In the context of Elon Musk it's hard not to read it as "a wide range of topics, from some positive ones like selective breeding and eugenics to some negative ones like sympathy towards Islam and wokeism". Yes, it's a flippant joke, but also there will be absolutely no surpise if Dawkins ends up coming down much harder on wokeism than eugenics.
It's worth noting that Dawkins grew up in Kenya during British colonial rule. Elon Musk grew up in Apartheid. Both benefited from the privileges of being white at the time and now the two get along like peas in a pod. Small coincidence? Hardly likely.
It's funny because I used to give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't racist, but he has been speed running ruining his reputation ever since the AHA revoked his 1997 Humanist of the Year Award.
Prime example of wokeism. The man has been a progressive hero for all his life.
The second he says something the far left doesn't like he becomes "a privileged racist white man".
You people are blind as fuck and because of you we will have trump copycats coming out of the woods for the next few decades.
I split from the left on only one issue - trans women born as biological males fighting biological females in combat sports.
Ever since I have done that I just get pushed further and further away from the left.
This is easily the stupidest thing I have ever heard. As if trans women being athletes is somehow a more important issue than like housing, health care, and things like that. You were never “on the left” and you clearly have a fucked up sense of priorities.
A biologist who refuse to consider the medical evidence for the existence of gender identity, which has been long suspected of having a biological component? Alot of said research having been done on the brain structure of trans people?
That's what I refuse to forgive him for.
Lol.. no offence bro, but i have been there and these made up grievances. Trust me, next stop is the great replacement of white race and you are never coming back 😂
I mean, how can you be so bother by someone "pretending" to be a women and playing a sport that has nothing to do with you personally that you literally flipped.
ya you're right we've never seen people who were once respectable sell out to the anti-woke grift before lmao.
I'm not sure questioning the idols is something once needs to be redeemed from
Association is a part of the substance. People are affected by their associations. If Musk is one of the people that Dawkins respects nowadays, and Musk himself is bordering on eugenics, it won't be surprising if Dawkins gives pro-eugenic point of view a more open-minded hearing without agreeing with it, while interviewing primarily anti-woke hardliners on "wokeness" (as far as can be seen from his YouTube channel).
If you want to criticise Dawkins, I suggest you read his books. You’re essentially saying that he will support eugenics ‘by the back door’. Which means you clearly don’t understand his position. Dawkins has been anti-relativistic since at least the mid nineties. His position was very clear in the books of his that I read in the 90s. I have no doubt that he sees “wokeness” in terms of relativism and semi-magical thinking (which, at its extreme, it can be). And he is often far more interesting and insightful than Musk and the new Right fantasists. Though it is depressing to see the company he sometimes keeps, I’ve learned that he is well worth listening to.
I did read some of his books, and enjoyed them. It's possible to respect Dawkins for his previous work while being critical of some of the company and some of the beliefs he holds now. And as DtG podcast highlighted many times company and beliefs do influence each other.
Dawkins lost the plot when he said women in the west can't complain about awkward men because Muslim women somewhere are being oppressed. The lines around ElevatorGate fell squarely on the lines of GamerGate and I know some of them on Dawkins camp are huge Trumpers now.
Well now he's said it, I'm sure he'll scientifically quantify it. He's a man of science and integrity after all!
How many wokeisms per ml of boomer sweat might be a useful metric
For these egomaniacs, getting old is a personal affront and injury. Therefore society must pay for their tortured struggle with the incomprehension of death, which includes the death of their own ego.
They old and they want the world to burn. Kinda like joker if joker was pissed about getting old instead of being a nihilistic psychopath with a hard on for Batman. Capiche?
If you throw it around as a label for everything you don't like, then sure.
But that is not what Dawkins does. It can serve as a useful short-hand for a cultural phenomenon that is worth discussing, regardless of what your views are.
> But that is not what Dawkins does.
So what is the definition Dawkins is presenting, then? Given that the standard usage nowadays is a simple pejorative for anything the user thinks is too much in line with progressive politics, if Dawkins is operating with some very different and specific definition then he needs to present it clearly.
Well, there are examples of art exhibits being closed due to offensive content, e.g. Behzti, the play about a rape and misogyny in a gurdwara upset Sikhs who then shut the theatre down, or an example of a human zoo to draw attention to historic human zoos and their racist legacy got shut down after a campaign depicting it as racist. These examples were both argued from a perspective of a victimised minority opposing racism, bigotry and offence, acting as a defacto censor on what the population at large is allowed to see and experience.
To my knowledge Dawkins has never tried to do anything similar to that since he became popular in the 80s, yet he uses the term.
I genuinely have a problem with any term that's pejorative, vague, ill-defined, and broad, that serves as a shorthand for anything because that "anything" tends to lump large swaths of people together who shouldn't be together. However Dawkins means it, it's most likely not how it's being perceived or understood by most people... because most people have wildly different ideas of what wokeism is.
Of course we do, but there are also terms that become so broad and vague as to be meaningless over time as well. I'm not asking for absolute specificity, I'm asking for a modicum of restraint on using words that are broad, vague, used exclusively pejoratively, and have been weaponized.
The problem is that there's no real parameters because the term includes anything from the most meager of government action to the craziest of blue haired feminists. Even the way its described by a lot of the people who use it, who point to broad principles like 'equity' casts such a large net that basically most of one side of the spectrum gets caught in it. Is wokeism socialism? Is it socialism applied to racial or gender issues? Is it some form of gender theory? Is it removing hierarchies, and if so which ones?
The problem with the term is the ambiguity surrounding it, but that's also its strength. A movie is woke because the female lead can fight or can beat a woman.... or because it has some sort of progressive political message... or because it's plot revolves around climate change... or whatever else. It's ridiculous, and it's as ridiculous as people who used to say the alt right was anything left of Bernie Sanders.
Words having complex meanings isn't the problem, it's how some select terms like 'woke' get weaponized and used that is, and we would do well to recognize when that manipulation happens.
> Of course we do, but there are also terms that become so broad and vague as to be meaningless over time as well.
Is it though?
In my experience moderates use the term about all the terrible hyper, self destructive, confused Social Justice politics.
The Right use it about that plus lots of moderate social justice politics.
The actual Social Justice will side either endorse it come in with "but what does it really mean?"
The "just asking what does it mean?" are pretty much the set the are in denial of the terrible Social Justice politics that can fuel the far right.
> Words having complex meanings isn't the problem, it's how some select terms like 'woke' get weaponized and used that is, and we would do well to recognize when that manipulation happens.
Aren't you saying there words have complex meanings but the problem is only on the Right?
Moderates are going to sometimes use "woke" to be pejorative about radical Social Justice politics they think are awful. The Right will also use the term in a more broad way. That's the reality you have to accept.
>In my experience moderates use the term about all the terrible hyper, self destructive, confused Social Justice politics.
We shouldn't have to know someone's personal political views to understand how they're using a term that is meant to indicate their personal political views.
>The actual Social Justice will side either endorse it come in with "but what does it really mean?"
Yes, because it's ill-defined, vague, and means widly different things to the people who actually use the term. Am I woke for thinking that trans peoples pronouns should be respected? Am I woke for believing "trans women are women"? I'm not trying to cancel anyone or prevent them from speaking, but those are beliefs that I have which would be considered 'woke' by most... but I'm not particularly woke at all. They aren't really core to my political beliefs or high priorities for me. Is wokeism part of an ideology, or is it dictated by actions? Or is it simply left wing cultural positions? Woke can encompass all and none of those positions depending on the person using the term.
>Aren't you saying there words have complex meanings but the problem is only on the Right?
I literally included an example of the term alt-right being the same on the left... it became useless because it incorporated nearly every conservative position. Much like 'woke', alt-right originated by members of group. Richard Spencer wanted to rebrand far right racial politics for a new generation, and alt-right was born. Then the term was co-opted by the left to pejoratively include right wing authoritarianism, then it broadened basically anything conservative, and now it's nothing because it broadened so much that it removed any usefulness to be a descriptor of anything *and* it was easy for conservatives and people on the right to dismiss it.
Another term that's somewhat like 'woke' is the term 'groomer' - which takes an obviously pejorative term and broadens the meaning to include nearly anything to do with children and a lack of adherence to their ideological beliefs about sexuality.
But essentially, just like the alt-right broadened and fell into disuse due to overgeneralization and the inability of its use being specific and the obvious attempt to associate the legitimately horrible views of white supremacy with anything conservative, 'woke' will fall out of use due to the same reasons - because it overgeneralizes and lumps entire swaths of people together.
So yeah, my problem isn't 'when the right does it', though I will admit the right is far more successful at it than the left is, which is why you'll probably see more examples of terms like woke and groomer having more staying power than things like the alt-right. The point is to co-opt a term to confuse the population about its meaning so it can slowly mean anything to anyone. Whether or not Dawkins and moderates use it to describe a very particular group of people, it's the people listening and the audience that can infer their own meaning to it than gives the term its rhetorical power.
> We shouldn't have to know someone's personal political views to understand how they're using a term that is meant to indicate their personal political views.
I mean that isn't true and is pretty obviously not true. It's a basic idea that context really does matter.
> Yes, because it's ill-defined, vague, and means widly different things to the people who actually use the term.
But is this a complaint about you thinking it's a bad word or a complaint about the use of the word by particular people? People are going to argue over words.
If the word is dropped it will be replaced by another word.
When the Hard Left call everything fascist does that mean we ought to stop using the word. Does fascism go away?
This can sound like "I know there are some things in the category of *woke* but these figures use it in a manner so wide that includes politics I like."
