Agree with all this 114%. Yet, I maintain, 'dissing the Woke' is a bad thing to do regardless. Anti-woke people need to constantly be on their guard to remember that the vast majority of Woke people have their hearts in the right place.
John, I would say you're ignoring one traditional institution that has been *thoroughly* corrupted by the alt-right: the Republican Party. To many on the left, this might qualify as an afterthought, since we've viewed the Republicans as being corrupted by various flavors of dogmatic lunacy, illiberalism, and racial hostility for quite some time now. But never have they so thoroughly, publicly embraced such a nihilistic style of politics as they do today - as they essentially bow to the reality of being a personality cult which formally censures anyone who dares betray Dear Glorious Leader. Compare the party to five years ago and the difference is truly stark.
The far right is the bigger threat at the moment because they now constitute a controlling majority of one of our two major political parties. Most Republicans still believe that Biden won the election through massive fraud, despite there being no evidence to support this. And a disturbing number of them are becoming comfortable with the idea that using violence may be necessary to reclaim "the traditional American way of life". Make no mistake; right now we are between a rock and a hard place. The "woke" are a threat, but a less immediate one, because they do not control the Democratic party. In fact, many people who are sympathetic to their ideology on a surface level become much more alarmed when they read accounts of their excesses and realize that the devil is in the details. The majority of the party are reasonable people who are more and more beginning to awaken to the dangers of this new mindset. Are we safe enough to ignore them? Absolutely not, which is why it is good that we have folks like you and Bari Weiss manning the barricades, so to speak. But at the moment, the left is managing this threat, far better than the right did with their crazies, who have now become the Republican mainstream. It's why the Democratic party is the only one that can be trusted in power at the moment, even while it deals with its own internal problems.
We simply live in a country where people’s careers can be ruined, intellectual curiosity strangled or muzzled with impunity and is sometimes openly encouraged and defended, but if you punch someone in the face or threaten bodily harm (in the name of a group you feel a belonging toward) you are branded a terrorist. Social justice warriors just haven’t crossed that line into violence yet, or started openly carrying their ARs to protests, maybe because they can’t at least in CA where I live, because last time that happened (Black Panthers) the governor (Reagan) banned open carry. It does feel anti-intellectual, when feelings are valued so highly that they negate the need for discussion. In other words, it’s only ok to ruin someone’s life if your tools are socially acceptable, and we place a premium on punishment for physical violence.
Well, here in our small town of Snohomish, WA, our mayor's former campaign manager adnittedin writing to the local paper that he was a Proud Boy, and moved to TX because WA was just too liberal for him. When the mayor was asked if he himself was a Proud Boy, the most he would say is "No comment." In June, after an on-line rumor came out that Antifa was coming to our small town to smash windows, the streets were lined with quickly drunk yahoos, with their ARs and empty plate carriers, some with "Proud Boy" emblazoned on said carriers.
During the inevitable protest, one of them decided to bravely get into a fist fight with a 16 year old girl, who was joined by a 19 year old, fresh high-school grad who got himself put into the hospital by the same drunken buffoon. The mayor and the sheriff essentially cheered them on.
So here in the Seattle area, there is some institutional infiltration by the Proud Boys, but nothing like the wide scale corporate and government adaptation of CRT.
That happened three blocks from my house. Robin DiAngelo lives ten miles from me. It feels like we're living between the Red Guard and the Brownshirts.
As an aside, did anyone send you the article about BLM grossing $90,000,000 in the last five years, and Michael Brown's father asking for $20M for them using his son to raise $$?
$90M is serious bank, and serious inspiration to keep the narrative alive.
I've had the sense for quite some time now that Right-Wing Loonies and the Alt-Right is a bête noir. Your rhetoric is strong, but I don't think it's enough.
I can't find a single article on line anywhere asking the question if any of this is true, or what it means aside from, "Nazis will soon be goose-stepping through your living room unless we circle the wagons." And frankly, I don't have a good leg to stand on when I dive into those conversations. The opposite is true: The UN says it's a problem; the Canadian government says it's a problem; The FBI grudgingly admits it's a problem, the SPLC says it's a problem, the ACLU says it's a problem, etc. My google results are at least 5 pages deep with how big of a problem this is.
