This is a guest post by Thomas Prosser (who writes at The Path Not Taken) and Edmund King (who writes at Paroxysms) about their very interesting new book, Beyond Woke and Anti-Woke: Explaining the Rise of Social Justice Ideology.
Indeed, both studies are excellent and we draw on them extensively in the book. I guess what we are getting at is the need for a field—a research programme—as well as discrete books.
Will buy the book today. I saw this play out in progressive philanthropy, not academia, and spent the final few years of my working life utterly confused as to why people whom I knew to be smart, practical, and well-intentioned (pretty typical 'liberals') adopted a set of caustic dogmas about race, sex/gender, and economics. And stubbornly applied those dogmas in contexts where they were obviously more false than true and self-defeating (even accepting their definition of justice). Seems to be an unfortunate confluence of many, many factors including: trust in / deference to 'experts' and academics; trust in / deference to the self-appointed leaders of oppressed identity groups; a preference for simple explanations of the world; the binary nature of US politics; and pretty quickly a new set of social norms and institutional incentives within philanthropy. I thought the second election of Trump would cause a reconsideration, and initially it looked like it was. But Trump's subsequent extreme antics and resulting unpopularity has removed or at least muted any internal pressure to move beyond the 'Social Justice' lens.
I worked in healthcare in 2020 and we had a similar thing happen. At one point we were doing a study that looked at racial disparities in "negative" terms used to refer to patients in chart notes -- terms like noncompliant, aggressive, refused or uncooperative. We found that black patients were less likely to have these terms in their records or in an individual chart note. The conclusion was that having fewer negative terms in black patients' charts was a pernicious form of racism, and the citation was a theory paper (full of the author's personal experience and emotional reactions) in a theory journal. The conclusion, of course, was ridiculous, but the general opinion was that you must find racism because it was there. I considered suggesting that maybe black patients were more polite (possibly because they were concerned about racism), but realized that that was not an acceptable answer. Even worse, this disparity in negative terms was flagged as a possible reason for disparities in utilization of preventive services.
Unfortunately, there are health disparities by race and ethnicity and that means that you need to figure out what's actually causing them instead of attributing it to a theory that's fashionable in the humanities. I know of one attempt to reduce racial disparities in a key indicator that followed the advice of the social justice movement exactly and the result was that the indicator stayed the same for white patients and it got worse for black patients. This did not prompt a reevaluation of the initiative.
When you reach the same conclusion under the same conditions regardless of the state of the variable you purport to study, then you don't have a theory*, you have a dogma.
The situation you described reminds me of a prototype example. A white store clerk is at the back of the store when the entry door chime sounds. He comes forward and sees that there is a black man and a white man inside the store.
If he assists the white man first, that is evidence of racism, because he favors the white person.
If he assists the black man first, that is evidence of racism, because he wants to hurry him along.
Looking forward to checking out the book! I just went through a version of this on the pro-immigration side, and the reaction patterns were remarkably similar--denial that anything worth examining is happening, paired with concern that raising the question gives ammunition to the wrong people (https://alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/reflections-on-the-uncomfortable). I guess professional incentives explain part of it, but I suspect a simpler scarcity of intellectual courage among many of us does too.
My comment is from someone who is 'on the Right' and (though I consider myself a well-educated observer) not an academic.
But first of all, congratulations on the publication of your book which sounds to me an important and timely address to the world of Progressive academia. I very much approve of all attempts to get past the various 'derangement syndromes' that have so cramped intellectual discourse on both left and Right in our time. So well done!
Now to the 'but'....
From a Rightist perspective, 'Social Justice Ideology' is not some newish departure but Progressivism's fundamental origin story. From this (my) perspective, Social Justice Ideology has a history going back beyond Marx, perhaps even to Rousseau. From this perspective, Social Justice has always been an essentially middle class intelligentsia mind-game - a largely subconscious but highly seductive 'more-sophisticated-than-thou' mind game - and wokeness is the end stage of its 200-year-long purity spiral.