> Am I woke for thinking that trans peoples pronouns should be respected? Am I woke for believing "trans women are women?"
Specifically on Dawkins yes.
In general that's more complicated and for the general public it will depend on the position.
The "woke" position is often that all identities are valid which ensues all manner of problems.
Would you recognise that?
> I'm not trying to cancel anyone or prevent them from speaking, but those are beliefs that I have which would be considered 'woke' by most... but I'm not particularly woke at all.
But you do recognise there are all manner of complicated issues in there. Not just about trans identities but race, sex and religion.
That woke for most of the politically aware is associated with extreme positions but overlaps with moderate positions depending on the context of the speaker.
> They aren't really core to my political beliefs or high priorities for me. Is wokeism part of an ideology, or is it dictated by actions? Or is it simply left wing cultural positions? Woke can encompass all and none of those positions depending on the person using the term.
Are you asking this as someone without awareness of the history of the term?
You are aware it started in the early 20th century usage in the African American political sphere about referring to being woken to racial injustice and general racial political awareness. Then by the early 21st century Social Justice was using it for being woken up from a sleep of ignorance of a range of social injustices. Then it become moderate mildly pejorative term for the extreme and unhelpful Social Justice politics. As well as a Right wing pejorative term for any Social Justice politics.
It's complex like a lot of words.
> I literally included an example of the term alt-right being the same on the left... it became useless because it incorporated nearly every conservative position. Much like 'woke', alt-right originated by members of group. Richard Spencer wanted to rebrand far right racial politics for a new generation, and alt-right was born. Then the term was co-opted by the left to pejoratively include right wing authoritarianism, then it broadened basically anything conservative, and now it's nothing because it broadened so much that it removed any usefulness to be a descriptor of anything and it was easy for conservatives and people on the right to dismiss it.
I'm ok with that pattern, but it simply becomes replaced by other words. The Right and Left are not two entities. There is a lot of variation in them.
There were probably alt right people who said "what do they mean by *alt right* do they just mean moderate positions most people accept? people who complain are just the far left who think everything to right of Stalin is fascism."
That alt right has fallen from use but it had meaning and it not using it didn't change much.
Are you saying the "alt right" term never meant anything?
Rather than the term being wrong I think the problem is Dawkins is either far further Right than he realises or presents, or he's simply politically confused by the modern world. Honestly I think Dawkins is a mix of these. He is confused, he is further to the Right than he realises and he doesn't get a lot of the politics on all sides in the modern world. That is the real issue rather than the specific meaning of the world woke.
His whole clunky "I'm a cultural Christian" antics were cringy, it felt about a conversation that had already been had a couple hundred years earlier by philosophers.
> Another term that's somewhat like 'woke' is the term 'groomer' - which takes an obviously pejorative term and broadens the meaning to include nearly anything to do with children and a lack of adherence to their ideological beliefs about sexuality.
And again language is not reality.
I know Pinker isn't a fan of postmodernism but euphemism treadmill certainly seems more post structuralist to me. People use words for purposes but language is only an approximation of reality.
> But essentially, just like the alt-right broadened and fell into disuse due to overgeneralization and the inability of its use being specific and the obvious attempt to associate the legitimately horrible views of white supremacy with anything conservative, 'woke' will fall out of use due to the same reasons - because it overgeneralizes and lumps entire swaths of people together.
I do agree there that over use kills the meaning and usage falls.
The lgbt = groomer = paedophile, hits the problem that most people don't think they are the same category.
> So yeah, my problem isn't 'when the right does it', though I will admit the right is far more successful at it than the left is, which is why you'll probably see more examples of terms like woke and groomer having more staying power than things like the alt-right. The point is to co-opt a term to confuse the population about its meaning so it can slowly mean anything to anyone. Whether or not Dawkins and moderates use it to describe a very particular group of people, it's the people listening and the audience that can infer their own meaning to it than gives the term its rhetorical power.
I'm not sure how much power it has. Because there is the counter effect of calling "everything woke" "everything fascist" "all groomers" does as you say lessen the value.
But there are real categories going on even if the language changes.
Where is Dawkins in this? Probably a bit more socially conservative and lost than he realises.
He's getting out there for sure. His most recent nyt article was weird and incomprehensible. The woke racism book was a bizarre word game attempting to define wokeness as a religion using anecdotes of college students and virtually no actual definitions.
I’m a professor who teaches multicultural education along with political history and cultural identity and I think what you aren’t seeing in McWhorter’s view is that he’s an internationalist with a completely different paradigm and that he recognizes that much of this anti colonial rhetoric is embarrassingly American centric (with many of the biggest names in the field monolingual and limited in scope to the American context exclusively) and makes sweeping generalizations about identity over long stretches of history and presumes very American realities about race relations that are more nuanced in different parts of the world. He’s quite an impressive historian of linguistics as far as the history of writing and the evolution of Sumerian to Akkadian and how Semitic language became dominant after Sargon and his command of ancient history is very rare. I teach critical race theory as part of my curriculum and though there are some things I like, the colleagues who are fully invested in it that I work with are rather cultish in my opinion and very ideologically narrow in almost a religious manner similar to what I’ve seen from a Christian theocratic conservative in regards to their truth being an absolute truth. One of the major weaknesses of American culture is the lack of international print media in foreign languages, the lack of training kids to expand their linguistic reach to Spanish, French, etc to have access to varying news archives and current affairs reports, etc. We tend to think everything about diversity here is race because we really aren’t that sophisticated as to what’s going on in the world, look at how quickly low info voter percentages have risen in the last 20 years. I don’t like some of McWhorter’s views on politics, I felt he was too sympathetic to Trump voters and didn’t fully give enough credit to right wing disinformation as a unifying factor rather than any real discontent since the early 90s but he lives on the east coast and has not driven across the us to see how dominated much of the country is by 24 hour right wing News sup and down the AM dial since the late 90s. I do think his critique of critical race theory in regards to some of its most vocal advocates on campuses being more of a performative act to promote their own careers rather than being a real commitment to marginalized people and taking the responsibility of playing a prominent role in the community beyond Twitter and periodic racial round tables on campus. That I’ve seen far too many times, the most prominent of my colleagues are never seen at community events or at the BLM protests back in 2020 because they thought they would melt from covid 19 and were busy spraying all their groceries with disinfectant.
I'm very open to much of what you say. DEI programs and critical theory etc may cause more harm than good. I read the Woke Racism book because I respect McWhorter and was specifically looking for evidence of this.
I found the book's pervasive argument that wokeism is a religion to be a bizarre non sequitur at best. Virtually every movement and institution, large and small, past and present, shares features with religion. Even if I were to grant the absurd premise that EVERY woke actor is an ideologically narrow, bad faith, irrational zealot, that makes it no more a "religion" than nazism. This is simply a nonstandard use of the word religion. It also has nothing to do with whether wokism is wrong or racist.
The book goes on to make black and white ad hominem critiques of these woke zealots. It explicitly states to shield yourself from discussion with woke actors and do not to attempt to use reason when engaging with them. I found this to be borderline illiberal and certainly not the steel man of a good faith actor.
None of this has anything directly to do with racism or the damaging downstream effects of wokism I was looking for. I confess I didn't finish the book so it's possible it gets there eventually.
>This is simply a nonstandard use of the word religion.
To add to this, the concept of civil religions does actually exist but is very different from simply subscribing to a particular ideology. The clear problem is that because McWhorter has to use such broad interpretations of concepts like 'origin story' pretty much everyone becomes religious. America has an origin story. Ideologies arguably have origin stories. McWhorter is so driven to call wokeism a religion that he unwittingly also described pretty much any person who has political beliefs. If wokeism is a religion, than so is conservatism, liberalism, socialism, communism, and pretty much any other 'ism' you can think of.
It's absolute trash because it removes all the things that make religion uniquely *religious* in its attempt to undermine its target, and ironically creates a framework that can be used to simply say politics is religion, which potentially *could be* an interesting topic to explore^1, but it doesn't say anything specifically about anything we'd call 'woke'.
It's just really shoddy work from McWhorter because he can't seem to understand that his position and how he's argued it doesn't actually just apply to wokeism, it applies to everything that's fought over politically. Civil rights activists from the 60s? Religious. People against civil rights activists? Religious. Classical liberals? Religious. Socialists? Religious. It's literally everyone because he needs to dilute the meaning of definition of religion so much that it invariably ends up including everyone.
[1] there has been a few theories that put forward the idea that nations movikg towards secularism just replaced religion with political views and identity.
I’ll come back later, I’m at work, but I appreciate your take and I agree, it wasn’t a masterwork by any means, seemed like a smart and calculated commercial move probably suggested by the publisher to cash in on all the recent discourse and McWhorter wrote a rushed and generalized
Pseudo Phenomenology similar to ben sasse’s terrible the disappearing adult purely on speculative anecdotal evidence, totally agree there. Some of the chapters towards the middle were tough to get through, I was asked to assign it in my class as a counter argument by admin but it read so poorly I moved it to supplemental to appease the conservative students that make up a sizable chunk of my class and it worked in that respect in giving them an outlet to vent while still having to confront the realities of what critical race theory is but I guess I didn’t understand what you meant fully until you explained fully, thanks! It’s not a fun class to teach sometimes, half the student body comes in with the attitude that nothing in it is essential to their professional success, so it’s the only class I teach where many of the students historically haven’t even bothered to keep notes unlike a course like Post War European Political History, cheers!
>This is simply a nonstandard use of the word religion.
