The Origins of the Woke Left - OP is a faggot

[Kosher Dill]

Haven't we had this thread before?
@Syaoran Li I think your theories need to account for the previous incarnation of the Woke Left in the 80s and 90s, which doesn't fit with your framework here. It wasn't some sort of direct reaction against Reaganism or the Moral Majority, for example.
And rather than being part of some pendulum-swing mechanism acting throughout history, woke-ism has a definite historical starting point in the tail end of the civil rights era. And its "academic" underpinnings are, of course, the various permutations of postmodernism centering one pet issue or another.

 

[Lemmingwise]

Never understood why people say this, but how come everyone always claims that the genie cannot be put back? What's realistically stopping them? What's stopping a strong rise of another fascistic regime like Hitler that stops all this? People listen to power. We have just witnessed everyone blindly following along with the covid hoax where everyone just gives away their liberties and freedoms because the government says so.

I'm saying it not because it is 100% impossible, just that it is very unlikely. It requires a new, opposite revolution.

What's stopping a new hitler? Assassinations, lack of funding, hostile media, online censorship, diverse population, communication monitoring to prevent specifically a new hitler, the fact that you can call a new hitler hitler....

Let's not forget Trump was the most liberal GOP candidate in a long time and even this causes people to want a purge:

 

[Kosher Dill]

I would also point out that it didn't take an authoritarian regime to put down the first wave of woke. People got sick of it on their own. Bill Clinton was already to the point of repudiating extremist elements as early as 1992, and it was as much due to dispassionate electoral calculus as to any personal conviction on his part.

 

[The Curmudgeon]

I just want them to either go away forever or be so severely marginalized that no one takes them seriously anymore. Everything is drama and conflict with these assholes. I'm sick of nearly everything needing correction or fixing according to them. I'm sick of their lost causes.

I also wish I didn't live in a blue district. That's my bad for not having foresight...

 

[Unassuming Local Guy]

Spoiler: WARNING: Deepest Thoughts Within

It's not exactly a mystery where the woke left came from. They actually tell you themselves on a daily basis, though they're too stupid to understand what they're saying. The entire movement is an overreaction to the nazis. For proof, see how long they can go without making a reference to the nazis. The war ended almost 80 years ago and nearly everyone involved has been dead for decades, yet these people act like Hitler is still around and bring him up at every possible opportunity. Everything they do is motivated by one goal: not being anything like the nazis.

Now, not being a nazi is a fine endeavor. I wouldn't call it worth obsessing over like a deranged lunatic like a lot of people do, but it's not harmful in and of itself. The problem is that people take it too far. They think that since the nazis are the epitome of evil (which they aren't, but let's humor them), being the opposite of a nazi must be the the epitome of good. The nazis were nationalists. Thus, not being a nationalist is good, but actively hating your own nation is better. The nazis were racists. Not racist good, reverse racist better. And so on.

Now, you may be thinking that the woke left are some of the biggest authoritarians in human history, they're socialist, they're statist, etc., which actually makes them very much like nazis in a lot of important ways. That is because they don't actually know what a nazi is. Beyond what Hollywood and the internet told them, they have no idea what they even hate, so they often fill in the blanks using their limited black and white thinking. They were told the nazis were right wing, therefore they believe the nazis were a direct copy of the modern right. They have no concept of a political spectrum or context. Right is right, left is left, and there is zero deviation from either under any circumstances.

Not to mention the even dumber "good guy" vs "bad guy" thinking that's so incredibly prevalent in that crowd. All good guys act the same, all bad guys act the same. You know, just like the comics. If someone is bad they wear skulls and spikes and kick puppies into volcanos. There is nothing good about them, because they're the bad guys, and bad guys are bad. Hitler couldn't possibly have been an animal-loving vegetarian who was against smoking. There's just no way. Those are good guy things. Only good guys can do them.

tldr the woke is what you get when you teach retards about bad guys without making sure they're aware that said bad guys aren't the sole source of evil in all of human history

 

[Kosher Dill]

The entire movement is an overreaction to the nazis.