I have (as you may know Thomas) written extensively on this theme in the 4-part Madness of Intelligentsia series of essays on my Slouching Towards Bethlehem Substack....and which I link to here for anyone who might like to explore this counter-progressive perspective:
I have always found it baffling when people claim that there is no such thing as 'woke'. There is a large number of well known, very popular and coherent positions on the progressive left, e.g.: on sex and gender (sex hardly matters, gender is all that matters, gender can be self-identified, gender trumps sex in sexual preference); on race (discrimination is so fundamentally baked into concepts and institutions that society must be fundamentally rewired and different systems and standards adopted for races discriminted against); on nations and the legitimacy of the state (colonialism- only a state formed by indigenous people is legitimate, all institutions arising from states that weren't formed by indigineous people must be purged of the influences of the non-indigenous); genetics- no psychological, personality or non-physical characteristics are heritable/genetically determined (including intelligence). You can add in policies about policing, and probably a view of capitalism too.
I appreciate the goal of the book and will likely get it, and I see that you referenced al-Gharbi and Mounk, which is fantastic.
That said I think your dig at heterodox spaces is a bit unfair. For every James Lindsey and Jordan Peterson there's a Jon Haidt and John McWhorter. You do acknowledge some good has come from it, and I get you're arguing for a deeper program of study. But in a way your book itself could be seen as within this heterodox space, trying to advance it. My justification for this is that I would image the same people who would reject, say, Woke Racism are going to reject your book too.
Yes, there's some very good heterodox literature and, in the book, we engage with this. As you say, there are very different streams within the movement.
I mean you’re sort of dodging my point though. In this article at least (again haven’t read your book yet) you position yourself as being outside of the heterodox space, doing something different and better and less divisive. Yet the project itself could be seen as within that space, and even anti-woke (despite the title of the book).
I've not read the book either, but I think Prosser to rejecting a false binary to avoid being lumped in with people he disagrees with or finds disreputable. For example, if someone criticizes and rejects a given religion, would we demand that the person identify with atheism? Certainly not, the person may criticize from the perspective of another religion.
Yeah I get that it's a strategy rather than a real difference in substance. But even with your atheist example, if someone were writing a book called "Beyond atheism and Christianity" but then most of their arguments sided with the atheist side of things, I'd have the same issue. To continue with the example, though, I wonder what other "religious" perspective Prosser and King are writing from? Will it really distinguish itself from "anti woke?" Maybe.
James Lindsay did very good work explaining the origins and core beliefs of "wokeness" at his New Discourses site. Several years ago I got really turned off by his Twitter/X behavior. I haven't tuned in to him in quite a while. Last I checked, he seemed to have turned his attention to arguing against what he called "the woke right" and Christian nationalism.
Agreed on both counts on this one. Actually one of my first articles on here was a confirmation of Linsay's and Pluckrose's thesis in Cynical Theories: https://substack.com/@lukecuddy/p-63051944
I'm not sure about the origin story, but as a center lefty who attended university in the 90s, and became a professor in 2013, the difference is stark. Progressives have always had the same goals more or less. But the "woke" brought two elements I had not encountered before.
The first was what I might call "presumption.". In the 90s, if you were a Marxist, you were probably arrogant and superior in your attitude towards center left people, but you knew they were ignorant and needed to be shown the right way. You wanted to fight them to get them on your side, or even to "wake them up."
In the 2010s, it was presumed that everyone already knew the "good, right way" and that anyone who wasn't confirming was willfully obstructing progress. So something need only be called "problematic" or "racist" and if you couldn't _ immediately recognize_ why, you were "complicit" in the oppression that was being called out. Because it was clear that either you didn't care about oppression or you were willfully ignoring the _obvious_ truth.
The second is what has been identified here -- a focus on discourse and emotions over material conditions. This is a huge shift from Marx to Foucault in the thinking of the left. Progressives came to believe that the reason there was so much inequality was that white cishet normies were thriving on the "taken for granted" discourse that "legitimated" oppression. And that this worked by making it emotionally "unsafe" for marginalized groups to exist in various spaces. The idea of "seizing the means of production" is totally anathema to this view.
My personal view, which I've written about on my page, is that it's fundamentally immature. It's passive aggressive. It wants the "grown ups" to do all the work, because the right good way is already obvious, and the hurt that the children feel is the grown ups responsibility.
