WOKE and proud of it....

[Alexis Jacobi]

They're into silencing, deplatforming, bullying, harassing, doxing, parading, threatening, slandering, screaming, rioting, and burning and bludgeoning. Not all ideologies, beliefs and religions will go that far.

America, Europe too, has an extensive rail system. These wokies must be herded into rail cars (heated, air conditioned, with toilets — this is the 20th Century) and hauled down to reeducation facilities.

I don’t have it all worked out yet but I imagine a whole army of ultra-sophisticated Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro look-alike robots, with life and death powers, that will attend to them one-on-one until they are made to see the error of their ways.

[Consul]

My question is: I wonder if that Hyper-Liberal and Hyper-Liberalism (my term and one I think gets closer to a workable definition) originated in America and in americanism which, they say, is an American export?

From Homo americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age, Tomislav Sunic:

In this book Dr. Tomislav Sunic describes the origins and dynamics of America's founding myths. Quoting and translating from many long-forgotten or suppressed sources from the fields of literature, history, anthropology and philosophy, the book represents an interdisciplinary compendium dealing with the topic of Americanism. The genealogy of early Calvinist Puritanism mixed with the techno-scientific religion of boundless economic progress and legally veiled in the obscure para-Biblical and Jewish-inspired sense of political self-chosenness, created a system that has little in common with its original design. Postmodern Americanism, with its abstract theories of multiculturalism and its global desire for world improvement, turned America into a menacing and self-destructive continent that puts not only the survival of America's European heritage at risk, but threatens the heritage of other peoples worldwide as well.

This sounds pretty abstruse. I don't know this book, and I hadn't heard of Sunic before. According to Wikipedia, he is a far-right, neofascist guy. The foreword of the above-mentioned book is written by Kevin B. MacDonald—"an American antisemitic conspiracy theorist, white supremacist"—, so I presume Sunic has antisemitic views too.

Anyway, what do you mean by "hyperliberalism"—libertarianism, anarchism?

The Woke Left is influenced by American political liberalism as represented by Rawls and Dworkin, but they are not libertarians or anarchists.

The famous postmodern American philosopher Richard Rorty once called himself a "postmodern bourgeois liberal", but later he said:

"That designation was supposed to be a joke. I thought it was a cute oxymoron—but no one else seemed to think it was funny."

(Rorty, Richard. "Toward a Postmetaphysical Culture." Interview by Michael O'Shea. 1995. In Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself: Interviews with Richard Rorty, edited by Eduardo Mendieta, 46-55. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. p. 52)

Moreover, Rorty also said:

"I am not fond of the term “postmodernism”[.]"

(Rorty, Richard. "Feminism and Pragmatism." 1991. Reprinted in Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 3, 202-227. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. p. 210n18)

"I've never known what the term 'postmodern' means."

(Rorty, Richard. In: Richard Rorty & John Searle. "Rorty v. Searle, At Last: A Debate." Logos 2/3 (1999): 20–67. p. 46)

"The word 'postmodernism' has been rendered almost meaningless by being used to mean so many different things. If you read a random dozen out of the thousands of books whose titles contain the word 'postmodern', you will encounter at least half a dozen widely differing definitions of that adjective. I have often urged that we would be better off without it – that the word is simply too fuzzy to convey anything."

(Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and Social Hope. New York: Penguin, 1999. p. 262)

Furthermore, although his "postmodern" neopragmatism has become increasingly influential in the Academic Cultural Left (with its Cultural Studies), he himself criticized it for its neglect of the Old Left's economic class struggle.

"RR: In the U.S., liberal means what social democrat means in Europe."

(Rorty, Richard. "Biography and Philosophy." Interview by Andrzej Szahaj. In Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself: Interviews with Richard Rorty, edited by Eduardo Mendieta, 148-160. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. p. 152)

"Hollinger is, like myself, a social democrat and an admirer of Dewey."

(Rorty, Richard. "The Unpredictable American Empire." 2003. In What Can We Hope For? Essays on Politics, edited by W. P. Malecki and Chris Voparil, 161-177. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022. p. 169)

[Consul]

The Woke Left is influenced by American political liberalism as represented by Rawls and Dworkin, but they are not libertarians or anarchists.
…

"RR: In the U.S., liberal means what social democrat means in Europe."

(Rorty, Richard. "Biography and Philosophy." Interview by Andrzej Szahaj. In Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself: Interviews with Richard Rorty, edited by Eduardo Mendieta, 148-160. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. p. 152)

Rawls and Dworkin represent left-liberalism or social liberalism, which is not what right-liberals such as Mises, Hayek, and Friedman mean by "liberalism". For them, social liberalism = moderate socialism. Actually, social liberalism overlaps largely with social democracy.

