CULTURE+POLITICS

Why You Don’t Need A Watertight Definition Of Wokeism To Dislike It

The broad brushstrokes and baggage of woke ideology

Recently I read an article on Medium in which the author mocked the right for its fierce hatred of ‘wokeism’ despite being often but not always wholly unable to define what it is.

The author claims that the right uses wokeism as some sort of universal bogeyman, to galvanize its own supporters, scare the mainstream and discredit the fundamental issues that the left fights for. Thus, the ‘woke left’ becomes an all-encompassing pejorative that captures everything and anything that rightists happen to hate.

A similar position is taken by multiple outlets, and it can be mind-boggling just how far off the mark right-wing commentators can be.

I am in complete agreement with the claim. This is the modus operandi of many elements on the right.

I don’t wish to malign the author and agree with some of her assertions, in particular with regard to how big business instrumentalises woke ideology to win over groups of all colours, all in the name of the green.

However, the article does provide a useful springboard to make a larger point about how lacking a clear and comprehensive definition of something, which is impossible for many isms and ideologies, does not invalidate all criticism of that thing a priori.

Before we investigate further there are two points to clarify.

The first is that I have sympathy for the woke left. I’m a traditional leftie who believes in socio-economic equality, as much as it is possible, for the health of the economy, the stability of the political system and for nothing other than my pure moral love of my fellow humans. I’m for big government reining in big business and I’m for people and parties, where and when they exist, who strive to make big government a force for good. I’m for a fairer, freer, more environmentally friendly and more equitable society for all and the sort of fundamental changes required to achieve this.

Internationally, I’m a traditional leftie again, mutatis mutandis. I’m anti-imperialist and anti-interventionist and support a conservative foreign policy in order to stave off large-scale war, promote peace and protect liberalism in the countries where it evolved more or less naturally.

In short, I share some, perhaps even many, of the values and convictions of the woke left. Its heart is in the right place more often than not; unfortunately, its head is not.

But just because the right is wrong, it does not mean the woke is right.

Secondly, as referenced above, many on the right use wokeism as a stick to hit society over the head with, to scare and stupefy it, to plant seeds of hate and fear, and to sow a deep distrust of the weakest, the most vulnerable and the most disadvantaged with the express purpose of protecting the strongest, the most secure and the most entitled. Those that do this are scum of the highest order.

But just because the right is wrong, it does not mean that woke is right.

Defining wokeism

There are three points of primary importance here.

The first point is that defining isms, ideologies, big ideas and grand concepts so that all will agree on what specifically constitutes them is an impossibility for several reasons.

Firstly, no single definition will adequately capture all aspects of the phenomenon. Secondly, the greater the impact of the idea, the more it will splinter and subdivide into various offshoots that may be at odds with one another, highlighting and downplaying different elements of the ism. Lastly, ideas mean different things to different people; even proponents of the ideology are likely to diverge on certain core properties.

The second point is, even given the impossibility of arriving at any ultimate final consensus, that does not mean that nobody understands anything at all of what they speak. The core elements are not likely to be swimming off in the ether, beyond the ken of one and all. The general features are likely to be relatively well known and fairly well mapped out.

And the third point pertains to a fallacious form of thought: just because something cannot be defined to the universal satisfaction of all does not mean people cannot like and dislike the sort of values and practices that are closely connected with that thing.

Let’s unbox there three points to let them breathe, so to speak.

1. Defining The Undefinable

Democracy, Dadaism, conservatism, capitalism, communism, existentialism, plutocracy, liberalism, megaloliberalism, libertarianism, fallibilism, ynglism, humanism, Swedenborgianism — dig into any one of these spicy specimens and you’ll find a general outline with many mostly and partly agreed-upon features and simultaneously a whole lot of divergence and haze (for any William Blake fans I highly advise you take a further dive into Swedenborgianism).

My idea, megaloliberalism, which owes much to others as discussed elsewhere, is pretty clear in my head, but I could only trace out its core aspects; I could not provide a sturdy definition that I wouldn’t end up disagreeing with in the end.