Center for Strategic and International Studies definitely sounds official. Anyway, here's what they have to say:
The Rise in Far-Right Extremism
Terrorist attacks by right-wing extremists in the United States have increased. Between 2007 and 2011, the number of such attacks was five or less per year. They then rose to 14 in 2012; continued at a similar level between 2012 and 2016, with a mean of 11 attacks and a median of 13 attacks; and then jumped to 31 in 2017.7 FBI arrests of right-wing extremists also increased in 2018. 8
Well, it's definitely growing, but the average American still has a better chance of their refrigerator failing on them than being embroiled in a right-wing (or any) terrorist attack. So we see again that fear is stronger than reason. Still...it's growing. How soon until it takes over the world???
You say they have no institutional power and no impact on culture (aside from increased fearmongering). I agree, but someone else will say, "Well, QANON is in every police department and the military at all levels. The FBI has release a report 10 years ago about the growing threat of white supremacists in police organizations. THIS. IS. KNOWN." If one argues against this, or merely wonders if it's true, it's as if you shoved an entire cat turd into your mouth.
I've had a friend tell me that he believes white supremacy is a problem because he doesn't see reporting on the opposite. Pointing out the flaw in that argument, i.e. the myriad issues with modern journalism, requires an entire separate and equally difficult discussion. I mentioned a recent SPLC article I read on the Proud Boys and how it contained almost no evidence that this group participated in any kind of violent acts or terrorism, just that they said nasty things online and they might be friends with other bad people. Yet it was the source for most of the opinions people held about the organization. (It was truly a terrible article, and has shattered any faith I had in the SPLC. Please read it: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys)
So let's turn the question around a bit: if Right-Wing extremism is growing, what does it mean? Why is it growing? Is there a threshold we can point to where we all agree it's really a problem. What about other types of extremism? What are we trying to protect or preserve? How does one actually combat it?
I guess I'm ranting a bit here, but it's really, really hard to get through to anyone that they should AT A MINIMUM be asking these questions. They believe it because they want to believe it, it's easy to believe, it costs nothing to believe and could cost everything not to believe it. The stranglehold this narrative has on people's minds is simply horrifying and I've really lost any sense that people can snap out of it or that I have any ability to argue against it.
We need some REALLY good arguments against the narrative and while this is a nice opening salvo, it's unlikely to move the conversation.
I can see only one solution to the problems at Smith College - a freestyle battle between Jodi Shaw and Kathleen McCartney. I am having trouble getting over the thought of a librarian doing a "rap" presentation. It seems the school was saving her from real embarrassment. Besides if you graduated from Smith and make $45,000 a year you probably should be reconsidering your life choices.
I think that both women were put in difficult situations. McCartney over-reacted. But Shaw could have been a little more understanding. I worked in education. Shaw has to be used to being bored by ridiculous presentations.
Thank you for this, John. It is very difficult to find actual data on the extent and significance of the alt-right or white supremacists, some of whom I am sure are on the Left as well as the Right.
I don't observe the alt-right having any influence on my employer, my church, my alma mater, or any other similar institutions that I am involved with, certainly. I don't trust my own experience of this to necessarily be reflective of the national reality. The only Trump supporters I know personally are extended family living in other states. It's sometimes hard to imagine, but I know there are many other places with a lot more Trump supporters around, and I have to say that I'm just not aware if alt-right ideas might be taking over some institutions in those area. I haven't been more than a two hour drive from my coastal urban home in a year and a half, so if there's any time I might be out of touch with the ground truth in other parts of the country, it's now. Regardless of this uncertainty, I agree that I can see firsthand that wokism is taking over a lot of the institutions I care about and deal with, and I share your concern about that.
And now we have Michelle (free speech) Goldberg at the NYTimes opining that attempts to stop our public institutions use of CRT to dehumanize more than half the population based on race is actually anti free speech. She does a hit job on Chris Rufo because he is working to get these issues before the Supreme Court.
I can see your concern that CRT is not taken sufficiently seriously as being dangerous & potent— but why set up a competition as to which tendency is the most dangerous? There is danger in both, and they are related. Four years of Trump’s stirring up white nationalist and xenophobic fears resulted in Jan 6, a wake up call with regard to the deathly seriousness of the nativist, sometime hideously openly racist, anti-democratic forces, as seen in the protestors armed with assault rifles in the gallery of the Michigan legislative chamber. And then what we saw in the Capitol. As the actual racist killings and death threats continue, the race attitudes in question and other manifestations of frustration and anger may be emboldened and more righteous, punitive and hostile. The term “extreme left” is awfully vague—covers a multitude of sectarian tendencies..... I wonder if all those in the category of Elect even identify with leftism and have a sense of urgency about the need for social reform of economy to rein in big corporate power. White those same corporations are dutifully offering sensitivity training.
