ok but I don't understand how you've determined that the wokes have lost the culture war. it feels like their opinions are...
ok but I don't understand how you've determined that the wokes have lost the culture war. it feels like their opinions are constantly getting more mainstream. or maybe that's just it, and everybody hates the mainstream? is that the calculus? i don't really understand your position
also, if the people who have lost are called "wokes" or so forth... what are the people who won called?
There are bad things out there but the worst now have no viable path to hegemony and the bad stuff has a narrowing path and you’ll find that a lot of dynamics were based on people thinking they might (or bluffed into certainty they would) have to accommodate them
This looks more like thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis to me, but I think we’re in broad agreement that that the illiberal bits of SJ are in retreat and the stuff that’s worth keeping seems pretty safe.
Why do you think “the illiberal bits of SJ” are in retreat when illiberalism - e.g. the UK’s new Online Safety Bill - seems to be in full advance? Is it just because the general acceptance of strict speech control by the elite is not from an explicitly and solely progressive perspective?
I admit that my evidence is anecdotal, but I also think there’s a good reason to think professional class liberals are bellwethers on this particular issue, and at least in my circles things have been changing a little.
Mostly it’s that I can say something like “the illiberal bits of social justice” in polite company and not get rounded down to a racist. There’s a much bigger rhetorical space for people to approve of the general goals of SJ while criticizing certain elements of it. I think people, or at least people of this social class, are hungry for a synthesis that lets them pursue social justice without the backbiting or cruelty.
I wouldn’t expect this to start showing up in policy outcomes for a few years yet, but the atmosphere is definitely way different than it was in like 2015.
Absolutely, like read Bonfire of the Vanities with the awareness that this all turns around and in 1995 it’s Giuliani Time and the equivalent of the prosecutor’s wife’s friends would feel silly