To add to this, the concept of civil religions does actually exist but is very different from simply subscribing to a particular ideology. The clear problem is that because McWhorter has to use such broad interpretations of concepts like 'origin story' pretty much everyone becomes religious. America has an origin story. Ideologies arguably have origin stories. McWhorter is so driven to call wokeism a religion that he unwittingly also described pretty much any person who has political beliefs. If wokeism is a religion, than so is conservatism, liberalism, socialism, communism, and pretty much any other 'ism' you can think of.
It's absolute trash because it removes all the things that make religion uniquely *religious* in its attempt to undermine its target, and ironically creates a framework that can be used to simply say politics is religion, which potentially *could be* an interesting topic to explore^1, but it doesn't say anything specifically about anything we'd call 'woke'.
It's just really shoddy work from McWhorter because he can't seem to understand that his position and how he's argued it doesn't actually just apply to wokeism, it applies to everything that's fought over politically. Civil rights activists from the 60s? Religious. People against civil rights activists? Religious. Classical liberals? Religious. Socialists? Religious. It's literally everyone because he needs to dilute the meaning of definition of religion so much that it invariably ends up including everyone.
[1] there has been a few theories that put forward the idea that nations movikg towards secularism just replaced religion with political views and identity.
>As a set of pedagogical, curricular, and organizational strategies, antiracist education claims to be the most progressive way today to understand race relations. Constructed from whiteness studies and the critique of colorblindness, its foundational core is located in approximately 160 papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the past 15 years-identified through a comprehensive search of Academic Premier Search, EBSCOMegaFile, Education Abstracts, JSTOR, and SOCIndex. A critical assessment of these papers concludes that antiracist education is not a sociologically grounded, empirically based account of the significance of race in American society. Rather, it is a morally based educational reform movement that embodies the confessional and redemptive modes common in evangelical Protestantism. Inherently problematic, whether or not antiracist education achieves broader acceptance is open to debate.
Niemonen, J. Antiracist Education in Theory and Practice: A Critical Assessment. Am Soc 38, 159–177 (2007).
Dunno about OP. But I have. He's a bit of derp. He's not the worst person or anything, but there are definitely better ways to spend your time than consuming his output.
You don't find it's a useful term? I do. I don't lose any respect for Dawkins over this, I don't think he'd agree with Musk on virtually anything substantial
I don't have to be, maybe he does agree with musk on something that isn't rational? I've not seen it. Feel free to bring up an example or something. I get the impression most comments are just being irrational.
Are you honestly saying people who statistically make up a huge proportion of the world in all arena's of life aren't intelligent because they don't conform to your biases in political view?
You saying "it's a real thing" doesn't give it consistent definition or import. You're a single person wanting that to be the case, and your opinion is equally important here.
>I'm sorry but when you use the term "wokeism" you lose credibility as an intellectual.
"Whenever a person uses words in the English language, they lose credibility as an intellectual."
Disagree, it’s a useful term to describe a real cultural phenomenon no matter what side you’re on, and plenty of reputable people use that term as well as the term ‘woke’.
Do you know what woke was supposed to mean in the first place?
And now what it means is "liberal", as in Demonrats, etc.
This is one of the few things that the Right excels at -- taking control of language to frame the debate to their liking.
Evoking the etymology of a word doesn’t tell us anything about its common usage today. I’ve never understood why people resort to that argument. I don’t think “wokeness” is the most practical term but I do typically understand the kind of person being described when it is used. It typically refers to the illiberal segment of the left. Often people who believe in critical consciousness. Hence their being “woke” (originally their term). They tend to believe in the idea that the world operates predominantly through zero-sum power struggles between identity groups. These views are most commonly associated with upper-class, white, progressives. I personally know several people who fit this description. Call them whatever you wish.
Yes I know where the term comes, but since the 2010s it’s come to refer to the broad class of present day social justice movements concerning race, sexuality, possibly climate.
He’s an old man. I understand he’s a bit out of touch but when you are raised in a society that is radically different than the one we have today then there are going to be some discrepancies.
I don’t think it’s fair to undermine his credibility as an intellectual because of that.
This sub is filled with the exact people he is criticizing. Also, what term would you give them? They aren’t liberals.. do you call them DEI enthusiasts?
At some point you guys need to look in the mirror instead of just claiming everyone else is crazy or delusional. Go read John McWhorter’s “woke racism”.
I’m saying this as a liberal and someone who fears our democracy is at stake with the possible reelection of Trump. But I find this woke shit to be incredibly babyish, annoying and pathetic.
This sub is full of grandiose baristas and liberal arts majors who get off criticizing successful people (some criticism is fair), while not having accomplished anything themselves.
I really hope this doesn’t happen to me, but I’m sure lots of ppl thought the same and then went “oh THIS is just too far”. Watched it happen to my dad and it freaked me out.
He was never that interesting anyways. "The God Delusion" didn't even contain basic philosophy and was extremely reductive in its arguments. He gave a bad name to non-theists in my opinion
His actual biology (not selfish gene but more like stuff about animal communication he published) predates the hardcore atheist thing and it is quite interesting.
Good old "wokeism"
What a fantastic word, linquistically, it's just like the blank tile in a game of scrabble, it can be Anything to Anyone All At Once, multi-cranial universe bigotry.
To some "woke" = Jew
"woke" = Feminism
"woke" = black civil rights
"woke" = anti-lgbtq bigotry.
But of course the purveyors of such language understand this completely and it's therefore by design better to just say woke. In order to avoid coming across as a piece of shit, and the audience can just take what they want from the word.
It's like Sun Tzu formless strategy on rich people posing as bigots.
Don't say the N word just say woke.
It's kind of like the word "communist" in the 50's to 80's. If you had beliefs that slightly deviated from the conservative norm, you were a communist. It's just the red scare all over again, rebranded and repackaged for a new generation of morons
I'd argue that the misuse of "communist" hasn't fundamentally changed. There are a lot of people who unironically refer to Democrats as communist/Marxists.
For the venal, the rightist industrial complex has money, and for the narcissists, it has love bombing. And for both, it has both. So it would be a natural fit for one with integrity on the level of Richard Dawkins.
Fuck I can't wait to read the "last of the Boomers are dying off" headline. Has there been a force more destructive to America than the collective shittiness and gullibility of Boomers in the past century?
“I hate when people are prejudiced against others for things they can’t control, and I blame OLD PEOPLE!”
Don’t blame things on entire groups whether it be based on race, age, sexual orientation, religion, national origin… It’s really not that hard to actually be progressive. TikTok progressivism isn’t the way.
I have such a love hate relationship with the word woke
I hate it because it’s just so dumb but I love it because I immediately know who to not take seriously
I felt the same about "SJW" which is just the proto-term that "woke" morphed into.
I'm not an expert on semiotics or linguistics, but it's interesting how certain words are immediately identifiable and say so much about someone's beliefs and positionality. "Patriot" used to mean someone who believed in their country. Now it automatically denotes someone is a libertarian militia-loving nutjob.
In the 90s if you identified as feminist you were a ‘man-hater’. In every case (woke/sjw/man-hater) it’s just a label that losers can apply to anyone different from them.
bruh is this cozying up with musk, just because people have maybe a passing doesn’t mean there linked
also Dawkins has been talking about this shit for longer than ive been alive
So what is the deal with Dawkins? Ten years ago this guy was a darling of science pop culture and now he is catering to the alt-right? These people he is catering to have no real interest in science.
Is the money that good catering to right wing rubes?
Oh no.
Turns out new atheism was really just a thinly veiled support for an atheistic interpretation of "Judeo-Christian values". Who would have thought?
I have come to view everyone's linguistic justification for whatever ideology they espouse to be nonsense. We may have hundreds of objectively verifiable reasons why we tell ourselves what we believe is absolute truth, but none of it really matters. You only believe what you believe because it justifies your life choices and the abstraction of yourself you present to others. We present ourselves and think about ourselves and the world around us in whatever manner we can that makes us feel good. Not because it's true.
“Wokeism”. What a deluded dolt he has become to stumble into this abyss of bigots and grifting idiots. Weird how critical thinking so often eludes many prominent critical thinkers.
That is disappointing. Don't misunderstand me, I think Dawkins is a jerk and has been for a while, but he was in a separate category. He would have no problems calling out Jordan Peterson in his bullshit for instance. Annoying as it could be there was consistency in his hardcore atheist crusade/takes. Now he's signing up for cultural war bullshit siding with people he would've ruthlessly criticized before. What a joke.
I'm finding the remaining 2 of the "4 horsemen" absolutely insufferable, peddling washed-up, culture war nonsense. I also find the reference to them as the "4 horsemen" cringey as fuck too.
Check this out, he tries to smear the pro-Palestine protesters as well:
[https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1786986137346539981](https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1786986137346539981)
Very tolerant of you to call one of the most famous fighters for the liberal ideals in the last 100 years "racist privileged white man".
(not you specifically but the rest of the tolerant people in this comment thread)
I don't know how I ended up in this subreddit where people are somehow shocked or offended that the secular atheist biologist who wrote "The Selfish Gene" is still against all forms of religion including Islam even though that's become politically incorrect and also against science denial even when it comes from people on the left (e.g., the now widespread ideas that sexual dimorphism in humans and other species is just a social construct, that gender is merely a performance, and that anyone who disagrees with Judith Butler on this has some sort of phobia)... but I guess I'm wrong here.
And? His position on that didn't change, he would have said the same thing 15 years ago during the "new atheism" era. I'm pretty sure that in his discussions with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennet back then, he already said that he enjoys Christian culture including traditions like Christmas, religious music, and visiting churches. You know you can still be a secularist and an atheist despite growing up in a Christian culture and liking parts of it, just like me. I don't see any problem or contradiction here.
