Obviously not, but it’s worth considering why they are not. In America today, the woke are mostly known for two characteristics:
1. Concern for the disadvantaged.
2. Favoring oppressive (and often bigoted) policies to advance the interests of various groups.
One famous woke tactic is to try to shut down innovation with claims of “cultural appropriation”. They might try to cancel a person for producing a work of art merely because the artist belongs to the “wrong” ethnic group. That’s pretty much the textbook definition of bigotry.
As recently as 1997 a white author wrote Memoirs of a Geisha. The film version starred a Chinese actress (Ziyi Zhang.) That sort of multiculturalism is increasingly taboo.
Miniso is a retailer that sells Japanese-styled products. Irene Zhang reports that Chinese nationalists are complaining that Miniso is engaged in cultural appropriation:
A few weeks ago, Chinese social media users found a post on Miniso’s Spanish Instagram account selling qipao-clad Disney dolls as “Japanese geisha.”
Cue the patriotic boycott. With 2442 likes, the third top comment under Miniso’s corporate statement on Weibo reads, “Don’t bother. Please close your stores, thank you.”
So apparently Japanese geishas are not allowed to wear a qipao? Are Chinese people allowed to wear Italian suits?
I’m guessing that Italians are flattered if foreigners wear their elegant suits. Chinese nationalists ought to be proud if Japanese dolls wear the equally elegant qipao. And the bigotry also operates in the opposite direction:
Eager to violently impose unenforceable cultural borders, nationalists have carried out shocking abuses of power — like in the case of Suzhou police detaining a woman for wearing a kimono.
So why don’t we consider Chinese nationalists to be woke, given that they have adopted some of the worst aspects of wokeness?
It’s a mistake to define any cultural movement along a single axis. Woke people would insist that they merely want to help the unfortunate. Critics often claim that the woke are nothing more than bigots engaged in reverse discrimination and cancel culture. Reality is more complicated than either of these caricatures. (I recommend this long Noah Smith post on wokeness, which discusses many of its positive qualities, but ends with some reservations about their tactics.)
Right wing nationalists in places like China and India increasingly adopt the language of the woke to pursue entirely different goals than the woke pursue in America. The outrage of Chinese nationalists is not about concern for the oppressed—it’s been 80 years since the Japanese were oppressing the Chinese people. Indeed the biggest recent problems in China have been the CCP killing tens of millions of their own people. Their motivation is pure nationalism. (Thus they do not express concern about the Uyghurs or Tibetans.)
Unfortunately, the worldwide nationalist wave is far from cresting. I fear that Ukraine is merely the canary in the coal mine—much worse will come unless the world returns to the globalization drive of the 1980s and 1990s.
READER COMMENTS
JFA
Sep 10 2022 at 2:16pm
“In America today, the woke are mostly known for two characteristics:
1. Concern for the disadvantaged.
2. Favoring oppressive (and often bigoted) policies to advance the interests of various groups.”
This is a much expanded definition from your last post in which you considered woke as only #1 with little recognition of #2. So kudos.
Scott Sumner
Sep 10 2022 at 2:23pm
You said:
“This is a much expanded definition from your last post”
I had said:
“Let’s say we start from a position on the extreme right, where the powerful people repress weaker groups like women, racial minorities, religious minorities, gays, etc. Over time, weaker groups are gradually liberated. At some point this movement gains so much power and prestige that society begins discriminating in favor of the traditionally weaker groups, and begins oppressing the strong (say Protestant, white, heterosexual men.) Now instead of moving up and to the left from Nazism to liberation, society begins moving down and to the left, toward Maoism.”
I’ve sort of gotten used to commenters not reading my posts carefully.
JFA
Sep 10 2022 at 5:22pm
Here’s one exchange from the last post:
Me: “I think you are working from a strange definition of woke (“advocating for the rights of the disadvantaged”).”You: “Strange? That’s pretty much how they define themselves. It’s also the definition Tyler used.”
