Woke Is Not Right
The origins and meaning of "woke"
By Scott Miller (Historian)
Defining Woke: Woke is Not Right
1.0 Introduction: In order to frame the problem of conceptualizing woke, we might first consider the unsatisfactory definitions of four political commentators: Pierre Poilievre has recently defined woke as “Woke has one purpose... control. It is designed to divide people by race, by gender, by ethnicity, by religion, by vaccine status, and any other way they can divide people into groups... because then you can justify having a government to control all those groups."1 I would certainly credit Poilievre with saying something intelligent and reflective about woke on the spot and in front of the cameras — at the same time, the answer is not entirely satisfactory as it addresses only the modus operandi of woke (its mode of operation) and does not attempt to engage with its origin, its creators, its underlying presuppositions. Elon Musk, an opponent of the “Woke mind virus” was recently asked to define woke on camera, but the tech genius demurred on the problem of definition and spoke instead about the dangers of anti-meritocratic and anti-free speech thinking.2
On the other end of the political spectrum, Justin Trudeau uses words such as “peoplekind,” “she-cession,” “post-nation” (with reference to Canada), and he claims that “diversity is our strength”;3 the latter claim means to say that it is only in emphasizing racial and gender differences that we conduct ourselves properly as a society. Justin Trudeau is woke, but he does not use the word “woke” and that’s because — in the view of liberal politicians and the media analysts at CBC news — woke is a word that right-wing politicians use in an attempt to discredit left politicians (rather than a word that describes the actual ideology of any given left politician).4 It’s just something “extremists” accuse us of of doing, not something we do in actuality, or so the liberal claim goes. To the left of what is supposed to be liberal, socialist intellectuals such as Susan Neiman, for example, in her book Woke is not Left, aren’t gaslighting us by insinuating that woke doesn’t exist; instead, it is something (they argue) that is derivative of the alleged “tribalism” (read racism) of the right. This ridiculous thesis is contested in the essay to follow.
From the unreflective to the banal to the egregiously dissimulative (concealing with the intent to deceive), none of these positions bring badly needed clarity to the situation and some of them do just the opposite. For a substantive position on woke, we might turn instead to Bruce Bawer’s book The Victim Revolution which argues that woke did not emerge from nowhere, rather it originated from the university campus where many faculty members are exchanging humanism for radicalism; they are “rejecting the search for truth, they’ve become purveyors of ideology. They’re no longer teachers, but propagandists; once devoted to the spread of knowledge, they now focus on power dynamics, seeing oppression everywhere and viewing everyone around them through the lens of group identity.”5
The position which will be advanced below, then, is that identity politics (which is the essence of what woke is) is the product not only of the radical activism of the street but of the radicalism of identity studies departments such as Black Studies, Women’s Studies and Queer Studies which emerged in the late 1960s. These outlets of institutionalized activism have advanced identity as an epistemological framework (as a theory of knowledge), politicizing the academy and, through the academy, society at large. In what follows, the history and pre-history of Black Studies will be given special emphasis as these histories together tell much of the story of how woke came to be. A self-descriptive term known to reoccur among Black Studies experts is the term “black radicalism,” a term which, properly understood, describes a synergy (a combined strength greater than the sum of its parts) between black nationalism and black Marxism. See sections 2.0 and 2.1 below.
The purpose of the current essay is also to synthesize and expand on information collected in other Woke Watch Canada pieces by the same author while streamlining the discussion for the reader; in addition, the purpose of the present essay is to refute socialist Neiman’s analysis that “woke is not left” (see section 3.0).