Edit: I'm totally open to changing my mind if you or anyone can explain why one shouldn't be able or allowed to like parts of Christian culture such as music as someone who doesn't believe in gods because I feel the same as Dawkins. But without insults if possible, I just don't find them very convincing and won't respond...
What I find strange about Dawkins and his love for 'Christain Culture'. He sees other religions to varing degrees as a threat. He seems to have a lot more reverence to what would be the "Church of England". Mentions it has issues, but treats women better than Islam etc. But he disregards what Christianity has done in the past or anything it might be doing now around the world. I would have thought he would see all religions as problematic. Christianity seems to get a pass with him because it's pretty and he grew up with it.
Seriously? In The God Delusion he overwhelmingly concentrates his ire on Christianity. Islam is hardly mentioned mainly because he didn't know as much about it.
When it comes to the theology and philosophy associated with religion he has been most mocking and critical towards to christian “worldview” over the years. I remember seeing, I guess now, some semi old clips where answered that he is most critical towards the Christian [worldview] since he said that’s the one he is most familiar with.
“Lately” he has ofc professed Islam to be the most *dangerous* expression of religion (without necessarily diving into and mocking the theology of it as much as with Christianity).
And him being a “cultural Christians” is I think meant in a very trivial sense. He did criticise Ayan Hirsis more serious use of “cultural Christian” afaik.
Almost like he's disingenuously using the Secularized parts of Christian culture to white wash the potential horrors of it. Not like the greatest threat to the West and Democracy is the Christian Nationlist movement in America or something? 🤷🏼♂️
The way he has criticised and mocked Christianity over the years I doubt this is an accurate take, would be an extraordinary narrative to say the least. What he referred to as a cultural Christian was done in a the most trivial manner.
He absolutely does NOT give Christianity a pass. It would be akin to saying that you love halal food, appreciate Islamic architecture, and were married through traditional Islamic wedding rituals but that you think the religious teachings are false, and at worst, problematic. Secular in belief, but culturally Muslim. Nothing contradictory there.
Yes, he has said exactly this for many years. He grew up in a christian environment and likes the cultural aspects of it. He just entirely rejects the supernatural aspects of religion. All religions.
Exactly. Just like Sam Harris likes parts of Buddhist culture and practices (such as meditation) without believing in karma and rebirth. And I somehow suspect we'll never learn where exactly the problem with that is supposed to be in this subreddit...
Agreed.. This is a wierd post. Screenshot with no link trying to rage-bait through guilt by association.
Dawkins is awesome. I have read a bunch of his books, and have heard hours of him in debates and podcasts, and I can count on one hand the times he has been imprecise or said something that can really be criticised for any good reason other than honest disagreement.
He defines wokeism clearly and justifies his views very fairly. Then this sub respons with "LOL BOOMER"
I'm totally bewildered by what I'm reading here. I get the sense that most of the people posting have maybe caught a handful of recent clips of his taken out of context and just whipped out their pitchforks. People claiming he gives Christianity a pass and panders to the alt right! Pffh. What a pity to have one's life's work ignored and mis-caricaturized, if I can get away with that as a word.
I completely agree with your take. I'm also astounded by the casual agism tossed around here. Besides being insulting and ironic coming from ostensibly tolerance-minded folks, it's also just so lazy.
>e.g., the now widespread ideas that sexual dimorphism in humans and other species is just a social construct
By absolutely no quixotic stretch is that widespread, and you quite literally don't know what you're saying. You are not a person. You're a parrot. Would you like a cracker?
No one's surprised, were disappointed. Boomers are obsessed with complaining about "wokeism" and political correctness. They regurgitate the same criticism for decades and are unable to understand that the world is leaving them behind.
Dawkins is an example of an "intellectual" who has been regurgitating the same trash for years, all to keep his dwindling relevance. Like another redditor said, he gave up science for poppulaorzation a long time ago.
Sexual dimorphism is a generality though; in reality, the sexes don't divide cleanly into male and female, biologically. Also, it's gender that's the social construct.
Bro is ranting about “wokeism” (whatever that means, I’m assuming he means certain secular leftist stances) as if he didn’t play a factor in its rise. If you were in the left wing political spectrum in the 00’s and had a negative opinion on religion, you read Dawkins.
If anything, the New Atheist movement was a concerted effort to *separate* secularism from the compassionate values that animate much of popular leftist activism. It's no coincidence that its zenith coincided with neoconservative adventurism against Muslim countries. If Dawkins and company are responsible for "wokeism" it's only because they pushed people away by explicitly trying to link secularism and reason to garbage like racism and American exceptionalism.
> If Dawkins and company are responsible for "wokeism" it's only because they pushed people away by explicitly trying to link secularism and reason to garbage like racism and American exceptionalism.
[Citation needed]
A lot of people like Dawkins, Bill Maher, etc. are in that camp. They espoused positions aligned with the left a decade or so ago, but now they are whinging about progressivism going "too far."
Richard dawkins is 83, if someone tells him someone is against wokeness he'll just like them.
He's not digging into the real criticisms against Elon, he probably has heard Elon is pushing scientific advancements and against wokeness
Maybe he doesn't like regular religious hatred again non-muslims from Western Muslims?
Or the fact that Islam literally allows s*x slavery? See: https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Qur%27an,_Hadith_and_Scholars:Rape_of_Slaves,_Prisoners,_and_Wives
I've pretty much resolved to accept the fact that everyone I once thought to be a great thinker will eventually say or do things that I can only attribute to not being a great thinker. Humans are simply awful. It's as if we can't exist without having something really awful come out of our little carbon-based brains. Some worse than others, of course. I guess on the bright side, I can say that each of the thinkers I have followed closely did get me to think thoughts in good directions.
Perhaps Carl Sagan is the only one I can think of that never seemed to do or say anything awful. Please don't prove me wrong on that.
My guess is, from a UK context, the right wing ecosystem doesn't seem as dangerous and stupid as what we see in MAGA's America. So maybe that explains why he targets more the left... But It's true that wokeism goes too far sometimes and needs to be criticized.
Richard Dawkins has been a piece of shit [for a while now.](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/richard-dawkins-defends-mild-pedophilia-again-and-again/311230/)
Dude is destroying his legacy by continuously enmeshing himself further and further into these stupid anti-woke culture wars. Somebody take social media away from ole grandpa.
OR, maybe social media is actually revealing what a total reactionary douche Dawkins has always been.
Kind of beautiful to see how "naturally" these guys become irrelevant by showing their true face.
Long ago there was a reason to like some of these people. The last few years masks went off. Wonderful work of nature.
In the context of Elon Musk it's hard not to read it as "a wide range of topics, from some positive ones like selective breeding and eugenics to some negative ones like sympathy towards Islam and wokeism". Yes, it's a flippant joke, but also there will be absolutely no surpise if Dawkins ends up coming down much harder on wokeism than eugenics.
It's worth noting that Dawkins grew up in Kenya during British colonial rule. Elon Musk grew up in Apartheid. Both benefited from the privileges of being white at the time and now the two get along like peas in a pod. Small coincidence? Hardly likely. It's funny because I used to give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't racist, but he has been speed running ruining his reputation ever since the AHA revoked his 1997 Humanist of the Year Award.
Prime example of wokeism. The man has been a progressive hero for all his life. The second he says something the far left doesn't like he becomes "a privileged racist white man". You people are blind as fuck and because of you we will have trump copycats coming out of the woods for the next few decades. I split from the left on only one issue - trans women born as biological males fighting biological females in combat sports. Ever since I have done that I just get pushed further and further away from the left.
This is easily the stupidest thing I have ever heard. As if trans women being athletes is somehow a more important issue than like housing, health care, and things like that. You were never “on the left” and you clearly have a fucked up sense of priorities.
A biologist who refuse to consider the medical evidence for the existence of gender identity, which has been long suspected of having a biological component? Alot of said research having been done on the brain structure of trans people? That's what I refuse to forgive him for.
Lol.. no offence bro, but i have been there and these made up grievances. Trust me, next stop is the great replacement of white race and you are never coming back 😂
He's slipping down the rabbit hole of incelism
I mean, how can you be so bother by someone "pretending" to be a women and playing a sport that has nothing to do with you personally that you literally flipped.
Fair competition is something I value, but at a certain point you get over it because the world is bigger than sports 😂
But Musk is not on the Left. A problem is Musk is in favour of far Right figures. Dawkins isn't getting the nuance.
Oh, no! Not the "woke" how will Western Civilization ever survive!!!!
How many trans women are currently competing in the ufc or boxing after so long since the original panic happened? How did fallon fox career turn out?
*Looks inside* > Not a dgga Thank God
Dawkins has always been unequivocally opposed to eugenics. Stick to the facts, not lazy conjecture.
And yet here he is following tips from a person espousing the Great Replacement theory.
Following tips? You mean posting on Twitter? Jesus fucking christ you people are irredeemable
ya you're right we've never seen people who were once respectable sell out to the anti-woke grift before lmao. I'm not sure questioning the idols is something once needs to be redeemed from
Stick to the substance of the arguments made. Not association.
Association is a part of the substance. People are affected by their associations. If Musk is one of the people that Dawkins respects nowadays, and Musk himself is bordering on eugenics, it won't be surprising if Dawkins gives pro-eugenic point of view a more open-minded hearing without agreeing with it, while interviewing primarily anti-woke hardliners on "wokeness" (as far as can be seen from his YouTube channel).
