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Comment by clusterfish | Hacker News Reader

Assuming the US:

Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left? I don't.

Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? I know very few. Almost all of them who speak on the topic, speak in unequivocal support of "woke" ideas and talking points.

If "the left" doesn't want to be equated with the woke culture, they should publicly and consistently disown it. You know, in the same manner as they demand that conservatives disown Trump and his crowd to not be counted as racists.

It's in everyone's power to start extinguishing the extremes. Until then, I'll take silence on your nearest extreme as your tacit approval of it.

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> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?

Certainly. The majority really. That's in the Netherlands, but compared to the vocal internet crowd most people I know who vote on parties left of the political compass worry about climate, animal and human welfare, and inequality. Rarely will someone go all 'woke' and demand changes like this.

That's in the Netherlands

Haha, GP specifically assumed US in the first line of his comment and then got responses from the Netherlands and twice from UK. Yeah, it's largely an American phenomenon so far but I wouldn't be too happy about it because American culture exports these things all over the world and Hollywood is among the most woke.

While you're protesting this notion on HN, plenty of your countrymen are learning English from some of the wokest trash on Netflix.

Ha I saw that too. But there’s nothing European HN users love more than commenting with their super well-informed takes about the US, so it should have been expected.

Yeah, the US is such an exceptional country that you can only have opinions about it when you're actually American - I hope you do see that this view is rather short sighted? Especially given that the US itself has no qualms with interfering in foreign politics all over the world.

The 800 pound gorilla at the edge of the world, you can have opinions.. but we are the motherfucking show!

Shit show you mean

Doesn't matter as long as you are watching. The opposite of love is not hate, its indifference. Hate is just misconfigured love.

I think you just proved the GP's sarcastic point.

The reason we chafe at this is because those opinions usually distill and treat us as a singular group. Like one of us saying “the British believe,” for example, prefaced behind something the Welsh and English disagree on.

Not your fault, though. Our internal borders are meaningful. We lie to ourselves that they aren’t, and the rest of the world goes with that. Minnesota, Michigan, and Mississippi may as well be different countries for all they have in common.

those opinions usually distill and treat us as a singular group

Whereas US' opinions on foreigners are always balanced, well-nuanced and fair?

It’s ironic that you did exactly what I mentioned is the problem while responding to a comment where I pointed out I’m aware of, and sensitive to, subtle cultural differences within Britain. I’m at least n=1 for giving a nuanced shit about people outside our borders, but that didn’t fit your reductionist narrative. I get it, but I don’t respect it.

Perhaps they chipped in because GPs phrase "Assuming the US" is not a very clear way of saying they want to talk specifically and exclusively about the US, or they thought it fair to broaden the discussion?

I don't see how your sweeping generalisation in the last paragraph adds to the considered discussion here either.

So I guess I don't even have to start with Germany, solving all issues changing the gender of all words to something more neutral, right? https://www.dw.com/en/gender-neutral-wording-is-making-germa...

> Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left? I don't.

I'm in the UK so maybe it is different, but lately "woke" is anyone that is seen as an enemy of the far right. Including those who are on the right of the spectrum, but just not as far as those throwing the "woke" label around.

I'm in the UK so maybe it is different, but lately "woke" is anyone that is seen as an enemy of the far right.

I am also in the UK and there is lots of hand-wringing about "the extreme far right" but if you gently probe what people mean by "extreme far right" they mean "Brexit" or "not electing Jeremy Corbyn".

I expect in a few months the term "ultra extreme far right" will enter the lexicon, and we'll keep adding superlatives as the term "right-wing" becomes more and more diluted and gradually encloses the entire population except for a few Momentum die-hards.

> if you gently probe what people mean by "extreme far right" they mean "Brexit" or "not electing Jeremy Corbyn"

Bollocks. For starters, Brexit had support on the far-end of the left, who see the EU too liberal, e.g. https://www.ft.com/content/692f2578-fcbd-11e5-b5f5-070dca6d0... (RMT comes to mind since I work in that sector)

I've certainly seen many outside the Momentum bubble being labelled 'Tory' (e.g. Lib Dems as 'yellow Tories', Blair/Starmer as 'red Tories', etc.), but you're speaking pure hyperbole.

