Anti-White Racism and the Woke Right Discourse
Why rightwing reaction should remain principally liberal
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Most readers of Woke Watch Canada are familiar with James Lindsay. He has been a major voice in the culture wars. His analysis of the leftist woke movement has been invaluable. One of the first volumes I turned to when initially engaging with critical social justice (the academic ideology of woke), was Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody, which Lindsay co-authored with Helen Pluckrose in 2020.
Lindsay has written a number of other books and essays, and produced hundreds of hours of culture wars analysis on his New Discourses podcast. He has focused much of his examination on the academic ideas of the New Left (the precursor to today’s woke ideology). He has studied volumes of enemy texts (the writings of radical leftists including the 1960s era New Left to the modern critical theorists and antiracists), has effectively communicated the illiberal tenets and agenda of this culturally marxist movement, and he has helped move the anti-woke discourse in the right direction.
However, recently he has taken to using the term woke right to describe those who are reacting to the woke with their own brand of right-wing illiberalism. For many reasons this is an inaccurate and confusing term. It makes more sense to describe illiberal rightwing reactionaries as what they are already commonly called: the far right. Or, they can simply be referred to as the illiberal right.
It is worth taking a moment to remind readers that liberalism is a set of fixed propositions, and conservatism is meant to be a reaction to the left whenever it moves away from the liberal center. Scott Miller published a four-part essay series in these pages which examined this idea in the Canadian context.
Rightwing reaction to leftwing illiberalism is not by nature illiberal. My fear is that Lindsay’s use of the term woke right, and his ardent defence of it, along with his promotion of its adoption, is blurring the distinction between liberal and illiberal rightwing reaction to woke. This is a confusion we do not need. The illiberal woke movement absolutely needs to be crushed by a liberal rightwing reactionary movement. This essay aims to warn analysts that focusing disproportionately or exaggerating the illiberalism of the right may end up frustrating those on the right who oppose wokeism while still retaining liberal principles. This could end up driving more people into the arms of the illiberal right.
Canadian political scientist Eric Kaufmann is a culture wars analyst and a principled liberal thinker whom I have recommended in these pages more than any other thinker (save for Thomas Sowell). He believes that by definition “there can be no woke right.” Here is what professor Kaufmann had to say on X about Linday’s term woke right :
There is no woke right even if the MAGA or online right resembles the woke left on some dimensions.
Why?
Woke refers to a very specific phenomenon: the making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender and sexual groups. This informs a moralistic worldview that judges people's core character.
A reverse wokeism would require making whites, men and straight people sacred.
Words which inadvertently insult these totems would be grounds for cancellation. Straight white men would be viewed as more spiritual and moral than others. Nonwhite LGBT women would be viewed as the fallen.
People who praised Indian cuisine or Chinese philosophy might be accused of a backhanded slight against whites, and get piled on.
Any disparity, such as boys doing worse than girls in school, would be evidence of systemic discrimination.
These would be part of a moral crusade, and those who blaspheme the sacred would be seen as morally deficient, with a stained soul. Disgusting like a sex offender. People you want to debank, unfriend and cast out of all of society.
In-group policing within a tribe is not the same as enforcing a moral order which seeks to take over the entire society.
Judging someone to be a bad Republican is not the same as saying they are a bad person you wouldn't date, hire or live next door to. They may be cast out of the right-wing tribe but not of society. The first is tribal, the second moralistic. The woke left is moralistic, the MAGA or online right is not.
Fans of a weak football (soccer) team like Bolton Wanderers who say the Premier League is rigged against them are tribal, identitarian and express grievance politics. They have a power-centred ‘oppressor-oppressed’ worldview. They are emotional and may feel virtue due to not being dominant. They may castigate those who do not share a victim narrative. That doesn't make them woke football fans.
The idea of face validity in science refers to the fact that terms have a meaning in the real world that scholars agree on and can thus recognize, measure and test when they see it. Woke has a clear meaning which is inevitably associated with the cultural left.
Woke refers to the making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender and sexual groups.
In theory, whites and men (less likely) could become historically marginalized after awhile. The left might then feel sorry enough for them to make them sacred. For example, Muslims in India were once the elite but are now subaltern enough to count as oppressed. Jews once got sympathy but are now seen as part of the oppressor class. Things could change.
But then that would likely put the right on the side of the nonwhite female oppressor class so there would still be no woke right.
By definition there can be no woke right.
In my view Kaufmann’s analysis goes beyond the stated intentions found in the enemy texts of radical leftists–not that these texts are unimportant pieces of the puzzle, and that Lindsay’s analysis of them are also unimportant. But Kaufmann see’s things as they actually are, not just as they have been written by radicals. The observation that woke means the sacralization of identity categories deemed historically marginalized is something that can be tangibly identified in the culture, it is something more than theory. I suppose one could argue that this sacralization is merely the praxis (activism) of the woke, which bridges critical social justice theory with the real world events and behaviours it inspires.
Along with the sacralization of non-white, non-heterosexual, and non-male groups, has been the problematization of whites, heterosexuals, and men. It has resulted in blatant misandry and anti-white racism. And becuase of the mis-characterization of Israel as an oppressive Euro-centric settler state, anti-Semitism has also been an outcome of the adoption of critical social justice.
