Stuff columnist Julia de Bres claims ‘woke’ has lost any meaning, so let’s give her some meaning
Stuff columnist Julia de Bres claims ‘woke’ has lost any meaning…
Whereas those on the Left originally used “woke” to describe their progressive ideals, they can scarcely use it any more as it has attracted such negative connotations.
And it’s hard to deflect a criticism of wokeness when it’s no longer even clear what the word means.
Woke seems to be having its political heyday right now, but the fact that it is bleaching before our eyes suggests it may be on its way out.
…as someone who likes to credit myself with the wide spread use of the word ‘woke’ as a derisive term aimed at identity politics activists in NZ (I used ‘Emerald Stormtroopers’ to describe them, but woke worked better), I feel we need an urgent redefinition of the term so woke columnists like Julia de Bres can’t hide the term or the politics behind it.
The woke have realised how alienating their identity uber alles is and how they have disrupted the solidarity of the Left and caused a trail of toxicity in their wake and woke protagonists like Julia de Bres are desperate to disengage with the term altogether.
As a class lefty, I see identity as an important personal journey that leads you to politics but feel Identity Politics becomes terribly limited in gaining the democratic 51% as its most shrill advocates in the cancel culture landscape manage to make progress as alienating as a cold cup of vomit.
The real demarcation of power in a liberal progressive democracy are the 1% wealthiest + their 9% enabler vs the 90% rest of us!
Class solidarity can gain 51%, Identity Politics risks pure temple over broad-church and you get endless schisms and little to show for it.
Woke activism is a middle class cult built upon social media virtue signals and cancel culture censorship.
They participate in Outrage Olympics and mommy blogger social media Lynch mobs to have people sacked for not loving veganism, te reo or pronouns enough.
Their middle class dogma is an alienating mixture of critical race theory and critical gender theory the Holy Trinity of which is:
- ALL white men are irredeemable cross during racists
- B-E-L-I-E-V-E ALL WOMEN that ALL men are rapists
- and that anyone supporting free speech is a uniform wearing Nazi who hates the trans community.
There’s not much intellectual wriggle room there.
That virtue-signalling-middle-class-micro-aggression-policing-identifiably-Green-Party-militant-bike-riding-vegan-condescending-supporting-pronoun-Spinoff-subscriber in your social media feed screaming endlessly at you in the ubiquitous world of social media certainly thinks they are shouting truth to power, unfortunately it all ends up as a cacophony of self righteous struggle sessions alienating the vast chunk of voters who just want to know how they are paying for the roof over their heads and the food on their tables.
So that’s ‘Woke’. Identity Politics activists suffering the narcism of small difference and subjective triggering.
We see the mainstream media like Stuff having increasingly woke newsrooms where the only lens with which their woke journalists can see any issue through is identity.
Take Carmel Sepuloni becoming Deputy PM, every single woke news outlet praised her appointment from the perspective of her being Pacific Island, at no point did any of the woke newsrooms look at Carmel’s time as Minister of MSD.
The painfully middle class woke Spinoff (who claim to care about the poor and marginalised) were so busy heaping praise on Carmel for being a women who was Pacific Island they didn’t once mention the 4000 disabled beneficiaries Carmel sanctioned on welfare under her 5 years, or the fact she failed to implement any welfare recommendations or the fact she ended the Children’s Commissioner’s oversight over Oranga Tamariki.
Julia de Bres refuses to accept the term woke describes any of this and she rejoices in undermining the power of the world because it describes the professional managerial class she so clearly represents.
Since 2016, the woke have gone from censorship and cancellation to just claiming words have no meaning.
That’s some 7 year journey there.
Real Left activists need to push these middle class alienating pure temple acolytes out of our movement.
You can see how the new political leadership inside Labour have dumped ideology for delivery and are moving towards Economic Justice rather than the minefield of woke Social Justice.
It’s called Bread and Butter politics because most woke middle class activists are Gluten free vegans who will run a mile away from actual bread or butter.
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Quick Joris. Write her out of you will while you’ve still got time. And get another one of those Stuff deeply investigative jonolists to follow Her every move. Just to make sure she hasn’t got some sort of hidden agenda We (the public) should all know about. Don’t be fooled. There are conspiracists and egotistical wankers now behind every corner looking to promote themselves even if it means trading on your name. One false move and you could be completely munted
I think we need to rethink the idea that wokeness is leftwing. I always thought the left was supposed to be champions of the working class but lately I see woke arguments being used as an excuse for the middle class to beat up on working class blokes. I worry that wokeness might now be a disguise for class prejudice.