Agree that people do seem to use Foucault this way though I think that's the wrong way to think about Foucault (but then that's neither here nor there).
Yes, I read your piece on this. I think you are probably correct, but we're really talking about the mainstream, watered down understanding. The big difference from Marx in this understanding is that power flows from discourse, not from anything physical. Change the discourse, you have thwarted or shifted power.
Already this looks silly and so it's hard to recapture. Because Trump said "how about you get the discourse power, and I get a masked army that is loyal to me."
Thank you for the good comments/replies. A few things.
There is some truth to the Power is Knowledge perspective.
If you're teaching novel ideas that could form the ensemble for a kind of ideology, keep in mind that the large majority of people who will adopt it, disseminate it, and be influenced by it will only obtain that watered down understanding. They will also take a handful of notions as slogans to be the full and total Truth. That is the means by which it will exist. Unless circumstances are really fortunate and wise leaders persist, then not only will you witness excesses, but if it comes to dominate, it might do so with very bad unintended consequences.
Just because proponents of woke ideology say the movement is progressive, does not make it so, at least for an anarchist progressive. To reject existing freedoms while advocating for essentialisms are totalitarian moves. The values professed are as far from anarchist liberal values as they are from Christian nationalist values. Would a progressive movement block scientists' attempts to analyze it empirically? See Leor Zmigrod on the psychology of cognitive rigidity.
This seems like an important book studying something that awaited study. As for why it's been ignored, sociologists (who should have been the first on the scene) take social justice ideology as the obvious ethical position, not so much that it taints everything they do (see my post defending sociology against that criticism) but at least to the extent that it's hard to examine it at arm's length, as something contingent that might have been otherwise. This book seems like a valuable correction and I look forward to reading it.
I think the rise in higher education has created the need for graduates to differentiate themselves through more radical ideas as a way of marketing their skills. Alongside this, the state has felt the need to absorb much of this cohort, which has made states encroach into social spaces that should be left to civil society.
Also, as an aside, what's going on with the use of Z instead of S from British writers? Is it going to be left to us Australians to defend the language? :)
I see it as elites always playing Lucy pulling away the football from Charlie Brown. Whenever the masses become too familiar and comfortable with social rules, the elites shift the rules.
There is a difference between not studying something and not studying it using what you think are the right frames and distinctions. Yes, of course academics are human and there is bias against studying what your colleagues believe in in terms that appear dismissive or antagonistic.
For instance the Catholic church has quite a few academic type institutions and priests doing theological publications etc. They certainly write quite a bit about the nature of faith and how it is/has changed. But of course it would be crazy to expect them to find them publishing work that explains why Christian beliefs arose when they did and came to dominate the Roman Empire -- implicitly that presumes the answer isn't just 'because they are true'
Similarly, academics have done a great deal of work examining trends in politics and ideology including discussing many things you would describe as woke. However, just like my example above, you aren't going to think there is any unifying extra explanation needed to explain about why people came to believe in trans-rights, such and such views about race etc etc if you think those views are true or plausibly so. They certainly study why those views have become more prevalent now so in many senses they have but to presume there is a unified thing that needs explanation is to tacitly assume the unifying thread isn't merely greater compassion and awareness of the issues facing certain communities.
---
Fundamentally this is a reason intellectual diversity is important. Ideologies can't really usefully study themselves from the inside. It's like asking someone "hey why are you like that" from inside the answer is always because that is how it makes sense to act.
Eric Kaufmann categorises ‘woke’ within an ideology he calls Cultural Socialism and traces its origins as an evolutionary blend of liberalism, humanitarianism, and egalitarianism. His School of Heterodox Social Sciences, based at the University of Buckingham, is making significant progress in understanding and positioning this ideology within an academic context.
al-Gharbi's "We Have Never Been Woke," [https://www.amazon.com/Have-Never-Been-Woke-Contradictions/dp/B0DHJ9HD78/ ] which came out in 2024, seems to be a good start to the academic study of this topic. Also, "The Identity Trap," [https://www.amazon.com/Identity-Trap-Story-Ideas-Power/dp/B0BWP5RTK3/] by Mounk. Both are polemics, but informed by academic research.
