Every chart shows a trend down from peak but still way up from 2019. Seems like what I’ll call a tee-up article - very fact-light with a provocative title so people can vent their preexisting frustrations after skimming it.
This is my impression of Economist articles in general. They very rarely give you enough historical context (for me) to understand what they're talking about. It's why I ended my subscription with them.
> They very rarely give you enough historical context (for me) to understand what they're talking about
It gave the charts so you could make your own conclusion, so seems like the opposite of what you said for this article.
Any alternatives?
Council on Foreign Relations is pretty good. Also longer-form documentaries on YouTube from DW, Al Jazeera, CNA Insider, Bloomberg Originals.
Council on Foreign Relations might have good content, but it is a special interest group. It is not equivalent to a news outlet, they are more like consultants.
DW is pretty reliable, don't know about CNA/Bloomberg.
Al Jazeera is very questionable to say the least. Worth it to read as you should also read biased news and validate content for yourself of course and on some topics their content is decent.
I think "woke" is the wrong word here.
I believe most Americans are aware of politicians and the media focusing on culture war divisions and are sick of it.
Agree. In the US in particular congress is by far the worst of the three federal branches. Most long term, strategic problems are due to their inaction whether taxes, current account deficits, operationally effective border control, gun laws. Even abortion: it was undone in the judicial branch but the same coterire of supporters know bans will never succeed as as an amendment .. so that's left in the air too without even the attempt to count votes publicly ... that's how chicken they are now that they've caught the bus.
Like a floundering company, the US congress spends most of its time in these modalities:
- trying to convince you they're not part of the DC establishment
- Fund raising off cultural divisions, and exasperation of same for the same goal
- blaming the other side
- blaming congress' culture as polarized hence can't get anything done
- US electorate laboring under the delusion that changing the president is a solution -- maybe helpful at the margins -- but fundamentally unable to permanently circumvent law.
- the far left and right are equally culpable in culture fights while the right is more criminally culpable in how it uses its agency.
And that's exactly right: we're sick of it.
In a floundering company with no product, poor quality control, cost overruns, disdain from existing customers, and non existent cross functional coordination the first thing upper management must do is fire the people unwilling to stop whining, blaming, and take responsibility.
The focus must emphasize customer satisfaction through quality of service/product. In short the BS had to stop. Second focus must emphasize cross functional coordination. In-fighting is a fireable offense. No complicated product is made by one team. It takes coordination.
(I can name any number of examples from books to personal experience where this was done in US corporate history to get people to understand the old way is out).
Right now the US congress far left and right like the BS; it serves their goals. The middle 4 std deviations over the center stand around with their head down, hands in pockets, hoping nobody notices them. It's institutional incompetence.
In the world of belief systems untied to natural law and empiricism, even the Bible reminds: faith (beliefs) without works is nothing but cheap symbolism.
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Agree. I am not sure if patterns from small periods, like those named in the article, matter. I think there’s a bigger set of powers that uphold the wokeness. For example the culture of progressive activism that is found among teachers, their unions, school curriculums, etc. Or the moderation/censorship policies of social media. Or the content produced by Disney or Netflix. And various political movements. My prediction is things will get MORE woke not less, and that movement will become more intolerant of anything not woke as time goes on.
I think there’s gonna be a pendulum swing in the opposite direction.
Can't read the article, but I think this became obvious with the sharp decline in corporate DEI officer job listings.
At least a portion of the DEI officer job decline was caused by major investors becoming intolerant of DEI. I don't personally have a causal link for the change in investor's minds, but it happened at about the same time that fighting against DEI became a republican policy.
And for what it's worth, DEI's environmental cousin - ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) - reporting for investors is still going quite strong.
Also DEI officers are a thing only at companies large enough to have an HR department. Their entire purpose is to ensure that the company doesn't get sued or fined for making illegal race-based hiring decisions. Once all the big companies have filled that new title there's not much reason to expect lots of job postings for the title: the market is saturated. Even if no company eliminated their DEI officer position you'd still expect the number of job postings to drop! Hiring for new positions follows a sigmoid curve, not an exponential or even linear one.
ESG sadly is pretty popular in my country, but at least they have dropped their racism and sexism grift. Perhaps their other ambitions can be useful, but their language manipulation seriously had to go and it will take time until it is gone completely. It simply caused more problems than it solved.
Also those responsible for ESG do not have any disciplinary power over other employees, which was different with DEI. PR of course has slightly different rules.
Still, it should be under scrutiny to not mutate into something more authoritarian again.
As a dev I can ignore ESG completely now and I don't believe I will ever become friends with it. I certainly do not change my language for them, they caused enough damage and I believe polite silence on certain topics on their part would be quite adequate.
Is it really intolerance of DEI, or the fact that those jobs are basically horseshit?
It's one thing to incorporate aspects of DEI into company culture and to have policy around it, but do you really need a role dedicated to DEI? I really doubt it. I've worked at a few companies with these DEI officers, and the value they bring to a company is extremely dubious, if existent at all. My last company let theirs go, despite the administration being highly leftist at the time, and it was painfully obvious why. It's insulting to everyone that a DEI officer makes more than a burger flipper considering their cushy duties.
DEI-based roles were destined to fail.
My partner chaired a D&I board for a while. The amount of work she had to put in was astonishing.
She organised events, had to find speakers, find venues for said events, wrote internal SM posts, etc.