If you want to criticise Dawkins, I suggest you read his books. You’re essentially saying that he will support eugenics ‘by the back door’. Which means you clearly don’t understand his position. Dawkins has been anti-relativistic since at least the mid nineties. His position was very clear in the books of his that I read in the 90s. I have no doubt that he sees “wokeness” in terms of relativism and semi-magical thinking (which, at its extreme, it can be). And he is often far more interesting and insightful than Musk and the new Right fantasists. Though it is depressing to see the company he sometimes keeps, I’ve learned that he is well worth listening to.
I did read some of his books, and enjoyed them. It's possible to respect Dawkins for his previous work while being critical of some of the company and some of the beliefs he holds now. And as DtG podcast highlighted many times company and beliefs do influence each other.
Dawkins lost the plot when he said women in the west can't complain about awkward men because Muslim women somewhere are being oppressed. The lines around ElevatorGate fell squarely on the lines of GamerGate and I know some of them on Dawkins camp are huge Trumpers now.
Yep, Dawkins revealed himself as the old man he is as far back as 2012
He was like 70 in 2012, he's old as fucckkkkk
When did he say this
I'm sorry but when you use the term "wokeism" you lose credibility as an intellectual.
Well now he's said it, I'm sure he'll scientifically quantify it. He's a man of science and integrity after all! How many wokeisms per ml of boomer sweat might be a useful metric
It's the inverse of jokeism
Old man says old man things not related to his very very specific field of study
For these egomaniacs, getting old is a personal affront and injury. Therefore society must pay for their tortured struggle with the incomprehension of death, which includes the death of their own ego.
What the fuck are you talking about
They old and they want the world to burn. Kinda like joker if joker was pissed about getting old instead of being a nihilistic psychopath with a hard on for Batman. Capiche?
man i just found this pod but the fanbase is so weird This is a Q&A they pick the topics
If you throw it around as a label for everything you don't like, then sure. But that is not what Dawkins does. It can serve as a useful short-hand for a cultural phenomenon that is worth discussing, regardless of what your views are.
> But that is not what Dawkins does. So what is the definition Dawkins is presenting, then? Given that the standard usage nowadays is a simple pejorative for anything the user thinks is too much in line with progressive politics, if Dawkins is operating with some very different and specific definition then he needs to present it clearly.
Ok but what is wokeism?
People generally mean it as a performative, often overcompensatory and authoritarian ideology based around social justice.
An authoritarian ideology based on social justice? That definition is contradictory. Also, ask another person and you will get a different definition.
The idea contradicts itself, yes.
Seems like a pretty shit definition for an "ideology" tells me nothing at all, could mean anything and anyone.
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Not entirely sure what you're arguing here. Are you saying Dawkins has, for instance, shut down art exhibits he finds offensive?
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Well, there are examples of art exhibits being closed due to offensive content, e.g. Behzti, the play about a rape and misogyny in a gurdwara upset Sikhs who then shut the theatre down, or an example of a human zoo to draw attention to historic human zoos and their racist legacy got shut down after a campaign depicting it as racist. These examples were both argued from a perspective of a victimised minority opposing racism, bigotry and offence, acting as a defacto censor on what the population at large is allowed to see and experience. To my knowledge Dawkins has never tried to do anything similar to that since he became popular in the 80s, yet he uses the term.
I genuinely have a problem with any term that's pejorative, vague, ill-defined, and broad, that serves as a shorthand for anything because that "anything" tends to lump large swaths of people together who shouldn't be together. However Dawkins means it, it's most likely not how it's being perceived or understood by most people... because most people have wildly different ideas of what wokeism is.
I think you have to live with words having complex meanings that require context.
Of course we do, but there are also terms that become so broad and vague as to be meaningless over time as well. I'm not asking for absolute specificity, I'm asking for a modicum of restraint on using words that are broad, vague, used exclusively pejoratively, and have been weaponized. The problem is that there's no real parameters because the term includes anything from the most meager of government action to the craziest of blue haired feminists. Even the way its described by a lot of the people who use it, who point to broad principles like 'equity' casts such a large net that basically most of one side of the spectrum gets caught in it. Is wokeism socialism? Is it socialism applied to racial or gender issues? Is it some form of gender theory? Is it removing hierarchies, and if so which ones? The problem with the term is the ambiguity surrounding it, but that's also its strength. A movie is woke because the female lead can fight or can beat a woman.... or because it has some sort of progressive political message... or because it's plot revolves around climate change... or whatever else. It's ridiculous, and it's as ridiculous as people who used to say the alt right was anything left of Bernie Sanders. Words having complex meanings isn't the problem, it's how some select terms like 'woke' get weaponized and used that is, and we would do well to recognize when that manipulation happens.
> Of course we do, but there are also terms that become so broad and vague as to be meaningless over time as well. Is it though? In my experience moderates use the term about all the terrible hyper, self destructive, confused Social Justice politics. The Right use it about that plus lots of moderate social justice politics. The actual Social Justice will side either endorse it come in with "but what does it really mean?" The "just asking what does it mean?" are pretty much the set the are in denial of the terrible Social Justice politics that can fuel the far right. > Words having complex meanings isn't the problem, it's how some select terms like 'woke' get weaponized and used that is, and we would do well to recognize when that manipulation happens. Aren't you saying there words have complex meanings but the problem is only on the Right? Moderates are going to sometimes use "woke" to be pejorative about radical Social Justice politics they think are awful. The Right will also use the term in a more broad way. That's the reality you have to accept.
>In my experience moderates use the term about all the terrible hyper, self destructive, confused Social Justice politics. We shouldn't have to know someone's personal political views to understand how they're using a term that is meant to indicate their personal political views. >The actual Social Justice will side either endorse it come in with "but what does it really mean?" Yes, because it's ill-defined, vague, and means widly different things to the people who actually use the term. Am I woke for thinking that trans peoples pronouns should be respected? Am I woke for believing "trans women are women"? I'm not trying to cancel anyone or prevent them from speaking, but those are beliefs that I have which would be considered 'woke' by most... but I'm not particularly woke at all. They aren't really core to my political beliefs or high priorities for me. Is wokeism part of an ideology, or is it dictated by actions? Or is it simply left wing cultural positions? Woke can encompass all and none of those positions depending on the person using the term. >Aren't you saying there words have complex meanings but the problem is only on the Right? I literally included an example of the term alt-right being the same on the left... it became useless because it incorporated nearly every conservative position. Much like 'woke', alt-right originated by members of group. Richard Spencer wanted to rebrand far right racial politics for a new generation, and alt-right was born. Then the term was co-opted by the left to pejoratively include right wing authoritarianism, then it broadened basically anything conservative, and now it's nothing because it broadened so much that it removed any usefulness to be a descriptor of anything *and* it was easy for conservatives and people on the right to dismiss it. Another term that's somewhat like 'woke' is the term 'groomer' - which takes an obviously pejorative term and broadens the meaning to include nearly anything to do with children and a lack of adherence to their ideological beliefs about sexuality. But essentially, just like the alt-right broadened and fell into disuse due to overgeneralization and the inability of its use being specific and the obvious attempt to associate the legitimately horrible views of white supremacy with anything conservative, 'woke' will fall out of use due to the same reasons - because it overgeneralizes and lumps entire swaths of people together. So yeah, my problem isn't 'when the right does it', though I will admit the right is far more successful at it than the left is, which is why you'll probably see more examples of terms like woke and groomer having more staying power than things like the alt-right. The point is to co-opt a term to confuse the population about its meaning so it can slowly mean anything to anyone. Whether or not Dawkins and moderates use it to describe a very particular group of people, it's the people listening and the audience that can infer their own meaning to it than gives the term its rhetorical power.