I don't agree. The Nazi fixation isn't unique to the woke movement - it's a sign of intellectual bankruptcy across the entire ideological spectrum. Remember when the right wing would call any unfriendly Muslim states or groups "Islamo-Nazis"?
What you say about the image of Nazis being mostly drawn from jingoistic Hollywood fare is true, but the left is far from alone in wanting cardboard villains to knock down.

 

[Aidan]

I have no idea because they've been around in some form longer than I have, but I see Occupy Wallstreet as a catalyst that propelled it into the mainstream. OWS was a complete and utter failure on every front to the point many of those same people and people inspired by it actively champion companies who pretend to give a shit about them, all while making record profits.
Social media has done wonders for those looking to be woke and those seeking to "wake people up" as well and this has continued throughout the 2010s. If you were to remove the internet aspect and try to replicate this level of crazy in a real world setting, it wouldn't fly, even if everything else was as similar as could be.

 

[Unassuming Local Guy]

I don't agree. The Nazi fixation isn't unique to the woke movement - it's a sign of intellectual bankruptcy across the entire ideological spectrum. Remember when the right wing would call any unfriendly Muslim states or groups "Islamo-Nazis"?
What you say about the image of Nazis being mostly drawn from jingoistic Hollywood fare is true, but the left is far from alone in wanting cardboard villains to knock down.

Those aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Both groups can be nazi-obsessed and go in different directions. On the topic of Islam, consider the many types of Muslim that all want to kill each other because they interpreted the Quran slightly differently. Same source material, same goal in fact, but behavior so different as to foster murderous rage.

The woke saw the nazis and thought "I must hate my country and myself so I do not become them". Normal, non-retarded people saw the nazis and thought "I must avoid totalitarianism so I do not become them". And yes, some of the dumber right wingers saw the nazis and thought "we must abolish all government so we do not become them", but that's relatively rare. The woke are not rare.

Also, using "nazi" as an insult is hardly indicative of actual beliefs. People, especially really stupid people, have a tendency to use words they don't understand as insults. That's why everyone on the internet has been called a cuck incel nazi fag. Nobody is calling radical Islamists nazis because they actually think there's a modicum of nazi thought behind what they do. They say it because "nazi" is, to the vast majority, a meaningless word that they can hurl toward anyone they dislike without having to think too hard.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I wonder if "woke" can even end now. It's so saturated into everything in Clown World: the news, "social" media, education. And in 2020, it went overdrive.

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

I wonder if "woke" can even end now. It's so saturated into everything in Clown World: the news, "social" media, education. And in 2020, it went overdrive.

It would if 18-35 females stopped being consoomers and wokescolds but it's not happening.

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

It would if 18-35 females stopped being consoomers and wokescolds but it's not happening.

If guys would stop doing shit that women are interested in, in an attempt to get pussy, we'd have less of this problem, too.

 

[Odnovo]

If guys would stop doing shit that women are interested in, in an attempt to get pussy, we'd have less of this problem, too.

I was under the impression that most young men no longer bothered to do that anymore, given how hopeless the current dating scene is.

 

[Mr. ShadowCreek]

I think they started becoming more common around the 2012 Election. They existed before but the 2012 Election was where it really started to grow. It's around that time white people will deemed the spawn of the devil. When LBGT culture took more power. When school shootings became more common. The millennials who grew up with their religious right parents rebelled back and become the woke left. They vowed to fight for everything their parents were against. Ironically they become what they hated, maybe even worse. The difference is the media made fun of the religious right. They are for the woke left.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I think they started becoming more common around the 2012 Election.

That's when the elite derailed Occupy by planting identity politics. "Woke" really took off after that, aided by "social" media and smartphones becoming ubiquitous.

 

[SmugAutist]

A lot of the wokeism is self-centered narcissism to an extreme. Most of them are upper middle-class whites who had a privileged upbringing when compared to their working class counterparts, while at the same time not being part of the upper class and the demands that are expected of wealthier families. As such, they were the perfect microcosm for the "everyone is special" generation, and the endless pursuit of one-upping everyone. Seriously, go and find a person in college without hair-dye, tattoos, piercings, or needle-marks on their arms. You'll have an easier time finding Joe Biden's bunker.

