"Wokeist" - When people talk about progressivism without acquaintance

[Senethro]

"Real Manifest Destiny has never been tried"

I think I get your point, but also it actually kinda has. The bad consequences of white settlement, colonization etc were very deliberate.

And yet today you get the participants in those things like (purely for example, they're not unique) the Catholic church being very awkward about who has and how much responsibility there is for all these mass graves that keep turning up at residential schools or Magdalene laundries. It takes literal bodypiles to stop being hemming and hawing.

So its this question again of why do some things stick and others don't? (which might be a question relevant to this thread, whereas the age old competition to seize the moral highground of having only the second biggest bodypile is not)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

i think an important distinction wrt manifest destiny is that vast majority accept that it has been tried, did what it set out to do, and that what it set out to do was a bad objective. thus the people still advocating for something similar now are mostly fringe nutjobs, who consider those good consequences rather than bad.

that is very different context to "real communism hasn't been tried".

it is a good question though. for how much of an abject failure it has been demonstrated for many decades now, why is communism not considered similar to historical atrocities like trail of tears, manifest destiny, imperialism, holocaust, religious conquest with threat of convert or die, and similar? why does it "stick"? one might be forgiven for believing good intentions with it, the first 1-3 times...but now?

 

[Senethro]

i think an important distinction wrt manifest destiny is that vast majority accept that it has been tried, did what it set out to do, and that what it set out to do was a bad objective. thus the people still advocating for something similar now are mostly fringe nutjobs, who consider those good consequences rather than bad.

that is very different context to "real communism hasn't been tried".

it is a good question though. for how much of an abject failure it has been demonstrated for many decades now, why is communism not considered similar to historical atrocities like trail of tears, manifest destiny, imperialism, holocaust, religious conquest with threat of convert or die, and similar? why does it "stick"? one might be forgiven for believing good intentions with it, the first 1-3 times...but now?

Because painting the other guy as bloody and unsuccessful is good propaganda? Like I said, the second highest body pile (whoever that may be) is not a position of high moral authority.

Edit: I should make my point more explicitly. Communism is for something, so the concept has some resilience in appeal. I'm sure you're for something, but mostly you justify whatever that is by saying everything and everyone else is worse, whether thats China, BLM etc. It can be very difficult to not have you derail the thread on personal vendettas sometimes.

 

[Lexicus]

vast majority accept that it has been tried, did what it set out to do, and that what it set out to do was a bad objective. thus the people still advocating for something similar now are mostly fringe nutjobs, who consider those good consequences rather than bad.

This is comically false at least in the US. The vast majority of American liberals and conservatives, when pressed, will say that the genocide of the indigenous peoples in the Americas (at least in what became the US) was ultimately a good thing on an ends-justifies-the-means basis.

Regardless of this, the fact remains that atrocities committed by the British Empire, the USA, or the French are not blamed on "liberalism" or "capitalism" the same way that Stalin and Mao's crimes are somehow the fault of "Communism"

There is a simple, obvious explanation for why that is, too.

Oh and to those saying "Communism" is responsible for more death than fascism, you are straight-up Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis.

 

[Gorbles]

IIRC London and Norfolk.

"He's a sis", spoken quietly.

It is more as a slanderous aside, rather than a direct insult.

Interesting! Never came across it in either place, but unlike you, haven't spent super-long in either (in an out of London over the years, family, etc, and only around Norwich for a year).

That said, this really seems like one of those hyper-localised things that we can probably infer from context. Much like we do with a bunch of other words that sound similar, or are written the same but don't sound similar, and so on (which English is relatively infamous for). A good example is actually "nonce", which I never actually knew meant paedophile until I got someone amusingly threatening me over social media for using it. It's informal slang up north for an idiot, basically. Turns out the former meaning is actually (far) more well-known!

Right-wing appropriation of terms that have become more generally-used are fine, if the case is clearly about a right-wing appropriation becoming the dominant meaning (which are examples I'm asking for) and not just a general change of the meaning that is just also happily used by the right but (which is what I see all now-pejorative terms that were initially self-identifying labels on the woke subset of politics).
I haven't seen the BBC example, but wasn't that simply a sloppy definition rather than an actual right-wing appropriation ?

