been appropriated and perverted to mean very narrow identity politics. they are two completely different ideas. the word is beyond reclaiming at this point, but i do wish left wing critics of identity politics would better acknowledge where this idea came from in black american culture and why that origin is important
@@manofculture584 origins do matter. the word woke was created by black people for black people, and then it was appropriated by white people and turned into a slur. when we say “woke is reactionary” or “woke is not left” without being clear about what we mean, we may end up maligning the communities who originated the term and whose culture has been appropriated. doing that is not left either. we can only guard against that if we understand what words mean and where they come from. history is important.
An excellent conversation. I particularly admire Alex's ability to engage the guest with questions that challenge some of her ideas. Too often on RU-vid sites the hosts either agree with guests or just argue by denial.
To be honest, my impression was that Alex's challenges often came from Susan's arguments going over his head, but Susan was too polite to point that out explicitly.
@@DaneelroWith respect, there weren't any actual arguments to go over his head. There were just unqualified statements she made that went unchallenged by Alex
This one was really boring. She was very rambly while making very few points and the constant complaining and strawmanning left such a downer vibe with no intellectual excitement.
I am politically liberal, but I can't say that I have a fear of the right and how they might come at me in a conversation. I think the right has some valid points, although even if valid, I do not necessarily agree with them. I think "woke" is a term for an anti-racism viewpoint that has gone beyond what anti-racism was just a few years ago. It could perhaps be described as not just anti-racism, but pro-black or pro-minority.
Yes, but it's also anti-white. There are lots of people in the West with a rebellious temper who have an urge to revolt against their fathers and bring down tradition and the dominant order.
@Redactedlllllllllllll As a liberal as well as a humanitarian, I am a person who has concerns for all. I do indeed keep my eye on white nationalists, the antisemitic, anti-Muslim, the discrimination against Asians, and many more.
The fear of right wing backlash in conversations is definitely not unfounded, though, especially considering the historical and ongoing violence, discrimination, and marginalization faced by marginalized communities at the hands of right wing ideologies. Engaging in dialogue with the right can be challenging and potentially dangerous, particularly for those who are already vulnerable to systemic oppression. The term "woke" has indeed evolved over the years, expanding from a general awareness of social injustices to a more proactive stance in dismantling systems of oppression, particularly racism. However, labeling it as merely "pro-black" or "pro-minority" overlooks its broader goals of challenging systemic inequalities and advocating for social justice for all marginalized communities, including but not limited to Black and minority groups. While it's commendable to recognize that the right may have some valid points, it's crucial to critically evaluate those points within the context of larger social, economic, and historical systems. Often, what may seem valid on the surface can be deeply rooted in oppressive structures or perpetuate inequalities. Therefore, a nuanced analysis is necessary rather than accepting these points at face value.
WTF? The phrase colour blond is not used literally. In social settings colour blind means to see someone's race and it not being important in any way and that is a good thing. This would be the same for sex, or any other political affiliation. If everyone would be colour blind in all of these cases then the world would be the best possible version of it.
@@jothamstickings4773 What enemies of colour blindness fail to grasp is that colour blindness is an ideal, a goal to strive for. It does not prevent you from seeing that the world is not colour blind right now. Abandoning the concept althogether ensures that nothing fundamental will ever change, cementing racism and all other tribalism and excusing it. That's one of the core tenets of what is called wokeness today and it's devestating for society and the world.
@@jothamstickings4773 Bullshit. People who do not discriminate also see the problems existing. It's just that we can't do much about it. It's a problem coming from majorities and those will kill you if they have to rather than make changes that are fair for everyone.
> If everyone would be colour blind in all of these cases then the world would be the best possible version of it. Only if everyone's starting line is the same but thats not the case in any multiracial country.
I think he was also just trying to make the mode of conversation less of a set of claims powering between two people and more as a younger intellectual listening and learning. Not everything has to be so combative. He might even sit there in disagreement but prefers seeing the full body of her ideas. Sometimes question showers don’t allow us to let other cook.
