Hi L.P., your post assumes that people know who James Lindsay is and are at least tangentially familiar with the "woke right" controversy. For those not on Twitter, though (and I barely am), it may be hard to understand the context involved - it may help for you to flesh out the controversy and circumstances at the start.
Yeah. Will keep that in mind when I do another current thing post. But I think people should get something out of this even without knowing much about the background.
I too am barely there on X but got a great deal out of this. I remember Lindsay from his Portland f'ing with the wokesters and it was curious how most of the former leftists who turned right for a sec seem only to want to establish the new NYT and the New Harvard...and be in charge of course. They were never seekers and have shown that. I had never identified their mental cage with the Post war concensus. Spot on. Entropy and reformation. The wheel is always turning.
I'm in an awkward place where I agree with Lindsay against the Nick Fuentes & Tate bros. / groyper crowd being very very dangerous, but think he's being a little paranoid with some of the people on his list of those he considers to be woke right.
But there's something more hilarious going on.
Everywhere Lindsay looks he seems to see deep and hidden power structures fighting against the light of true reason, a flame kept alive by only a lonely few like him who have seen the truth, and come back to warn us all, to wake us up to the dark reality. Or to, pardon the phrase, to make us “woke” to these facts.
What seems to be happening to Lindsay is exactly the same epistemological pattern that he critiques with regard to the “woke left” and “woke right.” He’s just woke about classical liberalism and is thinking in what I’ll call a “woke centrist" or "woke-establishmentarian” type of way.
Indeed. And as I hinted at in a footnote, I agree that there are pathological actors on the right, as there are anywhere. Problem is, Lindsay and many others call everybody pathological who merely has different opinions. But an edgy opinion does not a psychopath make, and these people discredit the whole concept by their misapplication.
One of twist of language and presuppositions in recent discourse that is worth looking into is how this word "woke" came to replace the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) term that was in common use a decade ago.
SJW had more substance to it, picking out not only a certain pattern of behaviors but the common goals and intentions behind them. Permanent leftist revolution was baked into the pie.
Even a creative grifter couldn't pick up "SJW" and twist it around to gatekeep the right without getting laughed out of the room.
Now here we have this new term "woke" with enough ambiguity that lolcows can repurpose it, in a way that SJW couldn't be. That's mighty interesting.
I really appreciated the deep and philosophically precise response.
I remember the first time I delved into “postmodern” philosophy, (Foucault, Derrida, Heidegger, Lyotard, etc).
And the deep look of concern and fear in the faces of the boomer Christians I was around when I told them I was studying the ideas.
First, the common phase by Derrida that “there is nothing outride of the text” does not deny there is Truth, but all truth claims come in and through a particular context in the spoken word. For me, immediately as a Christian, this never posed a problem, because humans in themselves can never perceive or grasp T truth outside of God’s spoken word given to us in the human context of history.
Secondly, it’s getting frustrating listening to 20th century atheist rationalists like James L lecturing us epistemically about “objective reality” and “the external world” when their own atheistic presuppositions inherently deny the basic point there is reality (atheism necessarily implies material reductionism).
> First, the common phase by Derrida that “there is nothing outride of the text” does not deny there is Truth, but all truth claims come in and through a particular context in the spoken word.
Derrida is wrong.
If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself...that a tiger is an optical illusion--well, he will find out he is wrong. The tiger will himself intervene in the discussion, in a manner which will be in every sense conclusive.
It seems to me that what Derrida was pointing to is the fact that human beings mostly "live" in an artificial world of left-brained language games - a collective tower of babble/babel. A tower of babble/babel which is in many ways completely divorced from and indeed hostile towards living-breathing-feeling beings both human and non-human - including tigers.
The origins and cultural consequences of such has been explored and described in great detail by Iain McGilchrist in his book The Master & His Emissary.
"as a member of the Elite Elect he’s going to reclaim it by using his Secret Knowledge of Gnostiology to defeat his enemies on the Left and Right who are just too Unconscious to see the Light. "
Oh man, having secret knowledge of the gnasty gnostics has got to be exhausting!
