Counter-Currents
Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 530
The Genealogy of Wokeism
Counter-Currents Radio
126 words / 1:02:05
Greg Johnson was joined by Pox Populi (Telegram, YouTube) on the latest broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio to discuss the intellectual origins of wokeness, with special attention to Paul Gottfried’s recent Chronicles article “Marx Was Not Woke.” The recording of the stream is now available for download and online listening.
Topics discussed include:
01:33 Summary of Paul Gottfried’s “Marx Was Not Woke”
04:18 Gottfried’s counter-arguments
08:15 Is the article that controversial?
16:44 Are people defensive of liberalism because its European?
21:54 Is wokeism an outgrowth of capitalism?
27:08 How and why the Frankfurt school had to distort Marxism
30:13 How Marxists gave up on overthrowing capitalism
34:42 Individualism vs. collectivism as political strategies
42:30 Gottfried on liberalism
57:32 Final thoughts
To listen in a player, click here. To download, right-click the link and click “save as.”
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5 comments
A great discussion. A lot of topics were brought up that warrant further discussion.
Why did the class struggle dissipate? Some reasons:
1. De-industrialization
2. Welfare State + Central Banking free-riding regime hid full effects of industrial dispossession
3. Replacement of class based agitation in favor of race and sexual orientation based agitation; anti-white, anti-western civilization and anti-heterosexual male agitation.
In angry blacks, they found the perfect hotbed of anger and revolutionary fervor that they couldn’t find in a meaning rich, fulfilled and well off white society with a large middle and still affluent working poor. They also found agitation friendly whites in a world where a classical education that fostered white identity and cultural affinity was practically destroyed. This made them susceptible to waging class warfare against their own people to get cheap and easy status. They got bamboozled. Negro culture may feel good to the demoralized when it can be dabbled in around other whites, but when Grand Theft Auto is your, “lived experience”, it doesn’t feel so good.
I think there is value in Gottfried’s reply. Lindsay, Peterson, Murray, Walsh and other popular social commentators and pseudo-intellectuals refuse to acknowledge the role and ramification of race, particularly the villainized race in this. Gottfried’s piece repeatedly harps on the anti-white centric part of this. The bottom line is, the tranny stuff is evil but a distraction. It is a perfect sidelight, and I believe an intentional issue to get the “conservative”, suckers to chase that. It is safe to talk about.
Talk about the anti-white core of, “woke”, and you start raising eyebrows because you then have to talk about the solution. Deep down, they know that solution does not involve convincing the anti-white coalition to stop being anti-white. Thus it means they must become explicitly pro-white or consent to pro-white voices speaking in defense of white people and our civilization. Moreover, it means moving from owning libs and selling books and ads, to meaningful actions and policies that defend white people and our societies: end immigration; end affirmative action; repeal of “civil rights” regimes that destroyed free speech and freedom of association. We must be ready with that as our agenda. Then we cannot be accused and dismissed by fragile losers like Peterson as being, “just white people.”
Walsh can do, “What is a woman?”, and is applauded for owning libs. Can he do, “What is anti-white genocide and The Great Replacement?”
I believe it is this that scares the heck out of detractors like Lindsey. (sp?). I believe Gottfried recognizes that the liberals like Lindsey and Peterson will not address the anti-white core of, “woke.” I think, intentionally or not, it puts heat on the uncensored to address this core issue. Calling it Marxism or a child of Marxism is fine, but it gets us nowhere near the heart of the matter. When it is called anti-white replacement and genocide, which is first and foremost what it is, then we can get somewhere. So, I do find tremendous value in that aspect of Gottfried’s paper. He puts that at the heart of, “woke”, and gets it on the table, which is the proper place for it.
Similarly, the point that woke is of eubonic origins is not a minor point. It is a major point. It is the vernacular that comes from an albatross population that has a blood libel against whites. I think making that connection more clear will make things more clear for normie, and may even force say, Walsh, to take this issue up. We should do a ready made history of anti-white blacks integrated with the Frankfurters and flush this out. I think this will also have a beneficial effect of splintering the coalition of blacks and other fringe identities. We must isolate and ultimately splinter off the black anti-whites and make them naked and alone. It must be shown that this is a revenge fantasy being played out. We must make the connections with Rhodesia and South Africa. Not an easy task, but without that, they will run our cities, own the judiciary, command the military and an increasing number of police forces and tighten a grip.
I apologize for being long winded. It is worth noting that Lindsay has learned a lot in the past two years, and he is connecting the dots with the major historical landmarks in America’s moves to address the albatross population issue. So far, he has approached it as a breakdown in the legal order – a steady progression of degrading the American Constitutional order and body politic.
That is a significant development. I hope he continues on this and continues to bring this up in interviews and flush it out. Ideally, we can use that to say, “In 165 years of destroying our society’s bedrock legal and organizational pillars, what if anything have we gained from this? In regards to the population it was intended to help, has it on balance been grateful, produced more than it has consumed, made a significant contribution or has it become more aggrieved, consumed more resources than ever, detonanted and demanded ever more dynamite on our civilization’s foundations, and accomplished anything of real significance and value to the broader society beyond being entertainers and toxic agitators?”
Lindsey’s path is a gift if we use it. Ideally, he and multiple people he knows, become victims of the anti-white regime and its pets, live to tell about it, and realize the existential necessity of going all the way and taking his own side – which is also our side.
The etymology of “woke” is that it really comes from a 2008 rap song. Chris Caldwel names in his recent book. The word originally meant “aware of the spirit world or the magical world around us”. Strangely apropos, no?
Wow! It is chilling that the imaginings of the spirit world follow the people of the dark continent. We need to get our act together so that our fate is not like that of the dark continent.