Section 2.0 Black Nationalism and “Staying Woke”: For the reason that the danger and menace of white nationalism is a perpetual and incessantly recurring theme in left-controlled media (almost all media), few are unaware of white nationalism; in contradistinction, few are even dimly aware of black nationalism which has played a major role in compelling the identity politics which we have all had to accept as a reality of North American life. As was detailed in another Woke Watch Canada piece, black nationalism arose in the late 1700s as a response to slavery. The earliest written record which preserves the ideology of a black nationalist comes from 1852, the core contentions of the movement even then were as follows: i) black America constitutes a nation within a nation; ii) Pan-Africanism, that is, the idea that blacks of all countries are one brotherhood (usually coupled with the utopian idea of establishing a homeland for blacks somewhere); iii) black nationalism acquires an emphasis on black pride, and the directive to “cease striving to be white.”6
In the early 1900s, black nationalism gained a charismatic and influential new leader in the person of Jamaican immigrant Marcus Garvey whose UNIA (United Negro Improvement Association) had millions of card-carrying members (in a time when the black population was somewhere around 10 million).7 Garveyism, as Garvey’s version of black nationalism is sometimes called, featured a strong emphasis on black pride, on Africa as the fatherland and utopian future of black Americans (foreshadowing Afrocentrism), and a pronounced race separatism which opposed integration with whites.8
The origin of the term “woke”: According to Aja Romano writing in Vox Magazine, “the Jamaican philosopher and social activist Marcus Garvey included the summons “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!” as a call to global Black citizens to become more socially and politically conscious” and it was shortly after this that the term “stay woke” began to circulate in black communities as a call to maintain racial consciousness (which, one might recognize, is entirely in line with black nationalist thinking).9 Only in the 2010s, with its circulation on twitter by actors associated with BLM, did the term “woke” gain a relevance in modern life.
All of this isn’t to say that it is difficult to understand how black nationalism may have evolved especially in contexts prior to and shortly after emancipation. The question comes down to this, however: is it right that today, in the here and now, is it right that we aim to treat each citizen as an individual with the same set of rights and opportunities as the next citizen irrespective of immutable characteristics? If you answer in the negative, you are woke, if your answer in the affirmative, you are anti-woke.
Section 2.1 Marxism, Black Marxism and the Assault on Enlightenment Universalism: The enlightenment and humanist notions of universalism hold that reason can be turned inwards in order to discover the laws of human nature and society and that this knowledge, objectively true and knowable to all, could then be used as the basis to formulate a structured society with laws and policies applicable to all.10
In contrast, there is also a Marxist version of universalism which positions itself as the direct opponent of humanist universalism: based on Marx’ anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist vision of international socialism, Marxist humanism calls for the solidarity of workers first locally, then internationally, in order to combat globalist capitalism; as such, it is vehemently anti-nationalist.11
The ways in which Marxist intellectuals have sought to denigrate Western liberal and universalist values and to superimpose their own universalizing agenda are multitudinous to say the least. One could point to Franz Boas, Marxist intellectual and the father of cultural anthropology, whose theory of cultural relativism (that no single culture has a better value system than another) is now widely accepted not only in the social sciences but by the public at large. There has never been a greater blow to humanist universalism than the legacy of Boas, and, as Bawer notes, some trace the roots of postmodernist thinking to Boas’ cultural relativism.12 In similar manner, a hammer blow was struck against the universality of knowledge, that one truth can reveal human nature and be beneficial to all, when Marxist theorist György Lukács produced what would become known as “standpoint theory.” This theory, adopted by the social sciences and by social justice activists alike, maintains that each person has their “own truth” depending on their particular type of “oppression.”13
Equally insidious has been the doctrine of divide and conquer which Marxists have enacted on the free West. In 1917, Vladimir Lenin, then leader of the Soviet Union, declared that American blacks should be classed as an “oppressed nation,” that is, they should be considered as a nation within a nation rather than as Americans.14 Of course, this was the same thing that black nationalists of the time were saying.
