Comment by corimaith
5 days ago
>As to modernity, much of it was brought about by things that were called the analogous of "woke" by the centrists and conservatives of the time. As I wrote in another comment, claims of empty performance were contemporaneously levelled at the very same movements that Graham now characterises as substantive (radical chic). The way the arguments were presented were also similar: the feminists of the interwar period fought for something real but now it's all a show. You speak of the Enlightenment, but many things we take for granted were heavily debated in the West until the late 1960s at least, and those debates seem to be making a comeback.
Of course what passes as modernity today would have been considered progressive back in the past, but you fail to mention also that many such of those debates back then also never panned out and fizzled out (aka non-substantive), while others were actively fought against and rolled back.
The French Revolution, Communism, Fascism, The Cultural Revolution, society at many points has historically pushed back against radical progressive visions that ultimately turned into horrific failures that the majority opposed. And the helm of many of those movements were power-hungry Authoritarians, aka the "Aggresively-Conventionally Minded" PG is referring to. The point is that radical progressive movements often provide the unfettered space for Authoritarians to act out their own worst impulses on society, the Reign of Terror and the Cultural Revolution being a prime example.
That's why also the point of "conscious bias against defining new forms of heresy" is just reiteration of the etablishment view of slow, iterative change vs highly disruptive change, of which the former can more effectively keep authoritarians in check. This is not a paticularly controversial view either.
The point is that for PG, and for the majority that voted Trump, Wokeism isn't working, it's not the direction that people wish society to move forwards in. I don't think it's analogous here to Civil Rights or Feminism either because it's a question of speed rather then change. Equality via Long-term Integration (& Homogenization) vs Equality via Aggresive Multiculturalism, and I think people prefer the former.
> Of course what passes as modernity today would have been considered progressive back in the past, but you fail to mention also that many such of those debates back then also never panned out and fizzled out (aka non-substantive), while others were actively fought against and rolled back.
Sure, but Graham isn't suggesting there is some radical progressive movement with any real power. The question is whether wokeness, however defined, is mere performance or carries some real substance. The only people who believe there is any sort of ascendant left are on the far right, and Graham certainly isn't there (he's a middle-of-the-road neoliberal centrist).
In fact, the lack of an ascendant left was the argument used in the debate among historians and other scholars of authoritarianism on whether or not MAGA is a fascist movement. Some (those who typically associate themselves with the more radical left) claimed that MAGA cannot be fascist because fascism must be a reaction against an ascendant left and there isn't one. The response to that arguments by those who say MAGA is fascist is that even though it doesn't exist in reality, such an ascendant left does exist in the MAGA imagination.
> That's why also the point of "conscious bias against defining new forms of heresy" is just reiteration of the etablishment view of slow, iterative change vs highly disruptive change, of which the former can more effectively keep authoritarians in check.
Maybe, but Graham isn't claiming there's some radical left with some significant power. He's clearly not a radical, but his point is that wokeness isn't radical, either. If anything, he thinks it's mere radical chic and believes that to be different from the "real" protest movement of the sixties, and I pointed out that radical chic was levelled at the time against that movement, too.
> The point is that for PG, and for the majority that voted Trump, Wokeism isn't working
I seriously doubt Graham ever entertained voting for Trump, and those who did would find it hard to define what wokeism is (only that it's one of the many things they're against, including Graham's neoliberalism). They would find it hard to consistently define anything.