Liberalism is all about freedom but that’s even harder to define. Moreover, there is both positive and negative liberty, and liberalism has more branches than you could shake a stick at. It is also highly contextual and even means very different things whether you’re in the UK or the US.

Definitions of democracy tend to either be narrow or broad. The former lack the fullness and spirit of democracy but are far easier to test for, whilst the latter capture the breadth and scope but are wholly untenable in terms real-world evaluation.

So wokeness and wokeism, being so multi-faceted, so pervasive and so omnipresent is not going to be something that can ever be defined without many or even all having some issue with the definition.

The author of the article discussed earlier defined wokeism as: ‘to be aware of societal injustices and forms of oppression’. This might seem like not a bad attempt at first glance but, as another writer pointed out, this is way to broad. He, whilst being a left-leaning liberal, would in no way, shape or form want to associate himself with wokeism, yet, this definition would include him.

It would also include me. Society is highly discriminatory and some groups suffer far more than others, and the goal of any good person should be to make life as fair and equal as possible for all. Yet, I take large issue with a number of treads which run throughout woke ideology.

The crux of the matter is that when the right or anybody else cannot adequately define wokeism, it doesn’t invalidate their criticisms a priori.

I also doubt the author herself would stand by this definition under further scrutiny, as many others likely wouldn’t.

The crux of the matter is that when the right or anybody else cannot adequately define wokeism, it doesn’t invalidate their criticisms a priori. It doesn’t mean their criticisms are right either, but it does mean that they can’t be dismissed out of hand.

Let’s be clear though. If someone says they hate Germany and then points to France on a map to identify the source of their scorn and then proceeds to list off baguettes, Bastille Day and Brigitte Bardot as examples of just why they detest the country with such venom, then they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

So, if some far-right loon conflates the horrors of Covid and then vaccines with wokeism, sees big government and the big woke as the same thing, blames bank collapses on woke ideology and holds steadfast to the idea that the Black Lives Matter protests were caused by critical race theory, then you know you’re dealing with a troglodyte who’s as dumb as they are dangerous.

Nonetheless, the deep flaws of the right says little or nothing about the content of woke thinking.

2. The General Lay of the Land

For all the isms in the aforementioned section, a reasonably-well trodden landscape exists as to what they are what they are not. It isn’t perfect and there is nothing approaching a single masterpiece beyond all parallel which can capture the idea in question with complete fullness, richness and exactitude.

But the general lay of the land and the law of the country is known.

Let’s take a specific example: socialism.

Many Americans hate socialism with a passion born in the deepest, darkest circles of Hell. There is no agreed-upon definition of socialism, yet the hate is very real. What the Hell do they hate exactly?

According to the polls, some see it as about equality of rights and distribution, some see it as weakening work ethic, some see it as primarily about government control, small percentages see it as some form of modified communism, some Democrats and most Republicans elide it with heavy restrictions on gun ownership, still others perceive what many would call universal healthcare as socialist, and a few even understand it to be when government no longer trusts you to supersize your sodas.

So, social democracy mixed with socialism mixed with full-blown communism.

Are they just idiots then?

Well, it’s definitely fairly messy and mixed up, but they’re definitely not idiots in that they know what they don’t like, whether that is really socialist or not and whether that could actually be good for a great many of them or not.

Let’s unpack it.

No one in their right mind would call Australia a social democracy let alone a socialist state, yet Australia does have heavy restrictions on gun ownership. This is just good policy if you want a safer, less scary and less violent country; it’s not about socialism.

The same goes for universal healthcare. Most all western states practise some form of universal healthcare for the mad reason that the basic health and welfare of their citizens is viewed as too important to let the private sector get its dirty rapacious talons into it. This is not socialist, but we do see the greatest evisceration of the welfare state in the least socially-leaning states.

Thus, we see socialism conflated with the provision of basic needs and a general level of state care for the greater good.