I have only been subscribed for a week and I couldn’t be happier with the content you produce. I’m currently reading Losing the Race and I’m at the Anti Intellectualism and the Root and couldn’t agree more. I’m a Canadian with a Trinidadian background and can attest that the nonsense is spreading just as quick up here. Keep up the great work John. 🔥
No one on the alt right is demanding that my grandson be indoctrinated to think like Andrew Breitbart. But unless he attends a Jewish day school, my grandson will have a hard time finding a public school to attend that doesn't teach Critical Race Theory. And I work in entertainment and in food criticism, and the alt right has zero impact on my business dealings. But the woke left tries to interfere with my business any chance they can get. In the end of the day, Stalin & Mao killed many more people than Hitler. But for some reason, Hitler holds the mantle of the world's biggest monster. And I say that as the son of a survivor so no one has to explain the horrors of the Holocaust to me. But really, the Left is far more dangerous than the right.
The institution they are taking (have taken over?) is the Republican Party, and the threat posed by that takeover is the threat to democracy. I say that while agreeing with your view of non-governmental institutions and their problems, as you state them. However, if we are ordering threats by priority, I’d say the threat to the Democratic process has to rank quite high. No institution is as dangerous as the Republican Party in that regard. And yes I am considering the Republican party’s base to generally be a far/extreme element by any standard of liberal democracy, so no I don’t think I’m outside your premise. State legislatures across the country are, as we speak, proposing voter restriction laws representing a 4-fold increase in such laws over the past 20 years. Many of these laws surgically target minority voters, such as Georgia’s proposal to ban early voting on Sunday, the preferred day of voting for Black voters in the state by orders of magnitude. I for one see this form of radicalism (and surely it is radicalism) as a greater threat, even while recognizing the legitimacy of the threats you mention. At the very least I find your argument not nearly as convincing, and not nearly as warranting of its polemical tone, when the Republican Party is considered as major US institution, which of course it is.
This is a conversation I've tried to have with friends, relatives, and coworkers since before 1/6/21. I grow weary.
Agree with all this 114%. Yet, I maintain, 'dissing the Woke' is a bad thing to do regardless. Anti-woke people need to constantly be on their guard to remember that the vast majority of Woke people have their hearts in the right place.
John, I would say you're ignoring one traditional institution that has been *thoroughly* corrupted by the alt-right: the Republican Party. To many on the left, this might qualify as an afterthought, since we've viewed the Republicans as being corrupted by various flavors of dogmatic lunacy, illiberalism, and racial hostility for quite some time now. But never have they so thoroughly, publicly embraced such a nihilistic style of politics as they do today - as they essentially bow to the reality of being a personality cult which formally censures anyone who dares betray Dear Glorious Leader. Compare the party to five years ago and the difference is truly stark.
The far right is the bigger threat at the moment because they now constitute a controlling majority of one of our two major political parties. Most Republicans still believe that Biden won the election through massive fraud, despite there being no evidence to support this. And a disturbing number of them are becoming comfortable with the idea that using violence may be necessary to reclaim "the traditional American way of life". Make no mistake; right now we are between a rock and a hard place. The "woke" are a threat, but a less immediate one, because they do not control the Democratic party. In fact, many people who are sympathetic to their ideology on a surface level become much more alarmed when they read accounts of their excesses and realize that the devil is in the details. The majority of the party are reasonable people who are more and more beginning to awaken to the dangers of this new mindset. Are we safe enough to ignore them? Absolutely not, which is why it is good that we have folks like you and Bari Weiss manning the barricades, so to speak. But at the moment, the left is managing this threat, far better than the right did with their crazies, who have now become the Republican mainstream. It's why the Democratic party is the only one that can be trusted in power at the moment, even while it deals with its own internal problems.
We simply live in a country where people’s careers can be ruined, intellectual curiosity strangled or muzzled with impunity and is sometimes openly encouraged and defended, but if you punch someone in the face or threaten bodily harm (in the name of a group you feel a belonging toward) you are branded a terrorist. Social justice warriors just haven’t crossed that line into violence yet, or started openly carrying their ARs to protests, maybe because they can’t at least in CA where I live, because last time that happened (Black Panthers) the governor (Reagan) banned open carry. It does feel anti-intellectual, when feelings are valued so highly that they negate the need for discussion. In other words, it’s only ok to ruin someone’s life if your tools are socially acceptable, and we place a premium on punishment for physical violence.