And this was all unpaid, effectively. There was no policy, no obligation to participate, no forced anything. It was just about creating space that can either accommodate discussions or promote awareness, or workshops to help some people be inspired, feel supported or encouraged. There were culture cafés, mentoring programs, etc.
Said company seems to have had a reduction in DEI efforts/positions, but that seems aligned with a general cost reduction, not because DEI was a failure.
(I do an exceptionally poor job of summarising what she did, but then again, I wasn’t directly involved in it).
There was a sharp decline in job listings over all recently that could explain that too.
>“Raise your hand if you’re a racist.” Guests may often have broken down in tears when told that their claims to be colour-blind were simply another brick in the edifice of white supremacy
The fact that society collectively thought that not only was this OK, but those voices were the ones to be amplified was hysteria. Anyone who spoke up against this was immediately shouted down and called racist. The fallout from George Floyd and "The Summer of Love" will be studied as a moral panic in the future. People are slowly coming back to their senses. You can only deny reality for so long. Truly Orwellian.
Universal humanism is just so much more effective than what DEI brought forward and bad ideas have to die at some point.
You cannot keep them alive forever, even if you are not allowed to criticize them. But yes, this was their most egregious failure and in my opinion completely disqualifies them to bring something worthwhile to the table on these issues.
See also "The rise and fall of the DEI movement" on NPR.[1]
[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/09/06/1198913319/consider-this-from...
I feel like this article is gaslighting. The woke cycle is a long way from being over. The culture war still wages on.
Examples of poor polling data for $200
DEI mentions in earnings calls sounds solid to me fwiw
That doesn't follow if you assume that promotion of an idea is highest when it seeks to establish dominance, and goes away if it becomes hegemonic / the "new normal".
Well maybe that is a bad assumption in this case
I hate the term “woke”… and pretty much any other term that takes a heavily nuanced subject and condenses into one word for lazy minds to use and misuse. I hated the term when the left introduced it 10+ years ago, and I hate it now that the right has taken it over.
Making it easier to name makes it easier to criticise. I think this is your real concern.
It makes it easier to characterise. The way it does so is by eliminating nuance and making a word that doesn't express the opinions that people actually have.
Making it easier to characterise makes the characterisation easier to criticise, but that's not a meaningful target.
Use of unnuanced terminology creates battlefields far away from the positions that people actually care about.
Defund the police is used as a phrase by people who want a well regulated well funded police system. Only a very few extreme people want to eliminate police correctly
Microaggression is used in academia with a degree of specificity but there are those who will use it to mean "Thing I don't like". Dunning Kruger is a non partisan term that is misused similarly.
I don't particularly like the term woke myself but I also tend to agree with Godwin's second law.
At some point you need to ask yourself if the policies need that much nuance.
The term dates to the 1930s in its current social awareness usage:
<https://scientificorigin.com/origin-of-the-word-woke>
<https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188543449/what-does-the-word...>
Both of those articles reference only a single historical quote using the term, that being the 1938 song "Scottsboro Boys". The way the term is used in the song also isn't the way that is used today, but as a way to communicate to stay vigilant.
At least woke had a real meaning when it started, now the right just uses it as “anything the the other guys do that I don’t like”
It's hard to argue this is inaccurate. The origin of the term isn't really up for debate. And the way the conservative movement uses the term is overwhelming well-documented at this point.
I'd like to counter this, but yeah... lots of people just throw "woke" and "DEI" around for everything not good, it's extremely painful to see.
- Boeing sucks at building stuff: blame woke hiring
- SpaceX has a landing failure: blame DEI hires at suppliers
I wouldn't be surprised if they shout at the sky screaming about woke clouds when they get caught in rain without an umbrella
Both of those mean "hiring based on identity politics instead of ability to do the job" (though different sub-groups, the first being activists and the second being the groups the activists focus on). It's not a simplistic "not good".
I know that's what those are supposed to mean, but that's not how the average poster on social media seems to use it.
Like with my example of the SpaceX landing failure, it was a booster that had flown over 20 times, had flown a trajectory at the edge of its performance, the leading theory (IIRC) was/is that some components on the legs finally wore out too much. Testing these limits has been one of the side-benefits of Starlink launches on used boosters.
So, seeing a bunch of people stupidly freaking out about this being due to DEI just shows that they don't actually know what "DEI hiring" is as a complaint.
But this in no way negates the thesis that a hiring policy based on membership of groups rather than merit alone, might mean that people are less competent and more mistakes happen.
> I know that's what those are supposed to mean, but that's not how the average poster on social media seems to use it.
This applies for every single word, average poster on social media are dumb. Toxic masculinity is similarly misused etc.
Neither of those things mean hiring someone who doesn’t have the ability to do the job. Which is clearly wrong because of course minorities are able to do these jobs
No it is not true that "of course minorities are able to do the job".
Just as it is not true that "of course majorities are able to do the job".
Just as it is not true that "of course minorities are not able to do the job".
Just as it is not true that "of course majorities are not able to do the job".
What minority/majority/gender or other group you belong to simply is not relevant.
For most highly skilled jobs, most people are not able to do the job, completely irrespective of which group they belong to otherwise ("otherwise" meaning: unless your grouping is "people who can do the job" and "people who can't do the job").
So the only or at least overriding criterion in hiring should (must?) be: can they do the job? (Do they have the skills, training, temperament, work ethic, etc.)
