Excellent lively and colourful discussion over @Slugger O'Toole ... was aborted after 645 comments.
Trying to get into the thoughts a bit late, it somehow left me abashed thinking of a biblical event of Babel ...
I did not intent to hijack Frank's diary so with excuses I will continue the posts in this new thread.
The End of Woke?
@Slugger O'Toole - by Frank Schnittger on January 28, 2025 | 645 Comments - Readers 3702 |
Here's where `woke' comes from | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette |
Given this origin story, some observers have berated progressives for appropriating a term coined by Black activists. Kelly's 1962 essay in the Times addressed this very subject. Titled "If You're Woke You Dig It," the piece argued that Black people living in a white world needed a way to talk to each other that outsiders would not understand. Each time a word entered the mainstream, he wrote, "the Negro knows that part of his code is being broken."
Kelly's point is powerful, but the etymology of "woke" doesn't quite fit his thesis. Even granting the proposition that a race can "own" a word, a better description of where the term came from would acknowledge that it's been traded back and forth.
To begin with, Garvey isn't relevant. True, the phrase appears in the aforementioned 1923 volume, but there's no evidence that "woke" was associated with him by the Black public of the day. Small wonder, given that Garvey was merely borrowing a term Black leaders had long ago adopted.
As for Lead Belly, his 1938 usage of "woke" was likely a repurposing of the key line in "Sawmill Moan," a song recorded a decade earlier by the great blues artist Willard "Ramblin'" Thomas:
If I don't go crazy,
I'm sure gonna lose my mind
'Cause I can't sleep for dreamin',
sure can't stay woke for cryin'.
Although on the surface the song laments a lost love, historians have suggested that the lyrics were a veiled protest against the atrocious conditions faced by Black workers in Southern sawmills, where Thomas and other blues artists often performed.
This interpretation makes sense, and not only because blues songs often included hidden meanings representing opposition to cultural norms, particularly norms about race.
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Ramblin' Thomas Sawmill Moan (1928)
When you don't define "woke" it has a different meaning for many ...
The Boundaries of Intercultural Dialogue in a World 'After Babel' | Tilburg University |
The conclusion will be that, although intercultural dialogue confronts humans with inescapable boundaries, communication with and understanding of the cultural other are nevertheless essential, since humans can only understand themselves through the other.
Wouldn't your article be better served by "The End of DEI" under Trumpism?
Why wokeness has pitched the left into crisis | El País - 11 Mar 2024 |
Criticism is emerging from unexpected quarters over the puritanical aspects of the current wave of political correctness that puts the focus on identity and difference
Woke is not what it used to be. For some years, the term was used to describe those who are sensitive and involved in the struggle against social injustice, especially in U.S. politics, but also in the politics of other countries following suit perhaps to a lesser degree. Woke was a label proudly worn by activists in pursuit of social and climate justice: from Black Lives Matter to the #MeToo movement and the fight against global warming. Woke seemed to advocate a new era of equality and justice.
Now, however, the concept is being turned on its head by a growing anti-woke contingent that, according to the laws of action and reaction, has imbued the term with the kind of contempt that discredits those progressive causes. What began as a kneejerk reaction from the right has now spread to encompass an element of the left that is dissatisfied with woke's current prominence, is concerned by what they consider its excesses, and its lack of universality. Woke is now used as an insult. The growing criticism of the woke from some members of the left is generating tensions, as reflected by authors and philosophers such as Susan Neiman, Umut Özkirimli and Stéphanie Roza, not to mention the exuberance of right-wing critics within the field.
"By subverting the word `woke,' the ultraconservative sector of the U.S. Republican Party managed to turn it into a kind of catch-all to criticize any progressive aspect of the political spectrum, be it education on racism, feminism, identity politics or even books they consider inappropriate," explains journalist and writer Lucía Lijtmaer, author of Ofendiditos. Sobre la criminalización de la protesta (Anagrama, 2019). Today, anti-woke, especially among the U.S. right, could be considered a movement in itself.