I saw this coming 20 years ago when I was involved with a couple of activist campaigns, it was clear even then that “educated” liberal activists had a real disdain for working class people and now it’s morphed into all out war on anyone who’s deemed inferior because they can’t get their pronouns right.
It’s sad because the battles my generation fought to dismantle prejudice have been twisted into a new type of judgementalism – they totally remind me of the morality campaigners of the 20th century, using righteousness as a cover for spitting judgement and hate.
A lot of working class people have worked out that the old leftist institutions don’t serve them anymore but I’m still waiting for them to work out that running into the arms of the right wasn’t the answer.
The right doesnt care about the working class but the left, who have become the woke, actually hate them and actively attack everything they stand for.
The bureaucrats are in charge of the asylum.
Who do you want workers to vote for?
Stuff wisely closed off readers’ comments to Julia de Bres’s column after a single irrelevant comment on the difference between ‘literally’ and ‘figuratively’.
De Bres herself undermines her academic pretensions by appropriating the word ‘progressive’ for ‘the Left’ (undoubtedly of the ‘woke’ rather than proletarian variety), implicitly denying the possibility that non-woke people might think themselves progressive too.
‘Whereas those on the Left originally used “woke” to describe their progressive ideals, they can scarcely use it any more as it has attracted such negative connotations.’
Also the reason why The Standard has gone downhill. It used to be a great blogsite to witness the free exchange of ideas between commentators. It used to be a site where you could reasonably sift through the more outlandish comments which would be rebutted by the more rational commentators.
But ever since “weka” took control, every comment now requires a “link or youre banned” TS has certainly gone downhill. Weka exemplifies the worst of the woke excesses, in my opinion. If I were to make that comment over there, I’d be required to furnish links and engage in a mindless circle of doom with “weka” nitpicking their way to endless obfuscation. It’s a terrible place these days.
It’s why I enjoy reading TDB comments. A free exchange of ideas which is no longer allowed on TS unless verified and reputable (in the minds of the moderators) sources are used .
Keep it up TDB.
I suspect actual mental illness is a feature for some of the mods there.
I looked at The Standard not long after reading the Daily Blog which was many years ago & they were downhill even then so I never went back. I guess they would have had the occasional good article over that time but I have not missed them.
Woke is very simply, ideologies that see society as a series of identity based oppressor/oppressed groups (race, sex, gender, sexuality etc) with the associated value judgements of privileged/victim (sinful/sanctified) irrespective of personal history. It lacks a solid socio-economic analysis that isn’t downstream of identity.
This simplistic religious worldview combined with imperative to fight injustice gives rise to a kind of anti-politics where advancing anyone who isn’t white, male, cis, straight, right-handed feels highly progressive but does nothing to challenge underlying neoliberal power. This makes it incredibly easy to game the system giving rise to virtue theatre, while adding to cultural polarisation between people who have more in common with each other than not.
Woke is a cuckoo in the progressive nest, sadly the building backlash may throw the baby out with the bath water, the baby and rubber duck, making genuinely progressive politics unpalatable for a generation.
I am curious about what you think is a simplistic religious worldview? While there are different religions there are also differences within the religions & even the favorite end-time book for Christianity tells us that the last choice will be between forced worship & true worship with both sides thinking they are correct (deception at work) so while they all claim some sort of a God there is nothing simple about the multitude of different beliefs following from that.
@Bonnie
“while they all claim some sort of a God there is nothing simple about the multitude of different beliefs following from that.”
I agree, I am saying that Woke ideology is a simplistic religious world view NOT that all religions are simplistic.
At the risk of massive simplification myself, successful Abrahamic religions/sects tend to balance an emphasis on the upward facing (god, grace, love, forgiveness etc) with the downward facing (devil, sin, punishment etc) and package some wisdom or guidance, in personal life, family life and the wider society within their own context. In short enduring religions need to confer some advantage or personal and collective resilience in order to survive the collision between ideology and reality. They also save utopia for the next life.
“I am curious about what you think is a simplistic religious worldview?”
There are multiple characteristics including the emphasis on ONLY an upward or downward aspect (Woke emphasis is sin and punishment). A black and white value judgement of people or groups such as a faith based assumption that the degree of privilege (sin) or victimhood (sanctity) can be determined by intersectional group identity. Fragility in the collision between ideology and reality, such as the elevation of victimhood as the key quality that confers social status and clout (as opposed to say dignity or competence) which seems tuned to promote mental illness, charlatanism and social division.
This seems to be all about women getting on and pushing men aside. Pretty light stuff but Ron Burgundy v Veronica Corningstone. For those who need a laugh and have a good supply of popcorn and some beers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3tKJoidT_o
Anchorman The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) Theatrical Trailer