However, once we strip away this and the totalitarian nonsense, America does more or less understand what sort of stuff a social democracy or a somewhat socialist state may do.

Government will be big and there will be more state interference. The public centre will be inflated, taxes will be higher for the wealthy, market regulation will be more pronounced and a great many laws and regulations to equalise and sanitise society will be brought it. In more extreme cases, something approaching genuine socialism, business may be nationalised.

What Americans do completely fail to understand is that it would be a good thing for most of them. This is America’s delusion apropos democratic socialism.

I would probably call all this simply having a sufficiently robust counterweight to rampant capitalism rather than social democracy per se, but the social dimension and the level of state adjustment to society is doubtless enlarged and expanded.

Overall, I don’t think America misunderstands what social democracy or some form of mild socialism would be. In fact, it more or less understands.

What Americans do completely fail to understand is that it would be a good thing for most of them. This is America’s delusion apropos democratic socialism.

More than a few view such a putridly capitalist party as the Democrats as socialist as well. This again demonstrates a high degree of delusion, but not as regards the ism itself.

So, how does this relate to wokeism. Well, just like socialism, it cannot be adequately defined. And just like socialism in America, some Americans hate it for things it’s not and some politicians use it as an all-obliterating cudgel to besmirch all that they despise.

And just as with socialism, despite the lack of an all-unifying definition, the broad brushstrokes are more or less known and in spite of some confusion a great many understand what they don’t like about it.

3. The Broad Brushstrokes

Wokeness started out very different than the wokeism we are now forced to wade through. It began as a struggle by Black communities against their brutalisation at the hands of the police, the system and America itself. And then it was stolen by white middle-class liberals.

Wokeism has long departed from this noble fight and metastasised in all directions. The problem now is just how bloated it has become and how much baggage it comes with.

The tendency is towards subdivision and fissiparation, not unity and unification.

The following are the broad brushstrokes and baggage of wokeism as it stands today:

• Rejection of universalist systems of thought and structures that proclaim universal ideas and values, such as liberalism and rationalism.
• The physical and physiological are subordinate to the social. Race, gender and other primary aspects of identity are predominantly social constructs.
• Exclusivity over equality: specialness over sameness. The old left strove for equality, sameness and for all to be on the same level. The woke left seeks not universal recognition of all by society but particularist recognition decided by that particular and dictated to society.
• Accordingly, the woke left has a tendency to splinter into ever smaller self-excluding and self-defining shards as opposed to coalescing around universalising concepts like class or socio-economic status, and even gender and race themselves. The tendency is towards subdivision and fissiparation, not unity and unification.
• Use of dense and impenetrable language with myriad adjectives, prefixes and neologisms. This is typical of postmodernists, such as Foucault and Derrida, to which woke ideology owes a large debt.
• Society is a struggle for power at root and we are forever swimming in a sea of power relations. The rational functioning of institutions and structures is rendered futile and meaningless by the power relations which permeate them, to which they are wholly subordinate. Rest in power attests to just how deep this core idea sits within woke thought.
• ‘My truth’ and one’s ‘lived experience’ of greater importance than ascriptive imputations and general truths. Essentialist identity is self-assigned as opposed to given by society or stemming from nature. For example, ‘I am what I feel I am’; ‘I am not what society ascribes to me based on my physical attributes’. One chooses identity on one’s own terms; society and nature do not.

For a long list of reasons I find the preceding hugely problematic; in terms of first principles, consequences and practicable action. It is, however, beyond this article to explain why. I will, of course, in good time.

I hope I have demonstrated why a watertight definition for wokeism, and indeed any ism or ideology, is an impossibility, and why the absence of one doesn’t invalidate all criticism a priori.

I hope I have also shown that whilst the right is reprehensible in how it tries to weaponise wokeism as a means of slaying its enemies and masking over the deepest issues in society, this does not exonerate wokeism from the fundamental flaws in its thinking.

When observing what wokeism has become I often think of Nietzsche’s words of caution; ‘whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself’.