"Extreme far right" is reserved for the likes of NationalFront/BNP/UKIP/BritainFirst/BrexitParty/Reform/whatever they're calling themselves these days (plus their goons like EDL, DFLA, People's Front of Judea, Judean People's Front, etc.)

It saddens me to see this sort of word-muddying (especially on HN), since it makes it easier to deflect this sort of crap:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_UK_Conservative_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia_in_the_UK_Conserv...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_UK_Conserv...

(Not forgetting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_UK_Labour_... to avoid the knee-jerks; although that's probably not dismissed as 'people call everything "extreme far right" these days')

the likes of NationalFront/BNP/UKIP

By putting BNP and UKIP in the same list you have just proved my point.

Is Rustie Lee "ultra extreme far right" in your opinion? https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/who-is-rustie-le...

The distance between UKIP and Far Right is not a wide gap:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/03/new-ukip-membe...

Brexit party? Extreme far right?

Yes, for a few years the Brexit Party was the I'mNotRacistBut Party. It looks like they've now been rumbled (hence becoming unelectable), so they're rebranding as Reform, which might last for another few years.

The previous I'mNotRacistBut Party was UKIP (featuring Stephen Yaxley-Lennon as advisor for racially-charged issues, and denounced as racist 24 years ago by its own founder)

Before that the BNP was scoring a few percent in general elections.

And around and around it goes, all the way back to Mosley's blackshirts.

Nigel Farage left UKIP for that very reason. The Brexit party is fairly moderate and would be described as center-right, just shy of the conservatives.

The Brexit Party was just a face-saving rebrand for UKIP. It didn't take long for the mask to start slipping, with the party's founder resigning after retweeting racist posts from far-right figures.

Of course, Farage himself may denounce such things:

> I set the party up, she was the administrator that got it set up.

( https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/12/former-ukip... )

Which is an interesting contrast to his remarks when the party was being formed:

> This was Catherine's idea entirely - but she has done this with my full knowledge and my full support.

( https://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/the-new-ukip-nige... )

Friendly reminder that it's very easy, and very common, for racists to disavow their racism when it's expedient to do so (e.g. an extreme example https://youtu.be/zcoYKuoiUrY?t=1568 )

>I am also in the UK and there is lots of hand-wringing about "the extreme far right" but if you gently probe what people mean by "extreme far right" they mean "Brexit" or "not electing Jeremy Corbyn".

Yeah, the funny thing about the UK is hearing from a country where the center-left party bombed an election precisely because it couldn't throw away its woke wing on two big "woke" issues (Brexit and antisemitism), and hearing that "anyone who's not far-right is woke". Well no. Keir Starmer won his place as head of Labour precisely by his willingness to reject further coalition with the "wokes", when Corbyn had been unwilling to really oppose them at all.

It feels odd to portray the 2019 election as lost on "wokeism", or that Corbyn let that policy take over. By the end, Corbyn was the target of that crowd, being branded as an anti-semite for what amounts to "being too critical of Israel", and "being leader while being seen as too soft on others accused of anti-semitism".

Aside from that, the 2019 election was really a Brexit election. Labour failed to pick a side, and the Conservatives were promising to get Brexit done and were early enough in the negotiations that they could promise it would be a soft brexit or maximum brexit depending on which crowd they thought would hear their comments.

Totally agree. Everyone who's not far right is woke and everyone who isn't far left is racist, if you listen to Twitter etc. That's intentional, gotta make moderates afraid to speak up, leaving the discussion to extremists, bot farms and professional opinion havers.

But I was talking about a more agreeable definition of "woke". Many people on the left are very comfortable with this subculture, just like many people on the right are very comfortable with Trump. I very rarely hear people on the left saying anything against the woke culture, so in my mind it's very reasonable to equate or at least strongly affiliate the two.