Indeed, both studies are excellent and we draw on them extensively in the book. I guess what we are getting at is the need for a field—a research programme—as well as discrete books.
Will buy the book today. I saw this play out in progressive philanthropy, not academia, and spent the final few years of my working life utterly confused as to why people whom I knew to be smart, practical, and well-intentioned (pretty typical 'liberals') adopted a set of caustic dogmas about race, sex/gender, and economics. And stubbornly applied those dogmas in contexts where they were obviously more false than true and self-defeating (even accepting their definition of justice). Seems to be an unfortunate confluence of many, many factors including: trust in / deference to 'experts' and academics; trust in / deference to the self-appointed leaders of oppressed identity groups; a preference for simple explanations of the world; the binary nature of US politics; and pretty quickly a new set of social norms and institutional incentives within philanthropy. I thought the second election of Trump would cause a reconsideration, and initially it looked like it was. But Trump's subsequent extreme antics and resulting unpopularity has removed or at least muted any internal pressure to move beyond the 'Social Justice' lens.
I worked in healthcare in 2020 and we had a similar thing happen. At one point we were doing a study that looked at racial disparities in "negative" terms used to refer to patients in chart notes -- terms like noncompliant, aggressive, refused or uncooperative. We found that black patients were less likely to have these terms in their records or in an individual chart note. The conclusion was that having fewer negative terms in black patients' charts was a pernicious form of racism, and the citation was a theory paper (full of the author's personal experience and emotional reactions) in a theory journal. The conclusion, of course, was ridiculous, but the general opinion was that you must find racism because it was there. I considered suggesting that maybe black patients were more polite (possibly because they were concerned about racism), but realized that that was not an acceptable answer. Even worse, this disparity in negative terms was flagged as a possible reason for disparities in utilization of preventive services.
Unfortunately, there are health disparities by race and ethnicity and that means that you need to figure out what's actually causing them instead of attributing it to a theory that's fashionable in the humanities. I know of one attempt to reduce racial disparities in a key indicator that followed the advice of the social justice movement exactly and the result was that the indicator stayed the same for white patients and it got worse for black patients. This did not prompt a reevaluation of the initiative.
When you reach the same conclusion under the same conditions regardless of the state of the variable you purport to study, then you don't have a theory*, you have a dogma.
The situation you described reminds me of a prototype example. A white store clerk is at the back of the store when the entry door chime sounds. He comes forward and sees that there is a black man and a white man inside the store.
If he assists the white man first, that is evidence of racism, because he favors the white person.
If he assists the black man first, that is evidence of racism, because he wants to hurry him along.
*but you very well might be doing Theory.
Looking forward to checking out the book! I just went through a version of this on the pro-immigration side, and the reaction patterns were remarkably similar--denial that anything worth examining is happening, paired with concern that raising the question gives ammunition to the wrong people (https://alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/reflections-on-the-uncomfortable). I guess professional incentives explain part of it, but I suspect a simpler scarcity of intellectual courage among many of us does too.
Thanks Alexander! Yes, I've been following your work on immigration (and the reaction to it) closely. As you say, there are clear parallels!
My comment is from someone who is 'on the Right' and (though I consider myself a well-educated observer) not an academic.
But first of all, congratulations on the publication of your book which sounds to me an important and timely address to the world of Progressive academia. I very much approve of all attempts to get past the various 'derangement syndromes' that have so cramped intellectual discourse on both left and Right in our time. So well done!
Now to the 'but'....
From a Rightist perspective, 'Social Justice Ideology' is not some newish departure but Progressivism's fundamental origin story. From this (my) perspective, Social Justice Ideology has a history going back beyond Marx, perhaps even to Rousseau. From this perspective, Social Justice has always been an essentially middle class intelligentsia mind-game - a largely subconscious but highly seductive 'more-sophisticated-than-thou' mind game - and wokeness is the end stage of its 200-year-long purity spiral.
I have (as you may know Thomas) written extensively on this theme in the 4-part Madness of Intelligentsia series of essays on my Slouching Towards Bethlehem Substack....and which I link to here for anyone who might like to explore this counter-progressive perspective:
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/stairway-to-equiheaven
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/has-liberalisms-flame-burned-too
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-androgyny-syndrome
Thanks Graham! Yes, conservatives tend to emphasize the continuities between different progressive ideologies and make important points.