Two black intellectuals and Marxists, according to Bawer,15 would prove inspirational to the Black Studies departments when they came about in the 1960s. The first was the first black sociologist in America, and founding member of the NAACP, a member of the socialist party of America, W.E.B du Bois. Du Bois held that black America was a colony, and that overcoming black race problems in America was part of the global anti-imperialist struggle.16 To say he was carrying water for Lenin with these positions seems obvious. The second major contributor to the ideology that would become Black Studies was black intellectual and Marxist Frantz Fanon who wrote about “decolonizing” long before postcolonialism came to the fore and is responsible for the social justice notions of “blackness,” “whiteness,” and “lived experience” which, again, fall as hammer blows against humanist universalism.17 From Fanon, it was only a small step to Marxist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s position (adopted by Black Studies zealots today) that color-blind race policy (not seeing race) is racist.18
2.2. From Black Activism to Black Studies – A Quick Survey of Woke Concepts: Continuing the theme of how the synergy between black nationalism and black Marxism has created influential doctrines, concepts which are really interpretational frameworks — interpretational frameworks which, because they came to be institutionalized at the academy, have in recent times found their way into your HR department at work — we come to the theory of systemic racism. Systemic racism was originally theorized by an influential black activist and Marxist19 but sociologists such as Marxian and New Left visionary C. Wright Mills,20 Marxist Robert Blauner, Marxist Dick Flacks and the Marxist “Sociology Liberation Movement” would ensure that systemic racism was enshrined as a dogma taught to sociology students.21 In addition to systemic racism, we could add critical race theory, identity politics, anti-racism and intersectionality (originally “triple oppression” theory) to the list of woke social justice concepts deriving from the black radical (black Marxist or black Feminist) tradition.22
Activism pre-empted the creation of Black Studies departments: for example, in 1968, armed black students occupied a building in San Francisco State college. Black students similarly occupied Cornell University and demanded “an autonomous all-Black college, the hiring of Black faculty and administrators, and the recruitment of poor urban students to the Ivy League university.”23 Fabio Rojas 2010 book From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline tells you the whole story in the title of the book! The following excerpts from the book summary should bring home many of the points of the preceding discussion: “As an influential political force, [the Black Power] movement in turn spawned the academic discipline known as Black Studies. Today there are more than a hundred Black Studies degree programs in the United States, many of them located in America’s elite research institutions… Rojas traces the evolution of Black Studies over more than three decades, beginning with its origins in black nationalist politics. Rojas documents how social activism can bring about organizational change… this historical analysis reveals how radical politics are assimilated into the university system.”24 Black studies departments provided an intellectual home for critical race theory pioneers such as Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Ian Haney-López, Richard Delgado, Gary Peller, and Cheryl Harris all of whom take Carmichael's theory of systemic racism as their fundamental presupposition. Their arguments for legal reform, for example, are made on the assumption that systemic racism shapes the US criminal justice system.25
A 2019 Pew poll found that 74% of black Americans answered that being black is of high importance to their self-identity; in contrast, 15% of whites answered that being white is of high importance to their self-identity.26 Critical Race Theorist Gary Peller, despite his positions on just about everything, is probably correct in attributing this current day disparity in race consciousness to major differences in white and black culture. In order to conform to trends which appear progressive and enlightened, current day whites must reject race nationalism and thus never develop “either a consciousness or a political practice that comprehend[s] racial identity and power as centrally formative factors in American social relations.” Conversely, a considerable faction of black Americans sees race nationalism as having “a positive and liberating role for race consciousness, as a source of community, culture, and solidarity to build upon rather than transcend.”27
Section 3.0. Neiman and Woke is Not Left: Neiman’s 2023 book Left is not Woke is available in a talk format, as well as a shorter article length version.28 Neiman, who wears her socialism on her sleeve, has two main contentions which must carry her entire argument that woke is not left, rather its origins are on the right. In order to establish this, Neiman forms a dichotomy between the “reactionaries” and the “universalists” (the following summary follows both the book and the article):
i) Neiman asserts that the right-wing are “tribalists” and nationalists who oppose what she calls “universalism”; right wingers have no principles, unlike the “left” (by which she means, the socialists) and she states “Which do you find more essential: the accidents we are born with, or the principles we consider and uphold? Traditionally, it was the Right who focused on the first, and the Left who emphasized the second.” Right-wingers are examples of “reactionaries” (she calls Edmund Burke a “reactionary” in chap. 4).
ii) Neiman asserts that the left are those who traditionally embrace “universalism.” She states, “The concept of universalism once defined the Left; international solidarity was its watchword. This was just what distinguished it from the Right, which recognized no deep connections, and few real obligations, to anyone outside its own circle. The Left demanded that the circle encompass the globe.”
