isn't this exhibit a why olympic ratings are so low this year the focus on woke and not the win woke once everyone's all woke up it'll be great it's a dangerous word to use sometimes people can be so woke though everybody in the end gets cancelled yeah well as i always say you know i mean good luck to the whoa karate when the chinese communist party takes over they're going to have a great time you know this this idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke and all that stuff you should get over that quickly the world the world is messy wokism what is it a force for good for bad the woke ultras who want to wipe away all symbols of british imperialism don't speak for the families who lived under the empire political correctness gone mad you can always count on a cabbie to say it how it is and when it comes to political correctness this lot certainly have a view as far as i think he's concerned you know i'm a dinosaur is it really everywhere coca-cola going all woke is it a red herring a new mccarthyism i invited them to give information of wrongdoing graph corruption communism i am continuing to get that information getting documents too yes the idea of being woke of kism appeared seemingly out of nowhere does it have the history what's going on under the surface when you strip away the noise we'll look at the history of the term how it's related to political correctness ask whether it goes back even further before thinking about what i'll describe as the broadening of the public sphere it's relationship to fashion and the council culture debate let's just get stuck in [Music] the problem with any analysis of a term like woke is that it's vague already outdated contested and means different things to different people what i want to try and show here is that it's best understood not as a concept but as a logic or a process its original meaning staying alert to injustice has been reinterpreted by reactionaries to ironically describe the misguided the sensorious and the dogmatic but if it's just a label how does it become an ism a culture a movement to many wochism is equivalent to council culture while many who are labelled as woke would reject the term entirely or at least never use it themselves anymore of course the idea of being awake to something is a vague notion but in the early 20th century this idea of being awake became associated with philosophical ideas about self-consciousness and identity especially for black americans and the colonised the black nationalist marcus garvey urged the oppressed colonies to wake up ethiopia wake up africa and argued that descendants of slaves in the us could only achieve political consciousness through separation independence and an exodus back to africa you can enslave what was done for 300 years of men you can shackle the hands of men you can tackle the feet of men you can imprison the bodies of men but you cannot tackle or imprison the mind sociologist and precursor to the civil rights movement w.e.b du bois wrote about a black double consciousness and a life within the veil he wrote one ever feels his twoness an american a negro two souls two thoughts two unreconciled strivings two warring ideals in one dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder the history of the american negro is the history of this striving this longing to attain self-conscious manhood to merge his double self into a better and truer self in 1938 the american musician ledbelly wrote a protest song about nine black teenagers accused of raped [Music] at the end let belly says and uh yeah he showed me the scots my boy and i shake hands with him so i made this little song about down there so i advise everybody to be a little careful when they go along through that but they won't keep the eyes open and the first writer to use the term in print was probably william melvin kelly who argued that beatniks had appropriated blackwake slang he wrote that the american negro feels he can on the spur of the moment create the most exciting language that exists in any english-speaking country today i asked someone how they felt about white people trying to use hip language he said man they blew the gig just by being grey barry beckham's 1972 play garvey lives contains the lines no i won't go to sleep i won't i've been sleeping all my life and now that mr garvey doesn't wake me up i'm gonna stay woke and in the middle of the 20th century the psychiatrist and philosopher franz fanon wrote extensively about black and colonized consciousness and identity for most of the 20th century though it was a marginal word it only gained wider currency in the outrage over the shooting of michael brown by a police officer in 2014. it was quickly adopted by black lives matter's protesters as a reminder to be aware of police injustice at its simplest then the term woke has been used to encourage political awareness of injustice to wake up to social issues that are otherwise and previously hidden especially with regards to racial justice but the term was quickly co-opted by the right and turned into a term of derision the karate the woke mob and council culture were in the eyes of many a loud misguided movement determined to silence their ideological enemies at that moment the way woke was used slipped neatly into another lineage political correctness we are being enveloped with political correct nonsense you know what is so worrisome about this new brand of censorship is it doesn't care if something is actually offensive 68 of aussies believe that we are now a country that's far too politically correct in his history of the concept historian geoffrey hughes has defined political correctness as a slightly puritanical intervention to sanitize the language by suppressing some of its uglier prejudicial features it's striking when you look into it how similar the political correctness and work debates have been let's look at some definitions a 1992 article in the scotsman for example remarked that a survey of children's authors by the writers group pen suggests that publishers are not content merely