It’s really kind of pathetic that people who aren’t even operating in good faith are so damn good at completely capturing and re-defining words/phrases that originated on the left.
It speaks to the impotence of the left to be unable to control their own fucking narratives while the right-wing jack booted thugs are able to twist the narrative with seemingly no effort at all or attempt to even make their false narrative make sense.
See: COVID and “My Body, My Choice.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination”. Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.
The phrase stay woke has been present in AAVE since the 1930s. In some contexts, it referred to an awareness of social and political issues affecting African Americans. The phrase was uttered in recordings from the mid-20th century by Lead Belly and, post-millennium, by Erykah Badu.
I guess the history of the word in the black community doesn’t matter? Because racists co-opted it, we have to wipe away the black history of this phrase? Because @Custoslibera@lemmy.world seems to be implying the history of the phrase does not matter, because of how it is used now by fascists operating in bad faith.
I hear what you’re saying, but if I may provide an extreme example… Try wearing a sauvastika in the western world these days and what do you think the response will be? Once a symbol of abundance and prosperity became the most prominent hateful symbol for generations. Decades after the annihilation of Nazi Germany and the swastika is still given their interpretation. I don’t have an answer as to how to prevent this from happening all over again like it is to a lesser degree with vocabulary such as this is describing.
No, that’s not a good example at all. This is closer to Orwell’s Newspeak, in which the government makes a word mean its opposite in order to force a change to the way people think.
A more relevant example is the use of the term “fake news.” The term was originally coined to talk about Trump making up “facts” on the fly that were completely disconnected from reality. Then Trump started using the term to refer to news articles he didn’t like.
He was even asked at one point if by “fake news” he meant the story wasn’t true. He said no - he meant he thinks it’s not something the media should be talking about, true or not.
For his fans and for the media in general, it’s come to mean “false,” but that’s an inversion of the original meaning, which is that Trump was inventing “facts,” mutated to Trump thinking the media shouldn’t be reporting on his extensive dealings with Russians, and finally being interpreted as challenging whether those fully documented and verified meetings even really happened.
You’re not wrong.
I did completely gloss over the fact this term existed long before it was co-opted by the right.
I’m wrong about that for certain.
If I was to make an excuse I suppose it would be that I just don’t hear leftists using this term much in its original form. It has been twisted and hijacked and that is sad.
Maybe we should take it back but IMO I’d rather just call an issue what it is rather than create umbrella terms that encapsulate a variety of really complex topics.
If it’s a feminist issue it’s a feminist issue.
If it’s a representation issue it’s a representation issue.
If it’s a systemic racism issue it’s a systemic racism issue.
I’d rather we call it what it is than ‘woke’ but fully open to criticism of this position based on the fact this is ignoring its origin.
You’re also not wrong, it is widely used on the right to discredit it.
I appreciate your thoughtful reply, and I hope you didn’t feel like I was trying to act like you’re a bad person or something. I’ve definitely done similar things, and glossed over origins. I guess I was just thinking about it, and trying to not minimize the history of it.
Also, considering black Americans are only something like 12% of the total population, of course more right wingers are using it because there’s sadly apparently more shitty right-wing dinguses in the US than there are black people. Which means traditional use of “woke” is simply just drowned out by the right.
Anyway, cheers.
Haha no I didn’t think you were saying I’m a bad person.
I honestly don’t mind if you did, I’ve been called much worse.
I’m genuinely appreciative of being called out. Challenge what anyone says IMO.
I really was ignorant of how far back the term was used (I was aware of the 2010’s usage etc) so it’s important context for me to learn this.
So much of black American culture is squashed and by me saying that ‘you shouldn’t use woke because right wingers use it’ is in some ways me being racist or at least culturally imperialist.
To be clear though that wasn’t my intent when I made up my original comment about ‘woke’ I was really just expressing my frustration that the right have adopted it so wholeheartedly seemingly every time it’s mentioned it’s always a ‘wink wink nudge nudge’ you know what we really mean when we say it and I’m pissed off about it to the point whenever I hear anyone use the term I immediately try to get to the bottom of what they really mean when they use it because invariably it’s the racist/sexist/xenophobic etc usage rather than the originally intended one.
