James Lindsay, anti-Communist@ConceptualJames
I'm really trying to help people understand Woke. I've pretty much dedicated my life to it. I'll try something new here.
Woke can be summarized simply by at least two overlapping characteristics: thinking Woke and acting Woke.
Someone might think Woke without acting Woke or act Woke without thinking Woke, or do both. A not-Woke person doesn't do either one, or not much of one.
Because there are two ways to "be Woke," one thinking and the other acting (theory and praxis, iykyk), it can be hard to tell if someone is Woke or not.
Further, because you can be a little bit Woke or a lot Woke in either of those two dimensions, diagnosis isn't straightforward. Usually, we call people "Woke" when they are actually "Woke enough" to clear a fuzzy line in one or both dimensions, especially the acting Woke dimension. Arguably, the thinking Woke dimension is more important, though.
Acting Woke: Leninism
Acting Woke means acting like a Leninist, or a Bolshevik. It's the behavior of the French Revolutionary, even in people who claim to hate "the Enlightenment," which usually (and confusingly) refers to the disastrous French Enlightenment when otherwise unspecified.
People are pretty familiar with the way Woke people act, but they're also confused about it. This is where we're talking about collectivism (identity politics), forced conformity, cancel culture, struggle sessions, Machiavellian behaviors (lying for power), gaslighting, crowd bullying, provocation, misrepresentation, ends justifying the means, using someone's reaction against them, etc., etc. This is the worst stuff in Rules for Radicals, for example.
The confusion arises because part of the (Woke) Machiavellianism is the classic DARVO projection as well as the fact that some legitimate behaviors look like the things the Woke do. For example, it is perfectly legitimate to give someone a damaging label when it actually fits, even though Woke people do this according to made-up terms like "systemic racism" (hence the overlap with "thinking Woke").
If someone is actually being racist or antisemitic or something of the sort, it is fair to call them out and to expect there to be accountability or consequences. Woke people do this on illegitimate terms, but that fact doesn't negate that it can be done on legitimate terms too. Racism, antisemitism, and many of the rest can be real things that are not suddenly OK because Woke people abused the ideas with Marxist "systems of power" BS ("thinking Woke").
Making matters worse, Machiavellian behavior requires someone justifiably labeled with a term like these, or for other bad behaviors, to pretend they're the victim of a "Woke" witch hunt and to project Wokeness onto the people who are justifiably and legitimately calling them out and expecting justified accountability. They'll say they're "being struggled" or "being cancelled" when they're actually assholes who are actually out of line.
This behavior, ironically enough even when it comes from the Woke Right, depends on a kind of Woke moral relativism ("thinking Woke"), where all claims are effectively unable to be assessed on anything like objective grounds and it's just "my group" versus "your group" with no universal claim to legitimacy (like meeting an actual definition).
As you can hear, "thinking Woke" is actually a more important dimension of Wokeness than "acting Woke," which is Leninist behavior patterns. That's because for an action to really be acting Woke, it frequently has to be motivated by Woke thinking rather than objective standards and genuine respect for truth and justice.
Nevertheless, these Machiavellian and gaslighting tactics, plus a low-resolution, low-understanding of what people are seeing, plus missing context, plus in-group or tribal/political preference, often mislead people into thinking legitimate accountability behaviors and criticisms are "Woke." This generates much confusion and fighting, but it's the result of Woke manipulations and the underlying Woke allergy to accountability.
Thinking Woke: Critical Theory
Thinking Woke is a matter of adopting a "critical consciousness" or using "Critical Theory." Anyone can do this for their own ideological perspective, particularly both Leftists and Woke Right activists. Most Islamists also use this approach.
Critical Theory is a specific way of thinking that, in short, ruthlessly (not fairly) criticizes a system for not being ideal, meaning without problems, which is not real. It is making the good the enemy of the perfect and taking the side of the perfect against everything that is good.
Another feature of Critical Theory, which is Woke thinking, is believing that the fundamental organizing principle of society is a grand conspiracy that benefits certain powerful actors and their friends at the expense of some more legitimate group. Woke Left organizes this split by "class," construed broadly. Woke Right organizes this split by "nation" or "people," usually construed narrowly. There are some slight differences in approach, but the underlying societal conspiracy theory thinking is the same: society is unjust as it is and rigged by evil powerful interests and maintained by people who don't care enough to renounce their complicity and join the revolution.
If you don't have that element in your thinking, you're probably not thinking Woke. If you think there's some group or groups out there, other than actual straightforward political actors, who are controlling everything so that "people like you" or "people like those victim groups you care about" can't get ahead no matter what they do, you're probably thinking Woke.
Woke thinking is therefore counter-hegemonic thinking. This is probably its most prominent and observable feature, right up there with (a) a grand systemic and almost invisible conspiracy you have to be trained to see and (b) criticizing everything all the time for not being perfect (doing Critical Theory).
