Traditionally, the word woke was used to refer to the idea that one is awakened to social injustices, but, in recent years it has become almost like a bit of a slur—associated more with identity politics, virtue signaling, cancel culture, political correctness, posturing, hierarchies based on victimhood status, and a general sense of moral superiority. Those who deemed themselves
In mid-to-late 2022, I learned to make the distinction between Woke ideology and Woke behavior. The latter is not bound to, or necessarily induced by, ideologies. I've observed this behavior in non-ideological, non-partisan individuals who act just like the Woke do but are critical of them and, ironically, of the Woke behavior they themselves exhibit. I wish I had discovered your article sooner.
Great article! Unfortunately, it's too easy to fall into the trap of politicizing entertainment. True of both the Left and even the Right. Let fun be fun, without the divisive politics.
hi Katherine. thank you for your at-length article. a few small comments.
i was a victim of work place harassment. it completely derailed my life. i still have yet to recover. when i hear people decrying those claiming victim hood status i have a knee jerk reaction. to revel in victim hood is counter productive to social welfare. to declare and seek legal/ 'reasonable' redress, however is a courageous act of compassion for all persons involved--the perpetrator, witnesses, colluders, enablers, and the primary victim.
the woke right/ left are both suffering from the same disease of the mind. there is a desire within--in exercising/ experiencing the ego instrument--to seek out adoration, distinction, and prestige. this causes one to develop pride for their projected identity. identities are presented via association with the external (and occasionally the internal) reality. People simply choose a side based upon their mental disposition, which is fashioned by their association.
pride implies competition--whose identity is superior. where there is competition there is envy, a reaction to the fear of having ones projected identity compromised.
it is very difficult to get release from algorithmic reactions that are rooted in fear. but when one does, they become independently thoughtful due to seeing things as they are.
so in summary, woke-right/ -left are the same in substance. they differ, however in form.
A few points here... I get the intellectual exercise trying to equate two things which are unequal (logical fallacy here), but left and right are adamantly NOT the same. There's no "rightwing woke" at all.
Boycotting a company is NOT "cancel culture" -- is Bud Light still on the shelves available for purchase? Then it hasn't been cancelled. Is the right calling for it to be removed from shelves? Nope. Not cancelled. That's what a boycott is, a DECISION not to buy a product. On the flipside, the decision to remove Roseanne Barr from her TV show? We didn't make that. Her viewers didn't, either. She was simply cancelled.
If the left is going to insist we are segregated from them, under whatever guise they choose, then by necessity we are going to band together in some way; though for disparate reasons, survival requires it.
We don't control media, academia, the arts... we take what we believe are moral stands, like DeSantis vs Disney, like keeping pornographic material AWAY from children, like keeping children away from sexualized 'drag' shows and groomer adults. We don't have the POWER to cancel anyone, and frankly don't really (with few exceptions) have the desire to. You think Rachel Maddow or Joe Scarborough would still be on TV if we had the power to cancel them????? Of course not. Nor do we have the desire. I've NEVER seen a call to boycott, for example, Maddow's advertisers (simply for being her advertisers). Why? Because we neither possess nor desire that power.
For now.
You commit another logical fallacy when you compare the singular against the numerous, as here:
-- "As angry leftists were filming themselves burning copies of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter due to the “racism,” “fatphobia” and the author’s alleged transphobia, a Global Vision Bible Church head pastor took his Christian followers into the woods to burn Harry Potter, Twilight, and other "occultic materials” that offended their sensibilities." --
ONE guy did something that, in your words, multiple others on the other side did/do. It's almost like you were stretching to try to FIND an instance you could use by way of example to make your point, rather than showing a trend -- even a general one -- of the same behavior on both sides.
Last... as for DeSantis' bill (again, your words):
-- "The bill seeks to limit the ideals of free inquiry, beliefs, and discourse—ultimately putting a gag on what professors are able to say on certain topics. Without that, there’s no opportunity for these ideas to be debated, examined, amended, or scrutinized." --
YES, because those professors are 90% leftist, and they had decades to let their "ideas" be debated, examined, amended, and scrutinized -- yet here we are, in a place where college is NOT a place for that anymore, but for leftist indoctrination ONLY. While you might think DeSantis went too far, I could reasonably argue that the cancer needs must be removed, period, by hook or by crook.