Also, another comment from you from the last post: “While the term “woke” is new, people have been advocating for the rights of the disadvantaged for a long period of time.”
Here’s a statement from your other post: “The woke are the people pushing us to the left, toward (what they perceive as) greater help for the disadvantaged.”
When most commenters were pointing out that your definition (“concern for the disadvantaged”) was not unique to “wokism”, you ignored what they were saying. So forgive me if my understanding of your definition of “woke” was unclear.
I think the problem of viewing “woke” on some continuum was summed up in another comment. You said, “To turn it in the opposite direction, imagine a right winger being accused of being an “authoritarian” because they argued that San Francisco could use a bit more aggressive policing. Saying a bit more of X would help at the margin doesn’t mean you adopt the extreme X position.” I think your analogy falls down because you and Tyler are not just saying more women’s rights or gay rights would be good (akin to saying a bit aggressive policing would be good). What you and Tyler are saying is that more wokism would be good (in this example, that would be akin to saying a bit more authoritarianism would be good). I do think y’all actually mean to say that more classically liberal attitudes towards minorities would be better (presumably that wouldn’t come with the baggage of the second part of your definition of woke), but for some reason you keep saying more woke would be better.
Maybe it’s just a terminology issue, but I’d view helping the disadvantaged (or “liberation” as you denoted on your graph from the last post) as more akin to Aristotle’s virtues. There is no extreme of justice, courage, temperance, etc. Those are intermediate states between the failures of virtue. You can aid the disadvantaged without becoming oppressive. When you add in oppressive and bigoted tactics, you get “wokism”. Said another way, with wokism, you’re just moving along only the x-axis rather than moving towards liberation (this is entailed by your #2 in the above post).
Scott Sumner
Sep 10 2022 at 10:05pm
You seem to struggle with the idea that an ideology can have both good and bad characteristics.
JFA
Sep 11 2022 at 7:18am
Oh my God, Scott. I have never denied that the “woke” try to help the disadvantaged and marginalized. Here I am from the comment section on the other post: wokism is “focused on power differentials between groups within society with no overarching ethic other than to get as much power for whichever group is “marginalized””. You may not agree with that definition, but the focus on the “marginalized” is there.
How about this: “Woke is not just advocating for the rights of the disadvantaged.” In that statement, I implicitly accept that woke are advocating for the disadvantaged (which you thought was some gotcha moment). I even gave you kudos in my original comment here for your expanded definition (which includes helping the disadvantaged). I think I know who has the reading comprehension issue.
Here’s what I think has happened:
In the previous comment section, you lamented the anti-liberal path the Libertarian party has taken in recent years. You also brought up a few times (and now in an entire post) how many right-wingers (in the US and other countries) are now using anti-woke language as a tool of oppression. Now these statements (while true) are not really germane to the issue of whether India (or other countries) should be more woke. So I ask myself why would Scott bring up these issues. The best answer I could think of is that you are having a reaction against certain strains of anti-woke responses (some libertarians I know are having the same reaction). You see them (rightly) as bad things. But instead of seeing a “third way” and doubling down on support for classical liberalism, you just say you support woke in foreign countries (though you finally clarified that you prefer classical liberalism over wokism).
You were crystal-eyed when confronted with the example of Bolshevism vs. Tsarism: you just said that Russia needed more capitalism. That is the correct response now and would have been the correct response at the time of the Russian Revolution. You didn’t get bogged down by the 2 alternatives. Now, however, you seem stuck in the dichotomy of woke and anti-woke (which you see as more right-wing (at least in foreign countries since you describe yourself as anti-woke)), when you should just say classical liberalism is what people should choose.
Some worldviews and philosophies contain the seeds of their own destruction, and therefore, you shouldn’t advocate for those worldviews. The policy preferences of various worldviews may overlap, but that does not mean the worldviews are equally beneficial. You can advocate for second-best policies, but you shouldn’t advocate for second-best worldviews. If there is a worldview that advocates for the marginalized and disadvantaged without endorsing oppressive and bigoted tactics… advocate for that one over the one that endorses oppressive and bigoted tactics.