Thank you for this conversation, Alex. I wish you would challenge Susan one step away from defining abstract concepts towards the current culture war issues.
The terms "left" and "liberal" are not accurate descriptions of our politics. People who are now considered "liberal" would have been considered moderately conservative 40 years ago. "...had I set these policies in the 1980's I'd be considered a moderate Republican." -Barack Obama, 2014. The Democratic Party is liberal only in respect to culture war issues.
@@willjapheth23789I have heard Democrats talk, and I have watched as they accepted Republican principles on foreign and economic polices, per the quote from Barack Obama. What do you consider "left of center." I assert that terminology based on a political spectrum map is misleading and has no real value.
I get the impression that even woke folks are anti-woke. Because what anti-woke means is : stop being a jerk. However, my stupidity (and jerkiness) is not a choice. Anti-woke means : conflict is not the answer. Punishment is not the answer. Learn the art of dialogue, friendly inquiry instead.
From the off, she seems to be wildly confused about what left wing and right wing is. She attributes tribal, social/group ways of thinking to the right, but in my experience, one of the key defining characteristics between left and right is the difference between collectivist and individualist thinking. Ie, socialist vs capitalist. She made it clear she has no interest in speaking with those that would disagree with her, or at least won't disagree with her too passionately. And she also calls herself a socialist, so she has a lot of legwork to do, as anyone who claims to be a socialist will always have a big task ahead of them to convince me they're anything close to a good person. That's 3 big red flags in the first few minutes alone. Judging by the comments, I can use an hour of my time in better ways than watching this interview. Respect to Alex regardless.
I always find it interesting when people describe the right as being individualistic and the left as being collectivist. The Democratic Party has been a big-tent party since the Southern Strategy of the Nixon era. It has far more racial/ethnic and religious diversity made up of very different interest groups. The Republican Party, on the other hand, is quite homogenous being largely white, rural, and self-described Christians. Just look at the makeup of the two parties in Congress; reps on the right are basically mirror images of one another and today it's just a cult of personality around Trump. Where's the individualism?
@@neil6887 I think your comment is a good example of what I'm saying. You've analysed the two big American political parties in terms of their racial make up by breaking them down into groups or 'collectives' that you believe they belong to, to make a point. In this instance, you feel it is appropriate to group people by race in your analysis. I'd say this is more a collectivist style approach. An individualist would likely reject your analysis, arguing the correct level of analysis is at the individual level, meaning each and every politician should be analysed individually, with the groups or 'collectives' they 'belong' to not being a part of the analysis, or at least further down on the list of important factors.
@@MrMantis0, the makeup of the parties is evidence of how individualistic their constituents are. The democratic party is made of a very diverse set of individuals each bringing unique (individual) perspectives to governing whereas the republicans are homogenous. Take this example, before the Trump era, the Republican Party's ideals included being pro free trade, pro immigrant, and they believed in staunch defense of our democratic allies abroad. Now, like sheep following a shepherd, they've shifted to protectionist (pro tariffs), anti immigrant (severely restricting asylum) , and condemning allies (Ukraine, NATO countries) in favor of backing authoritarian regimes like Putin. Individualism is about adhering to a set of core values, not throwing your values out the window because the current party chief says so. So again, what is your defense that the homogenous Republican Party is constituted of unique individual interests as opposed to a collective interest?
@@neil6887 for your first paragraph, the main thing to say is I rest my case and to refer to my first reply. I'll also point out you seem to be confused about how individual someone is depending on what collectives you think they belong to. The individualist perspective is that *everyone* is an individual, and their race has no bearing on how individual they are. Ie, a group of 100 racially diverse people is 100 individuals, and 100 racially homogenous people is... 100 individuals. So, based on your comments, I'd guess you're more sympathetic to the left wing world view, as so far in your comments your tendency is to group people into collectives to make your points. Everything else I'm not interested in. I'm not from the US and I couldn't care less about the republican party. In my OG comment I'm specifically pointing out one of the key differences between left and right wing ideals, collectivism vs individualism, because Neiman gets it backwards in this interview.
the right are individualistic in the terms of the society they want to set out regarding the welfare of people within the society and the idea to put ones self above others in a political realism type of way. it is tribalistic in that it has much less fluxuation in ideology and opinion in the groups than the left does
@@albertcastro3500yes why not? Whether you fully agree with her or not, her message is one of cooperation and careful consideration of what to fight for. It’s an overall positive message.
