'The woke have no vision of the future' and the 'similarities between woke militants and the Bolsheviks who seized power in 1917'

[editor]

I don't view myself well versed enough in the subject matter to give en educated opinion on this essay, so I thought I'd serve it to the urban75 massive for comment and criticism:

As some conservative commentators have observed, there are striking similarities between woke militants and the Bolsheviks who seized power in 1917. But what is unfolding, in the US and to a lesser extent in other countries, is at once more archaic and more futuristic than a twentieth century revolutionary coup. The current convulsion is an outbreak more closely akin to the anarchical millenarians movements that raged across Europe in the late Middle Ages, whose vision of redemption from history was shared by America’s founders, who carried it with them to the New World.

Nevertheless, Bolsheviks and woke militants do have some things in common. In late nineteenth century Russia, under the influence of their progressive parents, a generation of educated young people was convinced of the illegitimacy of the Tsarist regime. Dostoevsky’s Demons (1871) is a vivid chronicle of the tragic and farcical process by which progressive liberals discredited traditional institutions and unleashed a wave of revolutionary terror. Not only Tsarism but any form of government came to be seen as repressive. As one of Dostoevsky’s characters put it, “I got entangled in my data…Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism.”

The author (who I know nothing about):

John Gray is a political philosopher and author. His books include Seven Types of Atheism, False Dawn: the Delusions of Global Capitalism, and Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and The Death of Utopia.

The woke have no vision of the future

Like medieval millenarians, today's SJWs believe all that needs to be done to bring about a new world is to destroy the old one

unherd.com

 

[Roadkill]

It's John Gray. As Wikipedia puts it with nice understatement, ' Gray's political thought is noted for its mobility across the political spectrum over the years.' Whatever he thinks now, he won't think in ten years' minutes' time. This is best filed under 'guff.'

 

[Pickman's model]

It's John Gray. As Wikipedia puts it with nice understatement, ' Gray's political thought is noted for its mobility across the political spectrum over the years.' Whatever he thinks now, he won't think in ten years' minutes' time. This is best filed under 'guff.'

specially as he seems all over the place in the first sentences of editor's first quote

 

[Roadkill]

specially as he seems all over the place in the first sentences of editor's first quote

specially as he is all over the place and always has been

Fixed it for you

 

[Nikkormat]

It's John Gray. As Wikipedia puts it with nice understatement, ' Gray's political thought is noted for its mobility across the political spectrum over the years.' Whatever he thinks now, he won't think in ten years' minutes' time. This is best filed under 'guff.'

I used to really like John Gray. Straw Dogs - Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals was thought-provoking, and False Dawn - The Delusions of Global Capitalism was excellent. Some of his writing in New Statesman has been good. I think he retired from academia about 10 years ago, though, and since then has taken to looking out of the window from his armchair and shouting at things he no longer understands.

 

[Roadkill]

I used to really like John Gray. Straw Dogs - Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals was thought-provoking, and False Dawn - The Delusions of Global Capitalism was excellent. Some of his writing in New Statesman has been good. I think he retired from academia about 10 years ago, though, and since then has taken to looking out of the window from his armchair and shouting at things he no longer understands.

Tbh I think he was always shouting at things he didn't understand - or not so much didn't understand, as had only a passing interest in, but was (and is) bullshitter enough to make it sound as if he'd spent a lifetime thinking about them. I like False Dawn as well, but on the a-stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day principle!

 

[Yossarian]

The only concrete measure proposed has been to defund and disband the police.

You'd think such a towering intellectual would be able to distinguish between defunding and disbanding the police - defunding the police by using funds earmarked for police overtime, etc. to support underfunded social programs and have mental health workers, etc. respond to some emergency calls instead of the police isn't that radical a concept, nor a difficult one to grasp.

 

[killer b]

You'd think such a towering intellectual would be able to distinguish between defunding and disbanding the police - defunding the police by using funds earmarked for police overtime, etc. to support underfunded social programs and have mental health workers, etc. respond to some emergency calls instead of the police isn't that radical a concept, nor a difficult one to grasp.

This is true, but the fact that these grifters can get away with misrepresenting it time and time again, and it constantly needs to be explained suggests that perhaps 'defunding' wasn't the best term to go with.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Gray has lived long enough now to see many of his predictions fail to come true. I read Straw Dogs years ago, and remember being impressed by his writing style, but not so much by the seeming rigidity of his ideas about the future. As wrong as Malthus was cos of his inability to see how things might change.

 

[Roadkill]

You'd think such a towering intellectual would be able to distinguish between defunding and disbanding the police - defunding the police by using funds earmarked for police overtime, etc. to support underfunded social programs and have mental health workers, etc. respond to some emergency calls instead of the police isn't that radical a concept, nor a difficult one to grasp.

To be honest - and possibly controversial - I don't think 'defund' is a very useful word thhis side of the Atlantic. In the US, where taxes are often more clearly hypothecated to one thing or another, it makes sense, but in the UK it's too easily confused with 'disband.' I mean no criticism of anyone using the slogan, but IMVHO it'd be better to come up with something that works better in a British context. What that could be or who might come up with it I have no clear idea, of course!

e2a -Bugger. killer b got there first.

 

[Yossarian]

This is true, but the fact that these grifters can get away with misrepresenting it time and time again, and it constantly needs to be explained suggests that perhaps 'defunding' wasn't the best term to go with.

Agreed - if they called the exact same concept something corny like "let cops be cops" there wouldn't be half as much controversy.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Not read it all, but of the bits quoted, it is extraordinary for him to defend the Tsarist regime as if it were somehow a benevolent force for good.

 

[Roadkill]

Not read it all, but of the bits quoted, it is extraordinary for him to defend the Tsarist regime as if it were somehow a benevolent force for good.