The right-wing appropriation of socialism (in politics) becoming "communism", or more accurately "Communism" (relating to an established historical regime, rather than the original theory) I would've thought was a pretty clear-cut case. It's got a lot of interesting history behind it, because it combines geopolitics, real-life war or near-war scenarios (like the Cold War as a relative lynchpin in US cultural history), the media, and so on.

It seems to me your argument is kinda "chicken or the egg", and I'm afraid I don't see the difference. If "the right" latches onto something and makes it what it means in mainstream culture, does it matter where it started? "woke" was clearly adopted by conservatives and that definition of it was popularised particularly in the US because even the "good" (ha ha) party is also right wing (by most of our standards, right?). "political correctness" is another one. These seem very obvious, so there's likely something I'm still missing in your argument.

To me, these are both examples of appropriation. But they're so well-known now that the original meanings are relatively lost to time (ergo, a change in "general meaning"). But you seem to be making "a change in general meaning" and "appropriated by the right" two separate things? Why?

I'm afraid that I simply don't see "communist" being used as a general pejorative. And even when it's the case, it's usually more about the, to say the least, pretty terrible track record of self-styled communist regimes than anything coming from the right.

To be blunt, I simply have a hard time relating to this whole vaguely conspiracy-like "the right dictate the common distortion of the language". From my perception, the pejorative tones that many words got are largely self-inflicted and not caused by any sort of deliberate smear campaign that somehow work only for one half of the political compass.
"SJW" and "woke", being self-label-turned-pejorative, look mainly due to the content of the political subset itself that repels a lot of people, and the very habits of calling "bigot" anyone who doesn't agree with said politics. This thread is in fact a pretty good example of the typical behaviour that lead to such perception, while ironically trying to do the opposite.

If you don't, that's cool. All I'm asking you to believe is that it is. I woke up to it in the papers pretty much weekly, if not more often than that, while Corbyn was head of the Labour party.

Besides, much like the ongoing tangent about imperialism, and so on "pretty terrible track record" applies to many, many more countries (and regimes) than just communism. I keep getting told that the problems with capitalism are in the implementation, not the theory. And? We can lay so much at the feet of driving profit. So many things in our modern world can be attributed to it. Focusing on the valid problems with regimes that were (however vaguely) "communist" while ignoring things like; 20th century Germany not being communist at all, developed nations exploiting developing nations, poverty indexes, and so on. Senethro is making a good point that it shouldn't just be a numbers game, but in response to him you literally see posters trying to twist it so that no real blame is laid at the feet of other ideologies. Just communism, apparently. Bit convenient, that. Which is exactly the pejorative in action.

On the whole "conspiracy" bit, I don't see it as a conspiracy, really. Reality may be often cited as having a "liberal bias" (whatever that means in actuality, because liberals are often equated with the centre, or barely left-of-centre in the US and UK), but power structures are inherently conservative. I don't mean that necessarily in a culture war way, or even economic. I mean literally "resistant to change". Which in turn often leads to economic and cultural conservatism, sure. But I don't get how it has to be a conspiracy theory. Honestly, I believe your position on the phrases like "woke" and "SJW" are impacting your view as much as you might consider myself or other posters to be similarly-influenced. And maybe we all are. Bias is a thing, for sure.

But to take one of your examples, "calling anyone who doesn't agree with them a bigot" (words to that effect, not trying to misquote you). "the right" does this all the time. It's just another word, or phrase, or argument. The behaviour replicates across the political spectrum. The right wing went through / is still going through a whole thing about "beta males", for example. There's some fun history there, like the intersections of the (online) alt-right with the MRA movement, and so on. But that's a whole other thread. The difficulty is sometimes in working out if the label is accurate, or being misused.

You think these phrases that have been co-opted by conservatives over the past X decades ("political correctness" dating back roughly half a century now, for example) are "largely self-inflicted"? I can see why you'd think that, but I feel you need to take the examples given to you in better faith. Remove whatever association you might feel they have with you, or people that have called you them, or similar. Because I feel that's definitely a part of it (hence your reference to the thread behaviour).

