Anti-wokeness is bigger than wokeness
On a critique that's got out of hand
Upton Sinclair observed that it is difficult to get a man to understand something if their salary depends on them not understanding it; we might update this to ‘It is difficult to get someone to adjust an idea if the idea has proved commercially lucrative for them.’
This thought comes to mind when I observe the vast ecosystem of anti-woke commentary, podcasts and events which have sprung up in opposition to the phenomenon of extreme social justice politics – a response which, while correct in its initial diagnosis, now needs revising in face of developments in the discourse within progressive politics, and may now be inhibited by audience capture from doing so.
There is no doubt that the advent of such heterodox forums met a vital need; in summer 2020, when Andrew Sullivan was being fired from New York magazine for being asked to change the word ‘riots’ to ‘social unrest’ when describing riots, it was vital to have tolerant and pluralistic spaces to discuss what was going on and the evident change in manners in the progressive sphere. After all, just discussing things in an open manner had become excommunicable online and off.
Many of the people tuning in to such platforms back then were, like myself, by and large progressives, just ones opposed to a politics we saw as illiberal and counterproductive. What was happening, and still is to a degree, is that positions in arguments were becoming adopted as the pre-conditions for discussion, so you’d have a debate predicated on the notion that ‘Opposing police reform condones injustice’ rather than ‘Let’s discuss policing’. As the circle of what was acceptable had been drawn so tight – as is normal on a moral crusade – the numbers of people finding themselves outside of it increased too. It is a little, to use an analogy, like all discussions about The Beatles had to start from their best album being ‘Revolver’, and there were now actual social penalties for preferring ‘Rubber Soul’.