Just went through CRT training. Everyone texting their real thoughts while the sessions are ongoing, eerily telling.
Glad you are here, John. Five dollars a month. Keep up the good fight.
Well, here in our small town of Snohomish, WA, our mayor's former campaign manager adnittedin writing to the local paper that he was a Proud Boy, and moved to TX because WA was just too liberal for him. When the mayor was asked if he himself was a Proud Boy, the most he would say is "No comment." In June, after an on-line rumor came out that Antifa was coming to our small town to smash windows, the streets were lined with quickly drunk yahoos, with their ARs and empty plate carriers, some with "Proud Boy" emblazoned on said carriers.
During the inevitable protest, one of them decided to bravely get into a fist fight with a 16 year old girl, who was joined by a 19 year old, fresh high-school grad who got himself put into the hospital by the same drunken buffoon. The mayor and the sheriff essentially cheered them on.
So here in the Seattle area, there is some institutional infiltration by the Proud Boys, but nothing like the wide scale corporate and government adaptation of CRT.
That happened three blocks from my house. Robin DiAngelo lives ten miles from me. It feels like we're living between the Red Guard and the Brownshirts.
As an aside, did anyone send you the article about BLM grossing $90,000,000 in the last five years, and Michael Brown's father asking for $20M for them using his son to raise $$?
$90M is serious bank, and serious inspiration to keep the narrative alive.
I've had the sense for quite some time now that Right-Wing Loonies and the Alt-Right is a bête noir. Your rhetoric is strong, but I don't think it's enough.
I can't find a single article on line anywhere asking the question if any of this is true, or what it means aside from, "Nazis will soon be goose-stepping through your living room unless we circle the wagons." And frankly, I don't have a good leg to stand on when I dive into those conversations. The opposite is true: The UN says it's a problem; the Canadian government says it's a problem; The FBI grudgingly admits it's a problem, the SPLC says it's a problem, the ACLU says it's a problem, etc. My google results are at least 5 pages deep with how big of a problem this is.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/rise-far-right-extremism-united-states
Center for Strategic and International Studies definitely sounds official. Anyway, here's what they have to say:
The Rise in Far-Right Extremism
Terrorist attacks by right-wing extremists in the United States have increased. Between 2007 and 2011, the number of such attacks was five or less per year. They then rose to 14 in 2012; continued at a similar level between 2012 and 2016, with a mean of 11 attacks and a median of 13 attacks; and then jumped to 31 in 2017.7 FBI arrests of right-wing extremists also increased in 2018. 8
Well, it's definitely growing, but the average American still has a better chance of their refrigerator failing on them than being embroiled in a right-wing (or any) terrorist attack. So we see again that fear is stronger than reason. Still...it's growing. How soon until it takes over the world???
You say they have no institutional power and no impact on culture (aside from increased fearmongering). I agree, but someone else will say, "Well, QANON is in every police department and the military at all levels. The FBI has release a report 10 years ago about the growing threat of white supremacists in police organizations. THIS. IS. KNOWN." If one argues against this, or merely wonders if it's true, it's as if you shoved an entire cat turd into your mouth.
I've had a friend tell me that he believes white supremacy is a problem because he doesn't see reporting on the opposite. Pointing out the flaw in that argument, i.e. the myriad issues with modern journalism, requires an entire separate and equally difficult discussion. I mentioned a recent SPLC article I read on the Proud Boys and how it contained almost no evidence that this group participated in any kind of violent acts or terrorism, just that they said nasty things online and they might be friends with other bad people. Yet it was the source for most of the opinions people held about the organization. (It was truly a terrible article, and has shattered any faith I had in the SPLC. Please read it: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys)
So let's turn the question around a bit: if Right-Wing extremism is growing, what does it mean? Why is it growing? Is there a threshold we can point to where we all agree it's really a problem. What about other types of extremism? What are we trying to protect or preserve? How does one actually combat it?
I guess I'm ranting a bit here, but it's really, really hard to get through to anyone that they should AT A MINIMUM be asking these questions. They believe it because they want to believe it, it's easy to believe, it costs nothing to believe and could cost everything not to believe it. The stranglehold this narrative has on people's minds is simply horrifying and I've really lost any sense that people can snap out of it or that I have any ability to argue against it.
We need some REALLY good arguments against the narrative and while this is a nice opening salvo, it's unlikely to move the conversation.