I think a lot of this can be summarized by individual psychology. People who have been traumatized are cursed with forever reacting against the evil they've known, and cannot anticipate the evil which comes next that they've let their guard down to.
Parents try to instill those fears to children.
This is definitely post-war and post-Jim Crow in that all our greatest fears are: Hitler, Stalin, anti-black racism.
Those fears will fade as we get further from the decades that produced them and kids stop believing the boogie men tales given to them from older generations. Our overreaction has already created new monsters that the coming generations will shape the world to defend against.
It's all just people with their fears, telling ghost stories until they become stale.
Anyone who supports the UN apartheid state of Israel doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. Specifically, James Lindsay, but generally, anyone soever. There is no such thing as “Judeo-Christianity” and infant circumcision, objectively, should be illegal in First World countries.
Lindsay can mislabel trannies as “Gnostic”, and Patriots as “woke” but it means nothing as he is a fount of mud.
Does having borders make you an "apartheid state"?
It's a little odd to describe modern-day Israel as a UN project when a lot of Israeli right-wingers consider various UN orgs to be a puppet for Arab interests and a major factor in keeping their hands tied.
I don’t give a fuck what Israeli “people” consider. It is a fact that the UN created Israel with the help of the not-actually-Hebrew Rothschilds. Fuck Isnotreal and abolish circumcision.
The Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine more generally seem more consequential here. The UN basically just rubber-stamped what was a fait accompli after 1948.
Nah, Lindsay is garbage and his slur is just the fake, ineffective gatekeeping of cuckservatives and people who intentionally moved others away from using the more accurate term SJW.
I know the term "Woke Right" is irritating from a brand perspective, but I honestly don't think the comparison is outlandish. "The woke are more correct than the mainstream" used to be something of a shared observation in the DR sphere.
The reverence for indigenous wisdom in "Other ways of knowing" maps pretty closely onto religious anti-rationalism, for example. A lot of post-modernist commentary on truth as a function of power is actually similar to JBP's commentary on pragmatic epistemology, if I read it right (Auron McIntyre said something similar about 'the rediscovery of the particular' on twitter.) Demanding "safe spaces" for racial minorities is essentially a call for re-segregation and ethnonationalism, and green environmentalism is, if taken seriously, a fundamentally conservative agenda. And obviously, both the woke left and dissident right have been highly critical of American foreign policy and political establishment and have particular client groups which they perceive to be victims of structural oppression and injustice.
The key difference is that DR sphere are correct about who is oppressed and by what and the woke left are wrong (or at least, think they are oppressed by various 'isms' and 'phobias' when when mostly they are held back by their biology.) But the two movements are hardly polar opposites.
I would hope not. It's just that the boomer generation is who defined and solidified the post-WWII consensus. They had their reasons and their motivations, but we are currently moving out of this mindset.
Intellectual guardrails ignore the fact that history and ideology have material guardrails.
The Marshall plan and trade did more to prevent the next Hitler than all the political philosophers in the world put together could hope to accomplish.
People react to material reality, not words on paper.
Which war? You keep saying post-war, do you mean WWII? The culture war?
Whatever happens Lindsay is destroying the usefulness of "woke" as a descriptive term. It implies religiosity, fervor, and when they say what they've awoken to, madness. "Woke" was the perfect pejorative. Now everyone will be woke so no one will be.
It seems to me that this reference provides an example of applied right-wing "wokeness". Not the suggestions as to what to do with those who are classified as un-humans.
Hi L.P., your post assumes that people know who James Lindsay is and are at least tangentially familiar with the "woke right" controversy. For those not on Twitter, though (and I barely am), it may be hard to understand the context involved - it may help for you to flesh out the controversy and circumstances at the start.
Yeah. Will keep that in mind when I do another current thing post. But I think people should get something out of this even without knowing much about the background.
I too am barely there on X but got a great deal out of this. I remember Lindsay from his Portland f'ing with the wokesters and it was curious how most of the former leftists who turned right for a sec seem only to want to establish the new NYT and the New Harvard...and be in charge of course. They were never seekers and have shown that. I had never identified their mental cage with the Post war concensus. Spot on. Entropy and reformation. The wheel is always turning.