Awake use to mean knowing where it's at. Or What Is ... or the Truth of the Matter. So someone being WOKE would normally mean someone who has awakened to Truth. If that is true then the things they say should not be moronic and self-destructing.
Woke is fundamentally a claim to sightedness where everyone else is blind. I can see the colour blue. I tell a blind person, the sky is blue. He disagrees. I say, you do not get to disagree you lump, you don't have eyes. Woke is the same but applied politically and morally.
God am I glad the left has moved on from fucking marx. Leftism existed before and after him. Dump the buzzwords and the technical terms. The economy has changed since marx, and language has too. Use your knowledge of theory to modernize leftism instead of being stuck in the past.
THANK YOU. It’s so annoying when otherwise thoughtful and intelligent atheist content creators just straight up don’t question the status quo when it comes to politics or anything other than religion. Western propaganda machine go brrrr
@@DigitalHayds I wonder why Alex didn't ask a clearly more left knowledgeable speaker on but rather chose a liberal? Or make the interview serve the purpose of demonstrating to the audience the difference between liberal and left? After this interview, it seems...seems...that he is underscoring right wing fixation on woke junk rather than left understanding that would help people. Does he just want to be a "culture warrior" after all his hard work? People are quite confused about the basic meaning of political terms after the McCarthy violence done to this country and this sort of interview may have just confused under informed but well meaning atheists or others for that matter.
@TND.4.worldpeace Try applying Hanlon's razor. It's not like she's spewing page-long sentences filled with obscure terminology. She's just not very good at conveying her thoughts.
That is why most experts and academics you'll see in media are only the ones who can say things in an appealing way. That doesn't say anything about their actual expertise and academic and scientific status. The most genius scientist or academic, who has a very high reputation in that field, may not be asked to talk in a talkshow or for a newspaper for that reason. The average person who watches tv, internet or reads newspapers aren't interested in actual in-depth, truthful content. They just want something easy-to-grasp, hip and appealing, that also fits the agenda of 'feelings'.
@@bladdnun3016 Applying Hanlon's razor, she being deceitful is the more probable case because academics are supposed to be good at conveying their thoughts.
I'm a little confused why she chose to use the word 'woke' in the title of her book if she considers it an incoherent term. If that's the case, why not call it "Left Is Not Cjzxhebsqif"?
@@israelgulley9104 Gotcha, so if I understand you: people have applied that label to her, and she rejects the label even though she considers it to have no real definition? So to say "Left Is Not Woke" is to reject an insult rather than making a descriptive statement? (Trying to steelman here, so help me out if I'm off-track.) My issue with this is that she goes on to give her own definition of the term even while protesting that it's undefinable. It seems like she herself is conflating the incoherence of the term with the incoherence of the position, which made her conversation with Alex less productive than it ought to have been.
5:22 start of her definition of left: 1 first the belief that you can have deep connections to everyone, not just members of one s own tribe, i.e. universalism leading to human rights, 2 second the belief that it is possible to distinguish justice and power, instead of seeing power underlying everything like ideologically following evolutionary psychology says your genes are trying to multiply, 3 third the belief that it is possible to make progress, instead of believing in a golden age we have fallen from, 4 fourth the belief that social rights are genuine human rights and are every bit as important as political rights, e.g. housing etc. (That is her distinctions between left and liberal).
Classical liberalism is the key. Live and let live unless someone is harmed, learn from the past without being angry, and be critical of any dogma from religion on the right to trans ideology on the left.