When reasonable people complain about DEI hires, what they are complaining about is "ability to do the job" not being the first, foremost and preferably only criterion used to select the hire. This is a reasonable complaint.
Of course there are also racist assholes, who complain about DEI hires because they believe a-priori that someone with a minority background can't do the job. That is to be condemned, obviously.
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This comment is probably the most correct reason "woke" has a negative tone now, because they chose to use it as a way to ignore their behaviors or associations that might not be the most empathetic of others, aligning it with this "woke" movement allows them to turn their back on the topic. Hard for those that care about topics to engage in bringing to light when half the Country puts your comment on blast for being too "woke". It's like Idiocracy at it's infancy.
It's usually used to mean identity politics, isn't it? The origin of the word has it's roots in racism, but now it's come to basically mean all forms of identity politics.
No, it’s an adjective to describe a person. Someone who is “awake” to the structural oppression around them.
I guess you could call structural oppression “identity politics”, but that seriously feels like a dog whistle.
Or phrased differently, someone who views everything through the prism of "oppressor/oppressed".
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FYI the "left" has introduced woke 90+ years ago in the 1930s. It merely increased in popularity.
A bunch of people are mad that their “white guilt” was weaponized and provided mansions for nonprofits, while doing absolutely nothing to attempt to fix the issue.
The main benefactors of DEI are white women, not sure if this is what "woke" is to mean or not.
A good thing. "woke" is a marketing term used by people who can make a buck from it. For it or against it.
Counterpoint; we are in a downwards-facing economy with war on our doorstep at eastern and western fronts. Companies have less money to spend on virtue signalling, governments are less discriminate about the results they want, and individuals have higher priorities than expressing uniqueness online. "Woke" is a byproduct of the entire political spectrum being steeped in it's own head-up-ass echo chambers, leading to QAnon and queer marketing strategy respectively.
America is pretty much guaranteed to return to a woke status-quo if we're sold enough luxury goods and convince ourselves that everything is fine again. Wokeness is the masturbatory pattern of self-assurance that both the left and right rely on to convince themselves they have absolute control over an irreconcilably apolitical reality.
Perhaps virtue-signalling is recognised more in society now. I and people around me have developed an eye for performative outrage, posturing, and politics in the last several years.
The hurting ego is often thinly veiled by grandstanding and incendiary language. You give the person what they need — security, community, direction; and their 500 grievances previously lodged in every direction suddenly disappear.
Unfortunately, this is rarely what these people get. There are many others willing to take advantage of their rage, too.
Or it's simple empathy. Folks are fond of denying it's existence these days, which simply marks the speaker as fond of ranting, addicted to the outrage culture so popular these days.
Don't like the word? OK use another one. But to tout hatred-of-the-other as some kind of natural normal efficient state is preposterous and ignorant.
It's not empathy. Gay people (myself included) don't feel "empathized with" when we see gay people reflected in modern advertising. We feel targeted, and rightfully so - people are preying on the unintelligent reactionary masses that empathize with or want to empathize with queer identity. It is fully and wholly virtue signalling - queer media was better when it was an underground identity! At least then the concept wasn't being abused for brownie points by C-suite executives that profit off the manipulation of their audience.
On the flip side, the wanton "wokeness" of the right is equally abusive. Right wing grandstanders say exactly what their party wants to hear, absolve themselves of responsibility ("oh i'm anonymous" or "i don't believe this but it's my right to say it"), and then get thousands of unironic adherents that fully believe in their hyperbolic attention-seeking. It's the exact same mechanism on either side of the aisle, jerking off precisely the same insecurities for almost exactly the same reason.
At some indeterminate point in the future, all Americans will end up being conservative. Not because it's the right choice, but because the way politics are headed nobody will be encouraged to think outside marketing and empty platitudes. We already spend more time defending our echo chambers than we spend engaging with policy.
Grown gay men and the queer youth of today are not the same people. Look at the trends of gender and sexual identity of the under-30s. Look at trends in religious activity. Society continues to move inexorably in one direction and the direction is not conservatism.
>Gay people (myself included) don't feel "empathized with" when we see gay people reflected in modern advertising. We feel targeted, and rightfully so - people are preying on the unintelligent reactionary masses that empathize with or want to empathize with queer identity.
Speak for yourself. Some people just want to see themselves represented in media (Advertising or otherwise) just like the rest of the population. Even if it's just for their money, it's still better than being swept under the rug and forgotten about.
>queer media was better when it was an underground identity!
There's still plenty of great underground queer media, and it's also great to see some of it go mainstream.
I will never be a conservative.
You may be a progressive liberal aged 20, but with your views not even changing you will be a moderate conservative aged 60.
Even if you become more liberal as time passes, no doubt your historical comments will show you up to "be conservative"
"never" is a conservative word.
I like this sentence because it is gibberish. One could similarly say “Forbes is a raucous breakfast” in a solemn tone and accomplish an equal amount of meaning
The Economist has a style guide rule of always explaining who someone is no matter how famous. The description they chose for Elon Musk in this article is "billionaire conspiracy theorist". And their thesis is that corporate wokeness is in decline - how ironic.
Also interesting how much more biased their headlines are in the print edition than online:
> This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline “Back to sleep”
I wonder why they do that. Presumably they know online articles will be seen by a more diverse audience?