I don’t think any of this is going to convince you. Maybe you’re associating those expressing anti-woke sentiments with right-wing ideology, but before you respond in the midst of an emotional reaction to this comment, take a beat (or three). I really do think the confusion is in your presentation and clearer writing would resolve the issue. You agree with some of the policy prescriptions of the “woke” in India (and other countries with right wing governments) so you say India should be more woke. I think a lot of the commenters would agree with expanding the rights of women, religious minorities, etc., but they disagree with your statement that India should be more woke. Have a think on why that is.
Scott Sumner
Sep 11 2022 at 12:04pm
“I even gave you kudos in my original comment here for your expanded definition”
No, I didn’t offer an expanded definition. My comments on wokeness were 100% consistent between the two posts. Again read what I wrote:
“Let’s say we start from a position on the extreme right, where the powerful people repress weaker groups like women, racial minorities, religious minorities, gays, etc. Over time, weaker groups are gradually liberated. At some point this movement gains so much power and prestige that society begins discriminating in favor of the traditionally weaker groups, and begins oppressing the strong (say Protestant, white, heterosexual men.) Now instead of moving up and to the left from Nazism to liberation, society begins moving down and to the left, toward Maoism.”
“But instead of seeing a “third way” and doubling down on support for classical liberalism, you just say you support woke in foreign countries”
Wrong, I never said that. I said it’s better than the right wing alternative. I’ve always been a critic of wokeness; if you followed my blogging over the years you’d know that.
All of your comments are attacking a straw man, you seem to entirely miss the point. it’s like if I suggested that North Korea would be better off if it replaced communism with socialism, you’d accuse me of advocating socialism and ignoring the fact that socialism inevitably gets worse over time. (Which it doesn’t.)
JFA
Sep 11 2022 at 12:38pm
“Tyler suggested that many developing countries could use more wokeness… My own views are closer to Tyler’s.” That’s not unequivocally saying wokeness is better than right wing but not as good as classical liberalism.
You then go into a lot of equivocation between moving left and wokeness. “The woke are the people pushing us to the left, toward (what they perceive as) greater help for the disadvantaged.” No where in that definition of wokeness do you say they use oppressive and bigoted tactics (as you do above).
The difference between our perspectives might be that you are focusing on the edge of the triangle, whereas I’m seeing a lot a value in describing various frameworks as being on the interior of the triangle.
I think the issue is that you want to use the terminology of “woke” when there are better terms to describe what you want.
Here it is more clearly stated (I think). “Instead of more wokeness, I think India (and countries with right wing governments) could use more liberal policies. Many people who describe themselves as woke want to move those countries leftward. That’s good, but at some point the tactics of the woke will back fire and become oppressive. So while it would be better for those to adopt more leftish social policies, we should be careful about promoting wokism and instead promote classical liberal values that rest on non-domination of individuals.”
Does summarize your position?
Scott Sumner
Sep 12 2022 at 5:52pm
Yes, that’s roughly my view.
JFA
Sep 13 2022 at 10:02am
👍
Stéphane Couvreur
Sep 10 2022 at 2:48pm
How would William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner fare today? (rhetorical question…)
Scott Sumner
Sep 10 2022 at 10:07pm
I think we both know the answer to that question.
Christophe Biocca
Sep 10 2022 at 3:21pm
So 80 years means long enough ago to make concerns about past oppression invalid, but 58 years is short enough to still be valid? Also, the cultural appropriation and cultural imperialism examples you highlighted happened in the last few months, so those who peddle grievances will claim there’s no reason to say oppression ended after WW2 when it clearly is still happening. The Japanese ear mound is still an officially-designated national cultural asset, after all. And the Chinese/Japanese income gap is a whopping 140%!