@@jamesdettmann94 ok sorry I assumed you might be from left. Anyway, Classical liberalism isnt the key as capitalism tend keep marginalised in the same position, rich gets richer and poor gets poorer.
@@rtam9894 classical liberalism as I understand it is more to do with the legal system than the economy, it may go more hand in hand with a free market but I definitely advocate some regulation there. A regulated economy and a free society is a hell of a lot better than a free economy and a controlled society.
I think it would only be fair to have someone on who is steep in woke ideology to explain their perspectives as opposed to everyone else speaking on their behalf.
Well, maybe somewhat helpful. I think it'd just be like asking a Christian to define what qualifies someone as being a Christian. Most every Christian would have a different answer. Seems like it'd just devolve into a no true scottsmen fallacy. Still, one could probably pull some "woke" commonalities and generalizations from it.
I mean it ll be kinda hard to find that person, they all just preach and yell,most wont even accept to debate.They are pure emotion so its hard to have a serious conversation.
Alex, at 45:12 Susan mentioned it’s crucial for white people to read some books by authors from other ethnicities and try to understand their views. It’s been a while since you gave a book recommendations video. Could we get a book recommendations 2024 list? I’d love to hear what you, and your guests, recommend to deal with this day and age.
She’s aware of that. I assume she was just insinuating to encourage the idea of being ‘colour-blind’ can sometimes lead people to fail to acknowledge the differences of experience in our society which are influenced by race.
@@ballisticfish1212 she mocks the hyper literal meaning of color blindness. Even when people say " I don't see color" Even if they don't realize it, they aren't being literal. They are usually confused about why you don't understand them.
@@ballisticfish1212do you even realize how racist that is? Why would I assume someone has a certain set of experiences based on their race? That's literally racism. Wokeness is racism. It's racism as a virus trying to evolve and find a survival strategy by hiding behind language of tolerance. Smh
@@JustinSwellno one has ever meant it literally. Although I often will realize minutes into talking with someone, what their race is and consciously have the thought about their race, and notice that its the first time ive thought about it. And it disappoints me because I know that thought has been conditioned into me by leftist extremists to try and make me feel sorry for them based on their appearance. There's a difference between recalling someone's skin color as a matter if how to identify them visually, and consciously thinking about their race and the stereotypes about how they're oppressed and whatever. I would prefer to not think about people like that and just think about them as people.
obviously what people refer to as woke, like gender ideology, critical race theory etc is incoherent. that's half the criticism of people that push the agenda labelled woke. it's not that the concept is incoherent from critcs (there good definitions out there). it's things like being 'anti-racist' whilst simultaneously denigrating whites and asians (purely based on race). being 'inclusive' to trans-women for sports whilst females lose the ability to compete fairly or win anything. incoherent
I didn't really understand her definition and rejection of working class as a valid position. We need to really get this as it is the seat of oppression. Its somewhat easier to point at immutable differences and overcome them, but economic oppression is just as if not more challenging. Not everyone can manifest their way out of sclavenmoral, especially if it's not even recognised.
She doesn't see class as important or valid because she is not working class. For her, being Left-Wing is an academic position, or a thought exercise, not an existential struggle. I think people like her are the origin of Woke identity politics, as a replacement for the more inclusive class politics. Splitting the Left into specific identity groups, with unique rather than shared experiences of oppression, has been catastrophic for the Left, so there is a good reason to try and distinguish the two (or conflate them, depending on your side). But I don't think she's the right person to do it because her understanding of both is shallow.
