WHAT DOES JAMES LINDSAY MEAN BY “THE WOKE RIGHT”?
(cc: @ConceptualJames)
TL/DR;
a) Lindsay is correct that beginning in the early twenty- teens, libertarians switched to a conservative position and the then broad conservative spectrum began using the left’s techniques in academy and media in social media, taking advantage of i) the fact that conservative ideas withstand scrutiny and progressive and left do not, ii) the capacity of right ridicule and sarcasm to reflect truths rather than wishful thinking, and iii) the success of these conservatives in social media (‘the left can’t meme’) in countering leftist narratives. – inspiring the left’s seizure of institutions to suppress such discourse (ie: using the left’s techniques against it). As such lindsay is using the odd accusation of Gnosticism instead of scientific evidence to create a false equivalency between left and right understandings of human nature and it’s social, economic, political, and geostrategic consequences. This is a rather obvious falsehood and a rather sophistic fallacy to argue from.
b) Lindsay is correct in that the right factions like the left factions might overstep the need for correction against left capture of institutions, but wrong in that i) the right claims no special insight other than the evidence of human behavior, the results of the science of human behavior in defeating left false promises of its malleability, and the demonstrated failure of left programs foreign and domestic. ii) ergo the right may err in factional prescription but they do not err in universal proscription.
c) Given that i) western success has consisted of five thousand years of incremental demand for and institutionalization of demand for individual responsibility for self, private and common, as a means of permitting the production of commons from which al benefit by reduction of opportunity transaction and risk costs; ii) all left framing, policies, and prescriptions are reducible to the (feminine) demand for evasion of responsibility for self, private, and common at the expense of those who demonstrate responsibility for self private and common, and iii) that all left policy seeks to use the state to steal from the responsible to subsidize the irresponsible; therefore all left framing, policy, narrative, and strategy consists of the attempt to use government to steal from others under the false pretense of victimhood when in fact they are engaging in crime. The crime is not an opinion. It is a fact. Ergo right claims of ‘oppression’ (criminality) are correct. iv) Meanwhile conservatives have always been and remain, open to trading support (not subsidy) in exchange for demonstration of responsibility for self regulation, one’s display word and deed, and it’s results for the private and common. This was as true on the steppe, as it was in greece and rome, as it was under the church, and as it remains today.
I do not err, in the least, in this assessment.
By and large Lindsay is an excellent book reviewer, expositor and promoter of the criticism of the left’s ideas. However, he has neither insights nor prescriptions, other than those that are universal regardless of stripe, and as we see with all such attempted public intellectuals – and his criticisms of the right are demonstrably somewhere between ignorant, self serving, dishonest, and false.
LINDSAY’S POSITION
James Lindsay, an activist on social media, has indeed used the term “Woke Right” to describe a subset of right-wing ideologies or individuals that he believes share certain characteristics with the “woke” ideologies typically associated with the left.
From Lindsay’s perspective, the “Woke Right” is characterized by:
1) An “awakened” critical-oriented theory of knowledge: This suggests that individuals or groups on the right have adopted a similar mindset of critical theory, where they perceive themselves as having special insight into societal structures and power dynamics, albeit from a right-wing perspective. They believe their ideas, which might be suppressed by mainstream liberal thought, are fundamentally true.
2) Leading with a sense of victimhood: Similar to how some on the left might claim victimhood based on identity politics, Lindsay suggests that those on the “Woke Right” also frame themselves as victims—victims of liberal or progressive policies, or of a broader cultural shift against traditional values.
Ends justify means: This implies a pragmatic approach where the moral or ethical concerns are secondary to achieving political or ideological goals, a trait Lindsay sees paralleling the tactics used by some on the left.
Lindsay uses these points to argue that this segment of the right is essentially engaging in the same kind of activism and rhetoric as their left-wing counterparts, just with different ideological content. This includes the tendency to misdiagnose societal issues and propose radical solutions, often cloaked in a narrative of needing to “fix” society through a transformation that would hand them more power while undermining individual liberties.
He has also indicated that the “Woke Right” might hijack the momentum of anti-woke movements to push their own radical agendas, suggesting they could be seen as opportunists within the broader conservative or right-wing sphere, using the backlash against mainstream wokeness to advance their own extreme views or to gain power.
Lindsay’s criticism seems to stem from his belief that this group’s approach is not in line with traditional conservative values like individual liberty, limited government, and classical liberalism but rather mirrors the tactics and mindset of the woke left, albeit with opposite political aims.
These interpretations come from Lindsay’s own statements on social media and in his written work, where he discusses the phenomenon.