-- "While colleges as of late have had their issues with the suppression of certain voices, the answer should not be to fight suppression with more suppression." --
Au contraire. "Suppression of certain voices"???? Are you kidding me right now???? Which voices, Katherine? And which voices on the left are "being suppressed" now? The professors??? Oh no, they're not allowed to include CRT or trans garbage in their curriculum. However will they go on??
I’ve learned a new tactic dealing with my Granddaughter through a therapist. I believe this tactic could help all of us to learn about how to get along.
First Person “When you say/do _____ it makes me feel _____.”
Second Person “I hear you saying when I did/said ________, it made you feel ______. That makes me feel________.”
First Person “When you said you felt ______, I feel______.”
This is simplistic, true, but it Could help our discourse together so that we can stop just attacking and start listening.
I forwarded this post to a friend, and she replied with the following comments:
The RNC sent out cease and desist letters regarding a Democratic group's ad that criticized then President Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic -- in 2018??
Boycotts and protests (if they are peaceful) are not cancel culture and I have no problem w/either side using them. These are effective tools to express displeasure.
[Katherine] talks about "some" conservatives being silenced - that is laughable - and she says this is done on the right yet she offers no examples. I would add that the "silencing" power lies with the mainstream media, which is clearly under control of the Left.
Amongst the books removed in some jurisdictions are also far more mainstream and surprising titles like John Green's Looking for Alaska, and James Patterson's Maximum Ride, a series of sci-fi adventure books for readers ages 10 and up, which were pulled from elementary schools.
The victimhood claim is also laughable. I think when you are told you are racist and homophobic for any criticism of any kind you are a victim. Again, I would add that schoolchildren who are told they are guilty of oppression merely due to the color of their skin are victims of racist brainwashing.
I think one of the key points here is that the Woke Right (love that coinage) is threatening librarians with jail time. That might seem to be just political grandstanding but it's revealing some level of Maoist/Stalinist ambition.
I boycotted MLB for a year by not watching my favorite team, the Chicago White Sox. When I thoughtlessly announced it on a tweet by one of the team's announcers, I got a sharp retort by the other announcer, "No one cares", who then blocked me. (I wasn't following him).
I did boycott MLB. Watched about 40 minutes total that year. I researched the issue, found myself in agreement with a Microsoft employee who was concerned about restrictions on drop boxes, but found the rest of the allegations groundless. Lots of working class people in Atlanta were harmed by MLB's foolish decision. Atlanta had come a long way since they hosted the Olympics and were not ready for Prime Time then.
I agree that many of the right are just as eager to cancel wrongthink, but I don't think it's fair to include the Bud Light boycott:
That boycott is compatible with a live and let live attitude. It's fine if you still want to associate with that brand, but it's no longer for me. Or take another example, is it cancel culture if you decide to switch to a different organisation if you think the old organisation has gone too woke? (If you switch from the ACLU to FIRE?)
It would be different if they tried to shame suppliers to stop with Bud Light. If all they do is go for a different brand of beer, what's authoritarian about that?
As usual a very well written article that you can tell you attempted to call out both sides. The more we do this and realize we are all being played by a two party system the quicker this nation will heal and get back to making its citizens proud. All of them not just one group or another.
The great poison that has been inserted into the minds of students everywhere is this idea of the political spectrum where communists represent the extreme left and Nazis the extreme right. In this framing, the question becomes "which flavor of totalitarianism do you lean more towards?" Do you prefer ethno-nationalist totalitarianism or egalitarian-utopian totalitarianism? Centrism in this framing becomes some sort of mushy technocratic totalitarianism, like we see in present day China.
This is all, of course, nonsense. The political divide that matters is the divide between libertarians and authoritarians, or between concentrated power and decentralized democracy. Unfortunately, we have a two-party system in which both parties are fundamentally authoritarian. There are a few exceptions, like RFK Jr. on the left and Rand Paul on the right. But by and large our political leaders across the faux spectrum share an abiding belief in the domination of the individual by powerful institutions. They just fight over what that domination should look like. Then at the end of the day, these two supposedly deeply antagonistic parties come together to support all kinds of corporate welfare and absurd amounts of funding for the military industrial complex and security state.
All the culture war battles are just some version of the political cartoon where an advisor tells the king, "Oh, you don't need to fight them -- You just need to convince the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks." The true enemy of freedom and individual thriving is not the torch people or the pitchfork people, but the elites in the castle.