Profoundly dishonest. Iraq wasn't about 'spreading democracy' - it was about removing a murderous dictator who fought an 8 year war with Iran, using chemical weapons, and as soon as the international community stopped that conflict, he invaded Kuwait. He gassed the Kurdish Iraqi minority with chemical weapons, and then refused to comply with weapons inspections - while flouting international sanctions, selling oil on the black market as the Iraqi people starved. That was roughly the background for UN Security Council Resolution 1441 - which concludes with the line: "Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations." The Iraq War achieved its aims in three weeks - Mission Accomplished. What happened after was a civil war fuelled by regional powers. The right craves money. It's the left that craves power. Woke - or to be more specific, radical left wing identity politics, is not really about representing marginalised or oppressed people. Take it from a straight white working class male who believed the left was about representing the working class relative to capital, and who now finds himself positively marginalised and oppressed by the left; collateral damage of redefining the bourgeoisie as 'the white male patriarchy.' Philosophically, left wing identity politics is based on an unholy trinity of identity politics, neo-Marxism and post modern philosophy. Post modernism rejects objective reality, morality, truth, reason and social progress, leaving only a contest of power, which is why things they oppose are construed as oppressive, and those they purport to represent are victims of oppression. It's a philosophy that rejects individualism, meritocracy and legal equality, to categorise people by race, sex, sexual orientation etc, and uses positive discrimination as an attack on the power structures of society. They lie, as demonstrated above - because for the woke left, truth is not a value. To use the jargon, they embrace epistemic relativism, and also moral relativism. There is no truth. There are no values. There is only a contest for power.
Woke in its original Afro-American usage meant alert to the workings of the racist power structure. Recently, it’s been more widely adopted to mean - regarding more than just ‘white’ supremacy - not unconscious enough to go out of one’s way to be a bigoted a-hole; an old-fashioned term for that is ‘courteous’. It’s certainly _part_ of what leftism implies, but it’s been a long time ere the latter properly denoted the anti-monarchy faction of the French bourgeoisie. For some time, the left has been defined by opposition to the capitalist system. In the USA, that’s become a very marginal phenomenon. Our partisan duopoly is basically two faces of a single party of plutocracy. Within that, the radical far right has taken to calling the more conservative center right “the left.” (That’s when they’re not literally calling them simultaneously Marxists and Satanists for a tour de force of incoherence.)
"Awakening" in this sense was very similar to the notion of "consciousness-raising" (becoming aware of one's own oppression), as used both by the Old Left in relation to the working class, and later by the women's and gay liberation movements in regard to their own constitutencies.
Most people use it much like cult, also, this is how words develop, it's a new term, but it can be applied correctly and fittingly. Often, it refers to cult like behavior, or open agendas that are of the left political side. I think left and right are equally demented. Both utterly lacking in common sense.
no natural language words 'have' fixed, stable definitions. math & logic, yes. ordinary language which evolved, no. dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.
@@real_pattern Yeah, true, but I am afraid that they can be very logical when it comes to how silly the idea of god is, but with their own religion/cult stuff, they tend to be as blind as a cave-fish.
@@haydencarn8737 i agree that there are some kooky extreme views that can be associated with any orientation. but it's rare that the people holding or reporting to hold these extreme views are in positions of actual power. usually just high school/college students without good critical thinking skills with a lack of intellectual honesty and humility. definitely not a civilization destroying superthreat like rightwing media empires and bad faith status-quo apologists often like to to frame the woke folk.
Great start, this is what the right really think/mean. Ignore what they say. And she won't speak to anyone on the right? That's not a concern at all, just goes to show she has no confidence in her own beliefs standing up to scrutiny.
7:00 This is a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary psychology (and a very common one) Richard Dawkins is constantly complaining that people read the "Selfish Gene" by title only. This is why. The confusion is between A) a technical evolutionary explanation which gives the backstory of how certain things came to be and B) subconscious selfish motives of conscious beings Blue prints don't necessarily specify blue buildings and selfish genes don't necessarily code for selfish motives (conscious or unconscious)
Culture and skin color are not the same thing! Why does she claim because she appreciates Culture diversity it somehow contradicts the ideal of not judging people by their sikn color? Why is Dr. King's vision is so deeply misunderstood, misquoted and forgotten...?
Ms Neiman: avoiding the conservative ("right wing") media is a mistake. You're exactly the kind of person to help bring unity through these topics. Suggest you rethink your position.