I have always found it baffling when people claim that there is no such thing as 'woke'. There is a large number of well known, very popular and coherent positions on the progressive left, e.g.: on sex and gender (sex hardly matters, gender is all that matters, gender can be self-identified, gender trumps sex in sexual preference); on race (discrimination is so fundamentally baked into concepts and institutions that society must be fundamentally rewired and different systems and standards adopted for races discriminted against); on nations and the legitimacy of the state (colonialism- only a state formed by indigenous people is legitimate, all institutions arising from states that weren't formed by indigineous people must be purged of the influences of the non-indigenous); genetics- no psychological, personality or non-physical characteristics are heritable/genetically determined (including intelligence). You can add in policies about policing, and probably a view of capitalism too.
I appreciate the goal of the book and will likely get it, and I see that you referenced al-Gharbi and Mounk, which is fantastic.
That said I think your dig at heterodox spaces is a bit unfair. For every James Lindsey and Jordan Peterson there's a Jon Haidt and John McWhorter. You do acknowledge some good has come from it, and I get you're arguing for a deeper program of study. But in a way your book itself could be seen as within this heterodox space, trying to advance it. My justification for this is that I would image the same people who would reject, say, Woke Racism are going to reject your book too.
Yes, there's some very good heterodox literature and, in the book, we engage with this. As you say, there are very different streams within the movement.
I mean you’re sort of dodging my point though. In this article at least (again haven’t read your book yet) you position yourself as being outside of the heterodox space, doing something different and better and less divisive. Yet the project itself could be seen as within that space, and even anti-woke (despite the title of the book).
But we can agree to disagree.
I've not read the book either, but I think Prosser to rejecting a false binary to avoid being lumped in with people he disagrees with or finds disreputable. For example, if someone criticizes and rejects a given religion, would we demand that the person identify with atheism? Certainly not, the person may criticize from the perspective of another religion.
Yeah I get that it's a strategy rather than a real difference in substance. But even with your atheist example, if someone were writing a book called "Beyond atheism and Christianity" but then most of their arguments sided with the atheist side of things, I'd have the same issue. To continue with the example, though, I wonder what other "religious" perspective Prosser and King are writing from? Will it really distinguish itself from "anti woke?" Maybe.
James Lindsay did very good work explaining the origins and core beliefs of "wokeness" at his New Discourses site. Several years ago I got really turned off by his Twitter/X behavior. I haven't tuned in to him in quite a while. Last I checked, he seemed to have turned his attention to arguing against what he called "the woke right" and Christian nationalism.
Agreed on both counts on this one. Actually one of my first articles on here was a confirmation of Linsay's and Pluckrose's thesis in Cynical Theories: https://substack.com/@lukecuddy/p-63051944
I'm not sure about the origin story, but as a center lefty who attended university in the 90s, and became a professor in 2013, the difference is stark. Progressives have always had the same goals more or less. But the "woke" brought two elements I had not encountered before.
The first was what I might call "presumption.". In the 90s, if you were a Marxist, you were probably arrogant and superior in your attitude towards center left people, but you knew they were ignorant and needed to be shown the right way. You wanted to fight them to get them on your side, or even to "wake them up."
In the 2010s, it was presumed that everyone already knew the "good, right way" and that anyone who wasn't confirming was willfully obstructing progress. So something need only be called "problematic" or "racist" and if you couldn't _ immediately recognize_ why, you were "complicit" in the oppression that was being called out. Because it was clear that either you didn't care about oppression or you were willfully ignoring the _obvious_ truth.
The second is what has been identified here -- a focus on discourse and emotions over material conditions. This is a huge shift from Marx to Foucault in the thinking of the left. Progressives came to believe that the reason there was so much inequality was that white cishet normies were thriving on the "taken for granted" discourse that "legitimated" oppression. And that this worked by making it emotionally "unsafe" for marginalized groups to exist in various spaces. The idea of "seizing the means of production" is totally anathema to this view.