This one-upsmanship eventually went into social media, primarily Tumblr, where purity spirals were dictated by who could shout the loudest and get the most reblogs, even if what they were saying was complete and utter horseshit. Then Tumblr bans porn and all these degenerates go to Twitter, where they now have a direct access to politicians, and debate in that platform is not done through rigorous Socratic dialogue, but who can give the first shitty take and get the most likes.

 

[Sweetpeaa]

One factor I think is just good old cynicism, I've noticed a lot of SJWs are people who used to be and in some ways still are really, really fucking bone deep cynical and Woke politics appeal to appeal who basically hate everyone and everything because Woke seems to reaffirm their worldview that everything is awful.

That extreme cynicism evolved over the course of the 1990s and 2000s and Woke politics is basically what you get when you combine cynicism with leftist identity politics.


I'm not seeing how this ends without some kind of war, especially after the Capital riot.

Either way we've got a while longer of this shit to put up with, I don't see the zeitgeist starting to change until 2022, 2023, 2024 sadly.


Before it was a Netflix series it was a movie filmed in 2013 and released in 2014, so it seems to be one of the earliest examples of the "woke" zeitgeist.

I love this photo from the original movie of ANGRY BLACK PEOPLE.
View attachment 1851824


On a side note, I knew back in 2014 we were headed for some dark days and sure enough I was right.

Than you for your post. I really saw a culture movement after the film ''dear white people'' as well and thought I was the only one who thought this. This is exactly when the tide changed around 2014.

The thing about the film ( I actually watched it one day) is that it's more about people presenting false identities than anything else. There was one character in the closet, another pretending to be fully black and an activist even though she was biracial and attracted to a white man who she ends up with at the end.

 

[DeadFish]

I wonder if "woke" can even end now. It's so saturated into everything in Clown World: the news, "social" media, education. And in 2020, it went overdrive.

The least woke are people such as iron workers, infantry, hi wire electricians.

People who had to work with the concrete world.

The most woke are office puppies. When things collapse I assure you the hardships will whip the woke right out of them

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

I think a lot of this has to do with the Housing crisis, the Generation Age Gap, and the fact that it takes so long for an American born in the country to get a degree, earn a career, and grow the fuck up. Social Media provides a way for the young and rootless to gain status and self-comparison, as they create an online persona whose life is rich and filled with activism for all of the "right"(and by right I mean left) causes. It's proven that Social media drives up Narcissism, and self-promotion and hashtag activism only feed into this.

I would also argue that most of the political changes in the Current Year are caused by the increase of technology and resources. Today's kids live in a bubble of technological advancement that keeps them fat and happy. Gone are the days when most men had to slave outdoors for 16 hours at a stretch to farm or mine coal. Women no longer need to marry uggo men with good jobs to keep themselves from starving- they can get careers of their own and work in safe, indoor environments. Birth Control keeps sexually active women from having to be baby machines and the government is happy to give women free money to take care of any bastard offspring that do get born. We tend to forget just how revolutionary technology has been for changing the nature of sex roles and the very structure of society itself. We're only now seeing the results of radical changes in human behavior that were introduced 100 years ago. If there had been no technological achievement, there would be no rich, fat white kids joining up with Antifa or boys trooning out - everyone would be far too busy trying to keep themselves from starving or dying of dysentery. Just like a fish doesn't know that it's swimming in water, Americans of today have no idea they're living in a tech bubble that keeps Nature's true nature at bay.

 

[Just Another Apocalypse]

The emergence of SJW's and the Woke Left has been fiercely debated multiple times and I've always leaned to the idea that it's largely a backlash against the Religious Right of the 80's and 90's. Or more accurately, the neocon-adjacent form it took in the Bush years when so many Millennials were in their adolescent years.

Others think differently.

Traditionalists and wignats will preach that it's an entirely manufactured phenomenon that began with the Sexual Revolution/Frankfurt School/KGB/the Jews/humans discovering the concept of entertainment/insert trad boogeyman here.

