Hello to all good comrades on this blessed website.

Something that has been bugging me for a while is how liberals use "woke" language to justify their neoliberalism. I'm the son of two Iraqi immigrants to this cursed country, and due to both cultural and physical factors, I think it is fair that I consider myself a PoC. I try to do my best with stuff like LGBTQ+ affairs and other leftist causes that are usually outside the cultural sphere of conservative Arab culture.

As part of maturing and becoming a more dedicated communist, I'm starting to be more active in activism both online and offline. But coming from a complicated background and quickly entering more serious activism since the Floyd protests started, I'm becoming more and more shocked about how many supposedly leftist spaces and ideas are just neoliberalism dressed up in woke language. I first noticed it with Arab Americans that are firmly entrenched in the professional middle class of this country, with their children only retaining fringe elements of Arab culture and weaponizing their cultural background while completely being just plain liberals.

The most obvious oh shit moment for me was meeting some of the organizers of the local Floyd protests. One (white) dude kept screaming about how police were our brothers and sisters, and did a thing where black people marched in front of everyone else. My inner monologue was something like "Jesus dude you're just making black people human shields for your own wokeness". Reading the experiences of a lot of people here and elsewhere, lib grifting seems to be a major problem everywhere. Every online brained liberal seems to just cover up their inhumanity towards the working class by co-opting the surface level identity crises of working class people. Everything online seems to be a competition to completely dismantle any reasonable criticism of liberalism by instantly jumping to the woke arguments. The rise of Liberal Zionism and Arab Zionism are good examples of that phenomenon I think, with both ideas being mostly repeated by young good looking people that do the "we're young Jewish/Arab peace loving hippies that love genociding Palestinians" shtick

How do we counter this annoying trend comrades? This mostly worries me because the real experiences of PoC, LGBTQ+ people and other repressed minorities are being misrepresented and weaponized by the bourgeois libs to further exploit the working class by offering surface level platitudes.

  • a_jug_of_marx_piss [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    It honestly broke something inside me when I read that one article that claimed that not allowing wall street execs in the cabinet makes it harder to get PoC in. I felt like a Lovecraft protagonist reading a forbidden book.

    While weaponized wokeness is maddening, I think it is also a weak spot, as long as it is criticized. In the modern online environment it produces great anti-liberal propaganda that often works as a really good demonstration of why class analysis is important.

  • Lovely_sombrero [he/him]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Woke liberal culture inevitably leads to moments like Hillary saying "we shouldn't break up the big banks because that won't end racism" and Joe saying "if you don't vote for me you ain't black". These are also completely coherent arguments within their ideology IMO.

    This mostly worries me because the real experiences of PoC, LGBTQ+ people and other repressed minorities are being misrepresented and weaponized by the bourgeois libs to further exploit the working class by offering surface level platitudes.

    ...and mostly policing language and having a policy built entirely on actual virtue signaling, like Warren promising to read names of LGBTQ members killed by police and/or hate crimes if she becomes POTUS.

    How do we counter this annoying trend comrades?

    Have no idea. Obviously, building class conciseness and solidarity is the answer to building power, the problem is how to get there rhetorically and in practice, since the attacks from the media, liberals and conservatives will always be the same and probably effective.

  • grillpilled [he/him]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I think it'll mostly go away on its own if Biden wins. Libs aren't ever going to direct their wokeness at Biden. They're already excusing the anti-bussing, crime bill, and rape stuff.

  • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Yes. It is a big problem. We're caught in a dilemma. We need to educate the masses (and by extension, the liberals) about revolutionary theory, but in the process of introducing liberals to revolutionary theory, we will inevitably introduce them to the vocabulary of revolutionary analysis. As long as there are more of them than us, it will be simple for them to lift this vocabulary and use it opportunistically for their own purposes. Over the past decade, this has become the epitome of "progressive" bourgeois politics, and has also formed the basis of various reactionary currents driven by contempt for their hollow usurpation of revolutionary rhetoric.