 

[Birdjaguar]

Moderator Action: Back on topic please! Imperialism vs Communism etc. should have its own thread. Thanks.

 

[Akka]

The right-wing appropriation of socialism (in politics) becoming "communism", or more accurately "Communism" (relating to an established historical regime, rather than the original theory) I would've thought was a pretty clear-cut case. It's got a lot of interesting history behind it, because it combines geopolitics, real-life war or near-war scenarios (like the Cold War as a relative lynchpin in US cultural history), the media, and so on.

As said before, I'm not sure that it's due to "the right ability to forge the mainstream language" and not simply the result of self-styled communist regime being horrible, and making the word associated with a negative outlook.

It seems to me your argument is kinda "chicken or the egg", and I'm afraid I don't see the difference. If "the right" latches onto something and makes it what it means in mainstream culture, does it matter where it started? "woke" was clearly adopted by conservatives and that definition of it was popularised particularly in the US because even the "good" (ha ha) party is also right wing (by most of our standards, right?). "political correctness" is another one. These seem very obvious, so there's likely something I'm still missing in your argument.

You don't see a difference between "the right manages to smear a word due to manipulating language" and "the word gains a negative connotation due to what it represents by itself and the right just happily profits" ?
Because the difference seems pretty huge and fundamental to me, and in fact is the whole point of the thread, so I don't know what to tell you here.

Besides, much like the ongoing tangent about imperialism, and so on "pretty terrible track record" applies to many, many more countries (and regimes) than just communism.

And these countries/regime usually have their name associated with negative perception without "the right" having to do anything with it. "fascism" is definitely not a word that is seen positively, with even fascistic regimes trying to paint themselves as something else (hello Russia and China).
Imperialism, colonialism are also not "good" words. You kinda prove my point here.

On the whole "conspiracy" bit, I don't see it as a conspiracy, really. Reality may be often cited as having a "liberal bias" (whatever that means in actuality, because liberals are often equated with the centre, or barely left-of-centre in the US and UK), but power structures are inherently conservative. I don't mean that necessarily in a culture war way, or even economic. I mean literally "resistant to change". Which in turn often leads to economic and cultural conservatism, sure. But I don't get how it has to be a conspiracy theory. Honestly, I believe your position on the phrases like "woke" and "SJW" are impacting your view as much as you might consider myself or other posters to be similarly-influenced. And maybe we all are. Bias is a thing, for sure.

Sorry but you just lost me there.

But to take one of your examples, "calling anyone who doesn't agree with them a bigot" (words to that effect, not trying to misquote you). "the right" does this all the time. It's just another word, or phrase, or argument. The behaviour replicates across the political spectrum. The right wing went through / is still going through a whole thing about "beta males", for example. There's some fun history there, like the intersections of the (online) alt-right with the MRA movement, and so on. But that's a whole other thread. The difficulty is sometimes in working out if the label is accurate, or being misused.

Yes, there are equivalent to the "woke" side on the right. And yes, it shows the exact same behaviour. That's my point.

You think these phrases that have been co-opted by conservatives over the past X decades ("political correctness" dating back roughly half a century now, for example) are "largely self-inflicted"? I can see why you'd think that, but I feel you need to take the examples given to you in better faith. Remove whatever association you might feel they have with you, or people that have called you them, or similar. Because I feel that's definitely a part of it (hence your reference to the thread behaviour).

Again, you lost me there.

 

[Gorbles]

As said before, I'm not sure that it's due to "the right ability to forge the mainstream language" and not simply the result of self-styled communist regime being horrible, and making the word associated with a negative outlook.

You don't see a difference between "the right manages to smear a word due to manipulating language" and "the word gains a negative connotation due to what it represents by itself and the right just happily profits" ?
Because the difference seems pretty huge and fundamental to me, and in fact is the whole point of the thread, so I don't know what to tell you here.

I'll try and address both of these together (bearing in mind the mod text, so sorry in advance if I'm too vague or reach for different analogies and examples).

