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.
Hello Steven - thank you. I would say we won't be getting out of this mess in this lifetime, but some dignity, at least, is maintained through dissent.
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.
Black studies departments, instead of "provid[ing] an intellectual home for critical race theory pioneers," should move to Haiti or Africa and work to make the lives of others better, for what they're doing in North Africa is unproductive, untruthful and resentful.
It is essential to understand the meaning and intent of "woke" to truly grasp that it is simply Marxism rebranded to once again attack and destroy Western civilization. Once we understand the virus, we can find ways to approach the beast surreptitiously to try and neuter its' power. We can already see how the "left" appears to be eating itself as it can't sustain its destruction without ultimately destroying itself. One should also look at James Lindsay's book, " Race Marxism" from 2022 that also describes "woke" as the same Marxism it has always been but repackaged so the West can accept it more readily. Here is an excerpt of a presentation he did in Europe recently which sums up where we are at and how we can address the "dis -ease". It is well worth a listen!
Hello Alice - yes, I am a big fan of Lindsay. One must, as Lindsay does, engage with the literature from which wokeness springs if one is going to do a serious job of criticicizing woke.
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.
Hello Steven - thank you. I would say we won't be getting out of this mess in this lifetime, but some dignity, at least, is maintained through dissent.
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.
Black studies departments, instead of "provid[ing] an intellectual home for critical race theory pioneers," should move to Haiti or Africa and work to make the lives of others better, for what they're doing in North Africa is unproductive, untruthful and resentful.
More from James Lindsay debating "woke" at Oxford using their own rhetoric to fight back..this guy is brilliant!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zut8akB4h8
It is essential to understand the meaning and intent of "woke" to truly grasp that it is simply Marxism rebranded to once again attack and destroy Western civilization. Once we understand the virus, we can find ways to approach the beast surreptitiously to try and neuter its' power. We can already see how the "left" appears to be eating itself as it can't sustain its destruction without ultimately destroying itself. One should also look at James Lindsay's book, " Race Marxism" from 2022 that also describes "woke" as the same Marxism it has always been but repackaged so the West can accept it more readily. Here is an excerpt of a presentation he did in Europe recently which sums up where we are at and how we can address the "dis -ease". It is well worth a listen!

/var/folders/r5/0ykjtxcd5_95wpvp76s3m6zh0000gn/T/ru.keepcoder.Telegram/telegram-cloud-document-4-5951947412300893951.mp4
Hello Alice - yes, I am a big fan of Lindsay. One must, as Lindsay does, engage with the literature from which wokeness springs if one is going to do a serious job of criticicizing woke.