These arguments all look very silly to you (and to me), but I the point is that it’d be really hard to define objective criteria by which one group’s current-day oppression is at least arguably sufficient to warrant the kinds of measures we’re seeing, vs. but the other has no standing and any actions must therefore really be motivated by something other than a concern for the oppressed.
Scott Sumner
Sep 10 2022 at 10:08pm
I’m not sure what your 58 year comment refers to.
Brandon Berg
Sep 11 2022 at 6:26am
58 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Scott Sumner
Sep 11 2022 at 12:05pm
Not sure why that’s relevant, Are you saying racism and oppression ended in 1964?
Christophe Biocca
Sep 12 2022 at 9:14am
It depends where you draw the line. 1964 is when overt discrimination became illegal in places of public accommodations and in employment. 1968 is when redlining became illegal. Affirmative action as a concept started in 1961 at the federal level, though it took a few more years until the 1969 “Philadelphia Plan” which really turned the screws on employers. Yale started affirmative action in favor of black applicants in 1954.
Now we can always define oppression and racism in a broader way. Public opinion on interracial marriages took decades to mellow out, for example. And there still are KKK members around somewhere. And if we define oppression as “adverse impact of neutral policies”, then it will probably be with us forever.
But by the same token, did anti-Chinese racism in Japan end in 1945? Japanese people had 73% unfavorable views of Chinese people (not their state, that one gets 85% unfavorable) as recently as 2008.
Scott Sumner
Sep 12 2022 at 5:49pm
I don’t think very many people would say racism ended in 1964. There are many laws and regulations that clearly have racist intent. On the other hand, I also disagree with the woke on this issue, as they exaggerate the extent to which racism explains economic inequality.
As for Japanese attitudes, that fact doesn’t really hurt the Chinese unless they visit Japan as tourists, and I don’t recall my wife encountering racism on her visit in 2018. So I reject the comparison.
TGGP
Sep 10 2022 at 11:01pm
That bit about how long is too long reminds me of this:
TGGP
Sep 10 2022 at 10:59pm
Why do you refer to the Chinese government as “right wing nationalists”? They are literally big-C Communists, and are currently rolling back changes since Deng on the basis of communist ideology. India at least is currently governed by a right-wing party which rejects the legacy of the “license Raj”. But in both countries the concept of a European-style nation state doesn’t really apply.
Scott Sumner
Sep 11 2022 at 12:10pm
The Chinese government calls itself communist but it’s obviously fascist under Xi Jinping. The vast majority of its public policies are right wing.
You said:
“India at least is currently governed by a right-wing party which rejects the legacy of the “license Raj”.”
Well so does the opposition Congress party. Modi’s government is highly nationalistic and increasingly authoritarian. India’s still a democracy, but for how much longer?
TGGP
Sep 12 2022 at 9:18am
No, it’s not “obvious” that Xi’s government is “fascist”. I, for one, deny it and I hardly think your description is mainstream.
Scott Sumner
Sep 12 2022 at 5:43pm
In what way is it non-fascist?
TGGP
Sep 14 2022 at 9:09pm
I linked to a previous comment in which I discussed how it’s not fascist. If you want me to add more, how about this: existing fascist governments came to power as new political parties which had not previously been in power, and changed the system to get rid of the system of parliamentary competition which they blamed for the crisis that led them into power. Xi came to power in a completely different context where the communist party had been dominant for decades under multiple previous leaders. Perhaps you could argue that Mao was a fascist so continuity of the CCP just means more fascism, but again you would be basically alone in that and the parties that are actually/explicitly/”obviously” fascist were not able to sustain themselves in power over multiple generations.
Brandon Berg
Sep 11 2022 at 7:02am
I would say that the defining characteristic of wokeness is not concern for the disadvantaged, which is also seen in liberalism, but a belief that inequalities in outcomes are usually or always due to disadvantage rather than to ability or effort. This is how we get assertions that racial differences in incarceration rates and test scores are proof of systemic racism. It’s also why the woke are so eager to suppress discussion of Asian and Jewish achievement, which is strong evidence against the central dogma of wokism.
