I'm Sick of the Phony 'Woke' vs 'Anti-Woke' Fight
I'm Sick of the Phony 'Woke' vs 'Anti-Woke' Fight
This is nothing new - it's just a repackaging of the same far left vs far right arguments that have raged for generations - but it's a huge distraction from what really matters.
This is the 17th installment of the new “Axis of Genocide” series at this Zionist Substack, the successor to the “Antisemitism and Culture” series which can be read in two 30-essay collections here and here.
This new series will document and analyze the antisemitic genocidal war waged against Israel by the Hamas terrorist group and its primary supporter, the Islamic regime in Iran. The accomplices in this attempt at a second Holocaust — Vladimir Putin’s criminal-gangster state in Russia and the authoritarian regime in China — will also come in for scrutiny and loud condemnation, as will the non-state actors supporting them, particularly the international Muslim Brotherhood propaganda network, and radical activists of both the far left and the far right. Other evil states and terrorist groups will also receive scrutiny. You can find a list of previous installments at the end of this post. Thank you for your support.
Since arriving back home in California on Monday after a too-long trip to see family in Indiana, I’ve been sick. I had a pain in my side, on the left of my torso.
First we thought the bad food we’d eaten on the cross-country drive back may have done it, and we tried a few days of laxatives. But the pain remained, seeming to get worse, and I noticed that eating food — especially fatty foods — exacerbated it. So we thought it might be an intestinal infection, that a liquid diet would help, and that, if necessary, I’d go into the doctor. Well, it got so bad on Wednesday that I chose to take a sick day at my boss’s kind urging, and thus ended up going into the urgent care doctor.
I was the last patient they let in before their scheduled 2:00 lunch break. So by the time the doctor got into the exam room, he was in a rush. Within two minutes, he’d examined my side and done his check-ups and diagnosed me with a stomach ulcer. He wrote a prescription, and since I’ve started taking it, the pain has almost entirely disappeared. I’ve been able to return to the daily routine of writing articles about the world’s Jew-haters.
This misdiagnosing of a health problem before finding the right solution is, of course, very common. And even when it’s trained physicians on the job — particularly in the field of psychiatry, where I’ve struggled for years — this misunderstanding of the problem and then mis-prescribing medication is so common. Oftentimes the wrong medicine will just make the patient worse, perhaps causing them to think that they’re doing something wrong, when really the mistake is on their doctor's side.
All this medical pondering infused my political pondering this week as I considered how to explain something else which has made me sick for years - and which I’ve gotten too deep a dosage of in recent weeks, as I’ve argued about antisemitism both publicly and privately.
A common refrain I’ve heard: the real threat comes from “Woke-ism” or “Woke ideology” or the “Woke censors.” I shouldn't be concerned at all about far-right antisemites, when really the “woke” are the ones fueling antisemitism today. If I’m really serious about fighting antisemitism, then I should be focusing on beating “Woke-ism,” since that is where the antisemitism is coming from.
Likewise, the left-wing parallel is to cast antisemitism as purely a problem of the Right, that Trump himself is a Nazi and that the “MAGA movement” is akin to modern day Nazism. And of course, anti-Zionism certainly isn’t antisemitism - but merely “criticizing Israel.”
People on both sides - especially at the extremes - tend to want to ignore their own side’s antisemites, and focus exclusively on those on other side. This annoys me to no end, as it reveals the inauthenticity of their alleged concerns about antisemitism. Opposing one antisemitic group or politician is merely to pick up a cudgel to hit the other side. Doing this just broadly makes people more skeptical of claims of antisemitism, even when they’re legitimate and serious, not made just to score points in some imaginary political “contest.”
Yes, imaginary. That needs to be restated every now and then. The idea that some “woke ideology” is in conflict with an “anti-woke ideology” is entirely an imaginary construction. All political, cultural, and religious ideological struggles are.
“Woke” vs “Anti-Woke” annoys me so much because it’s just a repackaging of something that has been around for a long time. There’s nothing new about these words. They’re just trendy ways to say “radical far-left people obsessed with race” and “reactionary far-right people obsessed with race.” That’s all this is.