Before going too far, it might be advantageous to consider what does Neiman mean by “universalism”? Well, it’s clear that she doesn’t mean that version of universalism which is in keeping with humanism and which seeks a truth that will clarify human nature and govern all people equally, for she denigrates that version of universalism as follows: such is “fake universalism” which she defines as “the attempt to impose certain cultures on others in the name of an abstract humanity that turns out to reflect just a dominant culture’s time, place, and interests.” Instead, it is rather implicit from “international solidarity was its watchword,” and from her vehemently anti-nationalist stance, that Neiman understands universalism in the internationalist socialist or Marxist humanist sense. (The contrast between these versions of humanism was discussed at the top of section 2.1).
Here we have a perfect example of a dissimulative socialist doing what socialists do: presenting her socialist framing of “universalism” to her left-wing readership as if it is the version of universalism they are supposed to be upholding (it’s not) while simultaneously presenting the ring-wing (the group which may call foul to her machinations) as an amoral sort of thinker without values (the English right-wing has embodied moderate liberalism since 1689). In one subversive motion, both left and right liberalisms are nullified in the mind of Neiman’s reader, while the universalism that has no business in the free West is surreptitiously presented as the only existing model.
In no place does Neiman show awareness or a willingness to grapple with the core identity politics roots of wokism in the history of race relations in the United States, in black nationalism and black studies departments, or in the long history of Marxist intellectuals and activists who developed the interpretative frames which serve to erode humanist universalism today. Instead, she would insinuate (in chap. 4) that Michael Foucault, a “godfather of wokism,” should be understood as a “reactionary” rather like Edmund Burke because he stands in the way of (one would presume, Marxist) progress. (See the same page for Neiman’s clarification that socialists prefer to call themselves “progressives” these days).
Neiman likes to use the word “reactionary” but tactfully avoids employing the word “revolutionary” (instead, she perverts the word “progressive” so that it stands in for “revolutionary”). For an example of the dichotomy which Marxist theory makes of “revolutionary” and “reactionary,” see the comment on race produced by Robert Minor in 1924. Minor, a white member of the Communist Party of the United States assigned to work on race relations, came up with the following bit of rhetoric (a rhetoric echoed by today’s “social scientists”): “Race consciousness in a dominant race takes the form of race arrogance, and we are accustomed to despise it as reactionary (which it is). But race consciousness in a people who have just emerged from slavery and are still spurned as an inferior race may be — and in this case is — revolutionary.”29 Robert Minor, true Commie, was (like so much else) left out of Neiman’s Woke is Not Left.
From the point of view of a conservative, woke is decidedly left. More often than not, the ideology of woke from a history of ideas analysis leads directly to a left of liberal thinker and/or a left of liberal movement – the paper trail is blatant and abundant. To all my Marxist sparring partners, don’t try to wow me with your replies and rebuttals about how only you can control the way that the term “Marxist” is used. Wow me by doing what Neiman doesn’t even come close to doing: top this post with your evidence-based analysis of why woke is right-wing (essay length).
Bibliography
Bawer, Bruce. 2012. The Victims' Revolution: the Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind. New York: Broadside Books.
Berard, Tim. 2008. "The Neglected Social Psychology of Institutional Racism." Sociology Compass 2/2: 734-764.
Bork, Nathaniel. 2022. "Failure to Communicate..." Ph.D Diss., Colorado State University.
Dawson, Michael. 2001. Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
Delaney, Martin. 1852. The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered. Philadelphia.
Elais, Sean and Joe Feagin. 2016. Racial Theories in Social Science: A Systemic Racism Critique. New York: Routledge.
Garvey, Marcus. 1924. An appeal to the soul of white America; the solution to the problem of competition between two opposite races; Negro leader appeals to the conscience of white race to save his own. [New York], [Press of the Universal Negro Improvement Association].
Moses, Wilson. 1978. The Golden Age of Black Nationalism 1850–1925. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Press.