If it’s a feminist issue it’s a feminist issue.
If it’s a representation issue it’s a representation issue.
If it’s a systemic racism issue it’s a systemic racism issue.
I see how that makes sense on the surface. In effect, though, intersectionality is a vital thing to keep in mind.
Otherwise we end up fighting the same enemies separately, basically wasting time, energy and public attention by competing against each other when we should be cooperating.
Yes you’re correct.
I have read and had to cite multiple times Crenshaw’s paper on intersectionality so I should have been clearer with my language and known better.
What I should have said is I want specificity in the language of describing who and what problem is trying to be addressed so it could very well be a feminist, systematically racist issue affecting African American women, rather than simply ‘it’s woke’.
I’d rather just call an issue what it is rather than create umbrella terms that encapsulate a variety of really complex topics.
while i like this approach of calling things by what they are, i dont know if it helps with the problem at hand or is even achievable.
critical race theory, while not necessairily being immediatly obvious in its meaning, is relatively specific and that still did not stop rightist from making it up to be some big evil. i doubt that even something direct like “fighting systemic racism” could not be coopted.
about the achievability, social justice causes have a very obvious relationship, highlighted even more by discussions of intersectionality. i think people will keep using umbrella terms cor these causes because they make it easier to communicated valued quickly and find people sharing these values.
‘Woke’ wasn’t defended by the left b/c the AAVE community didn’t want white people using it.
So the only white people that used it were the ones that didn’t care about the opinions of black people.
racists literally intentionally and vociferously assert their conviction that the black community doesn’t matter, so, yes literally that. if something originated in the black community, or was prominent in black history, that makes it MORE susceptible to being hijacked by fascists, because that makes it a tantalizing target to them. not only do the ethnonationalist scum get to steal something, they ALSO get to debase and undermine one of their favorite targets while they do so. of fucking course they’re going to hijack it.
…and that means we should just let them?
Because it seems about 800 or so people agreed with the statement in the OP, which is that “woke” is a garbage word only used by fascists… which in itself is a statement that debases and undermines a right wing target (black history/AAVE). The original post is ostensibly written by a “leftist” based on the things they clearly support, but they’re taking a black phrase with a long history, and saying only fascists use that word.
I’m saying the left is being complicit by letting them, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.
Who the fuck is WE? There’s no solidarity on the left. The plurality is more interested in eating each other alive for clout, making enemies for no good fucking reason, and brainlessly applying the no true scotsman fallacy except “no true leftist”. I so fucking desperately wanted to believe there was actually some kind of community here, but every time ANYONE gets into a position where they might be able to organize something greater than themselves the FUCKING crab mentality kicks in and they got DOGPILED. And not an insignificant part of this is driven by sock puppets operated by actual right wingers who are vapidly parroting leftist aesthetics, whipping up a rabid frenzy of torches and pitchforks, and motherFUCKERS on the left KEEP FALLING FOR IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN. At this point every time I see someone on the left who is attacking anyone specific, i just drop them and stop engaging. THIS BEHAVIOR is why ‘we’ fucking lose over and over again.
Instead of trying to punish each other, we should have been working together, but THAT is what “we” have been doing to “let” the right get away with shit. If we don’t have solidarity “we” have NO shot of taking ownership of “our” messaging.
to the contrary, leftists don’t get to have snappy buzzwords UNTIL AND UNLESS there is a “WE” that has enough coordination to clearly define and DEFEND the definition OF those terms. The left needs to stick to PLAIN TEXT. No more bullshit in-group jargon. “we” can’t afford to be an “in-group”.
Okay buddy, while you’re practically screaming at me about lack of solidarity, I’ve had a nice conversation with the person who made the original quote. Get a grip. Maybe it’s you?
First of all I’m sorry it sounded like I was screaming at you.
you’re not the one at fault for the overarching fuckery.
Second of all my complaint is about a standing pattern of behavior, not specific people, and targeted harassment is the problem. I didn’t call for you–or anyone specific–to be excommunicated and shunned, so it is definitionally a separate issue.