Any time some right-wing person insists on running down the laundry list of what “woke” means to them then I respond with, “That’s just leftism.” Likewise when a left-wing person wants to insist that the Trump MAGA movement is something new or unprecedented or akin to Nazism then I respond, “This is just a standard populist-nationalist white identity politics movement.”
And there is nothing requiring that any of us must participate in this small — yes, a tiny minority on each side perpetuate this kabuki pageant — ideological squabble.
And as I wrote early in my Antisemitism and Culture series in the eighth installment, focusing on Left/Right ideology is a huge distraction from dealing with bigger issues that transcend simple ideological back-and-forths. One can choose to be liberal, conservative, or both (as I prefer,) while rejecting the extremes of “the Left” and “the Right.”
There’s also the second installment in this series, where I explain my approach to possessing largely “mainstream” views argued in eccentric, original ways:
Part of what I’m really sick of with the “Woke” vs “Anti-Woke” framing is that it makes race the primary issue. It entirely pits all “people of color” in a contest against “white people,” thus fueling identity politics on both sides. So what about all of us who don’t consider our skin color some defining aspect of who we are? What about those of us who are more concerned about the genocides being perpetuated against the Jews, the Ukrainians, and the Uyghurs? Is that not more important than arguing over how many board members at a corporation should be of a certain color, or which books in the library could make white children feel “guilty” about being white?
And I won’t even get into the extremes of the debates about so-called “trans ideology,” both sides of which also tend to be seemingly equally annoying while many people can embrace a kind, reasonable middle-ground position. It’s all just a retread of what happened 20 years ago when gay marriage was the “social issue” cause du jour to support or oppose.
Now, in spite of my tendency to reject both “Woke” and “Anti-Woke” ideological framings, both in term and in moral values, I understand if other people want to engage in these debates or sympathize with one side or another.
My urging is simple: just do not make your focus on this debate much more important than being willing to confront and condemn antisemitism wherever it emerges on the political spectrum.
And don’t assume that these lines between the far left, the far right, and radical Islam are so firm. The same ideas and terms tend to float between them. So-called “horse shoe theory” where the extremes connect is entirely legitimate.
And this is nothing new. The black nationalist antisemitism of Kanye West found an ally in the neo-Nazi troll antisemitism of Nick Fuentes. And their conspiracy theories of Jewish secret control of media and institutions align with leftists and Islamists who merely reframe it as “Zionists” doing the same thing. In the 1960s, the black supremacist antisemites in the Nation of Islam sought to collaborate with the white supremacist antisemites in the American Nazi Party.
It’s all one toxic stew of antisemitism. All these “ideologies” which so many of us - myself included, guilty as charged - have obsessed over too long are modern inventions largely originating in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Antisemitism proceeds them all by at least 1500 years, perhaps longer depending on when one wants to start the count. These radical ideologies are not the cause of antisemitism, they are merely forms of antisemitism that have existed for a long time and aren’t going anywhere.
Don’t get caught up in the debate about which form of antisemitism is “worse” than another. It’s like arguing over whether the electric chair, hanging, or lethal injection is a better method of execution. The end results are all the same.
“The God of Israel is a God of the Desert.”
The previous pieces in the “Axis of Genocide” series:
Mainstream Political Positions Argued in Extreme Ways: A Manifesto of Sorts
The Vicious Vladimir Putin Is a Disgusting Antisemite Who Is Helping Hamas
Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Conversion to the Wrong Christianity for the Wrong Reasons
A Huge Collection of Statistics That Reveals Americans' Ignorance and Moral Confusion Today
Click here to read Volume 1 of the “Antisemitism and Culture” series and volume 2 here. Ten of the most important installments from this series for better understanding this Substack’s approach to fighting hate include:
7 Reasons This Christian Hippie Became a Zealot Against Jew Hatred
2 Numbers Which Reveal the Overwhelming Level of Human Devastation Wrought by the Holocaust
7 Great Counterculture Authors Who Inspire My Writing and Zionist Activism
How to Revive King & Heschel's Black & Jewish Anti-Racism Prophetic-Activist Partnership
I try to slice through woke b.s. by asserting one, simple fact (albeit, a fact with complicated implications): If you are a native-born American, regardless of your skin color or your hair color, you are indisputably part-black. That's because the Black-American experience is central to American History, and Black Americans' contributions to almost every aspect of American culture, too, are indisputable.