Hollis, Martin. 1996. "Is Universalism Ethnocentric?" In Multicultural Questions, edited by Christopher Joppke and Steven Lukes, 27-43. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Peller, Gary. 1990. “Race Consciousness.” Duke Law Journal vol. 1990 n. 4 (Frontiers of Legal Thought III): 758–847.
Pinker, Steven. 2018. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress. New York: Penguin Books
Neiman, Susan. 2023. Woke is Not Left. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Rectenwald, Michael. 2018. Springtime for Snowflakes: "Social Justice" and its Postmodern Parentage. Nashville: New English Review Press.
Romano, Aja. 2020. "A History of Wokeness." Vox Magazine. https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy
Robinson, Cedric. 1983. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press.
Rolinson, Mary. 2007. Grassroots Garveyism: The Universal Negro Improvement Association of the Rural South, 1920–1927. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Rooks, Noliwe. 2006. White Money / Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crises of Race in Higher Education. Boston: Beacon Press.
Skyers, Sophia. 1982. Marcus Garvey and the Philosophy of Black Pride. MA Thesis – Wilfred Laurier University.
Steinmetz, George. 2008. “W.E.B. Du Bois as theorist of colonies and empire.” (Originally Published as “Présentation de W.E.B. Du Bois,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, nos. 171-172 (March 2008), pp. 75-77).
van der Linden, Harry. 1996. Marx's Political Universalism. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/facsch_papers/65
Zamalin, Alex. 2019. Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Feminism and the Janus-Face of Modern Politics
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https://www.westernstandard.news/news/watch-poilievre-defines-what-woke-means/article_e6c26f7e-cfe0-11ed-856a-a3d2e85496eb.html
According to CBC Darren Major, woke “has been adopted by figures on the political right to discredit policies and politicians they consider too progressive, experts say.” https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberals-distance-from-woke-label-1.6586136
This convenient summation of the author’s position is provided by Bawer at: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0BSR8D7RZ/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
For a more detailed discussion on this topic, see https://wokewatchcanada.substack.com/p/a-moral-chimera . The statement that black nationalism arose out of the context of black slavery in the US follows (black) historian Wilson Moses in The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850—1925, p. 25. The earliest written record of black nationalist ideology refers to the writings of Marcus Delaney, a black nationalist and free man living in the era before emancipation. For Delaney’s work and the characterizations of black nationalist ideology that follow, see: Zamalin 2019, 19; Delaney 1852, 11–13; Skyers 1982, 19. Dawson (2001, 97) states that “for at least a century and a half, many blacks have argued that they belonged to a separate nation confined within the borders of the United States” (hence, that would work out to over 170 years at the time of the current author is writing).
Rolinson 2007, 2; Robinson (1983, 214) gives a more ambiguous estimate: “hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of Blacks were enrolled in the organization.”
Garvey 1924, An Appeal to the Soul of White America. In this same chapter, Garvey plays upon the “liberal” sensibilities of white Americans, petitioning them to aid black America in splitting itself off from whites (missing or misrepresenting the fact that liberal philosophy is (or at least, ought to be) universalizing, the opposite of the separatist’s agenda).
Vox wouldn’t normally count as an authoritative source and, although Romano cites no sources, the information provided cannot be dismissed out of hand – the same information from the same article was recently referenced in Bork’s Ph.D dissertation about campus politics (Bork 2022, 106). What is woke: How a Black movement watchword got co-opted in a culture war - Vox
Drawing from Hollis 1996; Pinker 2018, chap. 1.
Following van der Linden 1996, 16; see also: https://monthlyreview.org/2000/07/01/marx-and-lnternationalism/
Bawer 2012, 17. For more on Boas, see: https://wokewatchcanada.substack.com/p/race-radicalism-in-americaBawer 2012, 17. For more on Boas, see: https://wokewatchcanada.substack.com/p/race-radicalism-in-america
Rectenwald 2018, 75–76. Note that, in Lukács
Lenin’s statement came in his 1917 Statistics and Sociology communication; see also: https://wokewatchcanada.substack.com/p/race-radicalism-in-america
Bawer 2012 (chap. 3) states: “the editors of A Companion to African-American Studies...note that "the undisputed, most influential intellectuals in the development of African-American studies are W.E.B Du Bois and Frantz Fanon."
