Reader Keith called my attention to a new book by Charles Pincourt “with” James Lindsay, which gives advice on how to actually defeat Wokeness. It’s published by New Discourses itself, and, as Lindsay notes at the beginning of the podcast below, he has another book coming out shortly, Race Marxism. Charles Pincourt is not a real person, but the pseudonym of somebody who writes the “Woke Dissident” blog on github. Further, Lindsay says in the podcast that he didn’t really co-author this book, which was written wholly by “Pincourt”. Lindsay’s name appears on the cover because he gave comments on the manuscript and published it.
The “field manual” bit reminds me of Peter Boghossian’s A Manual for Creating Atheists, which was a field guide to combatting faith.
This is a short book: 111 pages, and is $12.49 in paperback. It’s Amazon position is fairly high: 2308 overall. Click on the screenshot just below to go to the Amazon site.
Here’s a 100-minute “podcast” with Lindsay that was featured on this page. I haven’t listened to the whole thing, but it explains what the book is about.
Thank you Professor. I’ll definitely be reading this book.
There should be a new law stating that anyone who mutters the word “woke” should just immediately get punched in the face.
I think “Charles Pincourt” has more constructive tactics in mind…!
You sound like you’re channeling George Carlin, Gary.😠😉
During the recent interview conducted with Glenn Loury by Peter Robinson, both use the amusing neologism “wokebuster”, of whom there can never be too many.
For those who don’t have time to listen to the whole podcast, here’s the author’s blog about the book: “Counter Wokecraft: Why I Wrote It and Why You Should Read It” https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2021/11/26/counter-wokecraft-why-i-wrote-it-and-why-you-should-read-it/
I deeply distrust anyone, whether fan or foe of the concept (and there are both), who thinks there’s such a thing as “Race Marxism”, or that such a concoction, if attempted, will be worth thinking about in those terms.
Could you elaborate on that, please? I think I know why I likely agree with you but I’d be interested to hear more.
Here is a representative commentary from Adolph Reed (hat tip Brian Leiter, another Marx fan). Starting with “[A]ntiracist politics is in fact the left wing of neoliberalism…”.
Thanks for that. I get you: class struggle obscured by racial identity politics.
Because there are multiple organisations using Black Lives Matter in their names it can be slippery trying to pin things down. It’s possible that those referring to Race Marxism have something like this in mind: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter_Global_Network_Foundation#Criticism_and_disputes
Pincourt and Lindsay are far far beyond simply “being alarmed” about Woke. Lindsay has supplied massive evidence for BLM/Woke/CriticalStudies as nothing less than the current aggressive frontline manifestation of Marxism. You can call it ‘neo-Marxism’ or Cultural Marxism … the reality is the identical mission at the root: to deconstruct the freedom/individualism/capitalism born of the Enlightenment to make room for communism. Marx’s mission.
Wouldn’t touch anything Lindsay is involved in at this point… He went from “Cynical Theories” (solid) to full on Twitter-mad black piller who’s more or less onboard with the mission detailed in that David Brooks Atlantic article.
In any case there’s nothing remotely Marxist about wokeism, as any socialist will tell you.
This is just using “Marxism” as a curse-word. Real, literal, actual, Marxists are some of the most anti-woke people around, vehement in their disdain for wokeness. They’ll stress racial solidarity of the entire working class against the rich, not be focused on whether the 1% composition is statistically correct according to some overall metric. They’ll say racism is a tool for capital to divide labor, rather than an individual moral failing to be confessed and repented.
While it’s possible the supposed woke-fighting tactical advice can be good even if the political analysis is all wrong, such nonsense is not a good sign.
Pincourt had an early draft of the book on his blog but took it down when he realised he could make money off it: https://woke-dissident.github.io/documents/pincourtHow.pdf. Poor Charles. He does not realise the Wayback Machine exists.
Hurrah for this article. Thank Heavens the backlash seems to be gaining traction. May I be biased and recommend Jessica Harper Is Not Woke, too, for those who want a comic novel. Thank you.
https://tinyurl.com/3m46mfdc