This is How to Take Back the Woke Skeptical Movement | Moral Libertarian Talk

We can still repel the Populist Right's ideological invasion

Over the past two years, I have talked quite a lot about my disappointment with how the 'woke skeptical movement' turned out, the wasted potential, and so on, but it's something I have to talk about again, because I think the situation is actually still salvageable.

Earlier this year, when former President Trump attended the US Libertarian Party conference, and received a hostile reception there, it brought attention to the takeover of the Libertarian Party by the populist right-aligned Mises Caucus over the past few years, and the frustrations of true libertarians towards this development. The Libertarian Party is vulnerable to this because it is a small party supported by a small movement, and it is situated adjacent to a much larger and more well-funded right-wing propaganda machine that has largely moved towards authoritarianism in the Trump era. A lesser discussed fact is that, around the same time, the woke skeptical movement experienced a similar hostile takeover too, even though it is not a formal political party. It seems that the populist-authoritarian New Right is hell bent on taking over and remaking everything it can, which is unsurprising given its ideological commitment towards 'dismantling the Cathedral' and 'regime change' in America and the West.

These days, the unfortunate reality is that many people simply equate woke skepticism with the populist right. You know, for taking a strong stance against wokeness, I have been called right-wing by countless numbers of people. Those of you who know me, who have truly read and understood what I have said, would know that I am not right-wing. Indeed, I have a very negative view of the populist 'New Right', and their hijacking of the woke skeptical movement is among my biggest political frustrations of all time. I'm all about freedom, and the New Right is all about controlling people's lives in an authoritarian way. We're literally incompatible opposites, like fire and water. Of course, with populist right propaganda dominating the woke skeptical brand out there, some people are bound to think that woke skeptical equals right-wing. I mean, some people now think libertarianism equals Trumpism too, for similar reasons. Ridiculous, yes, but the political landscape is, on the whole, ridiculous right now. And it's all because of some dishonest actors.

But firstly, how would the woke skeptical movement have turned out, in my ideal world? My hope was that it would have been the beginning of a culture where people actually looked at issues in a thoroughly rational way, where independent thinking and good faith discussion were encouraged, and where skepticism to established narratives were the norm. The worst aspects of wokeism were slavery to unsound philosophical theory, irrationality, a lack of free speech, conformity with the in-group, tribalism, and seeing everything as a power struggle, which justifies bad faith arguments. The reaction against wokeism would have been the catalyst for the coming together of people who rejected these things, thus forming a community with the opposite kind of culture. Or so I hoped. If this was successful, then the new community wouldn't just be critiquing wokeism, which would be quite limiting anyway. We would critique all sorts of bad ideas in the same way, whether they came from the left or the right. This would also fit nicely with my philosophical commitments as a Moral Libertarian: allowing free speech without the fear of cancellation would be an important part of upholding equal moral agency for every individual, and a truly free and fair marketplace of ideas would allow the best, and most moral, ideas to win out.

My vision was ultimately made impossible by the reactionary-populist New Right, which saw frustration with wokeness as something they could exploit politically. The New Right is basically a reactionary program that wishes to supplant establishment conservative politics, which it sees as 'weak' and useless. It wants to remake society and turn the clock back by decades at least, using highly authoritarian means, inspired by everything from Catholic integralism to Viktor Orban's illiberal democracy model. The New Right saw that frustration with wokeness could be weaponized to make the case for their kind of radical authoritarian program. Thus well-funded right-wing propaganda began coming at the woke skeptical discourse like a hurricane, a force so powerful that we were unprepared to counter it.

The New Right's strategically biased reporting and use of emotionally charged rhetoric distorted the woke skeptical discourse to serve the New Right's own political interests, to promote and justify its worldview, and to build it into a dominant force on the Right. In doing so, they turned woke skepticism from being about rationally critiquing the unsound ideas of postmodern critical theory, to being about moral panics around things like woke corporations, certain LGBT issues and liberal education policies. Failed presidential candidate Ron DeSantis was perhaps the most important figure in this campaign, which is why I've long said that he represents an even bigger problem than Trump. This unprecedented aggressive campaign has actually been very effective, in redefining the content and tone of the woke skeptical discourse. It is why, even in moderate center-left circles that pride themselves on rejecting wokeness but still being liberal, hysteria about drag queens occasionally comes up nowadays, even though it wasn't a thing in most woke skeptical circles prior to 2019. My point is, the right-wing moral panic discourse is so loud, so persistent, and so aggressive that it has reached basically every corner of the woke skeptical landscape. The replacement of rational critique with moral panic has turned woke skepticism into a tribalist, conformist and sometimes irrational movement, ironically the opposite of what it started out as. I certainly wouldn't have supported a movement that looks like this.

The question we need to ask here is, can we still fight back, spit the New Right out, and salvage our original vision? I actually think yes, but we have to be dedicated, brave and strategic. Dedicated because it will be hard work. Brave because we will need to stand up to the new cultural hegemony being forced upon us by the New Right. Strategically, we have to recognize that the New Right are not allies, but intruders with weird beliefs. I think the key here is to encourage even more skepticism. While the woke skeptical movement has been thoroughly skeptical towards wokeism and its various claims, it has failed to be equally skeptical towards the New Right, perhaps because it tried to befriend us and convince us that we're on the same team in the beginning. But subsequent events have shown that we're actually not on the same team. We might both be opposed to wokeness, but it's clearly not for the same reasons. Indeed, we just need to ask the same questions of the New Right as we did towards the woke left. We would then be able to expose the fact that they are just as full of unsound philosophical obsessions, irrationality, hostility towards free speech, conformity with the in-group, tribalism, and bad faith arguments. Literally, just critically examine the very weird ideas of the New Right, and the even weirder phenomenon where previously respectable influencers just accept all of it uncritically. I'm not naming names, but we all know who they are.

Indeed, going forward, I think the key is just to be consistently skeptical. We need to be especially skeptical towards ideas that appear to be too popular, especially in the online context. What I mean by too popular is that too many people uncritically accept it, parrot it, even go crazy over it, despite it clearly not being very sound. Be especially skeptical if all the big name influencers are pushing the same thing at the same time. Wokeness started out exactly like this, and we saw right through the Emperor's New Clothes situation, which we sought to expose. Now it's time to do the same to the baseless rhetoric about woke corporations, the idea that the West should emulate Hungary, the supposed dangers of drag queens, the supposed immorality of IVF, the idea that mixing religion with politics supposedly serves the common good, and the like. Push back, and push back with a lot of skepticism. We won the debate against wokeness because we pushed back with skepticism, and we should do the same to the New Right. And maybe, just maybe, we will get the truly pro-liberty woke skeptical movement of 2018 back.