While being forever subjected to the myths, symbols and propaganda of the LGBTQ movement, straight people are shamed if they ever suggest a straight pride parade. The asymmetry is deeply frustrating to a majority populace who have been bullied and badgered against defending their honour or human rights. A wholly unsustainable situation bound to blow up if not somehow dealt with in a sensible and amicable manner.
In my view Lindsay seems to be castigating strong culture warriors, like American
Conservative podcaster for the Daily Wire Matt Walsh–film-maker of the great culture wars documentaries What is a Woman? And Am I Racist? – for his commentary on issues involving the rampant anti-white racism that permeates Western society. Walsh is not woke right for his take on the Shiloh Hendrix affair–the mother who allegedly called a 5-year old the N-word. He, among other things, made the point that calling someone a hurtful name does not deserve the disproportionate response of being doxed and having your life ruined. I had a similar take in my recent piece Black Fatigue: How one race gets away with far too much bullshit
In my view the ubiquity of misandry, anti-Semitism and anti-white racism, the virtual tyranny of the minorities created by the equity-obsessed woke activists, is a far larger problem than the racists, misogynists, and homophobes found on the fringes of the right. While I agree that an illiberal right is not something that should be taken for granted, and that it should absolutely be opposed. It should be opposed with the same liberal principles used to oppose the woke.
Along with Lindsay, there are a number of other self-identified classical liberal internet influencers who are throwing around the term woke right, and labelling as racist anyone who speaks about white identity or the protection of white people or their interests. In the same way that rightwing reaction to leftwing illiberalism is not by nature illiberal, white identitarianism is not inherently racist. You are not woke right if you notice that all people groups are encouraged to celebrate their ethno-traditional cultures except for white people. I am not sure what the classical liberals are trying to accomplish by their insistence that white people continue to endure this basic asymmetry of Western multiculturalism, which means erasure of white history and ethnic identities and for whites-only to practice colour blindness with respect to their culture and history, while other people groups are taught the central importance of their colour and encouraged to celebrate the distinctness of their ethno-cultural traditions and history. Again, not sustainable.
One would think this should be easy for classical liberal internet influencers to understand, but alas they seem more concerned with other things and have annoyingly resigned themselves to policing the speech of the Maga/conservative movements of Western nations. Discussing anti-white racism, and the rights as full ethnic humans of white people, should be encouraged. There is nothing about this topic that necessitates it being a racist or hateful one. My approach to this subject is to begin with the understanding that all people are ethnic and should be able to freely connect with their ethnicity and practice their ethno-traditional customs without internet eggheads accusing them of racist woke right identitarianism.
If it is cool and encouraged for black men to be proud and to have a black culture to celebrate, then it is equally cool and permissible for white men to do the same. Why wouldn’t it be? Why are white people who speak about the persecution and the interests of white people, immediately considered racists? Oh wait…we know the answer to this already: it’s because of the woke ideology which is thoroughly anti-white. Right, it is not difficult to get this. It is not difficult to see the asymmetry, the unacceptably unfair treatment of white people, and the racist conception of “whiteness” held by the radical left. Further, it is not difficult to understand why white people most stand up for themselves.
What is important is that when white people necessarily counter the relentless attacks against their people group (entirely inspired by woke critical social justice), that they do so without descending into racism, Nazism, Fascism, or any other ism that is known to be evil or illiberal. Why don’t the internet influencing classical liberal eggheads help steer the white reaction towards a liberal outcome? Why instead the pearl-clutching, the grand theories of woke right illiberalism, and the moral grandstanding?
There are many other conversations connected to this one which I hope to address soon. One big one is the tendency of the eggheads to advocate for civic nationalism and say that Western nations are founded on ideas. I have an enormous pet-peeve with this conception of Western nations for many reasons, not least that it erases the people who came up with the exalted ideas or who transplanted them to the New World. My essay series Deprogramming Leftism for Anglo Canadians (which also delves into Eric Kaufmann’s work) offers a relevant exploration, it examines ethnic identity in Canada by discussing the ethnogenesis of Anglo Canadians.
I’ll leave it at that for now but expect to see more commentary in the coming weeks on anti-white racism, asymmetrical multiculturalism (and diversity), and how to react to these things while maintaining a principally liberal approach.
Thanks for reading. For more on this author, read “Free John” :Daniel Tate and the cover up of Canada's founding father
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I think Lindsay means, when referring to woke right, those on the right who engage in cancelations and censorings - some of the prime activities of the woke left.
I have enormous respect for Lindsay and Pluckrose and Boghossian - the heroes of Sokal Squared. Nevertheless, I think Lindsay here is making a dangerous mountain out of a molehill. Even with my definition of the woke right above, they are in no way comparable in depth, breadth and intensity to the woke left.
Right wing reactionaries usually don't claim to have liberal values. They're categorically illiberal. They see liberalism as a failed project, no?
Who the fuck knows what any of these terms even mean anymore. It's news to me that conservativism, wholesale, is actually just the correction back towards the liberal 'center'. That's how all self described conservatives see themselves as promoting, sure.
I'd bet the majority of ordinary people don't think about any of the shit talked about in this article. Joe Blow has qualms about the term Woke Right. Yup.
Nerds. All of you!