[Consul]

This sounds pretty abstruse. I don't know this book, and I hadn't heard of Sunic before. According to Wikipedia, he is a far-right, neofascist guy. The foreword of the above-mentioned book is written by Kevin B. MacDonald—"an American antisemitic conspiracy theorist, white supremacist"—, so I presume Sunic has antisemitic views too.

I'm not implying that everybody who rejects postmodernism or multiculturalism is a far-rightist or fascist!

[Consul]

Anyway, what do you mean by "hyperliberalism"—libertarianism, anarchism?

Libertarianism is radical liberalism or ultraliberalism, of which there are both left-wing and right-wing versions.

"Libertarianism:
1. The form of liberalism which believes in freeing people not merely from the constraints of traditional political institutions, but also from the inner constraints imposed by their mistaken attribution of power to ineffectual things. The active libertarian is engaged in a process of liberation, and wages war on all institutions through which man’s vision of the world is narrowed (some would say focused) – among them the institutions of religion, and the family, and the customs of social, especially sexual conformity. Libertarianism is not so much a doctrine as an attitude,
condemned by some as mistaking licence for liberty, praised by others as the new temper of humanism.

2. In economics, a radical form of the theory of laissez faire, which believes that economic activity must be actively liberated from the bondage of needless political constraints in order to achieve true prosperity.

3. Often used as a name for the metaphysical theory that determinism must be false, on account of the fact of human freedom.

4. Now often used to mean the view that human activity in general, and economic activity in particular, should be released from all control by the state other than the bare minimum required for social order. In this sense, libertarians are economic liberals who wish to extend the principle of the free market into all areas of social life, advocating ‘market solutions’ to social problems, and arguing that the major problems of modern society come from the attempt to control social life from outside and to organize by planning what can only be organized by spontaneous agreement among participants.

Libertarianism in sense 4. has exerted considerable influence over recent politics, and formed one input into Thatcherism. It should be distinguished from classical liberalism, which merely emphasizes rights and liberties against the sovereign power and defends the free market only as part of the right of private property and not as the ruling principle of all social order. Libertarians are radicals whose posture towards the state is one of vigilant suspicion and whose philosophy is often secular, anti-authoritarian and even Nietzschean, as in Rand. Two core arguments are given in favour of libertarianism. First, the Nietzschean argument that societies need leadership, but that the second-rate will conspire to prevent leaders from emerging and will use the state in order to penalize all forms of power, achievement and success other than those conferred by committees of the second-rate. Second, the more soothing argument (which generalizes from the theories of the Austrian school of economics) that social order arises spontaneously and that the information necessary for harmonious social life exists only in spontaneous institutions and is always destroyed by planning. See Hayek, Mises, Oakeshott.

5. There are those (e.g. Chomsky) who define themselves as ‘libertarian socialists’, a usage which, given sense 4. of the term, would come close to self-contradiction. For the libertarian socialist the state is justified in pursuing goals of social justice, but must not infringe individual liberty in any other way."

(Scruton, Roger. The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought. 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. pp. 397-8)

[Alexis Jacobi]

This sounds pretty abstruse. I don't know this book, and I hadn't heard of Sunic before. According to Wikipedia, he is a far-right, neofascist guy. The foreword of the above-mentioned book is written by Kevin B. MacDonald—"an American antisemitic conspiracy theorist, white supremacist"—, so I presume Sunic has antisemitic views too.

I am surprised that with your thoroughness in research and citation that you would rely on a Wiki definition.

For the *Wokies* (I borrow the term with some irony) anyone who has ideas that are grounded in non-liberal or counter-liberal ideas is fascist by definition.

It has been awhile since I read Sunic’s book. But I remember it as being well-reasoned and helpful to understand this americanism.

Obviously, my appreciation reveals my core fascism. What to do, what to do?

MacDonald wrote extensively on Jewish “group-strategy” in 3 volumes. I read one of the volumes and, again, thought he made sound observations. His reception by the •establishment• earned him hyperbolic condemnation, general cancellation and even a citation in the SPLC “hate-list”.

I used that hate-list as a research tool and made it a point to read first-hand the works of (some of) these terribly evil people before I made up my own mind.

In many instances I found the designations to be prejudiced — more even: calumnious.

My personal philosophy allows for a Judeo-critical stance. But I do not talk about this because the topic is waaaaay too hot.