with encouraging writers to be politically correct but are actually censoring anything they feel to be politically incorrect in 1997 the oxford english dictionary described pc as conformity to a body of liberal or radical opinion on social matters characterized by the advocacy of approved views and the rejection of language and behavior considered discriminatory or offensive webster's college dictionary defined it earlier in 1991 as marked by or adhering to a typically progressive orthodoxy on issues involving especially race gender sexual affinity or ecology in the 90s feminists were already arguing that words like chairman or businessman should be replaced with chair person and business person to its advocates being politically correct was about reappropriating the labels that were often used to designate outsiders the colonized minorities foreigners to strip terms of their prejudice and reformulate them with more neutral language but where did this come from he was on this campus and that a group of students decided that because they disagreed with not that he's published institute newspaper they would strike out for political correctness by simply confiscating and destroying an entire issue of paper well many saw it as a monster invented by the right conjured up to discredit progressives but while it was certainly exaggerated by the right the fight over language was very real author filmmaker and activist tony cade bambara wrote in 1970s the black woman for example that a man cannot be politically correct and a chauvinist too facts on file in 1975 wrote that on the lesbian issue she said that the national organization of women was moving in the intellectually and politically correct direction between the 70s and the 90s the debate had moved into the mainstream in the us and the uk so what was significant about that moment well two things happened some saw it as language that had emerged from mao's cultural revolution mao wrote that the failure of the party's leading bodies to wage a concerted and determined struggle against these incorrect ideas and to educate the members in the party's correct line trotsky had also talked to the correct political perspective and the soviet union quickly followed mao's emphasis on cultural issues at the same time the cultural revolution and the cultural turn in humanities departments began to emphasize and study questions of culture language and everyday life from a political perspective the civil rights movements and second wave feminism highlighted questions of culture as much as politics cultural politics the idea that both were intertwined became central but we could go back further if wokeness and political correctness are about correct language justice and injustice progressive politics and reaction then aren't these just timeless phenomena as hughes points say what was politically correct in england before the civil war under charles the first changed entirely under cromwell's commonwealth and changed again with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. what was politically incorrect under czarist russia quickly changed under the bolsheviks what was politically incorrect in colonial america was transformed throughout the war of independence so if as an underlying logic it's nothing new what is going on [Music] the public sphere according to the german philosopher jurgen habermas is the loose set of mediums persons and institutions through which public affairs are discussed and decided under a monarchy and throughout the middle ages the public sphere was limited to the king or queen's court with the development of the printing press and increasingly throughout the enlightenment this fear widened to include philosophers businessmen and newspapers this of course required money and a certain social position however habermas argued the enlightenment public sphere was dynamic a proliferation of coffee houses clubs masons lodges publications letters and books all contributed to the discussion of politics and new ideas in the year of the french revolution in paris every political or politically minded man of any worth started a club or a journal in may of 1789 as many as 450 clubs and 200 journals sprang up across paris compared with today though the public sphere was still compromised of a tiny minority of privileged metropolitan elites and while this continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries more people entered the debates through the sale of cheat newspapers social mobility entry into universities and the development of the radio the television and the internet in the late 20th century especially there was a rapid and exponential deepening and broadening of the public sphere not only through these new media technologies but through globalization and multiculturalism but capital and corporations legacy media and big money still dominated media theorists call old technology like radio and television one to many mediums one person broadcasting out to many others while the internet can be one to many many to one and many to many we can roughly map the first wave of political correctness onto moments like the cultural revolution women's and civil rights movements and globalization leading to multiculturalism this brought many more whether as participants or simply as topics into the discussion but many others of course were still marginalized this second wave woke-ism is an internet phenomenon today information to a large degree has been democratized anyone can educate themselves on any topic and footage of injustice from police shootings and concentration camps can be transmitted around the globe in seconds but this digital ecosystem has created new pressures and there's one that's particularly human the demand that we know that we're in the loop that we're up to date with the news with history with music with trends with fashion we're a gossiping species a social species and we're judged on how well we play the social game we must above all else be interesting this applies to justice and morality as much as any other topic man after