The article is tracking irrelevant information over time and calling it significant. Please don't publish this stuff on Hacker news.
To say nothing of the article itself, calling something that makes the front page of HN irrelevant is sort of how the US ended up in the situation it finds itself in today. If your only response to a counterpoint is to disparage it, you will find yourself with a large cohort of people that believe they have been shut out of the conversation.
No, being permissive of nonsense is what caused the US to arrive at where it is today. The tea party patriots nonsense should have been the end of it.
What do you mean permissive of nonsense? You mean permissive of views you disagree with? Yeah, I absolutely don't agree with that, and a cursory glance at history will show you that stifling dissent is the quickest path to ruin.
And for the record, I largely disagree with the nonsense I suspect you are referring to. I also respect that there a bunch of people who don't, and in a democracy, that matters.
Qanon and birtherism were both nonsense at the time and it’s still true today. Lying to score political points should never be tolerated. I’m surprised I have to say this.
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I disagree.
There is a lot of distracting, dividing, and just trash-tier content in social media that society is only worse off for taking seriously.
Politically divisive articles such as ones encouraging identity politics tend to fall in that category. So do articles with emotionally loaded terms like “woke”. Maybe they are loaded not for us, but we all know they are loaded emotionally for many.
And it doesn’t matter much if many other people engage in it, it is likely healthier for you and society not to.
Now, I agree that maybe “irrelevant” should be grounded in context — it is irrelevant to a discerning reader. It is relevant in society and its discourse, unfortunately.
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Divisiveness is the wrong solution to real problems.
I am happy to discuss any cultural value respectfully and seriously. But nothing productive will come out of a discussion mired by incendiary language and identity politics, it is a waste of time.
Just look at how the article dives into divisive controversies from the first sentence. There won’t be meaningful discourse on social media for it. Hate and anxiety is the best it can hope for. It’s just not written in a way to foster collaborative efforts, not in the masses.
Divisiveness is an outcome, not a solution. So I'm not really sure what you mean.
I'm just not sure that you realize your framing of things that you agree with as "respectful and serious" and anything you don't as "incendiary" and "a waste of time" is literally the dynamic that you are railing against. You are half of the problem. Somewhere else on the internet, someone else is saying the very same thing about you. You can't claim the masses won't engage in collaborative debate when you aren't willing to either.
By solution I meant “tool” or “method” to resolve.
Divisiveness is not a necessary outcome of most disagreements (political, cultural, societal, interpersonal), and it is not the right tool to solve them.
Diplomacy is a better tool, calm and understanding discussion is another, sometimes just listening is enough — there are many good tools. Divisive politics is not one of them.
I may not disagree with the message/data of the article, but I do disagree in the delivery/reporting quality. And the overall package is healthier for society to disregard. I do see your point that it can be discussed, but there are better articles to start a helpful and serious debate. I hope you can see my view.
Frankly, look at how the HN community reacted to your comments accusing others of being the problem and such. You may have an important and valid message but you should work on its delivery, because serious people (like decision-makers or those who contemplate deeply) won’t engage in a discussion like this. Apologies if this is unpleasant to read.
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It's attempting to gauge sentiment through tracking a number of proxies. It's obviously flawed, but it's a reasonable attempt at measuring shifting attitudes in various spheres.
It never was, however the mainstream media wanted you to think so
This mostly. A handful of very specific liberal and coastal areas drive this narrative... which guess where most media is generated?
You really only need to go about 30-40min inland from some of these places to see how normal/centrist most places are.
It's not even "places" -- not any more. It's driven by the extremely online. Twitter, in particular, is a bazaar of echo-chambers, and most of them push their own political and social agendas. (Left and right, the mechanism is the same.)
People get caught up in it, and then think that those opinions are normal. There is no "normative" frame of reference.
This has, of course, infected politics itself over the past 10 years.
I live in a liberal coastal area, and I can assure you it’s not woke.
There are/were attempts, such as thanking the Indians who lands we stole before every Kraken game.
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In the late 2000s/early 2010s, the left came up with "social justice warrior", and by 2015 it got turned into an insult by just about everyone online who knew the term (non-extreme-left, middle, and right). Shortly afterwards the left adopted "woke" to replace it, and even quicker than before everyone else turned it into an insult as well. DEI was, sort of, supposed to be the third replacement, and it's taken longer for this one to turn negative but it's well on its way now.
Yea definitely a little bit of that from a labeling and demonizing perspective.
I rarely hear moderate or more traditionally Republican/Conservative types rant about wokeness. It's the ones doused in right-wing propaganda.
I'm generally of the opinion most people are decent. We might have differences on things but most people can compromise and find a middle position. Our media and politicians thrive on polarization tho and it's utterly killing our ability to function as a democracy.
How many traditional Conservatives in the US remain? Maybe 10-20%?
This is an increasing problem throughout the west. I was listening to a UK ex-politician (Phillip Hammond), who was the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary in the past.
His view, which I broadly agree with, is that the membership of a party (Tory, Labour, etc) are further from the mainstream "centre ground" than the general population, and that's a bad thing. His solution was the leadership of the party should come from the elected representatives (the MPs) and not the 100,000 "enthusiastic" members -- in the past the parties (Tory and Labour specifically) had massive membership, but now it's just a small number. It's relatively easy for a specific group to actually take over a party.