What I find interesting here, now, is that you seem to rely on those pre-determinations that we have been critiquing in the “Wokies”.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Anyway, what do you mean by "hyperliberalism"—libertarianism, anarchism?

I mean something intuitively simple: an exaggeration of liberalism perhaps, but one necessarily involving self-condemnation and that “grammar of self-intolerance”.

Hyper-liberalism is perhaps a social costuming (“virtue signaling”) and involves a false-front or a deceiving front that is presented (and rehearsed) publicly.

I suppose that the cure for it would be in a grounded return to real Liberal principles — but Liberal principles with teeth. I.e. manly and capable of tough decision-making.

Hyper-liberalism is the ideological disease that has forced mass-immigration on Europe (for one example) and is therefore explicable as a misguided idealism which does not coincide with realism.

[Gary Childress]

Anyway, what do you mean by "hyperliberalism"—libertarianism, anarchism?

I mean something intuitively simple: an exaggeration of liberalism perhaps, but one necessarily involving self-condemnation and that “grammar of self-intolerance”.

Hyper-liberalism is perhaps a social costuming (“virtue signaling”) and involves a false-front or a deceiving front that is presented (and rehearsed) publicly.

I suppose that the cure for it would be in a grounded return to real Liberal principles — but Liberal principles with teeth. I.e. manly and capable of tough decision-making.

Hyper-liberalism is the ideological disease that has forced mass-immigration on Europe (for one example) and is therefore explicable as a misguided idealism which does not coincide with realism.

People I have met who described themselves as "woke" generally didn't criticize or condemn themselves as much as they criticized and condemned white supremacy, nationalism, and fascism. One can debate whether all the individual people that they criticized were indeed "fascists", "white supremacists" or "nationalists", or whatever but that's who or what they generally intended to criticize. May as well set the record straight.

[Alexis Jacobi]

People I have met who described themselves as "woke" generally didn't criticize or condemn themselves as much as they criticized and condemned white supremacy, nationalism, and fascism.

I think you fail to understand the psychological dynamic of self-intolerance.

Is it not incredible that the largest American population group, the group with the deepest roots, the most orderly and most technically proficient group, the nuclear population group of American culture and of the American gene pool, should have lost its preeminence to weaker, less established, less numerous, culturally heterogeneous, and often mutually hostile minorities?

With all due allowance for minority dynamism ... this miraculous shift of power could never have taken place without a Majority "split in the ranks" - without the active assistance and participation of Majority members themselves. It has already been pointed out that race consciousness is one of mankind's greatest binding forces. From this it follows that when the racial gravitational pull slackens people tend to spin off from the group nucleus. Some drift aimlessly through life as human isolates. Others look for a substitute nucleus in an intensified religious or political life, or in an expanded class consciousness. Still others, out of idealism, romanticism, inertia, or perversity, attach themselves to another race in an attempt to find the solidarity they miss in their own.

— Wilmot Robertson, The Dispossessed Majority.

You, Gary, are exemplary of the “split in the ranks”. You are its outcome. In fact there is no person I am aware of on this forum who can define a stronger •grammar• that does not involve the self-intolerance I refer to.

[Consul]

This sounds pretty abstruse. I don't know this book, and I hadn't heard of Sunic before. According to Wikipedia, he is a far-right, neofascist guy. The foreword of the above-mentioned book is written by Kevin B. MacDonald—"an American antisemitic conspiracy theorist, white supremacist"—, so I presume Sunic has antisemitic views too.

I am surprised that with your thoroughness in research and citation that you would rely on a Wiki definition.

That's a description of Sunic's political views, not a definition. Anyway, is it false that he belongs to the New Right, which actually is the New Far-Right = the Neofascist Right? The Wiki description seems to be correct. For instance, in the preface, Sunic explicitly thanks Alain de Benoist, a mastermind of the New Right, and other far-rightists. He even calls ex-National-Front activist Troy Southgate a friend. You don't do that if you're not one of them!

For the *Wokies* (I borrow the term with some irony) anyone who has ideas that are grounded in non-liberal or counter-liberal ideas is fascist by definition.

Not for me!

It has been awhile since I read Sunic’s book. But I remember it as being well-reasoned and helpful to understand this americanism.
Obviously, my appreciation reveals my core fascism. What to do, what to do?

I don't know. Are you a fascist? Of course, reading books by fascists and agreeing with a few things doesn't mean being a fascist; but if you agree with most of what they say about their political enemies, you may well be one of them—perhaps unwittingly.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Are you a fascist?