I don't see as much of a difference as you do because "the negative connotation" in this case is also driven by right-wing politics. In any case where "the right" manages to turn anything into a smear, there's always a possibility that that thing has problems in the first place. Sometimes these smears are fabricated, but sometimes they're based on a kernel of truth. To take "political correctness" (it's simpler than "woke", with "woke" having an AAVE background), it was used to describe a type of behaviour that was considered too rigid (within leftist spaces).

That same definition was hijacked by conservatives and applied to a much broader audience (to the extent where people are now called "woke" despite not being on the "left" at all. It's become an "enemy of whatever right-winger is using it" kind of term - a lot like "beta male", in some contexts). So there isn't much language manipulation, they just took something and made it applicable to more people (much like the whole communism > socialism > literally any left-of-centre political policy suggestion that I'm not spending too much time on).

"political correctness" would've likely never been a mainstream phrase, if not for "the right" (or conservative political interests, or whatever). But they didn't have to manipulate language that much, if at all, to popularise it. And this is the "success" that I think Angst is referring to (and the dominance of conservativism in power structures I was referring to). Not only are "the right" better at it, but they also have more of a platform / power structures that are more sympathetic to them. I'm not saying "power structures equals Neo-Nazis" (though there are absolutely examples of that, and very little examples of similar treatment of far-left movements), I'm speaking a lot more broadly / moderately.

Yes, there are equivalent to the "woke" side on the right. And yes, it shows the exact same behaviour. That's my point.

Which in of itself helps Angst's original point that kicked off the thread. "woke" just isn't a useful word. It reinforces the belief that this is a problem exclusive to a part of the political spectrum, as supposed to being relatively constant across the political spectrum. I know we've been over this before, so I don't want to repeat myself too much.

(I've dropped the tangents I've lost you on not because I'm ignoring them, but because I have lost you - that's my failing in trying to make the points)

 

[Akka]

I don't see as much of a difference as you do because "the negative connotation" in this case is also driven by right-wing politics.

And that's where I ask for significant examples, because my experience simply doesn't match. As I've said, I've seen words from all sides being used as slur/derisively (CFC itself sees a large amount of people using "moderate" as derisive), but those which sticks seem to stick simply because the public at large DO find the negative tone to be warranted.
That the right is happy to see words that describe some part of the left to be seen as negative is a given. That they manage to do it, is the part that I haven't noticed from what I've seen. My experience is that the SJW/woke/whatever word you want to use for the subset, manage it by themselves due to so often acting like a religious cult trying to enforce a dogma.

In any case where "the right" manages to turn anything into a smear, there's always a possibility that that thing has problems in the first place. Sometimes these smears are fabricated, but sometimes they're based on a kernel of truth. To take "political correctness" (it's simpler than "woke", with "woke" having an AAVE background), it was used to describe a type of behaviour that was considered too rigid (within leftist spaces).

Yes, but the point was the lament that "the right" somehow manage it, while "the left" doesn't. And I just don't see it.

Which in of itself helps Angst's original point that kicked off the thread. "woke" just isn't a useful word. It reinforces the belief that this is a problem exclusive to a part of the political spectrum, as supposed to being relatively constant across the political spectrum. I know we've been over this before, so I don't want to repeat myself too much.

"woke", as I said, is just useful as "the right" (more actually, because "the right" is massively more nebulous, while "woke" covers a subset that is pretty well perceived). It doesn't means that the behavioural/mindset problems commonly associated with it are exclusive to the left, it just name the group.
Just like "fascists" are a subset of right-winger, and it doesn't mean that authoritarianism and other negative mindset are exclusive to the right.

 

[Gorbles]

That the right is happy to see words that describe some part of the left to be seen as negative is a given. That they manage to do it, is the part that I haven't noticed from what I've seen. My experience is that the SJW/woke/whatever word you want to use for the subset, manage it by themselves due to so often acting like a religious cult trying to enforce a dogma.

To tie all of the above paragraphs together: the fact that we agree that the behaviour replicates across the political spectrum, and the fact that we lack a word for parts of that spectrum that aren't on the left, should clearly demonstrate "the right manages to do it" vs. "the left doesn't". If "the left" could, we would have a corresponding word for the same behaviour on the right (and in the centre, and so on) - or "woke" would apply equally across the spectrum. We don't, and it doesn't.

