Comment by petsfed

I think this is a bit reductive.

Trump came to power on the back of a populist anger at the wealthy elite and the consequences of neo-liberal economics (which is pretty fucking far from e.g. Marx. Regardless of the entirety of his meaning, certainly some of Alex Jones' hatred of "globalists" springs from the fact that they outsource jobs to where the labor is cheaper). Insofar as "wokeness" factors into Trump's power, it was to harness that anger and direct it at some wealthy elites, but not others. That is, he claimed that these wealthy elites are being performatively sanctimonious and are trying to rob you of your freedom, money, power, etc, but those wealthy elites have your best interests at heart. Even though the two wealthy elites are kissing cousins (to whit, Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump Jr. both engaged in a committed long-term relationships with the same woman, albeit at different times) and don't actually care either way.

"Woke" in the traditional sense is realizing that no matter what they say, both groups are wealthy elites, and that neither actually has the interests of anyone but the elites at heart.

There are definitely moments of "are we really prioritizing this right now?" with modern social justice movements. But even on the subject of trans kids, the question for me is not "are we encouraging the wrong ideas around gender?" but rather "are we doing everything that's necessary to keep kids from committing suicide?"

The other day there was a post about fascists vs. rakes, and I really do feel like the the discussion around wokeness comes down to a similar misunderstanding about the intentions and moral principles of the two sides of the discussion.