My local political scene is using French, not English nor AAVE. And yet there is a which-hunt in the academia to exclude the “wokes” and the “islamo-leftists”. Sorry if my proximate political realities are more important than etymology.
This is fucking brilliant.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
Those of us on the left needs to be more concerned with our optics and police ourselves better.
Catch-phrases like “all cops are bastards”, “defund the police”, “
math is racist”, “black lives matter”, “trans-women are women” etc., do not help to promote liberal ideologies and push the people on the fence away.For the record, I’m not saying that the ideas behind the words are bad*, but the phrases themselves act as a litmus test; If anyone questions the phrases, the divide has occurred, and they’re a fascist (another word which is used far too often).
Many of these are so easy to correct for, “Reform the Police”, “Black Lives Matter Too” are the most obvious and easy changes.
There are those who’ll say that conservatives are going to complain about it anyway, and many of them are set in stone, but there are far too many people going to the right, as a result of the left making fools of ourselves.
The strength of the right is that they’ll accept anyone who isn’t left. Proud Boys, Neo-Nazi’s, and KKK are tolerated by the right because their strength is in numbers, not ideas.
*I support the ideas behind all of them, but how they are perceived by conservatives is not how they were intended to be understood.
EDIT: I am getting tired of explaining over and over that Liberal ideology and Liberalism are two different things.
The Liberal Parties of Britain and Australia, and the Liberals (Liberalism) of America do NOT hold liberal ideology, which is defined as:
Favoring reform, open to new ideas, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; not bound by traditional thinking; broad-minded. synonym: broad-minded
These are leftist ideals. Leftists are liberal. For the sake of my sanity, please look up the differences between the two before trying to tell me they’re different. I don’t live in America, the word is not synonymous with conservatism in the rest of the world. (With the exception of the Liberal parties in the aforementioned countries, which are oxymoronically named)
Liberal != leftist. Also, the right wing could not care less about optics, because they are the ones who dictate what is acceptable. Why would we play by their rules, especially since they always change them?
Oops, my bad, I forgot liberal means something different in America. I meant it as a synonym for left.
Why would we play by their rules when they always change them?
Common misunderstanding is we’re playing the same game. The game they’re playing is “own the lib-tards”. At the moment, we are scoring own-goals and it’s fucking embarrassing.
And as aforementioned, it’s the own-goals which are causing people to switch sides.
The game the left is playing is “who has the best idea”, which doesn’t matter to the right, because they’re either deliberately taking us out of context, or believing on face value what is being said by those who are consciously misunderstanding.
The only way to win both games is to stop giving them ammo and present our ideas with a modicum of sanity.
Well then you shouldn’t use them as synonims because they are fundamentally different ideologies.
Again, why would we care about their game and scoring goals in it or not when we know they can move the goalposts at any time? The whole optics game is rigged in their favour, so don’t play. Leftist ideas are sane, they are the ones misrepresenting them as insane, no matter how logical they are. They have massive funding and a giant media machine to push it. Fuck them.
Do what is right. Simple.
Yes, the game is rigged in their favour, absolutely. The problem is that their ideas will not change, they are conservative, they conserve their ideas.
It’s the responsibility of the ones who can change, to be smarter about it. If we sink to their level, we are no better than them.
Progressives are smarter, but we’re not acting like it. That’s why I’m saying we need to be better at policing our own, it’s all about mitigating needless stupidity.
Also, outside of America, liberal and leftist are essentially synonymous, so that’s why I used it. But it’s my fault for not remembering America makes a very different distinction.
European here. They are absolutely not synonymous. Where I grew up liberals are the right wing, with socialists on the left and religious party on the center.
That’s the liberal party, same in Australia.
However, when I say liberal I mean it as an ideology, which is very much leftist:
You conveniently cut out the next definition in your page where it says that it is related to liberalism.
And the leftism ideologies isn’t simply being open-minded. It is actively promoting new ideas and policies that benefits the citizens. This is why we use the term progressive.
Liberal is firmly center right on the political compass and even the definition you post ad nauseum is indicative of that.
How are we not acting smart by saying “black lives matter” and “trans women are women”? These are great, simple and to the point slogans.