In mid-to-late 2022, I learned to make the distinction between Woke ideology and Woke behavior. The latter is not bound to, or necessarily induced by, ideologies. I've observed this behavior in non-ideological, non-partisan individuals who act just like the Woke do but are critical of them and, ironically, of the Woke behavior they themselves exhibit. I wish I had discovered your article sooner.
Great article! Unfortunately, it's too easy to fall into the trap of politicizing entertainment. True of both the Left and even the Right. Let fun be fun, without the divisive politics.
I likely won't stick with Twitter, but I will remember to look for new articles from you. Thanks!
hi Katherine. thank you for your at-length article. a few small comments.
i was a victim of work place harassment. it completely derailed my life. i still have yet to recover. when i hear people decrying those claiming victim hood status i have a knee jerk reaction. to revel in victim hood is counter productive to social welfare. to declare and seek legal/ 'reasonable' redress, however is a courageous act of compassion for all persons involved--the perpetrator, witnesses, colluders, enablers, and the primary victim.
the woke right/ left are both suffering from the same disease of the mind. there is a desire within--in exercising/ experiencing the ego instrument--to seek out adoration, distinction, and prestige. this causes one to develop pride for their projected identity. identities are presented via association with the external (and occasionally the internal) reality. People simply choose a side based upon their mental disposition, which is fashioned by their association.
pride implies competition--whose identity is superior. where there is competition there is envy, a reaction to the fear of having ones projected identity compromised.
it is very difficult to get release from algorithmic reactions that are rooted in fear. but when one does, they become independently thoughtful due to seeing things as they are.
so in summary, woke-right/ -left are the same in substance. they differ, however in form.
Thank you for this useful overview. I do wish we had a different word for "woke." Intolerant? Dogmatic? Blinkered? Pig-headed?
A few points here... I get the intellectual exercise trying to equate two things which are unequal (logical fallacy here), but left and right are adamantly NOT the same. There's no "rightwing woke" at all.
Boycotting a company is NOT "cancel culture" -- is Bud Light still on the shelves available for purchase? Then it hasn't been cancelled. Is the right calling for it to be removed from shelves? Nope. Not cancelled. That's what a boycott is, a DECISION not to buy a product. On the flipside, the decision to remove Roseanne Barr from her TV show? We didn't make that. Her viewers didn't, either. She was simply cancelled.
If the left is going to insist we are segregated from them, under whatever guise they choose, then by necessity we are going to band together in some way; though for disparate reasons, survival requires it.
We don't control media, academia, the arts... we take what we believe are moral stands, like DeSantis vs Disney, like keeping pornographic material AWAY from children, like keeping children away from sexualized 'drag' shows and groomer adults. We don't have the POWER to cancel anyone, and frankly don't really (with few exceptions) have the desire to. You think Rachel Maddow or Joe Scarborough would still be on TV if we had the power to cancel them????? Of course not. Nor do we have the desire. I've NEVER seen a call to boycott, for example, Maddow's advertisers (simply for being her advertisers). Why? Because we neither possess nor desire that power.
For now.
You commit another logical fallacy when you compare the singular against the numerous, as here:
-- "As angry leftists were filming themselves burning copies of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter due to the “racism,” “fatphobia” and the author’s alleged transphobia, a Global Vision Bible Church head pastor took his Christian followers into the woods to burn Harry Potter, Twilight, and other "occultic materials” that offended their sensibilities." --
ONE guy did something that, in your words, multiple others on the other side did/do. It's almost like you were stretching to try to FIND an instance you could use by way of example to make your point, rather than showing a trend -- even a general one -- of the same behavior on both sides.
Last... as for DeSantis' bill (again, your words):
-- "The bill seeks to limit the ideals of free inquiry, beliefs, and discourse—ultimately putting a gag on what professors are able to say on certain topics. Without that, there’s no opportunity for these ideas to be debated, examined, amended, or scrutinized." --
YES, because those professors are 90% leftist, and they had decades to let their "ideas" be debated, examined, amended, and scrutinized -- yet here we are, in a place where college is NOT a place for that anymore, but for leftist indoctrination ONLY. While you might think DeSantis went too far, I could reasonably argue that the cancer needs must be removed, period, by hook or by crook.
-- "While colleges as of late have had their issues with the suppression of certain voices, the answer should not be to fight suppression with more suppression." --
Au contraire. "Suppression of certain voices"???? Are you kidding me right now???? Which voices, Katherine? And which voices on the left are "being suppressed" now? The professors??? Oh no, they're not allowed to include CRT or trans garbage in their curriculum. However will they go on??
Seriously.