@@mrthirty2704 yet when the argument against Christianity is put forward as it basically being incoherent and you cant really argue against it because people will move the goalposts or say "I don't believe that bit", it ceases to be a strawman. The concept of identification with established groups is regressive. The concept of self identification with established and invented groups is frankly ridiculous. Theres nothing strawman about that.
@@mrthirty2704 well its not really is it, as youre not providing any argument at all other than insisting I take your pseudo-objective pseudoanalysis on faith.
Very surprising and sympathetic softball interview, quite unlike the videos where you could actually challenge the guest by asking intelligent questions. Sad state of affairs.
Woke people DEFINITELY do exist (and they are awful), however they encompass the extreme left, not most of the left. However, i will say that the left needs to be more critical of left wing extremism.
Tbh didn't quite enjoy this episode. Maybe because I was listening to it in pieces on my drive to and from work, but felt like Susan Neiman said a lot of words without conveying any real direct messages. Half the time I wasn't sure what was going on. Felt like Alex should have pushed back or interjected more.
Perhaps in the US, where eveything is a (radical) stereotype, left is seen as woke. But in Europe, left is just left. And left is associated with intellectual honesty and progressive thinking.
Woke isn't always left either. There are groups that can be considered woke that are quite conservative. I can't remember the name, but one particular example stands out in my mind of a black militia group that's extremely in favor of unlimited gun rights and creating a separated black ethnostate within America. I watched some sort of segment on them several years ago and they were talking about privilege and the unchangeable nature of racism. Definitely woke, definitely not left. Even still, I know *several* people who are extremely woke and talk about the importance of dismantling systems, including capitalism. But then you ask them what it means to dismantle capitalism and they start talking about identity and privilege and bias and absolutely nothing to do with capitalism or economics in any way. In other words, there appears to be a population of people that are woke and claim to be left but don't actually know the first thing about leftist politics.
Not all sparkling wine is champagne, but all champagne is sparkling wine. Also, non-sparkling wine is still wine, and grape juice isn't wine but it's all made from grapes. I'm terrible at analogies.
I was so prepared for her to have a crazy position about "wokeness ruining the left", but within 4 minutes she proves herself to be one of the sharpest political thinkers I've heard in months. Good questions too, Alex
@@andythomas4998 Socialists aren’t intellectuals? Karl Marx? Mikhail Bakunin? Peter Kropotkin? Emma Goldman? George Orwell? Albert Einstein? Robert Oppenheimer? David Graeber? Helen Keller? Abigail Thorn? Martin Luther King Jr? Rosa Parks? Aime Cesairé? Frantz Fanon? Angela Davis? Cornel West? Noam Chomsky? Christopher Hitchens?
From what I noticed, it does seem to be about “wokeness ruining the left”. Her understanding of so-called “woke” ideas are just right-wing strawmen from what I could understand.
5:15 Tribalism is not a right wing thing. It's the survival stratgy. It includes cooperating with new and unknown people. I hate when poeple politizice science.
Within roughly the first two minutes, she manages to claim the left-wing is abused by the term "woke" while also broadly characterizing right-wing expressions as "rants", compared with left-wing "arguments". Sometimes, the superficial level is all you require to know what's going on, and that's true in this case. She's mad at the word because the left can't meme. The right threw a word at the left that stuck hard, and you can bet that if the left had any perjorative terms that accomplished the same, she'd happily use them and probably argue why it isn't abusive when it's done to the right. This is all so tiresome, all of this intellectualizing of what amounts to playground-tier "you're in, you're out" games.
@@theCommentDevil Well, please use my preferred adjectives in the future. I identify as a smart non-nerd. Also, punctuate your sentences, you lazy retard.
I wish she would have gotten to the actual issue, which is who is using the term? What do they mean by it? Because people on the left don't use the word to describe themselves
@@TheSandurz20 the term is used a million times everyday as a derogatory by millions of right wing Americans and media. It's impossible to watch ten minutes of right wing media without hearing 'woke'
It used to he w left wing term and it rapidly became such a dispised term that the only people would still use it were the right who rightfully mock them with it
The word is used a ton here on RU-vid especially by right-wing youtube channels to basically mock anything they don't like (such as women or minorities in video games). Many popular channels that get hundreds of thousands to millions of views use the word "woke" to stir up hate and mockery. I can assure you that these people exist.