Ever since I was an undergrad I have seen rightwing activists go to the conservative establishment [Con Inc] and say: “Look, we have to deal with the situation on the university campuses. The leftists have not given up the hold they consolidated since the 1960s. And they are using that hold to indoctrinate a new generation.”
The standard Con Inc response was something like this: “What are you worrying about? It’s just some crazy college kids. Wait till they get to the real world where they have to get a job. Besides, the FBI and Army are on our side. Now excuse me, I am preparing for the annual Con Inc cruise.”
And here in the 2020s Con Inc is finally waking up to the threat. Sorta.
Much of the dilemma goes back to “technical” or “organizational” factors. There has been no militant conservative/traditionalist activist organization which could confront and discredit cultural marxism on the campuses, and later in the corporate HR offices and inside the Beltway. It was a war in which only one side decided to fight and so the Left won by default.
It wasn’t for a lack of resources. There was plenty of Con Inc money for running real conservative candidates who sometimes might even win public office. But these electoral victories did not change the situation on the campuses, in the newsrooms and among the CEO officers. Had only a fraction of those electoral funds been used for anti-marxist propaganda campaigns, legal defense of students running afoul of speech codes, training activists in the techniques of civil disobedience, and moving people into HR offices … the situation might have been turned around before things turned critical.
Let me note there were plenty of perceptive young conservatives in those days who did see the threat. They advocated for an end to affirmative action and getting rid of ethnic “studies” departments which were creating an expanding cadre of perpetually aggrieved leftist agitators. But the energies of the perceptive ones were diverted into such pressing issues as ending the minimum wage and amendments to ban flag burning.
I once proposed to a major conservative organization that they create an office to publish campus newspapers, posters and flyers, then train activists in the techniques of agitprop. But the proposal was turned down for “reasons.” The organization expected their local student chapters to do it all on their own, which was often logistically difficult. Of course, a sit-in at the campus “diversity” office was beyond the pale!
This is one of the reasons that the Regime came down hard on the Dissident Right in the Charlottesville ’17 era. While Con Inc has been no real threat to the Regime, the Dissident Right understands the metapolitical struggle and has been employing agitprop from the streets to the networks. It’s not just the racial advocacy but the push to gain intellectual hegemony, taking one’s own side in the culture war.
This does show a path to victory. That’s in the scientific use of propaganda and other techniques of political struggle. Challenge the very nature of cultural marxism. Throw them on the defensive. Discredit and demoralize. Provide an alternative. Do that and more people will rally to the cause of nationalism.
Today, the Dissident Right really is the only game in town.
I’ve had a chance to hear this entire discussion and I think that it was tremendously good, and it does hit the mark.
Some further points that I would like to make, some of which might be superfluous ─
I strongly disagree with those ex-Libertarians and ex-Leftists who don’t think there is any such thing as Cultural Marxism.
I might prefer a phrase like Cultural Bolshevism since I acknowledge Gottfried’s point that Communism (and Karl Marx in particular) springs directly from the Liberal intellectual tradition. So does Capitalism, btw.
It is not a matter of individualism versus collectivism. Classical Liberalism contains elements of both. Let’s drop the Big Gubbamint vs. Muh Freedums thing. That is not what we are talking about.
Karl Marx was an economic historian (nothing wrong with that) who believed that economic history was the only real History (wrong) and who believed that the class-struggle was the electromotive force of History (wrong). Marx saw class-warfare as linear Progress and his own utopianism as teleological History.
Wrong. At best Marxist class-warfare is racial and cultural cancer. And cancer does not build civilization.
You can plumb the depths of Liberalism and find everything from tranny bathrooms to usury.
Marx might not have been completely onboard with “Woke,” but that hardly matters if his followers are being financed by Fortune 500s or checking their trust funds with their cellphones on the way to the BLM rally on their pedal-powered microbus.
I would go further and state the Communism and Capitalism are two sides of the same race-mixing and internationalist coin.
And unless we are willing to at least acknowledge the Kosher Question, this might be a moot distinction. It seems to me that keeping Conservatism what George Lincoln Rockwell called “Kosher” is what Paul Gottfried is really worried about.
I don’t know much about Charlie Kirk and I don’t follow a lot of Online drama, but recently he and Neoconservative Dennis Prager were to speak at a very large University.
Well, the usual spate of Woke Cultural Marxist academic professionals officially protested the engagement in a somber letter of concern ─ and in so doing, giving the weakest nod imaginable towards supporting free-speech whilst still keeping a straight face.
They said that Kirk and Prager were “White Nationalists,” which was obviously meant as a thought-terminating cliché. I am not sure whether the event was ultimately cancelled or not.
Jared Taylor successfully spoke recently and did a decent job in my opinion. Antifa could barely muster a counter-protest, and the University President surprisingly did not take the bait and denounce him as Rayciss.
I don’t see the problem if Charlie Kirk correctly decries the Commies, but he is probably at best a RINO.
And (((Dennis Prager))) might see himself as Jesus Christ incarnate, but he is about as White Nationalist as Leon Trotsky. They certainly don’t come to the White Nationalist meetings. Prager even unironically thinks that all history should be vetted by the ADL.
If Holocaust Deniers Don’t Go to Hell, There Is No God
If Zoomers are butthurt because many talk against modern “Commies,” it is not because some of us are RINOs ─ or Boomers who are obsessing about the Cold War. Yes, I can remember the Cold War, but I’m also a historian and know a bit more about Commies than most red-pilled Zoomers who act like they just discovered some of this stuff and think they have all the answers (and can’t be told differently).
Well, some of us are not newly Woke but have been thinking about Erwacht for a very long time.
There is much not to like with Classical Liberalism, but we should learn indeed to distinguish between Baby and Bathwater.
🙂
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