Many people are not ok with either. We just left social media a decade ago but still somehow have to put up with its bullshit leaking out all over the internet.

What is "far right"? Is there "near right"? "middle-reach right"? 'Far right' is just a BS title used to 'adjust' the perception of people that anyone not left wing is crazy extremist nutjob.

> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?

Yes. The "healthcare pls" meme springs to mind as a trivial, but very widespread, example https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=healthcare%20pls%20...

There is this letter that criticizes cancel culture:

https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

Of course, the woke left views somehow views this as infighting, and somehow trying to primary away more conservative Democrats somehow is not.

> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? I know very few. Almost all of them who speak on the topic, speak in unequivocal support of "woke" ideas and talking points.

This article we are commenting on is an example of this.

Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?

Yes, some big names here: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

(cue the no-true-scotsman argument how e.g. Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker or Margaret Atwood aren't really "left").

Many of them have gotten flak for signing it, too.

EDIT:

>" Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?"

Bill Maher is a fairly prominent liberal who has been vehemently anti-woke. This is regular fodder on his Friday night HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher as well in his regular standup comedy.

Bill Maher would often be considered on the left based on the US paradigm.

The question wasn't "Do you know any people on the left who aren't woke?" The question was "Do you know of anyone NOT on the left who is woke?" I.e., wokeness is a problem of the left.

I pasted the wrong quote from the OP, fixed.

> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?

I know of quite a few prominient anti-woke left-leaning people in the UK: Helen Pluckrose, Andrew Doyle, Nick Cohen, Kathleen Stock, and so on.

Well everything in the US currently is extremely polarized. Very few people on either side are going to criticize groups on their side, as they are spending all their energy fighting the other side.

and even pointing out even that overlapping similarity will get you ostracized from ..... both sides

(but neither side seems to know the other has even that little bit in common)

> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?

There's a lot of them. But do you really expect them to do it all the time? Disavow every single misinformed but loud person? (Why don't you actively speak against Ted Bundy - are you supporting serial killers?)

For example I can argue with my mom who says she's a feminist because women are better than men. Or I can spend that time preparing a lesson for the local programming club for kids. Why would I choose the first option? Who would benefit?

Disavowing Trump is massively different - a single, elected person with power. Taking that position and bringing it to their local representatives would be worth the effort.

What is this "the left"? Bernie Sanders, by far the most left leaning of the democratic presidential candidates was hugely against the narrative that Trump voters were racists. Noam Chomsky has an extremely long track record of being extremely consistent in his support of free speech and open debate in a way that the most obsessive first amendment types would rarely stick to.

Amongst the more left leaning people I know there was a hugely negative attitude towards the CNN/MSNBC style coverage of the past 4 years that fixated on Trump and conspiracy theories and gotcha stories.

Every side is gonna be smeared, it's much more important to look at what they're actually trying to offer people. And offering nothing but vague platitudes tends to be worse than offering lies, as Hillary's pretty vapid 2016 campaign showed. This move by github seemed to bring more attention to them working with ICE and the like than anything else that I could see.

$15 min wage was super popular in Florida, Trump won Florida by a significant margin. Had the dems actually offered this obviously popular thing and stood by it that state could've turned out very differently as it'd force Trump to take a side on something that mattered to people.

Even this article that we are commenting on seems to me to be a _leftist_ critique of liberal/moderate virtual signalling, and is calling for them to actually do things that matter for anti-racism.

And the majority of the comments implicitly conflate left and liberal (and thus seem to assume that Joe Biden and Bill Gates are leftists).

>Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left?

The best I've seen is sentiments along the lines of "yeah that's overkill" which is about equivalent to what fiscal conservatives and libertarians were saying about the moralizing christian right back when those clowns ran the show.

People don't generally speak out against people who make their positions look like a reasonable middle ground. Woke crap makes basically every mainstream left position look reasonable by comparison so of course they don't want it to die. It makes them look good.