all is a political animal there's a digital demand that we wake up become woke know what's right and wrong in the world have a viewpoint and argument traditionally these questions about politics culture morality and justice were monopolized by the king's court the church hashed out by newspapers political parties the new york times polling institutes experts and specialists in his 1989 classic bureaucracy political scientist james wilson writes a professional is someone who receives important occupational rewards from a reference group whose membership is limited to people who have undergone specialized formal education and have accepted a group defined code of proper conduct the group sets the standards defines what's correct what's the right way of talking about things and often has vested interests but when it comes to politics and justice and morality that specialized formal education and group defined code of proper conduct has always been a type of chimera politics and justice affects everyone each person and every community has a perspective and a contribution to make this was the basic premise of the democratic reforms of the past 200 years we can now all in varying degrees contribute to the public sphere have a say on twitter start a blog a podcast or a youtube channel we can see this broadening of the public sphere in a surprising place fashion magazines as this recent vogue cover story of malala shows the young woman shot by the taliban for going to school fashion magazines have become increasingly politicized recently women's magazines have featured the likes of kamala harris aoc and jess phillips here in the uk teen vogue has attracted right-wing fury for tweeting things like can't end poverty without ending capitalism candace owens has had a meltdown over harry styles wearing a dress on the cover of vogue complaining that we should bring back manly man and that this was part of a bigger plan to take down the west douglas murray has rallied against woke gq what connects all of this is that there's a systemic relationship between fashion or taste and politics the french sociologist pierre bourdieu knew this he saw that tastes fashions and trends were a type of currency what he called cultural capital displaying the right tastes being in the no demonstrating that you have knowledge of the rules of the game contributes to your reputation your standing talking about what was on tv last night popular music the latest novel or fashion trends or in more elite circles highbrow art and opera signifies that you're a certain type of person reliable knowledgeable has the right skills an elite victorian gentleman in an expensive fashionable suit can immediately demonstrate that he's of value could be taken seriously is of worth to another victorian gentleman and his time capital and knowledge whether cultural social or economic is power and knowledge about morality and justice function in the same way the correct sort of views the right morals a virtuous mentality are all more likely to get you accepted in certain circles and of course what's considered correct changes from circle to circle group to group person to person [Music] why is it that multinationals magazines and brands seem to be more comfortable making moral statements about the environment about gender roles class minority rights well because the public sphere has broadened more people are informed minorities have more of a say more of a voice more of a platform editors and publishers read the room know what their demographic like play to the crowd and this broadening has brought with it an explosion of viewpoints of niche websites offshoots of ideological viewpoints the public sphere has become a wild dynamic and postmodern place [Music] i've argued that wokism in its new form has emerged because of the broadening of the public sphere a demand to be in the know and a wider democratic and popular interest in justice and morality but many would say that this has led to something else outrage council culture dogmatism witch hunts and puritanical pontificating even totalitarianism let's look at three quick case studies hans georges mueller from carefree wandering alex o'connor from cosmic skeptic and winston marshall from mumford and sons muller has recently argued that wokism is primarily a civil religion a shared spiritual moral vision and ideology that has a kind of national foundational impact and has an activistic and moralistic approach to political life so it is i think and others have uh said this as well it functions basically as a new form of religion and more specifically as a new kind of civil religion throughout the video muller takes a seemingly critical view of what he thinks wokism is describing diversity statements as basically an exercise in woke language saying that woke-ism today has western society in its grip and repeatedly arguing that its basis is being unapologetically me whatever that means muller's fallen into the trap of equating wokeism with religion a shallow and a historical analysis that can't account for the fact that debates about moral dogmatism and political correctness in different guises are as old as time take a look for example at this definition comparing ideology to religion by philosopher carl lowenstein from 1969 it's characteristic of the religious that it does not admit degrees of acceptance being absolute by nature it must either be accepted or rejected there are only believers and heretics most modern political ideologies have become religion affected in the sense that a particular thought and belief pattern embodies values that are considered absolute by its adherence muller's analysis makes many bizarre claims that wokism is individualistic not postmodern and is the new meta-narrative of our time but the underlying case he makes that wokism is a type of dogmatic religion essentially is a common one in a recent oxford union debate alex o'connor from cosmic skeptic makes a similar argument that council culture is a new and distinct and disproportionate cultural phenomenon he says then what