From Andrew Sullivan’s new Weekly Dish piece, “Katherine Maher is not a liberal“, criticizing the new CEO of National Public Radio:
The point I have been trying to make for years now is that wokeness is not some racier version of liberalism, merely seeking to be kinder and more inclusive. It is, in fact, directly hostile to liberal values; it subordinates truth to ideology; it judges people not by their ability but by their identity; and it regards ideological diversity as a mere dog-whistle for bigotry. Maher has publicly and repeatedly avowed support for this very illiberalism. If people with these views run liberal institutions, the institutions will not — cannot — remain liberal for very long. And they haven’t. Elite universities are turning into madrassas, and media is turning into propaganda.
Wokeness is Neo-Racism (mostly anti-Semitism).
I read his piece. She sounds like an awful choice to lead a news organization. She is a perfect example of how the looney left is not liberal and is proud to eliminate Enlightenment values. So long as their perfect values are in place instead.
Yep – Confucius was right about using the proper names :
Wokeness ;
Maoism with American Characteristics ;
Woke Marxism ;
Communism ;
All different flavors of a gnostic-hermetic religious cult with “man” as the god that creates society — and society as the god that creates “man” ; a perpetual Ouroboros.
As Above, So Below
-Hermes Trismegistus / The Emerald Tablet
Atheists are not necessarily atheists that go one god further.
We’ve put aside Isis and Zeus and Thor,
And Gaia is now merely metaphor;
Their twilight grows darker, there’s just one more,
One more god.
© 2024, free for noncommercial use, all other rights reserved.
This is really good – intriguing. I will state for the record : I am not god.
Can you name some living Woke Lefties who endorse communism as personified by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un?
Like quoting some activist on how communism will work this time? Like if Greta Thunberg wrote a sentence that said so-and-so’s version of communism is great? Or my woke neighbor? I have no handy quotes but doubt that will ever materialize. I think they would instead possess gnostic insight / consciousness of how it will produce Heaven-on-Earth this time. James Lindsay says a bunch of activists at his talk cheered for Mao. What does that mean? Dunno.
China officially said they are socialism and “not any other -ism”. That is quite meaningful. The cat catches mice – be the cat black or white. So are they communist? They are not woke though.
Were all the leaders from before producing only a grotesque pastiche of Marx’s communism?
Marx himself produced little to illustrate what form communism would take.
I’m hastily going from memory of my reading of Marx – A Very Short Introduction by Peter Singer – so, no exact quoting.
Yep. That’s where we are. New woke Title IX.
Nassim Taleb — The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority
The best example I know that gives insights into the functioning of a complex system is with the following situation. It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. If it seems absurd, it is because our scientific intuitions aren’t calibrated for that (fughedabout scientific and academic intuitions and snap judgments; they don’t work and your standard intellectualization fails with complex systems, though not your grandmothers’ wisdom).
https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship-small-minority/
Good observation. An age-old example from the realm of religious upbringing: If an Anglican and a Catholic marry, the children are generally brought up Catholic. If a Catholic and a Muslim marry, the children are generally brought up Muslim. Why? Because the more authoritarian and intransigent ideology insists on its privilege against the relatively yielding and accommodating one.
Superb quote; already added to Sullivan’s Wikiquote page.
It’s a little tangential, but Frank Bruni’s editorial in the NYT today addresses the heart of the issue of where wokeness comes from, and how it’s related to MAGAness. It’s all grievance on both sides, with no humility or the ability to forgive.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/20/opinion/students-humility-american-politics.html
That’s a terrific essay, IMO. Thanks much for sharing that link!
And just BTW, directly related to Sullivan’s thesis, also IMO.
I read that in the NYT this morning and agreed with every word (including about grammar🤓)
Good essay. I archived it at: https://archive.ph/JRGoT
Is there an archived version of this that jumps the paywall?
It’s *beyond* racism, so far beyond that the woke either can’t see their own bigotry or they don’t think that the rest of us are smart enough to make the connection.
Eric Kaufmann, a staunch critic of the Woke Left, argues that “[t]he Awokening’s roots are more liberal than socialist.”
See: “Liberal Fundamentalism: A Sociology of Wokeness”: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/11/liberal-fundamentalism-a-sociology-of-wokeness/
“[t]he Awokening’s roots are more liberal than socialist.” The distinction is more apparent than real. The elephant of liberal emotional attachments was herded in a “Socialist” direction (in connection with the USSR) in the 30s/40s, and today in an Islamist direction (our campus Hamasophiles). In fact, some of the most typical woke, liberal-modernist behaviors can be be observed today in an outfit which calls itself “Democratic Socialists of America”.
Glad to see this point being very explicitly made. The progressive woke crowd are NOT liberals. The media need to start being clear on this, as it is incredibly destructive to conflate what woke progressives are pushing with liberalism.
If I was a traditional conservative (I’m not), I think I’d want to make the same distinction as to the MAGA maniacs. These people are unhinged and both versions revel in just “making shit up”. Forget any pretense of respecting objective reality, the only thing that counts is what I want. And when do I want it? Now!
Arguing that something is woke and, therefore, either good or bad, is intellectual laziness. Law schools teach that the best way to win an argument about an issue is to ask whether it is right or wrong, not whether it is woke.
Woke, adj., describes someone who rejects meritocracy, and instead places a discriminatory priority on immutable properties such as skin color, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, etc., and also so-called gender identity, when awarding societal rights, privileges, and advancement. Descriptively it is “regressive leftism” or “identity politics”, reflecting its close affiliation with “regressive rightism” or “supremacy politics”, with which it differs primarily in terms of which immutable properties deserve discriminatory favor.
” . . . reflecting its close affiliation with ‘regressive rightism’ or ‘supremacy politics’, with which it differs primarily in terms of which immutable properties deserve discriminatory favor.”
Bulls-eye, danny.
I read Andrew’s piece this morning. Immediately highlighted and copied the essence of the quote Jerry posted here in the event, almost assured, that I’ll need to say or write in something to my teachers’ union, my school district, or elsewhere. An on-the-mark, as always, bit of mastery from Andrew Sullivan.
For the sake of clarity, we should distinguish between being liberal and being a political liberal (= liberalist). Moreover, there are different ways of being liberal (tolerant, permissive, licentious, indulgent, lenient, charitable, generous, bountiful, open-handed, open-hearted, open-minded), and also different ways of being a political liberal (liberalist), because there are different versions of political liberalism (classical liberalism, social liberalism, neoclassical liberalism/neoliberalism, libertarianism [classical liberalism’s radical child]).
Liberality isn’t exclusively a feature of liberalism, because there are liberal socialists and liberal conservatives; and radical liberalists (libertarians) can be illiberal.
Making these distinctions here would turn the quote from punchy to paunchy.
I just don’t understand people who think saying, “yeh, but can you define woke?” believe they have some sort of gotcha moment. I’d like to see more of their responses to statements like Sullivan’s.
I like to think as a good Popperian that truths are hard to vary, universal or fundamental, whereas ideology can go anywhere it fucking pleases, and yes like truths, good or bad.
That said, we are seeing a phenomenon, (treating it like a hypothisis) that has to be played out in the world of ideas. That needs to be plastered and pillard to it’s death and made irrelevant.. enter stage right, the likes of our host et.al. Elements though may have some relevance but in the main already stated and agreed upon, the rest can go.
“The journalists themselves are siloed into identity groups at NPR. Among them: ‘…Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees)…'” (Quoted from Sullivan’s article)
I didn’t know they have employees whose job is to identify Muslims. 😉
🎯