    The day to day situation on the ground at these protests will be a mixed bag. The vast majority of people turning out will be turning out because they know there is a problem and want to do anything they can to make a difference. What will make or break them is the makeup of organizers who turn out to direct this spontaneous energy. Liberals and NGOs have an advantage here as well, because they have been organizing these nonviolent "awareness" marches for decades, and have the mass media on their side. Normal people at these marches will cede to whoever appears to be most prepared, or most embedded in the struggle. All these NGOs need to do is show up with a megaphone and tell people to do stupid shit like kneel with the cops or snitch on rioters and a lot of them will assume they are helping.

    When the state loses its legitimacy, a vacuum is opened. These times are usually described as chaos, but in the midst of this chaos, the most organized groups will usually triumph. I think the only answer is to plant our roots and be intransigent about our beliefs. Don't assume people are acting in good faith because they can produce a PA system and a dozen volunteers in high viz to direct marches away from city hall. We need to establish the stakes, and make it clear what it will take to prevail in this struggle. We need to mercilessly call out the liberal appeasers.

  • TemporalMembrane [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    and did a thing where black people marched in front of everyone else

    They're getting trained to do that. I can't recall where I saw it but I did read that a white lib tried to get people to separate and self-segregate; stuff like "if you're white you shouldn't march with them, let it be their movement! We'll have a separate march for white people" and when someone shot her down she was apparently shocked and said that's how they're being trained.

    When the multi-racial working class is united the bourgeoisie tremble. We know the overt ways they can back up white supremacy and kkk and lynch mobs and all that. But they can also back these "woke" libs and fill their heads with nonsense (like when they filled BLM hastags with black screens and prevented activists from reaching people and with the white-guilt industrial complex right now).

    All of it is false consciousness.

    How do we counter this annoying trend comrades?

    With true class consciousness that simultaneously recognizes the intersectional ways that racism affects racialized people but is also unafraid to march along side their comrades arm in arm and is unafraid to use their privileges, such as they are, to speak up for marginalized voices. There is no better cure than solidarity - it can erase all boundaries and wipe out false consciousness. When you participate in a protest against the police and are arm-in-arm with black, asian, white all people together and you succeed in pushing back the pigs all that guilt can be burned out of libs minds and they can recognize that the only way to accomplish their class policy goals is not "wokeness" but solidarity.

  • grylarski [they/them]
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    4 years ago

    I think the most important thing I've learned from it is to reject the idea that identity takes importance over content. People can be wrong, even if they have 'right' lived experiences. Their ideas must be judged, as cynical and lib it is to say, on their ability to improve more people's life – on merit. I understand that gatekeepers have historically invalidated marginalised groups and it's incredibly hard to get this right, but it has to be done.

    There are far too many Candace Owens, Bobby Jindals, Rishi Sunak's pulling up the ladder. Our movements need to be inoculated against Obama and Pete Buttegieg and Warren .

  • crime [she/her, any]
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    4 years ago

    How do we counter this annoying trend comrades?

    I mostly do my best to combat this sort of liberalism by calling it out and deconstructing it whenever I see it or hear it, in particular when it comes to queer issues (since I'm queer libs are more likely to take me seriously about it). I'm not sure if there are better ways other than just correcting liberal takes when they comes up, but of course that only works on a micro scale.

  • grouchy [she/her]
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    4 years ago

    This is kinda why I got disillusioned with Asian American activism years ago, though I didn't have a way to articulate my issues at the time. Basically realized that AAPI solidarity (whether as a voting bloc lmao or as a cultural force) is impossible for many complicated reasons, and even if it were possible it would be of limited effectiveness anyway. Though I'm not gonna lie, I found it cute/hilarious when the Floyd protests started and I noticed younger AAPI peeps trying to reclaim the "Yellow Peril Supports Black Power" slogan (cute, because this was imo a huge improvement over "apolitical" apathy; hilarious, cuz if anyone reading this is unaware, the dude this is attributed to was an FBI snitch).

    I don't really have any answers either. One-on-one education works for the younger, well-meaning types. But I don't know if it's enough in the face of popular media and other misc cultural/religious influences. Like I don't think this phenomenon is even really all that new, it's just more visible because of modern social media and the current political climate. Of course, that means we also have more tools on hand to push back or get people to question their underlying assumptions, but that only goes so far.