The woke might disagree with that characterization, as they would reject any definition less flattering to them and less deligitimizing of disagreement than “not being a bigot” but questions about what causes disparities in socioeconomic outcomes compose the key points of contention between wokism and liberalism.
Scott Sumner
Sep 11 2022 at 12:11pm
Yes, that’s an unfortunate characteristic of modern American woke activists.
BC
Sep 11 2022 at 2:08pm
I think the two characteristics of wokeness are better stated as:
Mainstream society is inherently oppressive of minorities. Even if the oppression is not deliberate, unconscious bias and unchecked privilege permeate mainstream institutions to perpetuate oppression.
In the US, (classically) liberal ideas are mainstream. Thus, liberal ideas like equal treatment, due process, free speech, objective reason, meritocracy, etc. — while on the surface may appear to promote equality — in practice serve as instruments by which the mainstream oppresses minorities and/or obstructs reform.
I think the woke would agree with my description. They would probably disagree with Scott’s No. 2.
Wokeness is an alternative to liberalism and, thus, must be illiberal in at least some respects. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be an alternative. So, I don’t think illiberal American wokeness arises from having moved “too far” along some spectrum. Rather, it arises from reflexive antipathy towards the mainstream. When the mainstream doesn’t live up to professed liberal values, the woke are happy to criticize the mainstream for their hypocrisy, e.g., civil rights movement. However, the more faithfully the mainstream adheres to liberal values, the more the woke start to attack those values themselves, e.g., “merit is an illusion”, “free speech protects hate speech”, etc. That’s why, for example, wokeness moved from trans rights (in housing, employment, anti-harassment) to pronouns. Inventing 57 varieties of pronouns is not necessarily “oppressive” of the non-trans majority, but it is critical of mainstream practice.
However, anti-woke does not necessarily mean liberal nor does anti-anti-woke mean woke. Two anti’s do not make a pro-. So, the anti-woke Indian right may not be liberal. Regarding Scott’s last post, I think it would be better to say that India could use some anti-anti-wokeness rather than “a little bit” more wokeness. They don’t need to reject liberalism “a little bit”. They just need to reject their rightwing version of illiberal anti-wokeness.
Regarding the present post, Chinese nationalists are not woke. Quite the contrary, they are trying to perpetuate mainstream (in China) oppression and illiberalness.
Mark Z
Sep 12 2022 at 2:27pm
It’s not a novel phenomenon that different or even opposite ideologies reach the same conclusion on some issues because of how they’re oriented. Western anti-nationalists have often supported with third world nationalist movements in conflict with western nations. There’s no intrinsic contradiction in this, and I doubt it confuses many people. It’s already kind of a meme in fact.
Of course, third world nationalist *do* sometimes introgress aspects of anti-nationalist ideologies. During the 20the century they would often regurgitate Marxist theories relating them as victims to their western oppressors to justify their own politics, even though within their own countries they are clearly the oppressors. If you asked a Chinese person indignant about this why he’s allowed to wear Italian suits, he’d likely give a woke style of rebuttal: western suits are the universally accepted standard of professional dress, imposed upon the world by western imperialists; we never had a choice but to adopt them. That doesn’t make the Chinese nationalist woke, though it may expose a pitfall in the application of woke thinking.
nobody.really
Sep 12 2022 at 3:53pm
Is there anything new in this? Consider some words of parody from 1885:
“As some day it may happen that a victim must be found
I’ve got a little list — I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!
* * *
[T]he idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone
All centuries but this, and every country but his own….
* * *
You may put ’em on the list — you may put ’em on the list;
And they’ll none of ’em be missed — they’ll none of ’em be missed!”
Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado (1885) “I’ve Got a Little List” (emphasis added)
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