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Left Is Not Woke; Woke Is Not Left: A Book Review

10/29/2024

For many years, I was hired by many yoga teacher trainers to teach Indian/Yoga History and Philosophy, but it very early became obvious that most of the students had no experience in thinking philosophically. I was not one to lean into heavy philosophical jargon, but to face adult students of yoga who did not understand, for instance, the difference between “monism” and “dualism” and the implications of believing one or the other, or what was meant by theodicy, by what is meant by "absolute" and "relative" in philosophical context, or that the most common forms of ethical theory were virtue, deontology, and consequentialism and how that related to Yogic and Buddhist ethics soon made it evident that I had to first teach some of these philosophical concepts before even touching on the differences between Classical Yoga and Vedanta, and what it means to say that Buddhism and Jainism are heterodox schools of thought. Along with this, I found the need to impart some basic critical thinking concepts like the most common informal logical fallacies and the abuse of heuristics that can derail clear thinking. It became clear to me that most people don’t think about what they think they think. They often base their ideas on emotion, and do not follow what their thinking really leads to or is based upon. We all have a metaphysics, but most of us do not hold our metaphysics consciously, and as the philosopher Eugene Fontinell often noted, “unconscious metaphysics are dangerous metaphysics.” Julian Baggini and Jeremy Stangroom, in their book, Do You Think What You Think You Think You Think? show that what people say they believe is actually often at odds with what they truly believe and that most of us are quite inconsistent in our beliefs and in our thinking about our beliefs.

Susan Neiman understands this. As she begins her “Conclusion”: “This is a philosophical book, though it’s not only meant for philosophers….” She tells us that “I have chosen to focus on ideas. The woke call to decolonize thinking reflects the belief that we will not survive the multiple crises we’ve created unless we change the way we think about them. I agree that we desperately need fundamental changes in thinking, but I’ve urged another direction. For, as I’ve argued, the woke themselves have been colonized by a row of ideologies that properly belong to the right.”

And that is just what I’ve been arguing for several years now. So many of my well-intentioned, liberal friends don’t seem to understand the ideas that undergird the ‘woke’ project and how anti-progressive they in fact are, and how they lead to regressive policies, primarily because they haven’t ever thought about the ideas behind the 'woke project.' And ideas shape the reality we live. As Neiman shows, the same ideas based upon postmodern relativism undergirding the “woke” have been used by the right to create the “post truth” world of “alternative facts” that has led to the extreme polarization we now face in American society.

Now, she knows just referring to the “woke” is going to cause a reactivity that includes a refusal to even think about what this book is about. So, she begins this short, eminently readable tract by situating herself as not “liberal” because she lives in a country where “liberal” often means neoliberal libertarianism. She, like me, is a LEFTIST, happy to be called a socialist. What distinguishes liberal from left is the view that “along with political rights that guarantee freedoms to speak, worship, travel, and vote as we choose, we also have claims to social rights….” Now, both liberals and conservatives in America call these social rights “benefits”, “entitlements”, the “social safety net” or “nanny state.” Such terms make clear these leftist social rights like fair labor practices, free accessible education and health care, and decent affordable housing are more matters of charity than justice.

And as Thomas Piketty has argued, it is quite possible to move toward a participatory socialism by changing legal, fiscal, and social systems by doing something as simple as raising tax rates that would still amount to less than the tax rates in the US after World War II that saw our greatest economic growth along with the growth of the middle class. The identity conflicts that now permeate what passes for our political discourse “are fueled by the disillusionment with the very ideas of a just economy and social justice."

So, what’s Neiman’s point? She tells us up front in her “Introduction” that what concerns her most “are the ways in which contemporary voices considered to be leftist have abandoned the philosophical ideas that are central to any left-wing standpoint: a commitment to universalism over tribalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress.” And all of these fundamental ideas are connected. Neiman speaks for me when she writes that in response to so many on the left who have felt betrayed by what’s called “the woke left, or the far left, or the radical left” she is “unwilling to cede the word ‘left’ or accept the binary suggestion that those who aren’t woke must be reactionary.” Instead, she spends the bulk of her book showing how many of today’s self-identified left have in fact abandoned core ideas any leftist should hold.

AND, this project of hers – and why I’ve written this piece – is that while the current authoritarianism of the right, with its Christian Nationalism and Fascist tendencies is more dangerous, those who identify as progressives have deprived themselves of the very ideas we need if we hope to resist the growing lurch to the right!

“Woke” is a hotly contested term, and it moved from a pretty positive descriptor and term of praise to a term of abuse and eventually the right in this country took it on as a term of attack against anyone standing against racism! A similar thing happened with the term “identity politics” but her point is that the right alone is not to blame for this inversion. Neither identity nor woke politics was used with the nuance they demanded. They became divisive, creating an alienation that the right than took to advantage. Perhaps the worst example is found in “woke capitalism” which hijacks demands for diversity in order to bolster the bottom line.

