A Misunderstood Anti-Woke Liberal Rant
How many times do I need to say that I am not with the reactionaries?
As an ‘anti-woke liberal’, I feel misunderstood and unfairly attacked, like, all the time. I have been accused of hijacking the word ‘woke’ from black people, trying to use an ‘academic liberal against woke’ angle to become a right-wing grifter, and more. All this, of course, is not true. So in the interest of clarifying where I stand, once and for all, I am making this explainer post.
Firstly, I need to make this clear: I am certainly not part of the Republican school of using ‘woke’ to score political points. I am sincere and honest about my use of the word ‘woke’. I only use it to describe activists who adhere to a postmodern critical theory-inspired worldview, and use it to justify an illiberal form of political activism. The worldview in question includes an oppressor vs oppressed worldview based around race, gender and sexuality, the idea that discourse is power and rational debates do not lead to the truth, and the idea that much of our reality is made up of ‘social constructs’ that serve the oppressors and keep the oppressed oppressed. Thus, when we liberals say we’re ‘anti-woke’, we mean we are opposed to this particular worldview and its associated activism, which would include things like identity-based restrictions on free speech and cancel culture, among other things. We certainly don’t mean it in the DeSantis-style ‘Disney is a woke corporation’ way. In fact, I can’t identify the existence of any ‘woke’ corporation out there, which makes sense, because ‘woke’ is by definition anti-capitalist (although arguably in a more anarchist way than socialist way).
Secondly, we didn’t hijack the term ‘woke’ from black people. Actually, the people now called ‘woke’ did that themselves. Some time during the past decade, they began calling themselves ‘woke’, before most of us had even heard of the term. And then other people began to call them ‘the woke’, naturally. This was how the meaning of ‘woke’ changed.
Thirdly, trust me, I don’t really want to use the word ‘woke’ anymore, especially after how people like Ron DeSantis misused it in the service of their own agenda. But the problem is, we can’t use any other term to replace it either: ‘postmodern critical theory’ refers to academic theories, not a movement made up of activists. I actually prefer to use ‘critical anarchist’, as I had previously explained, but this term is not widely used or understood. Some have called it the ‘successor ideology’, in that it wants to supplant liberalism, but that is ultimately an unclear phrase that does not actually point to the ideology in question. You also can’t really name critical anarchists after a historical thinker, as in calling them Marcuseans or Foucaudians, because their worldview is shaped by multiple thinkers. And you can’t just call them leftists or even the ‘far-left’, because that could mean someone like Bernie Sanders and someone like Noam Chomsky respectively to some people. (Once I tried calling critical anarchist ‘far-left’, only to be told that I was actually talking about the ‘woke left’ by old-school socialists who self-identified as far-left.) So there’s no way, in the society we live in, to describe the ‘woke’ without using the word ‘woke’, as much as some might want to avoid it. It’s just like how it would be difficult to not use the word ‘apple’ to refer to apples. It is the only commonly understood word we have.
Finally, we are not reactionary culture warriors. As I see it, woke and non-woke are two different ways to social progress. The non-woke way to social progress is simply the old-school liberal way: via a commitment to learning about the objective truth, a desire to improve people’s lives through reform, and a belief that things can always be made better through rational thinking and practical experimentation. I am opposed to wokeism because it hinders these things, in multiple ways. For example, the Foucauldian idea that discourse and knowledge are constructed primarily by power dynamics hinders the commitment to objective truth. The revolutionary, ‘tear everything down’ orientation also makes achieving consensus for reform very difficult. Ultimately, I oppose wokeism precisely because I am committed to progress, and wokeism makes the progress I want impossible to achieve.
Originally published at https://taraella.substack.com.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