I can see only one solution to the problems at Smith College - a freestyle battle between Jodi Shaw and Kathleen McCartney. I am having trouble getting over the thought of a librarian doing a "rap" presentation. It seems the school was saving her from real embarrassment. Besides if you graduated from Smith and make $45,000 a year you probably should be reconsidering your life choices.
I think that both women were put in difficult situations. McCartney over-reacted. But Shaw could have been a little more understanding. I worked in education. Shaw has to be used to being bored by ridiculous presentations.
Thank you for this, John. It is very difficult to find actual data on the extent and significance of the alt-right or white supremacists, some of whom I am sure are on the Left as well as the Right.
I don't observe the alt-right having any influence on my employer, my church, my alma mater, or any other similar institutions that I am involved with, certainly. I don't trust my own experience of this to necessarily be reflective of the national reality. The only Trump supporters I know personally are extended family living in other states. It's sometimes hard to imagine, but I know there are many other places with a lot more Trump supporters around, and I have to say that I'm just not aware if alt-right ideas might be taking over some institutions in those area. I haven't been more than a two hour drive from my coastal urban home in a year and a half, so if there's any time I might be out of touch with the ground truth in other parts of the country, it's now. Regardless of this uncertainty, I agree that I can see firsthand that wokism is taking over a lot of the institutions I care about and deal with, and I share your concern about that.
And now we have Michelle (free speech) Goldberg at the NYTimes opining that attempts to stop our public institutions use of CRT to dehumanize more than half the population based on race is actually anti free speech. She does a hit job on Chris Rufo because he is working to get these issues before the Supreme Court.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/opinion/speech-racism-academia.html
I can see your concern that CRT is not taken sufficiently seriously as being dangerous & potent— but why set up a competition as to which tendency is the most dangerous? There is danger in both, and they are related. Four years of Trump’s stirring up white nationalist and xenophobic fears resulted in Jan 6, a wake up call with regard to the deathly seriousness of the nativist, sometime hideously openly racist, anti-democratic forces, as seen in the protestors armed with assault rifles in the gallery of the Michigan legislative chamber. And then what we saw in the Capitol. As the actual racist killings and death threats continue, the race attitudes in question and other manifestations of frustration and anger may be emboldened and more righteous, punitive and hostile. The term “extreme left” is awfully vague—covers a multitude of sectarian tendencies..... I wonder if all those in the category of Elect even identify with leftism and have a sense of urgency about the need for social reform of economy to rein in big corporate power. White those same corporations are dutifully offering sensitivity training.
I have only been subscribed for a week and I couldn’t be happier with the content you produce. I’m currently reading Losing the Race and I’m at the Anti Intellectualism and the Root and couldn’t agree more. I’m a Canadian with a Trinidadian background and can attest that the nonsense is spreading just as quick up here. Keep up the great work John. 🔥
No one on the alt right is demanding that my grandson be indoctrinated to think like Andrew Breitbart. But unless he attends a Jewish day school, my grandson will have a hard time finding a public school to attend that doesn't teach Critical Race Theory. And I work in entertainment and in food criticism, and the alt right has zero impact on my business dealings. But the woke left tries to interfere with my business any chance they can get. In the end of the day, Stalin & Mao killed many more people than Hitler. But for some reason, Hitler holds the mantle of the world's biggest monster. And I say that as the son of a survivor so no one has to explain the horrors of the Holocaust to me. But really, the Left is far more dangerous than the right.
The institution they are taking (have taken over?) is the Republican Party, and the threat posed by that takeover is the threat to democracy. I say that while agreeing with your view of non-governmental institutions and their problems, as you state them. However, if we are ordering threats by priority, I’d say the threat to the Democratic process has to rank quite high. No institution is as dangerous as the Republican Party in that regard. And yes I am considering the Republican party’s base to generally be a far/extreme element by any standard of liberal democracy, so no I don’t think I’m outside your premise. State legislatures across the country are, as we speak, proposing voter restriction laws representing a 4-fold increase in such laws over the past 20 years. Many of these laws surgically target minority voters, such as Georgia’s proposal to ban early voting on Sunday, the preferred day of voting for Black voters in the state by orders of magnitude. I for one see this form of radicalism (and surely it is radicalism) as a greater threat, even while recognizing the legitimacy of the threats you mention. At the very least I find your argument not nearly as convincing, and not nearly as warranting of its polemical tone, when the Republican Party is considered as major US institution, which of course it is.