Hmmm. You typed a whole comment without disavowing the extremists on the right. Should we take your silence as tacit approval?

Of course we shouldn’t. That’s not how any of us should think about other people.

stress is known to make systems less fragile.

The way to improve things is to speak "truth to power", and the moral way to do it is to always "punch upwards".

I've been riling against Trump, Bannon & Co for the past 4 years. Before that I've been vocal about Obama's reign of terror, his broken promises of closing gitmo, and his drone wars. No doubt in my next 4 years I'll be hurling insults against Biden.

There is no need to add disclaimers or enumerating all things that a comment doesn't stand for. Doing so not only makes for "boring reading" but also looks like the person feels very insecure.

>Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left?

Yes. The majority of them are performative liberals.

>Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?

Yes. There is infighting to an extent but it's really not hard to find leftist critiques of what you call woke culture.

>If "the left" doesn't want to be equated with the woke culture, they should publicly and consistently disown it.

I highly doubt bad faith actors would care about what people on the left are doing. Sure hasn't stopped you from mischaracterizing them all this while.

>You know, in the same manner as they demand that conservatives disown Trump and his crowd.

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding as to who "the left" are. The majority of actual (not what passes for American left) leftists will agree that disowning "Trump and his crowd" is the same kind of performative wokeness that you accuse liberals of. Disowning and denouncing for appearances does nothing because it doesn't tackle the root cause that allowed a movement like Trump's or the larger right to come to power.

I didn't mean "disowning" as performative act but as an honest expression of preferences, including in-person and online discussions and voting choices.

The general population publicly expressing their honest moderate views and opposing the extremes is not "for appearances". It's the core of what's missing in today's public debate, dominated by far left/right activists, bot farms, and personalities/celebs.

My point is, the (American) left is justly associated with wokeness because they are its primary visible supporters. Maybe it's because those on the left who don't support it just don't speak up, in which case, my message is: please do. I'm not just going to assume your existence.

Associating the Democrat with "wokeness" is the same as assiociating Republicans with trump supporters and "Storm the Capitol" crowd.

It's an easy way to discredit your political opponent.

Also, i am sightly offended when people call the Democrats "left". I've talked to a real "leftist" (and by that i mean, sightly left on european political board), he felt forced to join the democrat to have a shot at a representative position, and some support for his flyers, but he agreed with my broth: the democrat would be barely center in europe.

And honestly, the far right and the conventionnal right have only themselves to blame for the right of the woke/cancel culture. They are the one who started to open up the overton window, they can't start crying when their politicals opponent do the same.

What is the difference between Democrats the "left" in the US? To me they seem synonymous.

Also, what does "left" in Europe look like? Because I'm surprised to see you say that Democrats in the US "would be barely center in Europe".

There are "left" parties in the US too, like Gloria La Riva's PSL.

The Democrats push for what can at best be termed social democracy, even though real social democracies in Europe would still be to their left after they fulfilled most of their campaign promises. Left right and centre are kind of reductive categorizations but social democracy is left of centre.

>as an honest expression of preferences, including in-person and online discussions and voting choices.

As I mentioned, I've seen plenty of this, but with filter bubbles being what they are, it's hard to fault someone for not coming across them enough.

What I'm saying is that it's not that they (we?) don't exist, more like you don't come across us because of xyz reasons that are getting harder and harder to pinpoint as discourse is manipulated each passing day.

I also broadly agree that nuance is missing in the "modern debate", which causes bad faith interpretations like everyone on the left being either "woke police out to cancel everything you love" or "stalinists looking to establish USSRv2" and everyone in the right being "uneducated white people who don't know what's best for them" or outright Nazis. I wanted to push back against this kind of monolithic interpretation, hence my previous comment.

> ... but as an honest expression of preferences, including in-person and online discussions and voting choices.

Isn't that really dangerous though?

eg if you're unlucky enough to become targeted by some of the more "out there" people, they can do career-and-effectively-life ending things by blowing it out of proportion, getting it in the media, etc.

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