Neiman asks, “Can woke be defined? And she responds: "It begins with concern for marginalized persons, and ends by reducing each to the prism of her marginalization. The idea of intersectionality might have emphasized the ways in which all of us have more than one identity. Instead, it led to focus on those parts of identities that are most marginalized, and multiplies them into a forest of trauma.” Woke emphasizes the ways marginalized groups have been denied justice, but by focusing on inequalities of power, the concept of justice is often left behind. And in demanding nations and peoples face up to criminal histories, they often conclude that all history is criminal and deny the real progress that has been made historically."

And confusion among well-meaning liberals arises from the fact that the woke movement expresses traditional left-wing emotional commitments such as empathy for the marginalized and indignation at the plight of the oppressed, but they are derailed by theoretical assumptions coming from postmodernism and critical theory that undermine them. Neiman boils it down to a challenging question: Which do you find more essential: the accidents we are born with, or the principles we consider and hold? Traditionally it was the right that focused on the first and the left that emphasized the second." But when a major US liberal female politician heralds the election of Italy’s first female prime minister as a “break with the past” we have to wonder which past? How can any principled person on the left herald the election of a fascist just because she's a woman, especially given Italy’s past history of fascism?! The theories underlying the woke undermine their empathetic emotions and liberating intentions. And because the history of those theories (ideas) is not well understood by liberals who think woke is progressive they give the woke a pass. Yet, some of the authors of those ideas were outright Nazis! We’re talking Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger.

The nationalists of the right recognize no deep connections and few if any obligations to anyone outside their own tribe. Traditional leftism begins with the idea of universalism epitomized by international solidarity. The opposite of universalism is the identitarianism that reduces the myriad factors of any individual’s identity down to gender and race/ethnicity. And yet, any clear-headed assessment will show you that the life of a black person such as Barack Obama is dramatically different compared to the life of a poor black man in Alabama or perhaps more obviously as in the example Neiman uses between the life of a black person in America and one born and raised in Nigeria (see Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s Americanah). And even identifying someone as “Nigerian” only has significance outside the country since Nigeria is a land of peoples divided by more than 500 languages and fraught histories. Neiman asks, “Can you identify someone as gay without mentioning whether he lives in Tehran or Toledo?”

Benjamin Zachariah wrote: “Once upon a time, essentializing people was considered offensive, somewhat stupid, anti-liberal, anti-progressive, but now this is only so when it is done by other people. Self-essentializing and self-stereotyping are not only allowed but considered empowering.” Think of this the next time you hear someone introduce their argument for or against something with the phrase, “Speaking as a……” Also, what is it but essentializing when so-called ‘anti-racists’ like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X Kendi talk about “white fragility”? It’s offensive, stupid, anti-liberal, and anti-progressive, leading to greater tribalism and divisiveness. She quotes Todd Gitlin’s Letters to a Young Activist: “…identity politics is interest-group politics. It aims to change the distribution of benefits, not the rules under which distribution takes place.” A better example of this than of Kendi’s idea that “the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination” can hardly be found. Neiman pointedly writes that those who think such woke identitarianism is progressive should perhaps consider that one of the more successful examples of identity politics, “complete with the appeal to past victimhood” is the Jewish nationalism of right-wing politicians like Binyamin Netanyahu. As an aside, she shows how the hypervalorization of victimization ends up preventing real progress, an argument detailed by John McWhorter in Losing the Race: Self Sabotage in Black America.

There is so much of value in this short book of less than 150 pages! Some points made are quite thought-provoking as found in her argument against “allyship.” In a discussion of the Black Lives Movement, she says that it started with a universalist character, with a breadth and diversity among those demanding an end to violence against black people. But it soon turned away from such universalism, with the idea that it was a movement on behalf of common ideals explicitly rejected by many of its leaders, who "allowed" for the participation of “white allies.” Neiman writes: “I am not an ally. Convictions play a minor role in alliances, which is why they are often very short. If my self-interest happens to align with yours, for a moment, we could form an alliance. The United States and the Soviet Union were allies until the Nazi regime was defeated. When the US decided its interests lay in recruiting former Nazis to defeat communism, the Soviet Union turned from ally to enemy.” She notes that it was no alliance, but a commitment to universal justice that led to millions of white people around the world shouting “Black Lives Matter”. To divide members of a movement into allies and others undermines the bases of deep solidarity and destroys what standing left means.”

As an indictment of the poor education most of us receive in the US, when I speak of “Enlightenment Values” such as universalism, I mostly get blank stares and questions about what I mean! Worse still, there are others who cynically reject these values and ideals because we haven’t fully lived up to them. This is a perfect example of the good being an enemy of the perfect, otherwise known as the “Nirvana Fallacy.” And one of the more nonsensical arguments I’ve heard from the so-called woke progressives is that Enlightenment Values are themselves “Eurocentric” and “Colonialist” which is 180-degrees from the truth. Neiman reminds us “The Enlightenment was pathbreaking in rejecting Eurocentrism and for urging Europeans to examine themselves from the perspective of the rest of the world.” Indeed, most often, “the point of examining non-European cultures was to point out the defects of European ones” and this at a time when such ideas could have cost the Enlightenment writers and thinkers of such ideas their lives!