I’ve learned a new tactic dealing with my Granddaughter through a therapist. I believe this tactic could help all of us to learn about how to get along.
First Person “When you say/do _____ it makes me feel _____.”
Second Person “I hear you saying when I did/said ________, it made you feel ______. That makes me feel________.”
First Person “When you said you felt ______, I feel______.”
This is simplistic, true, but it Could help our discourse together so that we can stop just attacking and start listening.
Hi Katharine,
I forwarded this post to a friend, and she replied with the following comments:
The RNC sent out cease and desist letters regarding a Democratic group's ad that criticized then President Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic -- in 2018??
Boycotts and protests (if they are peaceful) are not cancel culture and I have no problem w/either side using them. These are effective tools to express displeasure.
[Katherine] talks about "some" conservatives being silenced - that is laughable - and she says this is done on the right yet she offers no examples. I would add that the "silencing" power lies with the mainstream media, which is clearly under control of the Left.
Amongst the books removed in some jurisdictions are also far more mainstream and surprising titles like John Green's Looking for Alaska, and James Patterson's Maximum Ride, a series of sci-fi adventure books for readers ages 10 and up, which were pulled from elementary schools.
The victimhood claim is also laughable. I think when you are told you are racist and homophobic for any criticism of any kind you are a victim. Again, I would add that schoolchildren who are told they are guilty of oppression merely due to the color of their skin are victims of racist brainwashing.
To “Woke” or not To “woke”?
That is the Question.
Paraphrasing W.S.
Society tends to devolve much faster when people attach themselves to ill-conceived ideas, labels, monikers, etc.
Oversimplifying everything seems to be going very well in the US.
I guess it comes with the territory 🫢
It feels like the right is paying for anti-communism
I think one of the key points here is that the Woke Right (love that coinage) is threatening librarians with jail time. That might seem to be just political grandstanding but it's revealing some level of Maoist/Stalinist ambition.
I boycotted MLB for a year by not watching my favorite team, the Chicago White Sox. When I thoughtlessly announced it on a tweet by one of the team's announcers, I got a sharp retort by the other announcer, "No one cares", who then blocked me. (I wasn't following him).
I did boycott MLB. Watched about 40 minutes total that year. I researched the issue, found myself in agreement with a Microsoft employee who was concerned about restrictions on drop boxes, but found the rest of the allegations groundless. Lots of working class people in Atlanta were harmed by MLB's foolish decision. Atlanta had come a long way since they hosted the Olympics and were not ready for Prime Time then.
Proves that the pose of enlightened centrism can still be utterly braindead.
I agree that many of the right are just as eager to cancel wrongthink, but I don't think it's fair to include the Bud Light boycott:
That boycott is compatible with a live and let live attitude. It's fine if you still want to associate with that brand, but it's no longer for me. Or take another example, is it cancel culture if you decide to switch to a different organisation if you think the old organisation has gone too woke? (If you switch from the ACLU to FIRE?)
It would be different if they tried to shame suppliers to stop with Bud Light. If all they do is go for a different brand of beer, what's authoritarian about that?
As usual a very well written article that you can tell you attempted to call out both sides. The more we do this and realize we are all being played by a two party system the quicker this nation will heal and get back to making its citizens proud. All of them not just one group or another.
The great poison that has been inserted into the minds of students everywhere is this idea of the political spectrum where communists represent the extreme left and Nazis the extreme right. In this framing, the question becomes "which flavor of totalitarianism do you lean more towards?" Do you prefer ethno-nationalist totalitarianism or egalitarian-utopian totalitarianism? Centrism in this framing becomes some sort of mushy technocratic totalitarianism, like we see in present day China.
This is all, of course, nonsense. The political divide that matters is the divide between libertarians and authoritarians, or between concentrated power and decentralized democracy. Unfortunately, we have a two-party system in which both parties are fundamentally authoritarian. There are a few exceptions, like RFK Jr. on the left and Rand Paul on the right. But by and large our political leaders across the faux spectrum share an abiding belief in the domination of the individual by powerful institutions. They just fight over what that domination should look like. Then at the end of the day, these two supposedly deeply antagonistic parties come together to support all kinds of corporate welfare and absurd amounts of funding for the military industrial complex and security state.
All the culture war battles are just some version of the political cartoon where an advisor tells the king, "Oh, you don't need to fight them -- You just need to convince the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks." The true enemy of freedom and individual thriving is not the torch people or the pitchfork people, but the elites in the castle.