Taking a Stance Against Woke vs Anti-Woke Accelerationism | Post Woke

The fundamentals of the Western Enlightenment is at stake here.

Welcome to TaraElla's Post Woke series, where we consciously aim to move beyond the woke vs anti-woke culture wars, and towards a post-woke model of culture and politics.

Today, I want to talk about what I think is the biggest threat to Western society right now: woke vs anti-woke accelerationism. Let's start by talking about the third National Conservatism Conference ("NatCon III"), which has been in the news recently. The NatCon conference is home to a particular strand of conservatism, that is most known for embracing the power of governments to fight the culture wars. This strand of conservatism is clearly different from the old-school conservatism of people like Reagan and Thatcher, and is probably better thought of as the radical wing of the anti-woke movement.

Let's look at what the NatCon people believe. "The institutional left does not intend to leave anything of the old republic behind for us to salvage. Constitutionalism, scientific inquiry, individual liberty, civil society, voluntarism, patriotism, parental authority, free expression, free enterprise, religious pluralism, cultural diversity - they are coming for everything. So national conservatism must come for them," declared Rachel Bovard, who was speaking at the conference. This quote is notable because it demonstrates what NatCon-style thinking is justified upon: a vague picture that 'the enemy' is out to destroy everything, and hence we are in a state of emergency, which would require extraordinary, illiberal measures to combat.

I actually agree that there are strands of left-wing thinking that is exactly like Bovard described. I have previously said that the logical conclusion of postmodern critical theory is that everything we know and cherish is a social construct that serves the interests of the oppressors by holding the oppressed down, and hence it all needs to be deconstructed. I also agree with the more general concern that the postmodern critical theory wing of the Left seems to have the misguided belief that an unlimited 'liberation' from the constrains of reality as we know it is possible or desirable. I believe this is partially rooted in the pseudo-Freudian philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, which has no basis in objective reality. As I often say, what we have now is the result of centuries or trial and error, and we will certainly not be able to get anything as good by knocking it all down and rebuilding everything from scratch.

However, the problem with the NatCon-style approach is that they conflate everything on 'the left', used in a broad sense, with the aforementioned extreme radical views. Hence, in their view, mainstream center-left politicians, political parties, media and organizations are all out to achieve that radical vision, and are hence all dangerous. This view flies in the face of objective reality, and also leaves no room for rational and respectful debate.  After all, if you see those who you disagree with as not merely sincerely misguided, but actively being a threat to civilization, there is much less reason to treat them with fairness and respect, and more reason to defeat them at all costs. Similar has been said about so-called 'woke' activists in the past, who saw their opponents as evil oppressors working to uphold an oppressive system. In both cases, their worldviews leave them with no reason to allow free speech and due process for their opponents.

Hence, the most extreme 'woke' activists often resort to using cultural and institutional power to suppress their opponents, and now NatCons want to use government power to suppress them. If the NatCons win power and start putting their ideas into practice, it will end up making the postmodern critical theory approach to politics look much more justified and necessary to progressives. This will mean that even the most moderate progressives will start embracing the most extreme forms of wokeism. This, in turn, will certainly cause the NatCons to double-down on their authoritarianism in response. The extremism on both sides will get worse and worse, and respect for things like free speech will certainly cease to exist. This vicious cycle will lead to the complete annihilation of the Western Enlightenment project, if it is not stopped.

As I have previously said multiple times, the anti-woke movement has evolved to become a mirror image of the 'woke' movement, and thus inherited most of its problems. Two of the biggest problems with the woke movement are its inability to be committed to objective reality, and its deliberate use of exaggerated language to rile up people's emotions. These features stem from the postmodern view that language and discourse are about power. It is a rejection of the classical liberal premise that discourse should be about getting us closer to the objective truth. In recent years, some anti-woke activists have, by mirroring the most extreme forms of woke culture, effectively adopted the postmodernist view that discourse is about power, and the NatCon style of politics is the ultimate culmination of this view. Hence, from the (classical) liberal viewpoint, woke and anti-woke, cancel culture and NatCon politics, might be different, even opposite, in content, but they are very similar in essence.

The problem with this false 'choice' between woke vs anti-woke, criticalism vs NatCon-ism, is that they ultimately represent only one choice on the most important issue: whether you believe that discourse is about getting to the objective truth, or about power struggle. Whether you believe that the outcome of the competition of ideas should be determined by merit, or by might means right. The false 'choice' between woke and anti-woke leads to the obscuring of this question, and the default acceptance of the power struggle, might means right worldview. Therefore, those of us who are still dedicated to the view that discourse should be about the objective truth need to clearly take a stand on this most fundamental of issues, and call out those who essentially want to put an end to the Western Enlightenment.