vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Jun 10, 2023 8:02 am
"Wokism is the new white supremacism".
Who is more obsessed with 'race' than wokies? Who bleats ad nauseum that it's a 'great privilege' to be born white? Who decides what 'inclusion' entails ('included' in 'what' exactly?)? Who assumes that 'white' people are the 'default humans' and that it's up to them to 'bestow gifts' on lesser beings because they need 'extra help'? How magnanimous of wokies to kindly give 'lesser mortals' permission to be 'included' in the human race...
My first thought when reading what you wrote is that I was dealing with a quite knotty topic and that I needed to unravel the terms before I could make sense of it. I think I understand what you are trying to get at, but I think the comparison fails for a few reasons. I'll try to explain.
First, white supremacism has to be addressed. White supremacism is, or was, a European category and is tightly bound up in a former anthropology. That is, European man saw himself as different and as superior when anthropological comparisons were made to the peoples he had discovered primarily in the Age of Discovery. The philosophy of colonialism, if I could apply that term, was based in this anthropology.
The fact of the matter is that up until very very recently an average European, and certainly elite Europeans (Aldous Huxley comes to mind) nearly universally saw themselves and interpreted themselves through these anthropological lenses, though they were lenses modified by modernity and modern views. I refer to the Interwar writing of Huxley (for example
Proper Studies: The Proper Study of Mankind Is Man) because it reveals a general view of European man that was common and accepted. That view involved a sense of social and cultural superiority -- though when I employ the word 'superiority' I feel that I am using a dangerous and contaminated word. Inevitably, to refer to something as *superior* to another is potentially, in our present, to implicate oneself in controversy. I can say that one car is superior to another, or one novelist is superior to another, but if I were to make comparisons between one culture and another I would be tending toward that fraught territory.
And as we are all aware it has become completely
thought-criminal to compare one human being or one race to any other. We must recognize (this is my own view) that we are dealing in applied thought-control when we ourselves edit our own thoughts or perceptions and impose on ourselves a (let's say) "politically correct view". Now, why is this? (You might think that by broaching this I am defending a supremacist view but that is not the case. My largest concern is about how thought-control functions today).
To examine these questions is, I admit, to enter a difficult territory. And the first point I'd make is there. And what is that point? That it has been made deeply problematic to think in certain terms that have been vilified and are felt to be *unthinkable thought*.
Now the question is How did this come about? It is here that the issue of "wokism", to use a very imperfect and far too general term, can be brought into the examination. At an essential point one must examine the imposed doctrines and ideology of egalitarianism, and then its modern derivative Equality, Diversity & Inclusion in order to expose the contrast between one ideological assertion and another that countermands it.
So let's say that for a set of generally pretty good reasons the doctrines of supremacism were challenged and contradicted, and we know that a great deal of this shift came about in the aftermath of the Second World War. That is, as a reaction against Nazi and Fascist doctrines. As against those ideologies -- really a set of anthropological assertions -- liberal doctrines grounded in Liberal philosophy were established as the *right & proper* ones.
Wokism and let's say hyper-egalitarianism (finding the right words and terms is difficult and also fraught), though grounded sensibly in at least something liberally defensible, have been modified or is the word distorted? So it seems that all previously defensible categories, categories of perception and understanding that made sense to our forefathers let's say, have now become submerged in guilty shadows. One is forced, to the degree that one accept the tenets of Wokism and hyper-egalitarianism, to quite literally turn against oneself, against one's culture and also against one's civilization. What once could be described (and certainly was described) as the *glorious accomplishments of Occidental civilization* cannot now be seen nor described in such terms. One literally turns against oneself. One is forced, to the degree that one internalizes the doctrine, to undermine one's own validity and, in a definite sense, one's *right to exist*.
Wokism is, at least if seen from the angle I am establishing here, a complex self-consuming ideology deeply rooted (?) in a psychology of self-negation. This seems to me a really interesting territory to explore. But it is, beyond all doubt, extremely fraught.
Who is more obsessed with 'race' than wokies?
Obviously this is very true. And may I suggest that the doctrines of wokism attempt to get hold of and employ the most devastating tools that they can gain access to? That is to say, one's very self-identification. It is easy to see this if we choose an example far outside of our own identification. One possible is, say, Japanese culture, Japanese civilization, and Japanese being at a physical (somatic) level. Which of these identifications would you (for example) allow? and which would you be forced (if you were forced) to deny?