It's quite a relief to hear that.
I'm in an awkward place where I agree with Lindsay against the Nick Fuentes & Tate bros. / groyper crowd being very very dangerous, but think he's being a little paranoid with some of the people on his list of those he considers to be woke right.
But there's something more hilarious going on.
Everywhere Lindsay looks he seems to see deep and hidden power structures fighting against the light of true reason, a flame kept alive by only a lonely few like him who have seen the truth, and come back to warn us all, to wake us up to the dark reality. Or to, pardon the phrase, to make us “woke” to these facts.
What seems to be happening to Lindsay is exactly the same epistemological pattern that he critiques with regard to the “woke left” and “woke right.” He’s just woke about classical liberalism and is thinking in what I’ll call a “woke centrist" or "woke-establishmentarian” type of way.
Indeed. And as I hinted at in a footnote, I agree that there are pathological actors on the right, as there are anywhere. Problem is, Lindsay and many others call everybody pathological who merely has different opinions. But an edgy opinion does not a psychopath make, and these people discredit the whole concept by their misapplication.
One of twist of language and presuppositions in recent discourse that is worth looking into is how this word "woke" came to replace the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) term that was in common use a decade ago.
SJW had more substance to it, picking out not only a certain pattern of behaviors but the common goals and intentions behind them. Permanent leftist revolution was baked into the pie.
Even a creative grifter couldn't pick up "SJW" and twist it around to gatekeep the right without getting laughed out of the room.
Now here we have this new term "woke" with enough ambiguity that lolcows can repurpose it, in a way that SJW couldn't be. That's mighty interesting.
Brilliant breakdown 👊🏻
L.P
I really appreciated the deep and philosophically precise response.
I remember the first time I delved into “postmodern” philosophy, (Foucault, Derrida, Heidegger, Lyotard, etc).
And the deep look of concern and fear in the faces of the boomer Christians I was around when I told them I was studying the ideas.
First, the common phase by Derrida that “there is nothing outride of the text” does not deny there is Truth, but all truth claims come in and through a particular context in the spoken word. For me, immediately as a Christian, this never posed a problem, because humans in themselves can never perceive or grasp T truth outside of God’s spoken word given to us in the human context of history.
Secondly, it’s getting frustrating listening to 20th century atheist rationalists like James L lecturing us epistemically about “objective reality” and “the external world” when their own atheistic presuppositions inherently deny the basic point there is reality (atheism necessarily implies material reductionism).
Ugh, anyways. I digress. Great article !
> First, the common phase by Derrida that “there is nothing outride of the text” does not deny there is Truth, but all truth claims come in and through a particular context in the spoken word.
Derrida is wrong.
If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself...that a tiger is an optical illusion--well, he will find out he is wrong. The tiger will himself intervene in the discussion, in a manner which will be in every sense conclusive.
It seems to me that what Derrida was pointing to is the fact that human beings mostly "live" in an artificial world of left-brained language games - a collective tower of babble/babel. A tower of babble/babel which is in many ways completely divorced from and indeed hostile towards living-breathing-feeling beings both human and non-human - including tigers.
The origins and cultural consequences of such has been explored and described in great detail by Iain McGilchrist in his book The Master & His Emissary.
Thank you for the book recommendation. I’ll check it out for sure.
I do not disagree.
"as a member of the Elite Elect he’s going to reclaim it by using his Secret Knowledge of Gnostiology to defeat his enemies on the Left and Right who are just too Unconscious to see the Light. "
Oh man, having secret knowledge of the gnasty gnostics has got to be exhausting!
I think a lot of this can be summarized by individual psychology. People who have been traumatized are cursed with forever reacting against the evil they've known, and cannot anticipate the evil which comes next that they've let their guard down to.
Parents try to instill those fears to children.
This is definitely post-war and post-Jim Crow in that all our greatest fears are: Hitler, Stalin, anti-black racism.
Those fears will fade as we get further from the decades that produced them and kids stop believing the boogie men tales given to them from older generations. Our overreaction has already created new monsters that the coming generations will shape the world to defend against.