The only way they can be seen as controversial is of you don’t agree with these statements because you believe that black lives dont matter and that trans women aren’t “real women”. So that would make you a right-winger.
You hit the nail on the head.
Black Lives Matter invoked a response which was “All Lives Matter” - it drowned out the sound of the cause to those who aren’t initiated.
“Trans-women are women” naturally begs the question of what a real woman is and implies trans-women are real-women. Those on the left don’t have a problem with this, but those on the right smell something deceptive happening.
The whole point of what I’m getting at is that there are moderate right-wingers who have been convinced by those more malicious right-wingers that the left is stupid because they say stupid things.
This is a war of optics, it’s why the right is parroting the same crimes to Biden, what Trump was accused of.
I really don’t think there’s anything controversial about saying the progressives need to continue to make progress.
Liberals are right-wingers all around the world, not only in america.
I know you probably mean well, but guess what? I do not care about how right-winger feels and I will not water down my opinions to please them.
I don’t want to get into an argument about semantics, but liberal does not mean right wing.
It isn’t about pleasing them or playing by their rules. It’s about not giving them ammo to shoot your comrades.
Liberalism is a pro-free market Capitalist idea centered on the ideas of individual liberty. This is right wing. It isn’t fascism, but it’s also not leftist.
The divide between left and right is who you think should own and control the Means of Production: the Workers, or Capitalists.
I’m honestly shocked at how many times I’ve needed to explain this, it’s quite a bother.
In America, liberal = Liberalism. I get it.
I never said Liberalism*, I said liberal. Outside of America, liberal colloquially means those pertaining to the liberal ideology (not the liberalism ideology). Refer to the dictionary definition above for what the liberal ideology is.
*(Nevermind I did say liberalism in a parallel post. Again, I’m not from America, but in context with the screenshot of the definition it’s pretty clear I’m referring to liberal ideology)
No, liberalism means liberal, even outside America.
Well, the said liberals have defunded schools, hospitals, trains, retirement and anyknd of welfare here in the name of “being opened to new ideas”, so it’s a bit more than semantics. Sorry, I don’t want to be associated with liberalism.
Liberal bourgeois are a significant political force since the French revolution - and always opposed people. It is and always was about the freedom of industry barrons and nothing else.
Liberal ≠ liberalism. I’ve had to explain this so many damn times in this thread it’s beginning to make me nutty.
Look at the definition above. Those are leftist ideals, very different from those who are American Liberalism fanatics.
That’s not at all what they said. Also, FY. We pay cops WAY too fucking much.
I don’t know why people are assuming that I’m in disagreement with them about most aspects of what I said.
I am not implying that cops should not be reformed, or have their funds recalculated (on this point I have no opinion because I don’t live in America).
I’m confused to what I missed in responding to the post above. What did I misunderstand?
Not a single person on the left has ever said math is raciat. That was something Tucker Carlson wholesale made up after we started asking why black kids did worse in school. As for “black lives matter” I’d say that’s pretty self-evident, and the only possible rebuttal (“don’t white lives matter too?”) has a one sentence counter (“obviously. but white lives aren’t under threat right now.”)
More to the point, respectability politics in general is a trap. We could have better slogans, that’s true, especially in the “getting people on our side” phase, but compromising what we believe in to be more palatable to moderates, even in the slightest, is unacceptable. “Sure, I’m cool with trans people (maybe I’m even trans myself), but neopronouns are where I draw the line” is their in. Once conservatives see that we admit some point is too far to our side, once they see the bubble of people we protect can shrink, they won’t stop until it’s shrunk all the way.
I stand corrected, though it says a lot that I believed that there would be a group from the left making that claim.
Yes, says a lot about where you source your information and that you don’t fact check enough.
Nobody fact checks enough. I’m sure you’re wrong about things every day. There’s no shame in admitting I was wrong, so cool your jets.
Case and point: your claim liberal ≠ leftist.
You’re wrong about that. I’m not going to hang shit on you for being wrong, but it is hypocritical.