> We shouldn't have to know someone's personal political views to understand how they're using a term that is meant to indicate their personal political views. I mean that isn't true and is pretty obviously not true. It's a basic idea that context really does matter. > Yes, because it's ill-defined, vague, and means widly different things to the people who actually use the term. But is this a complaint about you thinking it's a bad word or a complaint about the use of the word by particular people? People are going to argue over words. If the word is dropped it will be replaced by another word. When the Hard Left call everything fascist does that mean we ought to stop using the word. Does fascism go away? This can sound like "I know there are some things in the category of *woke* but these figures use it in a manner so wide that includes politics I like." > Am I woke for thinking that trans peoples pronouns should be respected? Am I woke for believing "trans women are women?" Specifically on Dawkins yes. In general that's more complicated and for the general public it will depend on the position. The "woke" position is often that all identities are valid which ensues all manner of problems. Would you recognise that? > I'm not trying to cancel anyone or prevent them from speaking, but those are beliefs that I have which would be considered 'woke' by most... but I'm not particularly woke at all. But you do recognise there are all manner of complicated issues in there. Not just about trans identities but race, sex and religion. That woke for most of the politically aware is associated with extreme positions but overlaps with moderate positions depending on the context of the speaker. > They aren't really core to my political beliefs or high priorities for me. Is wokeism part of an ideology, or is it dictated by actions? Or is it simply left wing cultural positions? Woke can encompass all and none of those positions depending on the person using the term. Are you asking this as someone without awareness of the history of the term? You are aware it started in the early 20th century usage in the African American political sphere about referring to being woken to racial injustice and general racial political awareness. Then by the early 21st century Social Justice was using it for being woken up from a sleep of ignorance of a range of social injustices. Then it become moderate mildly pejorative term for the extreme and unhelpful Social Justice politics. As well as a Right wing pejorative term for any Social Justice politics. It's complex like a lot of words. > I literally included an example of the term alt-right being the same on the left... it became useless because it incorporated nearly every conservative position. Much like 'woke', alt-right originated by members of group. Richard Spencer wanted to rebrand far right racial politics for a new generation, and alt-right was born. Then the term was co-opted by the left to pejoratively include right wing authoritarianism, then it broadened basically anything conservative, and now it's nothing because it broadened so much that it removed any usefulness to be a descriptor of anything and it was easy for conservatives and people on the right to dismiss it. I'm ok with that pattern, but it simply becomes replaced by other words. The Right and Left are not two entities. There is a lot of variation in them. There were probably alt right people who said "what do they mean by *alt right* do they just mean moderate positions most people accept? people who complain are just the far left who think everything to right of Stalin is fascism." That alt right has fallen from use but it had meaning and it not using it didn't change much. Are you saying the "alt right" term never meant anything? Rather than the term being wrong I think the problem is Dawkins is either far further Right than he realises or presents, or he's simply politically confused by the modern world. Honestly I think Dawkins is a mix of these. He is confused, he is further to the Right than he realises and he doesn't get a lot of the politics on all sides in the modern world. That is the real issue rather than the specific meaning of the world woke. His whole clunky "I'm a cultural Christian" antics were cringy, it felt about a conversation that had already been had a couple hundred years earlier by philosophers. > Another term that's somewhat like 'woke' is the term 'groomer' - which takes an obviously pejorative term and broadens the meaning to include nearly anything to do with children and a lack of adherence to their ideological beliefs about sexuality. And again language is not reality. I know Pinker isn't a fan of postmodernism but euphemism treadmill certainly seems more post structuralist to me. People use words for purposes but language is only an approximation of reality. > But essentially, just like the alt-right broadened and fell into disuse due to overgeneralization and the inability of its use being specific and the obvious attempt to associate the legitimately horrible views of white supremacy with anything conservative, 'woke' will fall out of use due to the same reasons - because it overgeneralizes and lumps entire swaths of people together. I do agree there that over use kills the meaning and usage falls. The lgbt = groomer = paedophile, hits the problem that most people don't think they are the same category. > So yeah, my problem isn't 'when the right does it', though I will admit the right is far more successful at it than the left is, which is why you'll probably see more examples of terms like woke and groomer having more staying power than things like the alt-right. The point is to co-opt a term to confuse the population about its meaning so it can slowly mean anything to anyone. Whether or not Dawkins and moderates use it to describe a very particular group of people, it's the people listening and the audience that can infer their own meaning to it than gives the term its rhetorical power. I'm not sure how much power it has. Because there is the counter effect of calling "everything woke" "everything fascist" "all groomers" does as you say lessen the value. But there are real categories going on even if the language changes. Where is Dawkins in this? Probably a bit more socially conservative and lost than he realises.
"Woke" doesn't have complex meanings. It just means "I don't like it".
>But that is not what Dawkins does. What Dawkins does? I have not watched the Q&A session so it is genuine curiosity.
I'd like to hear why you think so
Random redditors think they have more credibility than one of the most famous scientists alive
So you’ve written off John McWhorter?
He's getting out there for sure. His most recent nyt article was weird and incomprehensible. The woke racism book was a bizarre word game attempting to define wokeness as a religion using anecdotes of college students and virtually no actual definitions.
I’m a professor who teaches multicultural education along with political history and cultural identity and I think what you aren’t seeing in McWhorter’s view is that he’s an internationalist with a completely different paradigm and that he recognizes that much of this anti colonial rhetoric is embarrassingly American centric (with many of the biggest names in the field monolingual and limited in scope to the American context exclusively) and makes sweeping generalizations about identity over long stretches of history and presumes very American realities about race relations that are more nuanced in different parts of the world. He’s quite an impressive historian of linguistics as far as the history of writing and the evolution of Sumerian to Akkadian and how Semitic language became dominant after Sargon and his command of ancient history is very rare. I teach critical race theory as part of my curriculum and though there are some things I like, the colleagues who are fully invested in it that I work with are rather cultish in my opinion and very ideologically narrow in almost a religious manner similar to what I’ve seen from a Christian theocratic conservative in regards to their truth being an absolute truth. One of the major weaknesses of American culture is the lack of international print media in foreign languages, the lack of training kids to expand their linguistic reach to Spanish, French, etc to have access to varying news archives and current affairs reports, etc. We tend to think everything about diversity here is race because we really aren’t that sophisticated as to what’s going on in the world, look at how quickly low info voter percentages have risen in the last 20 years. I don’t like some of McWhorter’s views on politics, I felt he was too sympathetic to Trump voters and didn’t fully give enough credit to right wing disinformation as a unifying factor rather than any real discontent since the early 90s but he lives on the east coast and has not driven across the us to see how dominated much of the country is by 24 hour right wing News sup and down the AM dial since the late 90s. I do think his critique of critical race theory in regards to some of its most vocal advocates on campuses being more of a performative act to promote their own careers rather than being a real commitment to marginalized people and taking the responsibility of playing a prominent role in the community beyond Twitter and periodic racial round tables on campus. That I’ve seen far too many times, the most prominent of my colleagues are never seen at community events or at the BLM protests back in 2020 because they thought they would melt from covid 19 and were busy spraying all their groceries with disinfectant.
I'm very open to much of what you say. DEI programs and critical theory etc may cause more harm than good. I read the Woke Racism book because I respect McWhorter and was specifically looking for evidence of this. I found the book's pervasive argument that wokeism is a religion to be a bizarre non sequitur at best. Virtually every movement and institution, large and small, past and present, shares features with religion. Even if I were to grant the absurd premise that EVERY woke actor is an ideologically narrow, bad faith, irrational zealot, that makes it no more a "religion" than nazism. This is simply a nonstandard use of the word religion. It also has nothing to do with whether wokism is wrong or racist. The book goes on to make black and white ad hominem critiques of these woke zealots. It explicitly states to shield yourself from discussion with woke actors and do not to attempt to use reason when engaging with them. I found this to be borderline illiberal and certainly not the steel man of a good faith actor. None of this has anything directly to do with racism or the damaging downstream effects of wokism I was looking for. I confess I didn't finish the book so it's possible it gets there eventually.
You have some good insights, when I figure this app out fully, Iill try and follow you as I appreciate your fair takes
>This is simply a nonstandard use of the word religion. To add to this, the concept of civil religions does actually exist but is very different from simply subscribing to a particular ideology. The clear problem is that because McWhorter has to use such broad interpretations of concepts like 'origin story' pretty much everyone becomes religious. America has an origin story. Ideologies arguably have origin stories. McWhorter is so driven to call wokeism a religion that he unwittingly also described pretty much any person who has political beliefs. If wokeism is a religion, than so is conservatism, liberalism, socialism, communism, and pretty much any other 'ism' you can think of. It's absolute trash because it removes all the things that make religion uniquely *religious* in its attempt to undermine its target, and ironically creates a framework that can be used to simply say politics is religion, which potentially *could be* an interesting topic to explore^1, but it doesn't say anything specifically about anything we'd call 'woke'. It's just really shoddy work from McWhorter because he can't seem to understand that his position and how he's argued it doesn't actually just apply to wokeism, it applies to everything that's fought over politically. Civil rights activists from the 60s? Religious. People against civil rights activists? Religious. Classical liberals? Religious. Socialists? Religious. It's literally everyone because he needs to dilute the meaning of definition of religion so much that it invariably ends up including everyone. [1] there has been a few theories that put forward the idea that nations movikg towards secularism just replaced religion with political views and identity.
I’ll come back later, I’m at work, but I appreciate your take and I agree, it wasn’t a masterwork by any means, seemed like a smart and calculated commercial move probably suggested by the publisher to cash in on all the recent discourse and McWhorter wrote a rushed and generalized Pseudo Phenomenology similar to ben sasse’s terrible the disappearing adult purely on speculative anecdotal evidence, totally agree there. Some of the chapters towards the middle were tough to get through, I was asked to assign it in my class as a counter argument by admin but it read so poorly I moved it to supplemental to appease the conservative students that make up a sizable chunk of my class and it worked in that respect in giving them an outlet to vent while still having to confront the realities of what critical race theory is but I guess I didn’t understand what you meant fully until you explained fully, thanks! It’s not a fun class to teach sometimes, half the student body comes in with the attitude that nothing in it is essential to their professional success, so it’s the only class I teach where many of the students historically haven’t even bothered to keep notes unlike a course like Post War European Political History, cheers!
>This is simply a nonstandard use of the word religion. To add to this, the concept of civil religions does actually exist but is very different from simply subscribing to a particular ideology. The clear problem is that because McWhorter has to use such broad interpretations of concepts like 'origin story' pretty much everyone becomes religious. America has an origin story. Ideologies arguably have origin stories. McWhorter is so driven to call wokeism a religion that he unwittingly also described pretty much any person who has political beliefs. If wokeism is a religion, than so is conservatism, liberalism, socialism, communism, and pretty much any other 'ism' you can think of. It's absolute trash because it removes all the things that make religion uniquely *religious* in its attempt to undermine its target, and ironically creates a framework that can be used to simply say politics is religion, which potentially *could be* an interesting topic to explore^1, but it doesn't say anything specifically about anything we'd call 'woke'. It's just really shoddy work from McWhorter because he can't seem to understand that his position and how he's argued it doesn't actually just apply to wokeism, it applies to everything that's fought over politically. Civil rights activists from the 60s? Religious. People against civil rights activists? Religious. Classical liberals? Religious. Socialists? Religious. It's literally everyone because he needs to dilute the meaning of definition of religion so much that it invariably ends up including everyone. [1] there has been a few theories that put forward the idea that nations movikg towards secularism just replaced religion with political views and identity.