Cultural hegemony is, to put it simply, roughly the way everyone thinks, even if it's true, good, grounded, etc. It's the general beliefs about facts, history, and right and wrong that form the basis for the society. Woke thinking hates it and wants to destroy it. That's what it exists to do.
The Critical Theory itself was invented by Frankfurt School Neo-Marxist Max Horkheimer specifically on the grand conspiratorial claim that an alternative society cannot even be conceived of, much less described, on the terms of the existing society. That is, cultural hegemony in a given society prevents even thinking of, much less describing, an ideal society or even a good society. (Psst: he means some kind of socialist society that magically works.)
Thus, Critical Theory embraces "counter-hegemonic" thinking, which itself has two components: (i) thinking and ideas outside of the current system's modes and models, and (ii) thinking and ideas that are critical of or subversive to the current system itself. Counter-hegemonic thinking is Woke thinking, and it must include both of these dimensions. These are the practical conclusions of the points made above.
If you see a preference for "other ways of knowing," "other knowledges," or "you're not allowed to say/ask this, but I 'bravely' am," you're at least encountering outsider thinking, the first ingredient of counter-hegemonic (Woke) thinking.
If the information provided by that outsider thinking undermines your ability to trust the established system, its claims to truth or goodness, its (legitimate) authorities (genuine, not false, experts), etc., or that is ruthlessly (not justly) critical of the good not being perfect, you're probably dealing with counter-hegemonic (Woke) thinking.
The point of counter-hegemonic (Woke) thinking is to tear down belief in the existing thinking, knowing, and communicating system so that alternatives (usually socialist and/or totalitarian, somehow) can be wedged into the space created by the doubt.
The key here is that Critical Theory (counter-hegemonic thinking) is not the same as doing legitimate criticism, which is valid even when it's wrong.
Legitimate criticism is based in a demand to check for something that was legitimately missed or misunderstood, that is, to put it formally, for greater "epistemic adequacy" (knowing what you're talking about). We call this "critical thinking." It is NOT the same as Critical Theory, and nobody who understands the terms thinks it is. Max Horkheimer classified critical thinking under the opposite of Critical Theory, which he called "traditional theory."
Critical Theory is about assuming a conspiracy theory of hidden power dynamics, looking for those, and trying to undermine them, along with confidence in the existing system, epistemic, moral, political, social, economic, or otherwise. The point is not epistemic adequacy (knowing what we're talking about). In fact, Critical Theory considers epistemic adequacy (knowing what we're talking about) as part of the grand powerful conspiracy of society that has to be torn down. Remember Horkheimer's insistence that a better society cannot even be imagined "on the terms of the existing society." That targets epistemic adequacy as part of the "hegemony" conspiracy.
Critical Theory, as Horkheimer told us about his own creation, is made to "criticize those elements of the existing society that we wish to change," which means, given his immediately previous statement, to do counter-hegemonic (outside and critical, subversive) thinking. It is not legitimate criticism but (per Marx) ruthless (unjust) criticism in the name of societal and system transformation, not in terms of improving understanding (better epistemic adequacy, i.e., knowing better what we're talking about).
Obviously, these things can be confusing, and there are times when there is real corruption that deserves legitimate criticism. The difference with thinking Woke is believing in this "hegemony" hypothesis, which is to say believing it's a society-wide conspiracy theory to keep things the way they are ("maintain the status quo") to the benefit of the "bosses," whoever those people are.
They are different, and in most (though not all) cases, they can be distinguished as good-faith (legitimate) and bad-faith (ruthless) criticisms. Of course, when thinking Woke is identified rightly, the Woke thinkers will usually start acting Woke about it.
Summary
There are two dimensions to "being Woke": thinking Woke and acting Woke.
"Thinking Woke" is having a critical consciousness. This means having a mode of thinking that applies Critical Theory and counter-hegemonic thinking to tear down or subvert the present system in the pursuit of power for the critics, not in the pursuit of improvement for the situation.
"Acting Woke" means acting like a Leninist, a Bolshevik, or a Jacobin in the French Revolution, even if you're on the "counter-revolutionary" side. It is collectivist power-seeking, usually with a vanguard of intellectuals or elites who speak for the putatively cheated identity group. The means justify the ends, the behavior is brutally tribal and Machiavellian.
"Being Woke" refers to a state where you're sufficiently one or both of these, with a certain bias toward "thinking Woke" (as "Woke" is ultimately a mental state and way of thinking, then engaging the world in line with that).
You can also be "a little Woke" or "Woke in your approach" without "being Woke."
Woke is ultimately a way of thinking about the world and then engaging with the world on those terms. It isn't just a label slapped on people to control them or shut down discussion. It's a descriptive term describing counter-hegemonic thinking and action combined with certain bad behaviors rooted in friend-enemy tribalism.
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