you're advocating for becomes a machine for disproportionate and arbitrary punishment which is beyond ethically irresponsible disproportionate and arbitrary punishment is the behavior of despots not of morally serious thinking beings it's one of the first things that any functioning system of moral or legal justice must ensure cannot materialize and it's the one thing that cancel culture does best once it starts it doesn't stop and in the same debate this guy compares being cancelled with gandhi and martin luther king being murdered caesar gandhi jfk were all cancelled joan of arc was cancelled for becoming a symbol and 17-year-old lady jane grey was cancelled for getting in the way in the way the throne of england off with her head religions have cancelled people remember the crusades they speak for god they are right because they have faith i'm offended i'm hurt your words pierce my heart like a knife words are violent silence is violence you're amazing my existence these are the cries of people who never emotionally moved on from the nursery and finally winston marshall stepped down from mumford and sons after causing a twitter backlash for tweeting that the right-wing journalist andy noe was brave for reporting on left-wing violence in portland okay so what's going on in all of these cases the emphasis focus and direction of empathy is on the so-called cancelled usually but not always admittedly an elite or privileged person in some way someone with a platform while their ire is directed at the mob the crowd at public opinion and ordinary everyday people in other words they make the cardinal error of punching down not up as tom nicholas has argued in his video on council culture the mob is often viewed and analyzed through the eyes of an anxious elite martial rich famous and from a very well-connected family stepped down from mumford and sons voluntarily and found instant employment in a new career writing and talking about his cancellation on unheard who his father finances and the circuit of right-wing and liberal shows podcasts and channels that criticize council culture and the irony with most of these counsellings is that i personally never heard of them until they were cancelled and now they're everywhere the broadening of the public sphere has meant that if you're a public figure commentator or writer as each of these are who has a platform and an audience you no longer have that platform to yourself as clay shirky wrote in the aptly titled here comes everybody the more ideas there are in circulation the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with more media always means more arguing the result is simple and inevitable more than ever wading into the public sphere and making a public argument especially on a controversial topic that affects people's lives takes an extra layer of courage and an even thicker skin and that's great it should encourage stronger arguments you better have your points in order if you're going to make a public case to a passionate crowd on a controversial issue you should expect pushback you should know you're going to face fire invoke emotion of some kind that's courage courage isn't whining moaning and protesting that things didn't go your way courage isn't comparing an organization not wanting to associate with you with being burned at the stake or sent to the gulag the risk of rejection the possibility of causing a fence is the price of admission to be able to broadcast your own opinions onto a stage of millions in a broadened lively public sphere it's a brave thing to do admittedly but we seem to be creating a culture where freedom of speech is becoming synonymous with freedom from consequence the universe of public opinion is an unpredictably passionate storm you're gonna get wet be tossed about a bit you might even get struck by lightning twitter youtube facebook they're public stages you've willingly built an audience for yourself and the audience has fruit piers morgan can no longer stand on a platform high above the crowd but instead has to engage with an audience it takes an impressive display of insecurity to moan daily from a platform you willingly use about ordinary people responding to you there's something particularly nauseating to me about directing your complaints and criticisms downwards towards ordinary people rather than upwards to those in positions of power now are there cases when people will be unjustifiably vilified of course is faux outrage real yes should we strive to be tolerant open-minded and as undogmatic as possible absolutely but this has always been the case dynamic political discussion about morality justice and the limits of our freedoms is what democracy is about we live in a period of history where speech has never been freer you have never been freer to make a point without repercussions this is the most tolerant period in history gulags and concentration camps are rare monarchs are powerless the politburo is defunct the church has dismantled its stakes and almost anything can be published the public sphere is a rich vibrant and broad place ian forster couldn't publish his gay novel maurice until 1971 despite it being written in 1910 newspapers were censored right up to the vietnam war in france women couldn't have a bank account in their own name until 1965. publishing houses magazines and newspapers have always had strict guidelines and editorial codes again we live in the freest speech period in history the public sphere is broad and varied expect pushback have courage punch up not down stay awake to injustice and be kind what is wokism nothing it's dead as usual thank you so much to these people this little argument just wouldn't be possible without them if you'd like to support me make more videos like this you can do so through the link below there's a discord server i put the videos out early i make the scripts available early to patrons and you get your name in the credits and you get to support a little independent creator like me if not hit like subscribe share the bell and i'll see you next time
2021-08-13