Steinmetz 2008. Spector’s (2002, 115 ) discussion of Marxist sociology holds du Bois’ early work to have had some Marxist elements and states that he embraced Marxism late in life. See also: https://wokewatchcanada.substack.com/p/a-moral-chimera
The term “blackness” and the notion that one cannot understand the state of blackness without personally possessing the “lived experience” of being black, proceeds from Frantz Fanon, a pan-African and a Marxist intellectual who wrote his influential work “Black Skin, White Masks” in 1952 while living in France. See further: https://wokewatchcanada.substack.com/p/a-moral-chimera#_ftn31
Systemic racism, originally “institutional racism” was originally theorized in Stokely Carmichael’s 1967 work “Black Power…”. Carmichael was a black nationalist, a Marxist, and one-time leader of the Black Panthers. See: https://wokewatchcanada.substack.com/p/a-moral-chimera#_ftn30
C. Wright Mills is widely regarded as having launched the “New Left” movement with his 1960 “Letter to the New Left” which implored college students to move past the Old left (Marxist) fixation on class and see themselves as “a possible, immediate, radical agency of change.” See also http://www.artandpopularculture.com/New_Left ; https://www.marxists.org/subject/humanism/mills-c-wright/letter-new-left.htm; https://www.jstor.org/stable/27694377 . Spector (2002, 115) states: “C. Wright Mills is the most well known of the 1950s U.S. sociologists to be associated with Marxism… But Mills was more a "Marxian" than a Marxist.” Mills was an early proponent of bringing Marx into sociology classrooms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Wright_Mills
Robert Blauner’s intellectual Marxism is obvious in the titles of his works “Alienation and Freedom: The Factory Worker and His Industry (1964)”; “Resisting McCarthyism: To Sign or Not to Sign California’s Loyalty Oath (2009)” and “Racial Oppression in America (1972)” (the term “racial oppression” was at the time germane to Marxian analysts - https://www.proquest.com/docview/194892365?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true). His theory of “internal colonialism” riffs off of Vladimir Lenin and socialist du Bois (see above). According to Berard (2008, 737), Blauner 1972 is one of the first in the field of sociology to discuss “institutional racism.” The Sociology Liberation Movement (SLM) was a group of Marxist sociologists agitating, in the late 60s, for a politization of American sociology. Spector (2002, 117) records about the annual meeting of the sociologist in 1968: “The section on Marxist Sociology was preceded by the Sociology Liberation Movement (SLM), a loose grouping of activists with a large core of younger professors and graduate students who were active participants in militant anti-war struggles. The SLM was formed in early 1968 and first appeared publicly at the American Sociological Association Annual Convention in August 1968.”
Rooks 2006, 20.
See https://muse.jhu.edu/book/140 . See also Bawer 2012, chap. 3.
Elias and Feagin 2016, 241.
See https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/04/09/race-in-america-2019/
Peller 1990, 761
See
and https://unherd.com/2023/03/the-true-left-is-not-woke/
see https://jacobin.com/2018/04/socialism-marx-race-class-struggle-color-line
This is excellent and totally correct in its analysis. Black nationalism is just as real any any white-nationalism, and it is decidedly Marxist.
I don't know how we get out of this mess, other than by teaching individuals that they have the personal power to overcome any victim mindset with which they have been inculcated.
If we let the victim mindset spread, and more and more people embrace resentment vs gratitude as a life outlook, we are in serious trouble.
While I disagree with the tone of much of what you wrote and some of the detail (for example your definition of diversity) to a large degree we probably agree on how woke is infecting society, language and institutions.
We also agree that much of this is being generated by a section of “the left”, “the liberal left”, the “extreme left”. So let’s put aside where we agree and focus on the disagreement, which is whether “woke politics”, ie postmodernist identity politics in action is a left wing or a right wing “thing”.