To hear some of the “woke” you’d think Europe invented colonialism, as if stronger nations didn’t colonize weaker ones from time immemorial. We’re talking Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Assyrians, Aztecs, Malians, Mughals etc. Such colonialism was never really even questioned until the Enlightenment! Here is an excerpt from Kant’s criticism of colonialism: “Compare the inhospitable actions of the civilized and especially of the commercial states of our part of the world…. America, the lands inhabited by the Negro, the Spice Islands, the Cape, etc, were at the time of their discovery considered by these civilized intruders as lands without owners, for they counted the inhabitants as nothing…. They oppress the natives… spread famine…and the whole litany of evils which afflict mankind. China and Japan, who have had experience with such guests, have wisely refused them entry.” Kant rarely used the word “evil” but he’s clear here in the evil nature of colonialism.

Diderot was even more fervent in his criticism, arguing that indigenous peoples threatened by European colonizers had every right, reason, and justice on their side if they “simply killed the invaders like the wild beasts those intruders resembled.”
Enlightenment thinkers didn’t simply point out the cruelty of colonialism, they deconstructed the thinking of those who justified the theft of indigenous lands and resources (which often tended to be theological). This is why it's so important to address and question the thinking behind policy.

Neiman eviscerates the incoherence of much of the ideas behind the woke. Influenced by postmodernism, those who see themselves as radically progressive reject reason itself as a “white European concept” and yet use reason in their argumentation. How else could you argue a point? Audre Lorde was wrong: sometimes you do indeed need to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house and reason is one of those tools we need in order to do so. Yet, there are those who identify reason as oppression!

In her chapter on “Justice and Power” she critiques the cynicism, nihilism, and incoherence of Foucault. His obsession with everything being a power relationship leads him to assert “peace would then be a form of war, and the state a means of waging it.” Neiman punctures such inanity: “An introductory course in logic could have prevented some confusion. From the fact that some moral claims are hidden claims to power, you cannot conclude that every claim to act for the common good is a lie.” This, of course, is the argument of Chomsky in his debate with Foucault, who he called "the most amoral person I've ever met." As Neiman writes: “Anyone who denies the moral distinction between innocence and guilt denies the possibility of moral distinctions at all.”

Perhaps the biggest irony of the woke “progressives” is how anti-progressive such thinking actually is! She writes about this in her chapter, “Progress and Doom.” Traditionally, there was no bigger distinction between he left and the right than in the idea that progress is possible. It is simply not an idea found in traditional conservative thought which viewed history either as circular or as a devolution from some past golden age! The “better world” can only be thought of as being found in the afterlife. But to stand on the left is to believe that people can work together to make real and significant improvements in the real conditions of their own and others’ lives. Here again, Foucault was as reactionary as any conservative thinker.

Nieman gives several examples of real progress that has been made that is ignored or simply discounted by woke leaders by looking at Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, which gives a dramatic example of punishment in the 17th century. She begins by pointing out how Foucault fudges the distinction between normative and descriptive claims, which is common among those who identify as ‘critical thinkers.’ He writes in such a way that he attempts to make his readers feel that judging something as better or worse is intellectually crude. So, while he never claims that bringing back drawing-and-quartering would be better, he does say that the object of 18th century prison reform was not punish less but to punish better. He simply doesn't give a moment’s thought to the real human prisoners who were spared such torture! It is progress that we’ve gone from public torture as entertainment (“Bring the whole family to the Drawing-And-Quartering this afternoon!) to questioning the ethics of capital punishment. And it is the progressive foundation of Enlightenment values that motivates those of us who are capital punishment abolitionists.

More recently, the writers of Critical Race Theory: An Introduction discount the outlawing of segregation in the early 60s. Nieman points out that most events have multiple causes and “it’s particularly true in cases of progress.” She writes that segregation was outlawed because many Americans, including members of the Kennedy administration, were morally outraged by the sight of white policemen attacking black children with dogs and firehoses. As Delgado and Stefanic point out, the Kennedy’s also knew that the Soviet Union was watching the same things on television and were using it to attack American claims of its moral superiority. Without the context of the cold war, segregation would most likely have lasted even longer. Knowing this may certainly temper any admiration we may have for the Kennedy brothers’ moral outrage, but unless you were prone to the Nirvana Fallacy, it wouldn’t be totally undermined entirely but this is exactly what those promulgators of CRT suggest! The historical evidence shows it was real, and even if it weren’t how much does it matter what moved them to act? Blacks living after are in a better situation than before under the Jim Crow laws. And so-called progressives who deny this, and act like racism is as bad or even worse now, undermine the hope in progress needed for any actual activism to succeed.

To assert that racism is part of the DNA of America forestalls the hope needed to make real progress but that’s exactly the argument of Nikole Hannah-Jone’s 1619 Project! Hope isn’t optimism but it sure isn’t pessimism nor cynicism. And as Kant argued, we cannot act morally – and I would add, progressively – without hope.

Now, of course I know that “woke/progressive” activists seek solidarity, justice, and progress. Neiman shows, however, that “the theories they embrace subvert their own goals. Without universalism there is no argument against racism, merely a bunch of tribes jockeying for power.” And if that is what politics comes to, there’s no way to maintain a robust understanding of justice, without which, we cannot coherently work for progress. Thinking, like truth, matters.

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