My personal view, which I've written about on my page, is that it's fundamentally immature. It's passive aggressive. It wants the "grown ups" to do all the work, because the right good way is already obvious, and the hurt that the children feel is the grown ups responsibility.
Agree that people do seem to use Foucault this way though I think that's the wrong way to think about Foucault (but then that's neither here nor there).
Yes, I read your piece on this. I think you are probably correct, but we're really talking about the mainstream, watered down understanding. The big difference from Marx in this understanding is that power flows from discourse, not from anything physical. Change the discourse, you have thwarted or shifted power.
Already this looks silly and so it's hard to recapture. Because Trump said "how about you get the discourse power, and I get a masked army that is loyal to me."
Thank you for the good comments/replies. A few things.
There is some truth to the Power is Knowledge perspective.
If you're teaching novel ideas that could form the ensemble for a kind of ideology, keep in mind that the large majority of people who will adopt it, disseminate it, and be influenced by it will only obtain that watered down understanding. They will also take a handful of notions as slogans to be the full and total Truth. That is the means by which it will exist. Unless circumstances are really fortunate and wise leaders persist, then not only will you witness excesses, but if it comes to dominate, it might do so with very bad unintended consequences.
Yes, this is so true.
Just because proponents of woke ideology say the movement is progressive, does not make it so, at least for an anarchist progressive. To reject existing freedoms while advocating for essentialisms are totalitarian moves. The values professed are as far from anarchist liberal values as they are from Christian nationalist values. Would a progressive movement block scientists' attempts to analyze it empirically? See Leor Zmigrod on the psychology of cognitive rigidity.
This seems like an important book studying something that awaited study. As for why it's been ignored, sociologists (who should have been the first on the scene) take social justice ideology as the obvious ethical position, not so much that it taints everything they do (see my post defending sociology against that criticism) but at least to the extent that it's hard to examine it at arm's length, as something contingent that might have been otherwise. This book seems like a valuable correction and I look forward to reading it.
Thanks David - that's very kind of you!
interesting piece. Is there any way to access a reading sample or preview chapter of the book?
Thanks Viktor. The Kindle version, out next week, should provide a free sample chapter.
I think the rise in higher education has created the need for graduates to differentiate themselves through more radical ideas as a way of marketing their skills. Alongside this, the state has felt the need to absorb much of this cohort, which has made states encroach into social spaces that should be left to civil society.
Also, as an aside, what's going on with the use of Z instead of S from British writers? Is it going to be left to us Australians to defend the language? :)
I see it as elites always playing Lucy pulling away the football from Charlie Brown. Whenever the masses become too familiar and comfortable with social rules, the elites shift the rules.
There is a difference between not studying something and not studying it using what you think are the right frames and distinctions. Yes, of course academics are human and there is bias against studying what your colleagues believe in in terms that appear dismissive or antagonistic.
For instance the Catholic church has quite a few academic type institutions and priests doing theological publications etc. They certainly write quite a bit about the nature of faith and how it is/has changed. But of course it would be crazy to expect them to find them publishing work that explains why Christian beliefs arose when they did and came to dominate the Roman Empire -- implicitly that presumes the answer isn't just 'because they are true'
Similarly, academics have done a great deal of work examining trends in politics and ideology including discussing many things you would describe as woke. However, just like my example above, you aren't going to think there is any unifying extra explanation needed to explain about why people came to believe in trans-rights, such and such views about race etc etc if you think those views are true or plausibly so. They certainly study why those views have become more prevalent now so in many senses they have but to presume there is a unified thing that needs explanation is to tacitly assume the unifying thread isn't merely greater compassion and awareness of the issues facing certain communities.
---
Fundamentally this is a reason intellectual diversity is important. Ideologies can't really usefully study themselves from the inside. It's like asking someone "hey why are you like that" from inside the answer is always because that is how it makes sense to act.
Eric Kaufmann categorises ‘woke’ within an ideology he calls Cultural Socialism and traces its origins as an evolutionary blend of liberalism, humanitarianism, and egalitarianism. His School of Heterodox Social Sciences, based at the University of Buckingham, is making significant progress in understanding and positioning this ideology within an academic context.
David Riesman wrote about them in 1950 in "The Lonely Crowd."