I wouldn’t go so far as calling those people leftists (same as tankies aren’t leftists) but “math is racist” is definitely a thing that happens. People were suing in Canada that the tests to become accredited as teacher includes maths tests, and because some statistic somewhere showed that black folks score statistically lower on maths, they claimed that the requirement to pass it is racist. That completely ignored that they could re-take the test as often as they pleased and that plenty of education was given to prospective teachers that enabled them to pass those tests. A lower court agreed with the claim of racial discrimination, the constitutional court then struck it down pretty much saying “lulwut” in legalese.
No, maths is not racist. The people claiming it is racist were the racists here, thinking that being black makes you somehow inherently incapable of passing those tests, so much that you can’t even pass them with studying. Also I bet the disparity in maths scores by skin colour vanishes if you control for socio-economic status but the complainants would’ve needed maths to understand that so they didn’t.
OTOH, optically those kinds of fucks are associated with leftism and I’d say it’s important to openly respond to that kind of silliness with “lulwut” before the courts get around to doing it.
As to black lives matter: I think it was a strategic mistake to oppose “all lives matter”. The slogan, that is, not the racist fucks. Instead, it should’ve immediately been appropriated by the movement precisely to define it and to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that you don’t mean “non-black lives don’t matter”, which is understandably a reading lots of people had because they’re projecting their own racism, or just racist realism.
“Sure, I’m cool with trans people (maybe I’m even trans myself), but neopronouns are where I draw the line”
Neopronouns are an enby thing, not trans and yes I’m completely fine with calling you they/them and have no issues with your ingroup using as many different pronouns as there are members, but I’m not going to fucking remember all of them. I very much draw a hard, red, line at “difficult on purpose” as that would validate people’s vulnerable narcissism, “prove that you don’t hate me by jumping over random hoops I come up with”. Leftism is not the defence of maladaptive personality traits.
Just to shoot myself in the foot, the meaning behind “math is racist” is a nuanced discussion, but it wasn’t the left who distilled the idea down to “math is racist”, it was Fucker.
My problem is with phrases which fail to capture the meaning behind the words, phrases which are vague or easy to strawman, and phrases which are needlessly imflammatory.
There are many more which bother me but I’m drawing a blank. Thanks metacognition
Conservatives would not change their minds. They listen to whatever their talking heads tell them, and they would turn that around and make a counter protest. That’s all conservativism is.
There are no “sensible” right-wingers, they’ve had their values thoroughly corrupted by a media-machine designed to split the worming class against itself. Changing optics would do nothing, so instead the left should focus on continuing grassroots efforts.
Also, liberals are not leftists, liberalism is pro-capitalism.
I’m feeling like you’re deliberately misunderstanding me.
The people I’m appealing to are centrists. The last thing we need are more votes for Trump. It was too close last time, and it’ll be too close this time too.
Liberals are centrists, and they voted for Biden. Fascists are voting for Trump, not moderate right-wingers. What democrats need to appeal to is leftists, who they have largely scorned.
“Black Lives Matter Too”
Only someone operating in bad faith would claim this isn’t what “Black Lives Matter” means.
That’s the entire Right. You cannot win them on the grounds of good-faith, truthfulness, or humanity because their politics is solely about power. Conservative politics are the politics of abusers—litterally everything they wish to “conserve” within society includimg “tradition” is their freedom and ability to abuse. That’s it:
Family values is not about creating healthy families, it is about patriarchy and the right of the parents to abuse their children.
Defending the sanctity of marriage is about defining LGBTQ people out of legal rights and entitlements.
School choice is about controlling what ideas not just their children are exposed to but their neighbors as well.
Etc. Etc.
Every conservative position is a bad faith push to further their ability to control the lives others and their ideas deserve neither respect nor a platform.
Please tell me, as a trans nonbinary person, what the respectable version of “trans women are women” is?
You don’t have to say anything like it, no replacement needed.
The phrases like “black lives matter” and “trans women are women” imply their opposite. That is, the only reason they are being said is because they aren’t true. They are said in an attempt to make them true.
When people hold a sign saying black lives matter they aren’t celebrating the great respect that is given to black people. They are protesting that black lives do not in fact matter to some people. They are trying to make it so that black lives matter.