It's all just people with their fears, telling ghost stories until they become stale.
Anyone who supports the UN apartheid state of Israel doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. Specifically, James Lindsay, but generally, anyone soever. There is no such thing as “Judeo-Christianity” and infant circumcision, objectively, should be illegal in First World countries.
Lindsay can mislabel trannies as “Gnostic”, and Patriots as “woke” but it means nothing as he is a fount of mud.
Does having borders make you an "apartheid state"?
It's a little odd to describe modern-day Israel as a UN project when a lot of Israeli right-wingers consider various UN orgs to be a puppet for Arab interests and a major factor in keeping their hands tied.
I don’t give a fuck what Israeli “people” consider. It is a fact that the UN created Israel with the help of the not-actually-Hebrew Rothschilds. Fuck Isnotreal and abolish circumcision.
The Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine more generally seem more consequential here. The UN basically just rubber-stamped what was a fait accompli after 1948.
Nah, Lindsay is garbage and his slur is just the fake, ineffective gatekeeping of cuckservatives and people who intentionally moved others away from using the more accurate term SJW.
If anyone's woke, it's the atheist Lindsay.
I know the term "Woke Right" is irritating from a brand perspective, but I honestly don't think the comparison is outlandish. "The woke are more correct than the mainstream" used to be something of a shared observation in the DR sphere.
The reverence for indigenous wisdom in "Other ways of knowing" maps pretty closely onto religious anti-rationalism, for example. A lot of post-modernist commentary on truth as a function of power is actually similar to JBP's commentary on pragmatic epistemology, if I read it right (Auron McIntyre said something similar about 'the rediscovery of the particular' on twitter.) Demanding "safe spaces" for racial minorities is essentially a call for re-segregation and ethnonationalism, and green environmentalism is, if taken seriously, a fundamentally conservative agenda. And obviously, both the woke left and dissident right have been highly critical of American foreign policy and political establishment and have particular client groups which they perceive to be victims of structural oppression and injustice.
The key difference is that DR sphere are correct about who is oppressed and by what and the woke left are wrong (or at least, think they are oppressed by various 'isms' and 'phobias' when when mostly they are held back by their biology.) But the two movements are hardly polar opposites.
> in the wake of WWII we have come to accept a list of things that supposedly “paved the way for Hitler.”
Ooo, that sounds bad. Uncivil engineering.
But wait. They passed up the opportunity to coin "woke Reich"? "Bulding the AdiBahn"? "Highway to Heil"?
See, this is why they have to astroturf and mansplain everything. They're just...boring and pathetic.
Do I detect a little bit of "Boomer Derangement Syndrom"?
I would hope not. It's just that the boomer generation is who defined and solidified the post-WWII consensus. They had their reasons and their motivations, but we are currently moving out of this mindset.
I suspect " Boomer Derrangement Syndrom" has defined that "mindset" for you.
ok boomer
Is Lindsay a closet neocon?
What is the intellectual guardrail against Hitler, exactly constituted of?!
Thinking of it, I come up with "seeing" "the Nazi party"
But it failed, regarding Ukraine for example
Thank you for your article!
Intellectual guardrails ignore the fact that history and ideology have material guardrails.
The Marshall plan and trade did more to prevent the next Hitler than all the political philosophers in the world put together could hope to accomplish.
People react to material reality, not words on paper.
Which war? You keep saying post-war, do you mean WWII? The culture war?
Whatever happens Lindsay is destroying the usefulness of "woke" as a descriptive term. It implies religiosity, fervor, and when they say what they've awoken to, madness. "Woke" was the perfect pejorative. Now everyone will be woke so no one will be.
“The post war consensus” is a phrase used a lot in these circles, not original to this blog post. But the reference is to WWII.
I don't think it's a crazy comparison.
https://luctalks.substack.com/p/the-woke-right-and-its-discontents/comment/116296647
It seems to me that this reference provides an example of applied right-wing "wokeness". Not the suggestions as to what to do with those who are classified as un-humans.
http://www.thenerdreich.com/unhumans-jd-vance-and-the-language-of-genocide