Not for Gray it isn't. He'll come out with any old shit one moment, say something basically sensible the next, and then by the time you get your head around this he's back to talking shit again.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

What I’ve read of Gray over the years makes me see him as inherently reactionary, sneering, smug, self-satisfied and pseudo-intellectual. Instinctively anti-left, dishonest, fashionably neo-Buddhist. If I’m misrepresenting him I don’t misrepresent him nearly as well as he misrepresents others. He only gets a platform because right-wing editors and the like love his utterings - he’s guaranteed to slag off anything vaguely progressive. He’s one of those prats who love to show you how they’ve shrugged off their adolescent socialism, communism or anarchism, and how they’ve now grown to see the underlying truths of religion and capitalism.
I don’t like him very much.

 

[Roadkill]

I don’t like him very much.

Really? Could you explain why?




Needless to say, I agree with everything you've said, but would add that he's the sort of character who can bullshit his way through an academic - or many other - career and do quite well on the basis of being fluent, personable, persuasive and probably quite competent in a narrow, technical sense. Superficially impressive - like a house of cards, or Boris Johnson.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Not for Gray it isn't. He'll come out with any old shit one moment, say something basically sensible the next, and then by the time you get your head around this he's back to talking shit again.

It epitomises the problem with him, though. He quotes Dostoevsky, and he no doubt imagines himself living back then as Dostoevsky or one of the other members of the educated classes. The unwashed masses barely register.

Anyhow, I got about half way in that essay before I stopped. It's sub-Peter Hitchens drivel. At least Hitchens is vaguely entertaining. I don't think Gray even knows what he means by 'woke', other than 'the young, whom I do not understand'.

Old man shouts at clouds.

 

[Roadkill]

It epitomises the problem with him, though. He quotes Dostoevsky, and he no doubt imagines himself living back then as Dostoevsky or one of the other members of the educated classes. The unwashed masses barely register.

Anyhow, I got about half way in that essay before I stopped. It's sub-Peter Hitchens drivel. At least Hitchens is vaguely entertaining. I don't think Gray even knows what he means by 'woke', other than 'the young, whom I do not understand'.

Old man shouts at clouds.

Yeah, this, except tbh Hitchens is tedious these days as well. He was entertaining once (like when longdog wrecked his bulletin board ), even interesting at times - and he was a good foreign correspondent back in the 80s - but nowadays he's just a bore. IMO of course.

 

[xenon]

Yeah, this, except tbh Hitchens is tedious these days as well. He was entertaining once (like when longdog wrecked his bulletin board ), even interesting at times - and he was a good foreign correspondent back in the 80s - but nowadays he's just a bore. IMO of course.

I was thinking about Hitchens on the train earlier, (pity me) after reading some of his muzzle tweets. He's basically a clown. Booked and wheeled out for cheap contrary reactionary copy. A bit sad really. Not least he's either unaware or doesn't care that he's used thus.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

He quotes Dostoevsky, and he no doubt imagines himself living back then as Dostoevsky or one of the other members of the educated classes.

Dostoevsky’s not the half of it. Gray brings in the mediaeval Heresy of the Free Spirit, the Flagellants, Anabaptists, Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Roosevelt. He gets the first contingent from Norman Cohan’s “Pursuit of the Millenium”, in its time a ground-breaking work, but with no relevance to ‘woke’ cultural upheavals in the 21st century. Then Russia and China, always good to associate anything which happened there with the modern day. He could write this article about anything new in the past 50 years and only have to change a few words.

 

[Roadkill]

I was thinking about Hitchens on the train earlier, (pity me) after reading some of his muzzle tweets. He's basically a clown. Booked and wheeled out for cheap contrary reactionary copy. A bit sad really. Not least he's either unaware or doesn't care that he's used thus.

 

[RTWL]

It's all over the shop. I like the bit about industrial feudalism though lol.

 

[NoXion]

I don't view myself well versed enough in the subject matter to give en educated opinion on this essay, so I thought I'd serve it to the urban75 massive for comment and criticism:



The author (who I know nothing about):

The woke have no vision of the future

Like medieval millenarians, today's SJWs believe all that needs to be done to bring about a new world is to destroy the old one

unherd.com

The first couple of paragraphs do nothing to encourage me to read any further. It's asinine drivel.

 

[Treacle Toes]

I just can't take anyone who uses 'woke' as an insult and pejorative seriously tbh. I don't care who this is. So far they have proved to be massive wrong'uns and it's hump day, no space in my head for nonsense so as an act of self care I won't read the article.

 

[chilango]

Anyway this is a good book.

The Movement of the Free Spirit - Zone Books

This book by the legendary Situationist activist and author of _The Revolution of Everyday Life_ is a fiercely partisan historical reflection on the ways...

www.zonebooks.org

 

[Marty1]

Just started reading this article and already the author is hitting the nail firmly on the head:

The woke generation have learned a similar lesson from their elders, this time about the failings of American democracy. Rejecting old-fashioned liberal values as complicit in oppression and essentially fraudulent, they extend their power not by persuasion but by socially marginalising and economically ruining their critics.

Aka: Cancel culture

 

[ddraig]

Stay asleep marty, stay asleep

 

[fishfinger]

Just started reading this article and already the author is hitting the nail firmly on the head:



Aka: Cancel culture

Ooh, an article by John Gray, from the website UnHerd

 

[Treacle Toes]

Also editor do you not know what kind of platform UnHerd is?

 

[Marty1]

Stay asleep marty, stay asleep

There’s also a saying for that too

Get woke go .....

 

[ddraig]

There’s also a saying for that too

Get woke go .....

Yeah, by right wing cunts
Not true tho is it
Fuck off with your wink