However I don't think that the small number of votes is the only problem -- the US doesn't have that problem for example, are driven by the views of millions and still come out with the less centrist options
Us on the right aren’t Holocaust deniers. You got Louis Farrakhan on the far left denying the Holocaust. Holocaust denial is fringe and isn’t right or left. Most conservatives have a strong support of Israel and most on the left have a strong support of Hamas.
And Hamas literally supports Nazism.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-ny-yiddish-center-finds-nazi...
> most on the left have a strong support of Hamas
"most" is a vast exaggeration.
support of a two-state solution is not "support for Hamas"
having concerns about the massive civilian casualties in Gaza is not "support for Hamas"
How can you (rightfully) critique someone for painting with far too broad of a brush, and then in the very next sentence paint with a much broader brush yourself by claiming "most on the left have a strong support of Hamas"?
The left don't support Hamas. They support Palestine, which is a theoretical government for the people there. Ironically, Israel supports Hamas. Netanyahu supported setting them up as the leadership in Gaza because he could use them as a scapegoat and prevent a two-state solution.
We should all disparage both Hamas and Israel's nationalist leaders for causing the whole mess and getting civilians killed in the crossfire.
The left don't support Hamas.
Sadly, a large (though difficult to measure) portion of them do. If you don't believe me, just try hanging out at their events and talking with a decent sample size of them. And for bonus points, try reading their flyers and other propaganda. In some cases you'll find downloads of PDFs directly from pro-Hamas sources, and of course not just "contextualizing" but explicitly celebrating the glory of Operation al-Aqsa Flood, and so on.
The portion isn't as high as the hasbara / generic rightwing propaganda makes it out to be of course, but it's definitely not a negligible contingent or even small contingent. Even among those who aren't explicitly pro-Hamas, many just can't give a straight answer as to whether Hamas is good or bad or even as to what actually happened on Oct 7. The just start spewing jargon and polemics. And as what they know of the actual history of the region - forget about it.
What the hasbarists/rightwingers get wrong, though, is that the situation I'm describing actually doesn't come from a place of antisemitism. Rather from the simple fact that many of these people are very young and naive, and to all intents and purposes, basically were born pretty much yesterday. In most cases they were never taught how to recognize propaganda for what it obviously is, and they have almost no grounding in history beyond what they had to cram through to get past their multiple choice tests. So when you put sufficient quantities of shiny propaganda in front of them (that seems to resonate with their social justice narratives), they eat it up like candy.
Source: me, myself, and I. Basically left-wing (by most characterizations) and if you spend 2 seconds reading my comment history you'll see exactly where I stand in regard to the broader suite of issues. That doesn't change the fact of what, again, you can easily see for yourself on the ground by just stopping to observe the protest scene in real life for even a tiny bit.
most on the left have a strong support of Hamas.
"Most" do not. Some do, but they're a minority and it's mostly confused apologetics and certainly not "strong" support.
If you've been led to believe otherwise, then it's time to start taking a careful look at who's been drip-feeding you content that would cause you to do so, and why.
> And Hamas literally supports Nazis.
This is so stupid.
As a kind reminder, the Lehi itself tried to ally with the Nazis in 1940 to fight the British. Would you write that Israel supports Nazism because Shamir was president?
The 'Right' far outweigh the 'Left' on Holocaust Denial.
https://www.claimscon.org/millennial-study/ https://forward.com/opinion/652032/jd-vance-tucker-carlson-d...
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/02/texas-gop-antisemiti...
"Two months after a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser was caught hosting white supremacist Nick Fuentes, leaders of the Republican Party of Texas have voted against barring the party from associating with known Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers."
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/29/politics/republican-reaction-...
https://jewishinsider.com/2024/09/tucker-carlson-darryl-coop...
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/gop-popular-front... To build their popular front on the right, Republicans are happy to recruit white nationalists.
"concept of a “right-wing popular front” is extremely clarifying. We can see how this popular front functioned in popularizing Holocaust denial. This subject is described in a superbly researched article, “The Pre-History of American Holocaust Denial,” by John P. Jackson Jr., which appeared in American Jewish History in 2021. "
"Most conservatives have a strong support of Israel"
You are forgetting how much the Republican Party is now controlled by radical Christian's, who do NOT support Israel, because they think the Jews killed Jesus and are blasphemers for not accepting Jesus as the Messiah.
It's a distraction to keep everybody in-fighting to make them so focused on inconsequential things that they ignore the glaring wealth inequality.
Ala Huxley
Depends what you mean by "America". If you mean - an average american, sure. But the elites have been taken over by wokeness and are projecting that image to the rest of the world. An example just from today: https://x.com/MesugakiArchive/status/1840329124960723141
It was. But in the posturing way, not in the help anyone way.
edit: lol at the downvotes. Check the gini coefficient around the world and get back to me.
The main criticism I’ve always had about it is this: that it’s fake.
Take San Francisco as a prime example. It’s a place full of people who style themselves as progressive or “woke” or whatever but a starter home is unachievable to anyone without an exit event or a $400k salary. It has one of the widest rich/poor divisions of anywhere I’ve ever seen in the USA. Major industries include mass surveillance and addictive forms of media, and I have no idea how anyone who isn’t in a high six figure job can live well there let alone raise a family.
SF is not progressive at all, except in rhetoric.