People on the left use it all the time to identify themselves unironically. It's used in social justice circles to self identify as someone who is awake to the systemic issues that plague America et al.
Left = Woke. Woke is simply the social ideas of the left, as most people don't have enough understanding of economics to realize their economic ideas are just as crazy.
Only Jordan Peterson or Boris Johnson types say that left is woke. On the contrary, some woke types may say that right is fascist. Both sides of the spectrum are wrong with stating and feeling this.
She claims that fascism is growing on every continent. This only makes sense if you view the word "fascism" (as Orwell pointed out) to mean - something I dislike. To say that China, India, Russia under Putin, the US (when under Trump), Hungary under Orban, and Israel under Netanyahu are fascist would be a gross misunderstanding of what fascism is. For example, Russia under Putin is far more of a traditional conservative (authoritarian) state, as is India, than they are fascist.
Woke is essentially a word for politically correct. In the modern sense this means an obsession with identity politics. It’s a useful word. Woke people are left wing. But not all left wing people are woke.
I welcome someone trying to move the left away from the negative aspects of wokeism, but I am sad that the political discourse between right and left has to be so tribal and confrontational. She says for example: (1) she does not want to be instrumental to the right (and so talks up her socialist credentials and avoids dialogue with right of centre commentators); (2) authoritarian and power narratives were traditionally the purview of the right - yes and this is where wokeism has gone wrong by its adoption of cultural marxist power narratives; (3) the left believes in progress, whereas the right thinks we "went downhill at the garden of eden" - what a straw man! What the right actually says is that if you try to fix something that is 85% functional, there is good chance that unintended consequence will make it less functional rather than better.
lmao no, that's not what the right is about. The right is about hierarchy, law & order, tradition, history, religion, family, tribe, nation, natural rights, justice, personal responsibility and objective moral values.
@@gulanhem9495 I did not say that is what the right is "about" - I merely identified one aspect of conservatism that Neiman made into a straw man. It can be applied to some of the items on your laundry list. But to define someone to be broadly on the right by such a long list of values is to make the same mistake as to say those on the left are all cultural marxists.
The term "woke" is 100 years old this year and the current usage in our culture is less than 10 years. While there may be some genuine criticism that aligns with the criticisms against "wokeism", these often make unwarranted assumptions such as it's the "woke left" who are sole (or even _primary_) perpetrators of "cancel culture", "identity politics", and the inability to change one's position when faced with evidence. Distilling that away, the "anti-woke" movement is a form of moral panic (and/or scare). It is a useful rhetorical element to dismiss any social justice efforts, stall any civil rights movements, villanize inclusivity, and stop all discussions of class (especially as it intersects with minority identities). Further evidence that this is a moral panic is the number of falsehoods and conspiracy theories associated with "anti-wokeness" (such as the moral panics against "Critical Race Theories", against "Drag Queens", against "Explicit Sexual LGBTQ materials" in schools and libraries, against "Litter Boxes") The intersection of "anti-wokeness" with the current gay and trans scare, CRT moral panic, and others should be a huge red flag to distrust anyone who criticizes "wokeness" unironically. And Neiman's work seems to be a further way to redefine "woke" through a philosophical framework to distance herself from it, while playing into the same framework that has turned it into a bogeyman. Our discourse on issues will be improved drastically by dropping the thought-stopping mechanism "woke" from our lexicon.
I like Susan's vibe, but I still find it hard to pin down what her actual point is. It feels a bit fuzzy as to what she's actually trying to say. Like, if we can't define what woke is, then how can we in fact say that being Left aligned isn't woke? It seems to me that she's pointing to how some people, in their pursuit of being left wing, have adopted attitudes that are unintentionally regressive because they adhere so strongly to identity and other things. But I'm not 100% sure what the ultimate take away is from all of that.