Tankies and TERF's will preach that it's merely a generational overreaction to "late stage capitalism" and point to the Great Recession and Occupy Wall Street, which was the origin point for a lot of Millennial and older Gen Z SJW's.

Over the years, I've slowly realized it's actually all of the above.

The Woke Left as we know it today emerged as the result of a perfect storm of conditions.

Yes, we all know about McCarthy's failed attempts to fight communist subversion in the 1950's and Uncle Yuri would later reveal the problem was worse than any of us thought and that the KGB specifically targeted academia and the media for subversion and did so in a way that their efforts would become self-sustaining after so many years, an experiment that would outlive the Soviet Union itself.

But prior to the Obama years, this was all largely confined to the fringe and niche corners of society. Outside of higher academia and niche groups like the punk subculture and radical feminists or extreme environmentalists, these sentiments didn't really reach the general public in America. Even the media was more concerned with making money and keeping a middle of the road viewpoint that could make the most money and reach the broadest audience.

The Great Recession and the corporate bailouts soured an entire generation on the mere concept of capitalism, which was often intentionally conflated with corporatism by both neocon pundits and hard left college professors. The Millennials went to college more than any other generation and were hit hardest by the Great Recession alongside the Baby Boomers.

Contrary to popular belief, the Boomers didn't coast through the Recession but were hit by it almost as hard as the Millennials. It was Generation X who coasted through and then used the Boomers as a scapegoat since they already hated the Boomers but were outnumbered by the Millennials culturally speaking. Seriously, most of the problems Boomers get blamed for were actually the fault of Gen X.

The New Atheism movement really exploded in the 2000's thanks to the Religious Right still being a major force in American politics and culture despite their unpopularity outside of Appalachia and a few parts of the rural Deep South and Midwest. The New Atheists were a major breeding ground for both the Woke Left and the so-called Skeptics of the 2010's.

The venomous sentiments towards conservatism and the non-coastal urban regions of the United States these days really feels like the 2004-era "Real America vs. Dumbfuckistan" rhetoric cranked up to 11, and I'm wondering how much of it is due to unsettled resentment over the 2004 election (the first election that the oldest Millennials would've been voting in) where Bush won a second term and the popular vote and did so by pandering to the fundie crowd at the time.

I think SJW's and the Woke Left would still exist in some form if things played out a little differently, but it was the unique combination of both organic generational backlash against the religious conservatives of the Millennials' Reagan-Clinton era childhoods and Bush era adolescent years and the Great Recession that made the Woke Left as a whole so numerous and powerful.

Media and academia can only go so far, there needs to be a genuine organic movement as well to underpin it.

The Woke Left came about due to a freak set of perfect conditions. It wasn't entirely the fault of the Religious Right and McCarthy didn't go far enough.

Frankfurt School, Structural Marxism, Grievance Studies.

OP is thick as shi t wiki using faggot.

You're welcome.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Than you for your post. I really saw a culture movement after the film ''dear white people'' as well and thought I was the only one who thought this. This is exactly when the tide changed around 2014.

The thing about the film ( I actually watched it one day) is that it's more about people presenting false identities than anything else. There was one character in the closet, another pretending to be fully black and an activist even though she was biracial and attracted to a white man who she ends up with at the end.

I never saw that movie but I remember when it came out, though it released in 2014 it was filmed in 2013, so it's got to be one of the earliest examples of modern "Woke" ever made.

And like I said, I think Woke is a kissing cousin of good old fashioned cynicism, in the 2000s the equivalent to Woke was that really bitter, bone deep cynicism I remember some people had, which I never liked even at the time, it's no surprise Maddox went Woke to me because he epitomizes the attitude I'm talking about.

That "haha, everyone is an idiot except me" style narcissism evolved into "haha, everyone is racist and sexist except me" style narcissism.

It's also related to things like emo culture I think, I noticed a lot of former emos went Woke as well, what the emos and the cynics of the 2000s have in common with the Woke of today is they're all fundamentally miserable people who love to make others as miserable as they are, they just switched from bad poetry or snark to endless identity politics.