The greatest wealth inequality is always in the bluest of cities. See New Haven, CT for dramatic examples.
I think the arrow of causation goes both ways. Cities tend to be blue. Places with a lot of knowledge work or academia tend to be blue, have higher salaries, and thus have runaway housing costs due to the fact that America has chronically under built housing for over 30 years.
Still I don’t think that lets them totally off the hook since they obviously don’t care that much, otherwise they would advocate for better housing and zoning policies to make housing more affordable.
So I do think this issue points to a fundamental un-seriousness in the supposed commitment to equity.
The right is not necessarily better, e.g. blaming housing costs on immigration instead of underbuilding. But they are not the ones posturing as deeply concerned about equity.
Some red areas do accidentally have better housing policies because they tend to be pro development, but this isn’t because they care about the poor. It’s because they are okay with building and that has a side effect of controlling prices. Example: Texas.
Summary: both sides suck, but blue areas are also hypocrites.
Also posted a few days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41625358
Below the dupe threshold as there was little discussion (< 20 comments).
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As a Muslim who also spends considerable time in the Middle East, I am so totally confused by how America decided that wokism and pro-Palestinianism go together. I mean, literally one is in support of a proposed country where they kill gays or throw them off of rooftops, not to mention the religious backdrop that encourages them to carry out such shit. The other is a movement in outwardly strong support for those gays. Like how?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_State_of_...
Israeli atrocities against Palestinians are something that one can criticize independently of Palestinian atrocities against other Palestinians.
Thinking Palestinians should be freed from Israeli oppression does not necessarily mean one agrees with every part of their culture or everything their government does.
The US has got into a place where for most people political opinions are a package deal that you get shipped to you in a box from a major political party. You don't think through each issue and come to a conclusion, that takes too much time, you just subscribe to the bundle of your choosing and accept everything they offer.
Are you strongly pro-life? Well, that comes bundled with an isolationist foreign policy these days, so let's just check that box for you while we're at it.
Are you in favor of gay rights? Well, that comes bundled with opposition to Israel and support of Palestine.
It's not about what makes coherent sense, it's about groupthink.
No major political party in the US is pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli. The democrats are moderately pro-Israel and the republicans are extremely pro-Israel. The pro-Palestinian consensus among young people on social media is almost totally unrepresented in mainstream politics.
Palestinians, both gay and straight, are being carpet bombed in Gaza. The Western left tends to support the weak and oppressed. Being carpet bombed is a form of being weak and oppressed.
Also, very strange for you to claim to be a Muslim and then write a searing critique of Islam that would seem to dismiss the humanity of a group (approving of mass killing by bombing) of Muslims because of their religion of Islam.
Just to state the obvious as it seems it’s necessary Islam is 1400 years old. Despite what the Saudi would like you to believe, there is no such thing as a one and only heterodoxy that everyone agrees about and people have widely different relationship with the faith.
but all Muslims have the concept of the Ummah, the collective group of all Muslims, and it seems unlikely to me that any Muslim would approve of the dehumanization of Muslims as the OP had done. In fact it was the OP that projected an assumed belief onto all of the Palestinians. He seems more like yet another Israeli posting on the internet pretending to be a Muslim.
First, "Muslim" is a very broad category. For some it's a pious belief, for others less so, for others a cultural marker and nothing more. I don't see much value in the commenter's rant about "pro-Palestinianism" either (as it basically seems to be crude smear against this group for exactly the reasons you state), but ironically, it seems that you're guilty of projecting assumed beliefs here also, to some degree.
For another, if the commenter is trolling about their Muslim identity, then it would appear to be a highly cultivated effort, not limited to this post -- see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41028368 -- so Occam's Razor suggests that they most likely are not.
Make of that what you will. I personally don't care about anyone's identity, religion or lack thereof. In any case, the commenter is definitely riffing on a basically pretty lame stereotype about Palestinians, and seems highly indifferent to their plight as a group (on top peddling another stereotype that seems to consider all those who have strong concerns about the issue as being "woke"), so whatever motivations they may have for cultivating this nonsense are immaterial, in my book.
Implying that the way Palestinian authorities use Sharia to persecute some minorities is not a dehumanisation of a group. That’s the truth. That’s not approving what Israel is doing either. Please don’t deform what’s being say to suit your agenda. It doesn’t help your argument.
HN is not the place to be making weird assumptions and accusations of bad faith. See the site guidelines.
HN, increasingly, seems like a space where free discourse is not allowed.
Supporting my viewpoint with factual statements about my religion, even if they are a criticism of my faith, is not strange at all. There are a large number of Muslims who live with a "live and let live" approach towards the faith and its dictates, especially with respect to the LGBT question. But on the whole, yes, we are surpassed by an even larger majority who believe that the LGBT community should be oppressed because that's God's will. It's wholly rational in my view to criticize that aspect of the faith (even if the hardline Muslims will disagree with me), lest we end up like some lobotomized sheep with no function of thought.
Also, I never criticized the Palestinian community on the whole. I interact with Palestinian diaspora on an almost daily basis, many of whom scoff at the current sad state of affairs in Palestinian governance even internally. Many of them support LGBT rights and scoff at the current state of affairs as run by either Hamas or Fatah.
But that's exactly the point I was making. The liberal west has stupidly (and Hamas successfully) pushed for the equation of Hamas/Fatah representation as the rule of the Palestinian people (and not of the Palestinian state). It's the same as how any criticism of Zionism is basically called anti-Semitism these days (as Israel has successfully done).