I love how she tried to define the left as 'the people who are on the side of the underdog' and 'wanting to correct the crimes of history' as if that's actually what the left does and as if the right doesn't also believe in those things😂🤡
Well as a right winger, real right winger not an American conservative. The left definitely has this inherent bias toward the weak, or the perceived "victim" when it comes to social issues, but you're right so do conservatives. I think that tells us more about conservatives then it does about leftists. Conservatives today would have been leftists in the 60s, maybe all the way up to the 90s even.
@@Tehz1359Bias? What sort of bias? They use these people as mascots to further the power of the state. They certainly aren't Champions of the weak as they claim. Conservatives are to help the downtrodden, but help is now a warped term. Help is supposed to leave those in need a better person in the long run, not enable whatever issue is at the cause of their suffering.
Agree. I'm pretty damn right wing, and there's nothing in her explanation of left wing ideals that I don't also hold as core values. I care about the individual underdog, which is very much part of the reason I'm right wing and *not* left wing.
@@MrMantis0 The differences I've noticed are that the left take their emotions and feelings as the primary determining factor of reality and of right and wrong. The right is founded in God or experience or logic and evidence. Those on the left also tend to prefer surrogate decision making. They believe they can create a better world if a leader or experts make decisions for the whole instead of people being free to make decisions individually..
"We can all see that the sky is blue" is such a frustrating strawman counter to colorblindness. People can obviously see race. The concept of colorblindness is to not make assumptions about people based on race and/or not making policies based on race.
I think you should have pressed on a tension between her saying "I know when I've been picked for being a woman" and "some men make the mistake of not reading books by women". The tension here is, well, should we seek out womens perspectives or not? Similarly, she tells us not to give victim points for race, but also that it is crucial to read books by some black authors. Now, perhaps she can resolve this (perhaps the former is including women regardless of merit, and the latter is excluding good books by women despite merit). But I think hearing precisely what the resolution is and discussing it would have been good, since it seems right on the line between the value she finds in social justice, but also the "woke bashing" that we were investigating here.
I think people are being far too harsh on the idea of not going on obvious "right wing media" sources. It is laughably naïve to think Ben Shapiro or the FoxNews hosts are looking for "honest" debate. It's not like she can debate Buckley in long-format, she would just be bombarded by "gotcha" questions by Matt Walsh for 8 mins, who doesn't read books, have any education, or believe in science at all.
A very useful definition of woke is when an issue is being pushed not on evidence but on feelings or beliefs which then shuts down any opposition to the position being pushed. It's not the issue that is woke, it's the way it is being promoted. The issues of gun ownership and pro-birth in the US are never associated with woke but the arguments that are used to support those positions are remarkably similar to woke arguments. As a disabled person woke has done more harm than good. Instead of treating disability as an actual problem, it has pushed the idea that we are differently abled, and putting a few disabled people on TV to show how amazing disability is will fix it.
@@raneenah3240 Thats missing the point… The whole point is the disabled people don’t really even view being disabled as part of their “identity”; people relate to figures regardless of who they are. It’s basically interpolating from the generalized political argument that disability carries stigma; that interpolation doesn’t do anything and often, like the person above said front their experience, does harm.
"A very useful definition of woke is when an issue is being pushed not on evidence but on feelings or beliefs which then shuts down any opposition to the position being pushed. It's not the issue that is woke, it's the way it is being promoted." Why is that a useful definition of "woke"? It may be a useful clarification of how "anti-woke" parties use "woke", but I wouldn't get my definition of "Critical Race Theory" from the "anti-CRT" folk who are banning books about black children being proud of their heritage. Anti-woke Florida governor Ron DeSantis's attorneys defined woke as "The belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them", which I think is a far better definition of "woke" at least as it was being used only a few years ago.
@@raneenah3240 I Should have said: there’s no reason to believe disabled people view being disabled as part of their daily identity outside of a political context. The basic point was: you cannot interpolate a political identity to personal one.