I am not trying to defend a particular socialist theory or program. I am looking at the merits of claiming that what I see as tribalism is “left wing” at all, regardless of whether “left wing” supporters promote this thing. As a person on the left, I have been at odds with many “on the left” for decades, including on the identity front. I argue they have imported tribalism
into the left, a bad idea. The Left has been about cosmopolitanism, universalist one human race. The more modern Right has been about the nation, separate races, tribes etc, not universalism.
We should perhaps define our terms. Using the political compass as a guide, I place left vs right in the economic divide that determines preferences for the distribution and ownership of wealth and property. There are libertarian and authoritarian variants of both left and right. There are folks in the middle.
If we can’t agree on any of this preliminary framework then we should stop debating what is right and what is left wing.
I think tribalism comes in here indirectly. I hope we can agree that nazism is a good example of extreme tribalism that is generally seen as authoritarian and far right ideologically, and we can ignore the fact that the Nazis called themselves “national socialists”. The nationalism was obvious, but were they “socialists”? Did they believe that a tiny corporate empowered minority should or should not own and control the wealth? Or did they eschew private property and accumulation of wealth in a few hands? The answer isn’t necessarily obvious on the economic front but it was obvious on the authoritarian vs liberty divide.
On the specifics. I am in full agreement throughout what you write in 2.0 regarding black nationalism. It was inspired by anti-slavery (good); it’s been distracted by identity politics (bad).
I would agree also with some of your points about certain “new left” Marxists who went down the identity road. They certainly had a following and credibility within a section of the Left. In particular we are both taking about the “relativistic” proponents within the Left, which also bled into postmodernism, and Foucault, Derrida etc. These were “of the left” and certainly in terms of their views about oppression and hierarchy they were “left wing”. But in terms of relativism and tribalism and identity politics, they left the traditional left behind, and were rejected by them. That’s what we are debating, right?
If we can agree here that progressive liberalism is about free speech, cosmopolitanism, enlightenment, equal opportunity etc then we are still in agreement. These attributes, however, are primarily on the authoritarian vs libertarian axis, not the economic axis. (There’s an entire discussion about private property that we can leave aside for the moment, although it is relevant too.)
The quote alleged to have been uttered by Lenin “in his Statistics and Sociology communication that US blacks should be "classed as an oppressed nation." [I think he included other groups as well as part of this ‘racially oppressed category’ (?)] is news to me although I’d like to read the context. However if true, it was a stupid and unsupportable statement, and probably why it’s been quoted. Lenin said and wrote many things that are unsupportable, and not progressive. As did Marx, Stalin, Mao etc etc.
I’m not clear why you’ve spent so much ink chasing after Boas’ and others’ roots in Marxism. Is it to show that they had some bad ideas and therefore (sic) “the left is tribal”? Ditto for Lysenko, the Stalinist hack and Lamarckian, hardly a denizen of progress. Seems like a straw man argument.
You seem also to want to try to link Boas (the “anti evolutionist Marxist”) with the UNESCO statement on race. Was this what the diversion was for?
You write: “Written by Alfred Kroeber, a Boas student, the key line of the 1950 UNESCO statement on race reads: "for all practical social purposes 'race' is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth."…”
So that apparently is the linkage you want to make (?) which is pretty indirect and dubious, ie Kroeber—>a student of Boas (!)—> Marxist, and therefore…?
As I’ve pointed out, the lead pen on the UNESCO statement, at least the brains behind the scenes, was more likely author, and humanist anthropologist Ashley Montagu, who was certainly an evolutionist, one who led the questioning of the validity of race as a biological concept, and even was involved in later years in the attack against creationism.
I also don’t think you’ve made a strong link between cultural relativism (cr) and affirmative action, ie that cr “become the basis for assertations that all evidence of inequality of wealth is proof of discrimination and injustice” which is a core flawed argument made by the woke.
The more solid left wing argument would be that there is such a thing as the enlightenment, some ideas are far better than others, inequality can be the result of prejudice and injustice, but inequality (the economic argument) mostly is due to the distribution of wealth based on arguments about the dominance of private property.
I’ll leave it there. Interested in your follow up.