Lastly nowhere did I support the bombing of Palestinians in Gaza, or the Shia in Lebanon. In fact, I would say that Israel's pager move was especially genius because it limited damage to specifically the Hezbollah operatives - hard to be more precise than that on that scale.
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>Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
yeugh, nonsensical article
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> Stand up for what you're doing, own it, and have some courage & stand up for it when someone calls you out as a supporter of it.
Okay. What are you trying to do with this comment? What's the purpose? I honestly can't even tell what your opinion is, or if there's even a specific outcome you want. Your statement is so generalized that it could be said by anyone about anything. So it would seem there's something that's bothering you, but you won't come out and say it.
You did mention having a problem with the idea of "woke" or "woke people", and that opinion tends to carry some significant baggage. So I would tend to assume you're "anti-woke". If I googled that phrase, what tends to come up is a whole lot of hatred. But ask people about specific things about this opinion, and they back away from it, as if admitting to it would get them into trouble.
So what are your specific opinions about ideas related to race, sex, gender, nationality, etc? Do you have the courage to stand up for what you're talking about when I call you out on it?
> Can we not put woke in quotes?
We can, but in the sense used here it is appropriate not to.
> And when someone says woke in a discussion, do not ask them to define it.
Given that there are at least three, distantly related, uses to refer to social phenomena in current use, and the single most common or those actually is a simple handwavey pejorative, no, I absolutely will ask people to define what they mean, if nothing else to give them the opportunity to overcome the presumption that they are using it in the empty pejorative sense.
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And are these Trumpians in the room with us right now?
Please stop with this nonsense. Trump at least won a primary and whether or not people agree or disagree with his policies, at least he was democratically chosen. He’s called a “threat to democracy” and that’s laughable considering the Democrat nominee won not a single primary. There wasn’t even a primary! RFL Jr was ostracized yet when it comes to his opinions on the medical-food-industrial complex — he is one of the few people who are willing to challenge those ultra-powerful interests.
In my opinion, anyone that has faced two assassination attempts, multiple lawfare efforts, multiple impeachments and has earned the contempt of the neocons and defense-industrial complex has earned my vote.
The institutions opposed to Trump serve as a huge endorsement in my book.
In the olden days, liberals supported free speech and fighting the establishment — now, they are the establishment. Even Hilary Clinton has called for the criminalization of speech. Simply crazy. Even a majority of the Teamsters support Trump and while that isn’t exactly hell freezing over, it’s pretty close.
The “Trumpian Right” is closer to actual liberalism and the Kamala Left has quickly approached actual fascism. Trump is more to the left of Barbara Jordan on immigration, and is more aligned with the 20th century ACLU when it comes to freedom of speech.
Don’t believe me? Remember COVID, the lockdowns, the suppression of dissent? How about the guy that went to prison over a Hillary Clinton meme? How about the left that used to be opposed to war yet now seem to support continual escalation of the Ukraine conflict? Mitt Romney cited Russia as the biggest threat to national security in a debate against Obama and he was laughed at by all of the elites — yet now, the Democrats are continually howling at the danger of Russia. The danger of Russia is directly proportional to how much money can be made from it.
We are through the looking glass. This election is a simple choice — do we want more of the Snowden-revealed evil of the establishment or do we want to poke the establishment in the eye?
Downvote all you want. But I’m not voting for the party that supported school closures, coerced “vaccinations,” and funding endless wars. Any candidate supported by current or former “intelligence” officials is not a candidate that should get our vote.
But what do I know? I was born into a middle class family..
> Remember COVID, the lockdowns, the suppression of dissent?
This occurred under Trump during his first attempt to "poke the establishment in the eye."
> How about the left that used to be opposed to war yet now seem to support continual escalation of the Ukraine conflict?
Because 1) we're bound by treaties to do so (we promised to protect them if they dismantled their nuclear arsenal, which they did). 2) The Ukraine is, according to pretty much everybody with knowledge on European politics, acting as the first line of defense against Russia. It's why so many European countries are also supporting the Ukraine.
> The danger of Russia is directly proportional to how much money can be made from it.
The danger of Russia is there's a dying megalomaniac with nuclear codes and a desire to conquer Europe no matter the cost to Russia.
> I’m not voting for the party that supported school closures, coerced “vaccinations,” and funding endless wars.
So, you're not voting for trump? Again, all of these happened under his watch as president, and many were backed up by his executive orders.
> anyone that has faced two assassination attempts
By his own party, by people who voted for him in the past.
> He’s called a “threat to democracy” and that’s laughable considering the Democrat nominee won not a single primary
He's called that not because of anything leading up to the upcoming election, but because of what he keeps saying he'll do after it.
Need a refresher on how Parties work.
They send representatives to the Convention to vote.
At the convention, anything can be decided. They are NOT the government. They are more like private clubs with their own bylaws.
But, you seem to be getting a little frothy around the mouth. So, maybe try breathing in slowly, breath out slowly, focus on the breath. Examine where the anger is coming from.
Wow. I can almost see you crossing off bullet points as you wrote this.. Good job.
> This election is a simple choice — do we want more of the Snowden-revealed evil of the establishment or do we want to poke the establishment in the eye?
