Woke and proud: Compassion must never be allowed to go out of fashion | The weaponisation of right-wing insults has been going on for some time as part of a push to create a divisive and distracting culture war

26 comments

  1. I agree with the sentiments of the article, but the word “woke” is too self-righteous to be effective in changing hearts and minds.

    It implies that those prescribing to a different view on what is acceptable to say, do or think are asleep or dozing or unconscious in some way. To an extent that is true, but I would hazard to guess that it is putting off people significantly more than it is converting them.

    “Woke” is also a turn of phrase I originally associated with illuminati, NWO, conspiracy types before its current usage.

  2. Just ignore labels, they’re used as absolutes by those who are easily manipulated. Easily convinced of grand schemes to take their freedoms.

    The same people who will claim a person is _woke_, will also say the same person is a sheep, that needs to _wake up_.

    The words, the labels, they’re meaningless, they could be grunts and mean the same. It’s about conforming, that’s why being woke can be negative, and waking up is positive.

  4. I think the issue here, as is often the case is how the word is being defined. I totally agree with the article that the word ‘woke’ as a pejorative has been weaponized by conservatives to justify all sorts of horrendous policy.

    But as the article says itself. To the left it meant ‘awake to social injustice’. To the right it means:

    “Ideologies that are overzealous, performative and insincere.”

    I’m sure everyone’s seen examples of the latter at some point (especially on Reddit).

    It’s just two contradictory definitions lumped on one word. Both of which you wouldn’t really – as a normal, moral person – disagree with.

    No decent person wants to see social injustice, or to shy away from the issues it still causes today. But at the same time there’s nothing more annoying than people hijacking these issues in an insincere way to virtue signal online.

    Really there should just be two seperate words. So people can debate these topics and know what eachother are talking about.

  5. – Express: [800-ish ‘anti-woke’ headlines](https://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3Awoke+site%3Aexpress.co.uk)

    – Telegraph: [800-ish ‘anti-woke’ headlines](https://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3Awoke+site%3Atelegraph.co.uk).

    – Mail: [over 1000 ‘anti-woke’ headlines](https://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3Awoke+site%3Adailymail.co.uk).

     
    > Repetition makes a fact seem more true, regardless of whether it is or not. Understanding this effect can help you avoid falling for propaganda

    — [*How liars create the ‘illusion of truth’*](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161026-how-liars-create-the-illusion-of-truth), BBC global news.

     
    See also: [*WOKE UP What does being woke mean? Definition and meaning explained*](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10760207/woke-meaning-definition/), from the Sun (wait, what?)

  6. I’m so tired talking to rabid DM reading right wingers like my Dad.

    He revels in being a nasty person.

    Proudly saying racist, transphobic and homophobic things (I’m gay, btw).

    When you call him out in any of it, it’s always brushed away as “oh well I don’t mean you, you’re one of the good ones” etc.

    It bums me out so much to sit and have to listen to his anti-woke rant for the umpteenth time, with him preaching that my trans friends (all of whom he’s met and likes) don’t deserve rights.

    It’s getting to the point I’m deliberately avoiding going to visit him.

  7. Woke, from what I can make out, is a term that describes those self-righteous, pompous, shouting from the roof tops “how wonderful and aware they are and everyone else is a bad bigoted racist” people who actually do feck all but the shouting.

    Whereas the true people who do care and are doing something you’ll never here from or know about.

  8. I’ve always personally defined ‘woke’ politics as being distinct from simple advocacy (even for the same groups).

    I don’t think championing abortion rights is ‘woke’. But pushing a lens of analysis based on ‘The Patriarchy’ is.

    I don’t think racial equality is ‘woke’. But the concept of ‘White Privilege’ is.

    If the culture war is divisive pish (and I am definitely of this view), the ‘woke’ themselves are guilty of handing over the ammunition to – presumably gleeful – right wing actors.

    And all this at the expense of the class-based politics which I identify with.

  9. Woke is just the latest attempt to hold onto the status quo where groups are marginalised and behaviour is meant to never change.

    It used to be ‘political correctness gone mad’

  10. What is creating a cultural war is people telling me what i can and cannot say and can and cannot do when i’m not hurting anyone.

    Jokes about white women? Go for it! Hilarious!

    Joke about black women? Racist misogynist. You should be cancelled!

    What people don’t want is to be forced to accept things they don’t like. That’s what the woke brigade try to do which is why nobody likes them.

    Also worth pointing out it’s a largely online movement driven by social media. In real life hardly anybody throws their views out there trying to control people. Probably because they’d get a smack in the mouth.

  11. I’ve still got family members who will say “ooh they tick a box” the *moment* someone who is not white and cisgendered is on the TV screen.

    We’ve still got a long way to go.

  13. How many people in the UK ever unironically called themselves “woke” in the first place? Maybe a few, terminally online lefties on twitter and other social media platforms.