Does that make sense?

 

[Senethro]

To tie all of the above paragraphs together: the fact that we agree that the behaviour replicates across the political spectrum, and the fact that we lack a word for parts of that spectrum that aren't on the left, should clearly demonstrate "the right manages to do it" vs. "the left doesn't". If "the left" could, we would have a corresponding word for the same behaviour on the right (and in the centre, and so on) - or "woke" would apply equally across the spectrum. We don't, and it doesn't.

Does that make sense?

Note also the kind of implicit agreement in the post. Its probably accurate that the "right" is nebulous. However, most social human groupings are nebulous. Except for the one that akka believes to be like a cult (itself not exactly a neutral word).

So it kind of collapses into "If this language manipulation happened, its because its true, and we know its true because it happened." The way out might be to show that appellations fail due to increased nebulosity and that "woke" is indeed a "true" tightly boundaried group, but thats difficult to measure and an unreasonably tall order, so we're left with nothing. Meh.

 

[Akka]

To tie all of the above paragraphs together: the fact that we agree that the behaviour replicates across the political spectrum, and the fact that we lack a word for parts of that spectrum that aren't on the left, should clearly demonstrate "the right manages to do it" vs. "the left doesn't". If "the left" could, we would have a corresponding word for the same behaviour on the right (and in the centre, and so on) - or "woke" would apply equally across the spectrum. We don't, and it doesn't.

Does that make sense?

Yes, but the thing is, we do.
"tea party" is a pretty good example and probably the closest equivalent. "fundies", "integrists" also are pretty much always on the right. "fascist" is exclusive to the right and "authoritarian" is mostly right-wing themed. It seems you just don't see the "badly perceived" subgroups when they aren't specific to "the left".

 

[Gorbles]

Yes, but the thing is, we do.
"tea party" is a pretty good example and probably the closest equivalent. "fundies", "integrists" also are pretty much always on the right. "fascist" is exclusive to the right and "authoritarian" is mostly right-wing themed. It seems you just don't see the "badly perceived" subgroups when they aren't specific to "the left".

Sure I do. But I thought the context was the smearing by an opposing ideological grouping? "leftists" of any stripe didn't come up with the "tea party", and certainly didn't popularise it. Nor did we "fascist" or "authoritarian". You're right in that "tea party" is closest, but the other two are literal dictionary definitions of things; "woke" and "tea party" are more slang-like in their application.

Even accounting for that, there's an obvious difference between something like "the GOP" or "the tea party", both of which are used sincerely to (accurately) describe a subgroup of US politics, and "woke", which seems to be poorly-defined from the offset, and wielded primarily by people against others.

 

[Lexicus]

Just speaking to American politics for a moment the phrase "tea party" has fallen almost entirely out of popular use, the tea party was a phenomenon in US politics but in the age of Trump it's somewhat obsolete/quaint.

 

[Senethro]

They stopped being the Tea Party when they became the republican establishment.

 

[Lexicus]

They stopped being the Tea Party when they became the republican establishment.

Sort of, I mean, there was never that much daylight ideologically between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment, what disagreements there were were more based on affects and style. And it didn't take long for the confrontational, non-governing, no-compromise style and affect of the Tea Party to suffuse the GOP as a whole as soon as it became obvious that it was a vote-winning strategy.

 

[Senethro]

Apropos of absolutely nothing at all, does anyone know who else really dislikes authoritarian tolerance?

 

[Lexicus]

Apropos of absolutely nothing at all, does anyone know who else really dislikes authoritarian tolerance?

Jordan Peterson really swung for the fences on that one

 

[Synobun]

Apropos of absolutely nothing at all, does anyone know who else really dislikes authoritarian tolerance?

Jordan Peterson really swung for the fences on that one

 

[Senethro]

Was he cancelled or did the free market of ideas just not purchase his product?

Is there really a sinister plot of socially engineering toleristas warping the values through which we perceive and make sense of the world?

There were some familiar threads in what happened.