I agree this election is a simple choice, but not the one you proposed. It's the choice between electing someone to power that we can be fairly confident will release that power when the time comes and someone who is, by his own admissions and actions, an aspirational autocrat envious of and enamored with despicable world leaders like Putin.
As for the other issues you raise, as long as democracy survives, we have a chance of addressing them. When we start electing non-democratic leaders to fix our democracy, we have, by definition, lost.
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How will caring less and less about the injustice and intolerance experienced by people help in fighting injustice and intolerance?
I associate "wokeness" with what disney does. Putting black people everywhere to show how progressive they are, but being one of the worst corporations that exists.
> one of the worst corporations that exists.
Disney? I'm not a fan, but I'm pretty sure I could come up with a list of a few dozen worse corporations.
But do they also posture as being very moral?
Well, that's one potential interpretation of the word woke. It's amazing how much different the definition is.
But that's why I put my definition into my comment, so we don't have to argue over definitions in order to discuss the assertion made by the parent.
As a side note, the "token black man" has been a thing for decades, if not longer. This is nothing new, but it sure makes a great talking point for gathering angry people.
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1. America contains many countries other than the USA.
2. Regardless, one might rather say that the "America is going woke!" fashion among media pundits is being replaced by "America is rejecting wokeness!" fashion.
> 1. America contains many countries other than the USA.
Are you a native English speaker? "America" in the singular is universally understood to be equivalent to "the US".
You have to use "Americas" with an "s" to refer to the two continents combined, or "North America"/"South America" to refer to them individually.
The Economist originates and has primary readership, in the USA. In that country, the term "America" is used to refer to "United States of America." When referring to the American continents, the common terms are "Americas" (note the plural form) or the explicit forms North, Central, and South America. Most people in the United States are aware that the United States does not span the entirety of any or all of the American continents. As a simple example, most Americans are aware of the country north of the USA border called Canada, which is also in North America.
Hope that helps.
The Economist is a British newspaper. HQ London, editors British.
That said, ‘America’ is synonymous with the USA in writing and conversation here (and elsewhere in Europe in my experience).
> The Economist originates [...] in the USA
The Economist is a British publication.
Someone will probably downvote you for making the irrelevant mistake saying US vs UK, but your point is absolutely correct that “America” is colloquially the name of the USA, not a continent or set of continents, in both US and UK English.
I suspect OP knows this, and is fighting a battle to try to change how Americans speak their own language — it’s not rare, in my experience, for people in other countries of the Americas to be annoyed by this usage.
> America contains many countries other than the USA.
"The Americas" contain multiple countries. "America" is just another name for United States of America. North/South/Central is used when talking about the continent. But you knew that.
And I get it, it used to bother me when I was a kid too. I resented Americans for taking the continental name for themselves. But then real life arrived and that's just how it works in English and trying to fight is pointless.
Being deliberately obtuse or combative about this usage of the word America is just bad faith and detracts from the point you're trying to make.
The economist has published some absolute dreck recently. What happened?
Look. Even here people are engaging with this.
That's what happened.
Don't think you can fault people for engaging in a subject that half the country is willing to sink it for.
Can at least talk about it like "wow, the right is really willing to die for this, what are they on about"
Right or left that wasn't really my point. I didn't intend for anything political at all.
The original question was, essentially, why the economist published this.
My answer was because people engage with it.
Usually tended to be moderate but from a free-trade perspective and usually making points blindly obvious to everyone.
They’re still late past the post but now they’ve gone weirdly Neo-con.
Exactly why I canceled after many years of subscribing
Woke was initially a phrase coined by black Americans to express awareness to racism
The movement is still coalescing but I noticed this too in my church--people were leaving churches that were more strict about lockdowns towards churches that were more right wing. A steady trickle of people leaving and people arriving.
The bigger trend is of course people leaving churches, period. The practice of religion in the US has taken a deep dive over the last 10 years, putting it on track to match the long-standing disposition of Western Europe.
I know this to be true in the macro ... Strangely, I've noticed in my own life a small trend of the most unlikely of people giving religion a try. They talk about it almost as if it's a new "cool" thing. This is in New York City of all places.
There are plenty of smaller trends, sure. But the larger trend is absolutely overwhelming and, if anything, accelerating:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-reli...
Both happen; people abandon churches in droves in their late teens/early 20's, and then there's a constant stream of older converts / people trying it on.
The former far outnumber the latter. But the latter might outnumber people leaving religion later in life.
Eh, I have to agree with fellow commenters the decline isn't just a lockdown thing. I think it's more about refusing to meet the moment and keeping 50+ year old culture wars the rest of society has moved on from alive. Churches seem very uninterested in solutions for society becoming more lonely, anything to help single mothers, speaking out against vanity/gluttony/greed, etc. Maybe uniformly shifting gears away from the very very very tired weekly tirades about things related to sexuality would be a healthy first step. Find more to stand for than against, right?
When was the last time you attended church and what was the denomination? You’re providing anecdotal evidence, right?
2 weeks ago. I was raised in church and attended Christian university. Work in more liberal space. I can see perspectives from outside and in.
Same with people fleeing from school systems that were still locked down to ones that had since reopened.
I don't think this is about wokeness per se though, just people literally leaving institutions that are closed in favor of ones that are open. Like switching up your regular bar if it stops being open on one of the main nights you used to go there.
"Chruch of less-than-7th-day adventists if you wear your mask"?