    But the way right wing media has made it a huge issue, you’re far more likely to come across someone ranting about wokeness than advocating for it. It’s just another culture war bullishit item that the right has imported from the US.

  15. You can’t claim that it’s the Right somehow creating and pushing a Culture War and then defend the people who actively create it. You may identify with the term “woke” based on its dictionary definition, more power to you, others identify it based on the people they interact with and seeing those who advocate it in the media.

    You claim it’s merely a movement against unkindness, bigotry, etc, (for a start, how dare anyone claim they have a monopoly on or at the arbiters of any of those things) when to many it and it’s proponents are some of the most racist, dismissive, and bigoted people out there right now.

    The hypocrisy is what gets on most people’s nerves; for all the pro-woke’s messaging about anti-racism and anti-sexism their attitudes to White people, men, and Christians are absolutely appalling. If the language they direct at these groups were said by anyone else to anyone else it would be a national scandal, but instead whenever this is brought up it’s either dismissed in a mocking way, poorly justified, or ignored.

    There are those, like the DM and others in the boomer press, who go way too far and cringe-inducingly label everything and everything woke, and there are those who are grimly bigoted who’ll do the same, but to claim that one side has a monopoly on compassion and that if you don’t agree with them is tantamount to bring any number of labels they’ve overused into meaninglessness is absurd.

  16. How do I categorise myself – i support Trans people , have friends/colleagues who are trans but don’t support Trans Women competing sports as “women” .

    Am i a woke for supporting Trans and Lgbt people or right winger for not supporting trans women competing as women ??

  17. I was out with some elderly relatives yesterday. And one was complaining that she was behind the times and doesn’t always understand ‘this woke society that we live in’. When asked what she understood woke to mean she didn’t really have an answer. I think that’s part of the problem, I think a lot of people are probably more ‘woke’ than they give themselves credit for, but because the newspapers tell them woke is bad they are in conflict with this enemy that they can’t even define.

  18. Being woke isn’t a problem, but problematising everything possible into some great offence is. You can keep that American culture propaganda to yourself.

    Don’t need to be a part of the “woke / progressive” cult to treat others with kindness.

  20. As far as I can tell, this kicked off when people on the left, accused people who questioned higher than usual immigration of being racist. By labelling them racist, it stoked the fires of zealotry.

    People just wanted a debate about immigration because they were seeing impacts in jobs, housing, school places, and hospital beds.

    Most know that the majority of the issues are down to government policy rather than immigration, and the fact that the Labour of the 70s and tories of the 80s killed off industries but didn’t reinvest in new industry to help communities.

    But to reframe it as “they are all racist” didn’t help their view. Rather than debating and discussing, they accused. And the right were able to harness that and use it to their advantage as they always do. (The right, unlike the left, tend to be WAY better organised!)

    The same with the LGBTQ and BLM issues. Genuine societal issues that marginalised groups had, but if you questioned ANY part of it, you were either a racist, or a trans/homophobe and the debate was shut down. The loudest activists shutting down debates that needed to be had, and the result was people moving farther to the right because they felt abandoned by the left to the middle class. They want to know they’re being listened to and not ignored, as the tories ignored them in the 80s.

    I don’t even think it’s a right / left issue. But rather a centre / left issue. The centre want to discuss and debate, and the left call them bigoted, pushing them to the right.

    It’s made worse when people who seem to genuinely want to fight for justice end up being chancers and opportunists like the leaders of the BLM campaign who used funds to buy mansions etc.

    Both left and right are at fault and it’s only by hearing one another’s concerns and not shutting one another down, that a common ground will be found and a compromise reached on all subjects.

    And fuck me, it needs to. When we can clearly see that it’s the media and the politicians driving wedges into society so we’re fighting amongst ourselves rather than focusing on the real issue of class warfare. Who benefits from the infighting??

    The fucking rich.

  21. I despise the terms left wing and right wing being used so Willy nilly all the time here now. We are becoming very Americanised.

    Most people fall somewhere in the middle and don’t have strong feelings either way. The rest is just wet wipes arguing on the internet who gives a fuck that’s not news. (Aware of the irony of this comment being on the internet before anyone starts 👀)

  23. When the author says “I’m proud to have empathy for my fellow beings.” It actually summarises my problem with identitarians. They think that they have the monopoly on empathy and that their performative gestures are the only way to be supportive or inclusive. Take the rainbow flag having the extra colours being shoehorned in for no apparent reason, that desire to be even more inclusive in fact leads to division and soon it will be seen as racist and transphobic to use the old six coloured flag, save this post because I know it will happen within this decade.

  26. Compassion is the fundamental cornerstone of any civilised society – and species. It is vital for our survival.

    But I, personally, can’t stand the term “woke.” It’s just such a shitty little word that seems to be born from a meme with almost no real substance to it. But who knows, I may be in the minority there.

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