So...AOC made a strange comment talking about Francesca Hong's old posts, and her response was basically "woke 1 was crazy." The comment seems to have invoked a firestorm from those who still adhere to "woke 1", but looking into it, "woke 1" was the kind of idpol politics that I despised, where everything is super sanitized and tone policey. A lot of Hong's brainrot comments were "woke 1" stuff, like her going on about indiginous people and Thanksgiving being of the devil.
Woke 2, on the other hand, seems more up my alley. It's the "dark woke" politics of people like Kyle Kulinski (who often refers to himself as "dark woke"), and even myself. It's more the politics of provocation, "when they go low, we hit them in the nuts" and triggering the cons. basically, it means fighting back. Dont do the whole "ERMAHGERD HOW DARE YOU" type crap that quite frankly makes us look like a bunch of losers. It's more "shut the #### up you dumb ####" when dealing with morons on the right. And now THEY get all ERMAHGERD HOW DARE YOU! while we just continue triggering them.
If you notice the energy shifting since 2024 on that, yeah, you're not the only one. Even people like Nick Fuentes pointed it out. Republicans were the cool ones and now they're the offended snowflakes and we're pushing THEM around. And quite frankly, that's how it always should have been. We won during the Obama era with that strategy, and quite frankly, woke 1 was a mistake and source of much of what has been wrong with the modern left. Note how we barely backed away from any policy positions on marginalized people either. Because we dont have to. We just need to change up our rhetorical strategy and meet people where they're at, and meet the right where THEY are at. Rather than getting offended, we seek to offend.
Honestly I'm 90% for this. The only thing I will say in opposition to it is we gotta be careful with the most extreme stuff though. We live in an era of NSPM7, trump declaring left wingers terrorists, and directing law enforcement to investigate prominent progressives and the like. Honestly? I'd be careful about getting TOO spicy and doing stuff like sharing those luigi memes, or gullotine memes, or quite frankly, anything that advocates for or celebrates violence. Ya know? Youre just gonna get yourself potentially in trouble with that stuff. And that aint gonna age any better than woke 1.
Also, I wanna avoid the escalation trap that the alt right got into. They started out with dark and edgy humor, but then they kept taking it seriously until we ended up with an outright fascist, and its hard to tell if people actually support fascism or if they're just joking, or both. Ya know? Remember, I'm for a left wing TEA PARTY, not a left wing MAGA movement. One is about getting back to our roots, and the other is about escalating authoritarianism that threatens the fabric of our society.
It's fine if we add a little spice to our politics, but too much is problematic, ya know? Just saying that because it seems like part of the thrust of these politics does seem to be going in the whole "let's joke about violent actions" direction and uh...yeah. That's too spicy even for me. Being offensive without threats of violence can be funny, but yeah, we shouldnt cross THAT line.
And, let's face it, I don't want a literal communist revolution either. I know some on the socialist left seem to be edging that way, but I wanna make it clear, I'm a reformist. The point of criticizing capitalism isnt to abolish it, it's to implement the correct reforms that solve the problem. Ya know? Just because I feel like we gotta clear THAT too, and some of the ones most likely to lean into the extremist stuff are...well...extremists. We shouldnt celebrate or give cover for those guys. Yeah, again, we need a little spice to our politics, but we gotta be careful who we enable here. It's about balance.
So yeah...just wanted to discuss this. It seems like woke 1 died with 2024, and good riddance. The one silver lining of that mess. And while woke 2 is better, again, we should avoid the extreme impulses that some have with that stuff.
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