You seem solid in your ability to provide sound definitions.

Please give me a definition for this fascism. Then I will be able to tell you if I am aligned with it.

[Gary Childress]

People I have met who described themselves as "woke" generally didn't criticize or condemn themselves as much as they criticized and condemned white supremacy, nationalism, and fascism.

I think you fail to understand the psychological dynamic of self-intolerance.

Is it not incredible that the largest American population group, the group with the deepest roots, the most orderly and most technically proficient group, the nuclear population group of American culture and of the American gene pool, should have lost its preeminence to weaker, less established, less numerous, culturally heterogeneous, and often mutually hostile minorities?

With all due allowance for minority dynamism ... this miraculous shift of power could never have taken place without a Majority "split in the ranks" - without the active assistance and participation of Majority members themselves. It has already been pointed out that race consciousness is one of mankind's greatest binding forces. From this it follows that when the racial gravitational pull slackens people tend to spin off from the group nucleus. Some drift aimlessly through life as human isolates. Others look for a substitute nucleus in an intensified religious or political life, or in an expanded class consciousness. Still others, out of idealism, romanticism, inertia, or perversity, attach themselves to another race in an attempt to find the solidarity they miss in their own.

— Wilmot Robertson, The Dispossessed Majority.

You, Gary, are exemplary of the “split in the ranks”. You are its outcome. In fact there is no person I am aware of on this forum who can define a stronger •grammar• that does not involve the self-intolerance I refer to.

I think you fail to know the people I've personally met who used the term "woke". Some were white, some were minorities and they all got along pretty well with each other. It was a vibrant community of artists and poets of different walks of life. Not sure what they're doing/thinking these days but back when I associated with them, they were very diverse and multi-cultural and got along remarkably well.

[Gary Childress]

Are you a fascist?

You seem solid in your ability to provide sound definitions.

Please give me a definition for this fascism. Then I will be able to tell you if I am aligned with it.

Fascism:

:A political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism

Does that describe you? If not, then you're probably not a fascist. You might be a white supremacist or racist (I don't know), but I think to be a fascist you would have to have the added characteristic of advocating for autocratic government.

Are you a white supremacist or racist?

White Supremacist:

: a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races

Racist:

: having, reflecting, or fostering the belief that race (see RACE entry 1 sense 1a) is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
Accessed 6/12/2024

[Gary Childress]

Though the NIH defines "white supremacy" to include a white person wanting to live in a whites-only society.

White Supremacy:

Various belief systems central to which are one or more of the following key tenets: 1) whites should have dominance over people of other backgrounds, especially where they may co-exist; 2) whites should live by themselves in a whites-only society; 3) white people have their own "culture" that is superior to other cultures; 4) white people are genetically superior to other people. As a full-fledged ideology, white supremacy is far more encompassing than simple racism or bigotry.xxxiv

https://www.edi.nih.gov/blog/communitie ... ifferences

[Consul]

Are you a fascist?

You seem solid in your ability to provide sound definitions.
Please give me a definition for this fascism. Then I will be able to tell you if I am aligned with it.

Using "fascism" as a generic term (that doesn't specifically refer to Mussolini's original fascism only, and isn't synonymous with "national socialism"), I define fascism as a form of political extremism which rejects the values of the Enlightenment, rationalism, egalitarianism, individualism, liberalism (freedom rights), humanism (human rights), constitutionalism (separation of powers), parliamentarism, representational party democracy, and pluralism (multiculturalism).
Instead, it seeks to revive and reestablish values such as ethnic community & identity, nation, race, religion, divine or natural order, elitism, leadership, and to establish an authoritarian or even totalitarian system embodying and enforcing those values.

Neofascists may preserve a pseudodemocratic facade in the form of "populist democracy"; but an "illiberal democracy" as we see it in Hungary under Orban is not a genuine democracy.

If we call authoritarian (antidemocratic & antiliberal) national conservatism ultraconservatism, then it and fascism overlap and are historically connected, because both are rooted in the original Counter-Enlightenment conservatism as represented by Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821).

The so-called "Conservative Revolution" of the Weimar Republic in Germany (1918-1933), which is idolized and reproduced by the contemporary New Right, is properly called the German version of fascism.

The original fascists proudly called themselves so, whereas the contemporary (neo-)fascists prefer to present themselves as "conservatives", because it sounds better and more harmless. However, by doing so they intentionally blur the fact that there is an essential difference between moderate (democratic & liberal) conservatives (as represented by Christian democracy) and fascistoid ultraconservatives/fascists (as represented by the European New Right).