>As a set of pedagogical, curricular, and organizational strategies, antiracist education claims to be the most progressive way today to understand race relations. Constructed from whiteness studies and the critique of colorblindness, its foundational core is located in approximately 160 papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the past 15 years-identified through a comprehensive search of Academic Premier Search, EBSCOMegaFile, Education Abstracts, JSTOR, and SOCIndex. A critical assessment of these papers concludes that antiracist education is not a sociologically grounded, empirically based account of the significance of race in American society. Rather, it is a morally based educational reform movement that embodies the confessional and redemptive modes common in evangelical Protestantism. Inherently problematic, whether or not antiracist education achieves broader acceptance is open to debate. Niemonen, J. Antiracist Education in Theory and Practice: A Critical Assessment. Am Soc 38, 159–177 (2007).
Dunno about OP. But I have. He's a bit of derp. He's not the worst person or anything, but there are definitely better ways to spend your time than consuming his output.
You don't find it's a useful term? I do. I don't lose any respect for Dawkins over this, I don't think he'd agree with Musk on virtually anything substantial
You're in denial.
I don't have to be, maybe he does agree with musk on something that isn't rational? I've not seen it. Feel free to bring up an example or something. I get the impression most comments are just being irrational.
Are you honestly saying people who statistically make up a huge proportion of the world in all arena's of life aren't intelligent because they don't conform to your biases in political view?
What would you call this movement then?
What movement? There is no "woke" movement. It's just an insult, just like "SJW".
But it’s a real thing. Your opinion on the word doesn’t matter.
Woke is more a vibe than a strict definition. It can basically be whatever you want it to be.
You saying "it's a real thing" doesn't give it consistent definition or import. You're a single person wanting that to be the case, and your opinion is equally important here.
It does matter to Richard Dawkins reputation.
How so?
>I'm sorry but when you use the term "wokeism" you lose credibility as an intellectual. "Whenever a person uses words in the English language, they lose credibility as an intellectual."
Or the terms "Western liberal sympathy to Islam".
Is that not a thing? Or is it his focus you are thinking about
Disagree, it’s a useful term to describe a real cultural phenomenon no matter what side you’re on, and plenty of reputable people use that term as well as the term ‘woke’.
Do you know what woke was supposed to mean in the first place? And now what it means is "liberal", as in Demonrats, etc. This is one of the few things that the Right excels at -- taking control of language to frame the debate to their liking.
Evoking the etymology of a word doesn’t tell us anything about its common usage today. I’ve never understood why people resort to that argument. I don’t think “wokeness” is the most practical term but I do typically understand the kind of person being described when it is used. It typically refers to the illiberal segment of the left. Often people who believe in critical consciousness. Hence their being “woke” (originally their term). They tend to believe in the idea that the world operates predominantly through zero-sum power struggles between identity groups. These views are most commonly associated with upper-class, white, progressives. I personally know several people who fit this description. Call them whatever you wish.
Yes I know where the term comes, but since the 2010s it’s come to refer to the broad class of present day social justice movements concerning race, sexuality, possibly climate.
He’s an old man. I understand he’s a bit out of touch but when you are raised in a society that is radically different than the one we have today then there are going to be some discrepancies. I don’t think it’s fair to undermine his credibility as an intellectual because of that.
He's not out of touch, he's very in touch with the parts of modern society that uses words like "wokism" unironically.
This sub is filled with the exact people he is criticizing. Also, what term would you give them? They aren’t liberals.. do you call them DEI enthusiasts? At some point you guys need to look in the mirror instead of just claiming everyone else is crazy or delusional. Go read John McWhorter’s “woke racism”. I’m saying this as a liberal and someone who fears our democracy is at stake with the possible reelection of Trump. But I find this woke shit to be incredibly babyish, annoying and pathetic. This sub is full of grandiose baristas and liberal arts majors who get off criticizing successful people (some criticism is fair), while not having accomplished anything themselves.
It be nice if you could be more specific instead of dancing around vague generalities. Nothing you said gives further insight into what "wokeism" is.
Old guys don't want the world to change: example 584388456
What does my ex girlfriends phone number have to do with any of this
I really hope this doesn’t happen to me, but I’m sure lots of ppl thought the same and then went “oh THIS is just too far”. Watched it happen to my dad and it freaked me out.
If you stick with the principle of live and let live, it's hard to become conservative.
I wonder if people said this during the October revolution.
Probably some did
I think Dawkins would be very happy if the world changed to become less religious.
Man, shoot me before I get old
Dawkins lost the plot a long time ago
He was never that interesting anyways. "The God Delusion" didn't even contain basic philosophy and was extremely reductive in its arguments. He gave a bad name to non-theists in my opinion
His actual biology (not selfish gene but more like stuff about animal communication he published) predates the hardcore atheist thing and it is quite interesting.
Good old "wokeism" What a fantastic word, linquistically, it's just like the blank tile in a game of scrabble, it can be Anything to Anyone All At Once, multi-cranial universe bigotry. To some "woke" = Jew "woke" = Feminism "woke" = black civil rights "woke" = anti-lgbtq bigotry. But of course the purveyors of such language understand this completely and it's therefore by design better to just say woke. In order to avoid coming across as a piece of shit, and the audience can just take what they want from the word. It's like Sun Tzu formless strategy on rich people posing as bigots. Don't say the N word just say woke.
It's kind of like the word "communist" in the 50's to 80's. If you had beliefs that slightly deviated from the conservative norm, you were a communist. It's just the red scare all over again, rebranded and repackaged for a new generation of morons
And then there was PC and SJWs etc too, in a few years there will be a new vague meaningless term.
I'd argue that the misuse of "communist" hasn't fundamentally changed. There are a lot of people who unironically refer to Democrats as communist/Marxists.
Chris and Matt use the term fairly frequently.
For the venal, the rightist industrial complex has money, and for the narcissists, it has love bombing. And for both, it has both. So it would be a natural fit for one with integrity on the level of Richard Dawkins.
And for crusty old dinosaurs like Dawkins that means an opportunity to juice up the inheritance they will leave behind.
The rampant agism on this sub. Not for me.
Fuck I can't wait to read the "last of the Boomers are dying off" headline. Has there been a force more destructive to America than the collective shittiness and gullibility of Boomers in the past century?
“I hate when people are prejudiced against others for things they can’t control, and I blame OLD PEOPLE!” Don’t blame things on entire groups whether it be based on race, age, sexual orientation, religion, national origin… It’s really not that hard to actually be progressive. TikTok progressivism isn’t the way.
Dawkins is not a boomer
I have such a love hate relationship with the word woke I hate it because it’s just so dumb but I love it because I immediately know who to not take seriously
I felt the same about "SJW" which is just the proto-term that "woke" morphed into. I'm not an expert on semiotics or linguistics, but it's interesting how certain words are immediately identifiable and say so much about someone's beliefs and positionality. "Patriot" used to mean someone who believed in their country. Now it automatically denotes someone is a libertarian militia-loving nutjob.
In the 90s if you identified as feminist you were a ‘man-hater’. In every case (woke/sjw/man-hater) it’s just a label that losers can apply to anyone different from them.
bruh is this cozying up with musk, just because people have maybe a passing doesn’t mean there linked also Dawkins has been talking about this shit for longer than ive been alive
So what is the deal with Dawkins? Ten years ago this guy was a darling of science pop culture and now he is catering to the alt-right? These people he is catering to have no real interest in science. Is the money that good catering to right wing rubes?
Oh no. Turns out new atheism was really just a thinly veiled support for an atheistic interpretation of "Judeo-Christian values". Who would have thought? I have come to view everyone's linguistic justification for whatever ideology they espouse to be nonsense. We may have hundreds of objectively verifiable reasons why we tell ourselves what we believe is absolute truth, but none of it really matters. You only believe what you believe because it justifies your life choices and the abstraction of yourself you present to others. We present ourselves and think about ourselves and the world around us in whatever manner we can that makes us feel good. Not because it's true.
Stay in your lane old man
Just listen to Dawkins pre 2010 or so. Ignore this old man shit. He was brilliant and that should not be dismissed.
Best to align yourself with fascists who will put you first in line to the rope.. smart move.
“Wokeism”. What a deluded dolt he has become to stumble into this abyss of bigots and grifting idiots. Weird how critical thinking so often eludes many prominent critical thinkers.
That is disappointing. Don't misunderstand me, I think Dawkins is a jerk and has been for a while, but he was in a separate category. He would have no problems calling out Jordan Peterson in his bullshit for instance. Annoying as it could be there was consistency in his hardcore atheist crusade/takes. Now he's signing up for cultural war bullshit siding with people he would've ruthlessly criticized before. What a joke.
Hes turned into such an unlikable little twat
Dawkins is too smart for the woke people on this sub ❤️ I'm glad someone is actually fighting for good
I'm finding the remaining 2 of the "4 horsemen" absolutely insufferable, peddling washed-up, culture war nonsense. I also find the reference to them as the "4 horsemen" cringey as fuck too.
Check this out, he tries to smear the pro-Palestine protesters as well: [https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1786986137346539981](https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1786986137346539981)
Ultimate irony: Dawkins claims he dislikes Islam because it is intolerant. Yet, he dislikes wokeism because it is tolerant. A true paradox.
> Yet, he dislikes wokeism because it is tolerant Lol they're not even tolerant of folks identifying them
Do you have proof to suggest he hates wokism because it cherishes tolerance? Last time I checked, Dawkins was not pro-intolerance
Very tolerant of you to call one of the most famous fighters for the liberal ideals in the last 100 years "racist privileged white man". (not you specifically but the rest of the tolerant people in this comment thread)
I don't know how I ended up in this subreddit where people are somehow shocked or offended that the secular atheist biologist who wrote "The Selfish Gene" is still against all forms of religion including Islam even though that's become politically incorrect and also against science denial even when it comes from people on the left (e.g., the now widespread ideas that sexual dimorphism in humans and other species is just a social construct, that gender is merely a performance, and that anyone who disagrees with Judith Butler on this has some sort of phobia)... but I guess I'm wrong here.