My point is that when one examines "cultural identification" one inevitably arrives at the frontier where self-identification is, in fact, physical and somatic. I will not belabor this point and I hope, at least, that I have exposed
the problematic here. But the point? For us -- if we are European or European descended -- we are not allowed our identifications. Or our identifications have become extremely
problematized. And I can submit (for the sake that it is interesting and the topic is very interesting) a very recent book by Kathleen Belew and Ramón A. Gutiérrez titled
A Field Guide to White Supremacy. (They are actually the editors and the book is comprised of 19 different essays by those who you might, and we might, define as "Wokies".)
Here is
the blurb:
Hate, racial violence, exclusion, and racist laws receive breathless media coverage, but such attention focuses on distinct events that gain our attention for twenty-four hours. The events are presented as episodic one-offs, unfortunate but uncanny exceptions perpetrated by lone wolves, extremists, or individuals suffering from mental illness—and then the news cycle moves on. If we turn to scholars and historians for background and answers, we often find their knowledge siloed in distinct academic subfields, rarely connecting current events with legal histories, nativist insurgencies, or centuries of misogynist, anti-Black, anti-Latino, anti-Asian, and xenophobic violence. But recent hateful actions are deeply connected to the past—joined not only by common perpetrators, but by the vast complex of systems, histories, ideologies, and personal beliefs that comprise white supremacy in the United States.
Gathering together a cohort of researchers and writers, A Field Guide to White Supremacy provides much-needed connections between violence present and past. This book illuminates the career of white supremacist and patriarchal violence in the United States, ranging across time and impacted groups in order to provide a working volume for those who wish to recognize, understand, name, and oppose that violence. The Field Guide is meant as an urgent resource for journalists, activists, policymakers, and citizens, illuminating common threads in white supremacist actions at every scale, from hate crimes and mass attacks to policy and law. Covering immigration, antisemitism, gendered violence, lynching, and organized domestic terrorism, the authors reveal white supremacy as a motivating force in manifold parts of American life. The book also offers a sampling of some of the most recent scholarship in this area in order to spark broader conversations between journalists and their readers, teachers and their students, and activists and their communities.
I got through 1/2 of this book yet I admit to reading it, to a strong degree, against its own grain. That is, I felt I could discern in it a core ideology of radical egalitarianism and much that is expressed through the (Maoist) slogan "equality, diversity, and inclusion".
Who bleats ad nauseum that it's a 'great privilege' to be born white?
In essence? Those who see Occidental and European attainment as evidence of criminality, or so contaminated by criminality and evil that self-identification is rendered
highly problematic.
Who decides what 'inclusion' entails ('included' in 'what' exactly?)?
Since 'inclusion' is a term linked to 'diversity', and if the term diversity is examined closely, the term can be seen for what it in fact is: an attitude or ideology
to end diversity and exclusiveness. Things that are diverse and different are by definition diverse. But to force them into proximity, or to blend one diverse thing with another, is in fact to destroy what is diverse. This is not a defense of social separation! It is simply an examination of a sort of
Orwellian usage.
Inclusion will mean what those who operate and
wield the doctrine or ideology
desire it to mean, because as I say it is actually akin to a weapon (or a tool if you wish a softer term).
Who assumes that 'white' people are the 'default humans' and that it's up to them to 'bestow gifts' on lesser beings because they need 'extra help'?
You would have to modify your sentence a bit for it to make sense to genuine Marxists. Not *default humans* but historical beneficiaries of *oppressive* and *exploitive* historical activities which are, let's say, noticed as still operative in our
present systems -- systemic injustice, systemic oppression, systemic impoverishment.
What was attained criminally must be offered up or *returned* to those from whom it was taken. This is the inner logic of Marxian ideology.
How magnanimous of wokies to kindly give 'lesser mortals' permission to be 'included' in the human race...
I'm unsure how to comment on this or what to say. I am not sure I understand what you mean.
In any case the actual issue in all of this, the really important questions, involve a close examination of the internal, perhaps cloaked or invisible doctrines that operate in Wokism and Critical Theory generally. It requires nearly a master metaphysician to
see the core ideas at work.