I think the downside of this approach is that it creates a kind of backlash when you make a kind of generalization about a lot of people saying they care less about black lives than other lives. Whether it is true or not, they will feel falsely accused and become defensive, dig in, and look for reasons why they are actually fine.
Similarly with proclaiming that “trans women are women”. It points the finger at anyone who disagrees, saying they are wrong about women. Maybe they grew up with an idea of what the word women means. Now you are telling them they have been using the word incorrectly for a long time, maybe decades. You might even accuse them of transphobia or bigotry based on a disagreement over semantics. If they feel this is unfair they will not be won over to your cause.
You might say indignantly “what how can you say the it is not true that trans women are women?”. Well, let’s think for a minute about what it takes for that statement to be true. For that statement to be true, it would have to be the case that most of the time you see, hear, or read the word “women” it refers to cis and trans women using the recent idea of self-identification of gender rather than the prior one.
If we had reached that point, then the statement would be true, but also it would be totally uninteresting to make the statement. It would be like saying “women are also human” or something (hopefully) uncontroversial.
As for how to get there, I’m not sure.
Maybe more inclusive language like “get to know a trans person before you judge” would push people to take a step that is known to reduce transphobia. Or “treat trans women with dignity” as a way to evoke a person’s gentler nature? Or “if she looks like a woman and talks like a woman, don’t be rude, treat her like a woman”? Kind of random ideas there, though.
I don’t know the right answer, but the nasty rhetoric and accusations people glibly throw around online to degrade and vilify people who aren’t happily jumping on board the trans movement train…I personally think it’s divisive and unproductive. It’s going to lose potential allies rather than recruit them.
You’re advocating for respectability politics. We have to be nice to the people who hate us to try to convince them to be nice to us. If that’s the game you want to play, you can. But it certainly hasn’t achieved victory for anyone yet. You know what has achieved change? Protesting. Being loud. Telling people when they’re wrong. Not putting up with the bullshit.
You’re advocating for assimilation, while what we want is liberation.
I feel like you’re making some assumptions here about what I’m “advocating” for. You don’t know me and I don’t think it helps your cause to think you know people well that you actually don’t know at all.
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They know they can’t afford to go completely mask-off just yet.
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Good news! Many do openly hate feminism and the LGBT community?
Oh, fuck, that’s not good news at all.
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Woke is an extremely useful term in for identifying fascists, neo-fascists, christofascists, and their enablers and sympathizers. The moment you use the term “woke” unironically I know you’re a fucking idiot.
Woke used to be a positive term. It referred to people who had their point of view expanded or changed so that they felt more awake than they had before.
Woke used to mean enlightenment.
Woke used to be followed by up and it meant to stop sleeping.
The term originated from the black civil rights. It was originally used by Marcus Garvey, then again by black mine workers in 1940, and was generally meant to being aware of social and structural chains binding black people from freedom and equality.
Leave it to US right-wingers to coopt a black rights term to mean something they hate.
Edit: I originally had “If I remember correctly,” at the beginning, but then I remembered I had an archive spanning the majority of human history at my fingertips and just looked it the fuck up.
Woke used to mean aware of systemic mechanisms of privilege and oppression in society. I had to stop using it unironically because it turned into a white power derisive buzzword.
To be fair, it still refers to awareness and sympathy for those who suffer from systemic injustice. It’s just wrong according to hate-driven pro-authoritarian movements to sympathize with outsiders.
Current use of woke as a term of contempt is an admission if bigotry.
Meanings of words and the way they are used change over time especially when their is an active movement to change the meaning to harm others. I have no idea if woke could be taken back by left for its original purpose or if it’s too far gone but OOP is not wrong. That is how the word is used now most of the time. This doesn’t make its original definition irrelevant but it does make it difficult to use around the general public. You can’t simply ignore a co-opt
Perfect. And then next I will screenshot this comment and repost it to 197 or however it works lol.
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That’s but one of the redefined meanings. Originally it was closer to “watch out for racist cops”
The overbearing censorship of any idea that doesn’t wholeheartedly agree with those of the community moderators is toxic af
grok
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