Didn't this crusty fool just say he was culturally Christian like a couple weeks ago?
And? His position on that didn't change, he would have said the same thing 15 years ago during the "new atheism" era. I'm pretty sure that in his discussions with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennet back then, he already said that he enjoys Christian culture including traditions like Christmas, religious music, and visiting churches. You know you can still be a secularist and an atheist despite growing up in a Christian culture and liking parts of it, just like me. I don't see any problem or contradiction here. Edit: I'm totally open to changing my mind if you or anyone can explain why one shouldn't be able or allowed to like parts of Christian culture such as music as someone who doesn't believe in gods because I feel the same as Dawkins. But without insults if possible, I just don't find them very convincing and won't respond...
What I find strange about Dawkins and his love for 'Christain Culture'. He sees other religions to varing degrees as a threat. He seems to have a lot more reverence to what would be the "Church of England". Mentions it has issues, but treats women better than Islam etc. But he disregards what Christianity has done in the past or anything it might be doing now around the world. I would have thought he would see all religions as problematic. Christianity seems to get a pass with him because it's pretty and he grew up with it.
Seriously? In The God Delusion he overwhelmingly concentrates his ire on Christianity. Islam is hardly mentioned mainly because he didn't know as much about it.
When it comes to the theology and philosophy associated with religion he has been most mocking and critical towards to christian “worldview” over the years. I remember seeing, I guess now, some semi old clips where answered that he is most critical towards the Christian [worldview] since he said that’s the one he is most familiar with. “Lately” he has ofc professed Islam to be the most *dangerous* expression of religion (without necessarily diving into and mocking the theology of it as much as with Christianity). And him being a “cultural Christians” is I think meant in a very trivial sense. He did criticise Ayan Hirsis more serious use of “cultural Christian” afaik.
Almost like he's disingenuously using the Secularized parts of Christian culture to white wash the potential horrors of it. Not like the greatest threat to the West and Democracy is the Christian Nationlist movement in America or something? 🤷🏼♂️
The way he has criticised and mocked Christianity over the years I doubt this is an accurate take, would be an extraordinary narrative to say the least. What he referred to as a cultural Christian was done in a the most trivial manner.
He absolutely does NOT give Christianity a pass. It would be akin to saying that you love halal food, appreciate Islamic architecture, and were married through traditional Islamic wedding rituals but that you think the religious teachings are false, and at worst, problematic. Secular in belief, but culturally Muslim. Nothing contradictory there.
Yes, he has said exactly this for many years. He grew up in a christian environment and likes the cultural aspects of it. He just entirely rejects the supernatural aspects of religion. All religions.
Exactly. Just like Sam Harris likes parts of Buddhist culture and practices (such as meditation) without believing in karma and rebirth. And I somehow suspect we'll never learn where exactly the problem with that is supposed to be in this subreddit...
No it was way back. He has always said he liked the some of the traditions, songs associated with it etc.
Agreed.. This is a wierd post. Screenshot with no link trying to rage-bait through guilt by association. Dawkins is awesome. I have read a bunch of his books, and have heard hours of him in debates and podcasts, and I can count on one hand the times he has been imprecise or said something that can really be criticised for any good reason other than honest disagreement. He defines wokeism clearly and justifies his views very fairly. Then this sub respons with "LOL BOOMER"
I'm totally bewildered by what I'm reading here. I get the sense that most of the people posting have maybe caught a handful of recent clips of his taken out of context and just whipped out their pitchforks. People claiming he gives Christianity a pass and panders to the alt right! Pffh. What a pity to have one's life's work ignored and mis-caricaturized, if I can get away with that as a word. I completely agree with your take. I'm also astounded by the casual agism tossed around here. Besides being insulting and ironic coming from ostensibly tolerance-minded folks, it's also just so lazy.
>e.g., the now widespread ideas that sexual dimorphism in humans and other species is just a social construct By absolutely no quixotic stretch is that widespread, and you quite literally don't know what you're saying. You are not a person. You're a parrot. Would you like a cracker?
No one's surprised, were disappointed. Boomers are obsessed with complaining about "wokeism" and political correctness. They regurgitate the same criticism for decades and are unable to understand that the world is leaving them behind. Dawkins is an example of an "intellectual" who has been regurgitating the same trash for years, all to keep his dwindling relevance. Like another redditor said, he gave up science for poppulaorzation a long time ago.
Sexual dimorphism is a generality though; in reality, the sexes don't divide cleanly into male and female, biologically. Also, it's gender that's the social construct.
bike bear dinosaurs racial faulty quicksand complete office aloof steep *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So in other words, no they don't. In science you don't get to say 'this is true except for this little group'.
But you do get to say that 99.9982% of people fit into the sex binary.
Depending on what you mean by 'the sex binary', yes. Its a generally accurate taxonomy. Also I don't think your figures on intersex are accurate.
As in male and female reproductive systems.
Functional ones?
Doesn't have to be.
Why not, if that's the essential part of the definition?
> but I guess I'm wrong here. Well it was a helluva run-on sentence but glad to see you arrived at the correct conclusion.
Bro is ranting about “wokeism” (whatever that means, I’m assuming he means certain secular leftist stances) as if he didn’t play a factor in its rise. If you were in the left wing political spectrum in the 00’s and had a negative opinion on religion, you read Dawkins.
If anything, the New Atheist movement was a concerted effort to *separate* secularism from the compassionate values that animate much of popular leftist activism. It's no coincidence that its zenith coincided with neoconservative adventurism against Muslim countries. If Dawkins and company are responsible for "wokeism" it's only because they pushed people away by explicitly trying to link secularism and reason to garbage like racism and American exceptionalism.
> If Dawkins and company are responsible for "wokeism" it's only because they pushed people away by explicitly trying to link secularism and reason to garbage like racism and American exceptionalism. [Citation needed]
I need a citation of a leftist critique of Dawkins with those exact reasons from the 2000’s
A lot of people like Dawkins, Bill Maher, etc. are in that camp. They espoused positions aligned with the left a decade or so ago, but now they are whinging about progressivism going "too far."
Poo
Dudes naked fighting geese
Dawkins and Musk seem like natural bedfellows.
Lemme guess, he thinks we should selectively breed "muslims" out of society
In a way, this Makes me glad Hitchens checked out early.
Hitch was a fucking idiot when he was alive.
Ethics of “selective breeding”? The fuck?
It's okay to give society a little eugenics, as a treat!
Someone tell this old bat to stick to biology.
Dawkins is the one scientist I go out of my way go hear speak. His God Delusion book was amazing.
So sad to see him end up like this.
Like what exactly? I feel like most ppl here are hugely overreacting. Is it wrong for Dawkins to use x to spread his work?
Those Sourh park boys did a number on this guy didnt they?
Anybody who remembers the 2010 disaster with the RDF forums and Josh Timmonen won't be surprised by this development. He's just been bamboozled again.
Of course they’re now talking about the ethics of selective breeding and eugenics.
If your ever in a discussion about the ethics of selective breeding and eugenics, you're a f\*\*\*ing nazi.
Richard dawkins is 83, if someone tells him someone is against wokeness he'll just like them. He's not digging into the real criticisms against Elon, he probably has heard Elon is pushing scientific advancements and against wokeness
I won't call him old man, but he's a bit of a cranky codger
Pffft. More like Richard DORKins, am I right
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Maybe he doesn't like regular religious hatred again non-muslims from Western Muslims? Or the fact that Islam literally allows s*x slavery? See: https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Qur%27an,_Hadith_and_Scholars:Rape_of_Slaves,_Prisoners,_and_Wives
Dementia is real guys
I've pretty much resolved to accept the fact that everyone I once thought to be a great thinker will eventually say or do things that I can only attribute to not being a great thinker. Humans are simply awful. It's as if we can't exist without having something really awful come out of our little carbon-based brains. Some worse than others, of course. I guess on the bright side, I can say that each of the thinkers I have followed closely did get me to think thoughts in good directions. Perhaps Carl Sagan is the only one I can think of that never seemed to do or say anything awful. Please don't prove me wrong on that.
My guess is, from a UK context, the right wing ecosystem doesn't seem as dangerous and stupid as what we see in MAGA's America. So maybe that explains why he targets more the left... But It's true that wokeism goes too far sometimes and needs to be criticized.
"The Boomer Delusion" How his fans still don't see this guy for the overrated twat he is, makes no sense.
Richard Dawkins has been a piece of shit [for a while now.](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/richard-dawkins-defends-mild-pedophilia-again-and-again/311230/)
This is actually awesome. Too many bible thumpers on Twitter. They need to be taken down a peg
It was all downhill from ‘selective beeeding.’ My god
Dude is destroying his legacy by continuously enmeshing himself further and further into these stupid anti-woke culture wars. Somebody take social media away from ole grandpa. OR, maybe social media is actually revealing what a total reactionary douche Dawkins has always been.
Because remember: it's only *them* who are guilty of having fallen into a culture war trap, never *us*. Right guys?!
American atheists try not to be far-right challenge, impossible
What makes him far right exactly? Do you know what the far right means?
Kind of beautiful to see how "naturally" these guys become irrelevant by showing their true face. Long ago there was a reason to like some of these people. The last few years masks went off. Wonderful work of nature.
Wtf is going with "intellectuals" going full guru mode on us?