Hijacking a positive theme by turning it upside down labeling it as strictly negative. A war of words, or militarizing disinformation, propagandizing politics for decades now.
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Industrialized Disinformation
2020 Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation | Oxford |
The manipulation of public opinion over social media remains a critical threat to democracy. Over the past four years, we have monitored the global organization of social media manipulation by governments and political parties, and the various private companies and other organizations they work with to spread disinformation.
Our 2020 report highlights the recent trends of computational propaganda across 81 countries and the evolving tools, capacities, strategies, and resources used to manipulate public opinion around the globe.
We have entered the age of manipulation and a future with AI.
Extremists of all kinds ... "weird" subculture.
The r/incels subreddit, a forum on the website Reddit, later became a particularly active incel community.
Notable black pill posts were titled "Reasons why women are the embodiment of evil" and "Proof that girls are nothing but trash that use men."
It was known as a place where men blamed women for their inceldom, sometimes advocated for rape or other forms of violence, and were misogynistic and often racist.
2014 Isla Vista killings
Two misogynistic extremism attacks occurred in Isla Vista, California, Elliot Rodger said he wanted to punish women for rejecting him, and sexually active men because he envied them.
Elliot Oliver Robertson Rodger was born in London, on July 24, 1991, to parents Peter Rodger and Ong Li Chin Tye, of Malaysian Chinese descent.
>>>>>>> attended private schools in the UK
A year after the divorce, Rodger's father married Soumaya Akaaboune, a Moroccan-born French actress. Around this time, Rodger began showing difficulty socializing with others. As an elementary student, he was quiet and withdrawn; he struggled with speech, would whisper answers if addressed, preferred to write information rather than talk, and avoided peer interaction during recess. He often engaged in repetitive behaviors, such as making noises and foot-tapping, and was easily overwhelmed by over-stimulation.
Rodger had a difficult relationship with his stepmother Akaaboune, whose parental authority he rejected in favor of his biological mother.
Lessons From a Mass Shooter's Mother | Mother Jones |
A decade after her son committed a massacre, Chin Rodger is on a quest to help prevent the next tragedy.
When she got home, Georgia was headed out for an overnight with friends, and Chin decided to relax with a bath. A little after 10 p.m., she saw a text message from Gavin Linderman, the social worker helping Elliot. Linderman was one of several young counselors in LA and Santa Barbara enlisted by Chin to give Elliot life-coaching, augmenting the therapy he sometimes did with a psychologist. Chin had texted with Elliot that evening to celebrate the end of his semester, and she figured she'd catch up to Linderman's message later. Then he called.
"Have you checked your email?" he asked, his voice taut.
"No," she said, "I just got out of the bath."
"There's an email from Elliot."
An hour before, her son had sent out a 137-page document to nearly three dozen people with a terse message: "Attached is Elliot Rodger's life story, which explains how I came to be the way I am." Titled "My Twisted World," much of it was an extended tirade about his feelings of extreme social isolation and lack of sexual experience, for which he categorically blamed women. Quote from his manifesto ...
My mother and father had been married for a couple of years before my mother became pregnant with me. In fact, her pregnancy was an accident. She had been taking pills to prevent pregnancy, but when she visited my father on one of his film sets, she fell ill and the medication she took for that illness thwarted the effect of the anti-pregnancy pills, and so their lovemaking during this period resulted in my life.
He vowed "a day of retribution" and at the end described a plan to commit mass murder. Linderman had also found a seven-minute video that Elliot had just posted on YouTube in which he declared the same intent.
A mental condition of affluency?
Online-offline modes of identity and community: Elliot Rodger's twisted world of masculine victimhood | Tilburg University |
Elliot Rodger was glorified ...
How Elliot Rodger went from misfit mass murderer to 'saint' for group of misogynists -- and suspected Toronto killer | Los Angeles Times |
To the contrary I have always supported strong and outspoken women ... great benefit to the organization I led, and as colleagues in 35 years of volunteering in an amateur sport club. In the maternal family line, there were generations of loving and caring women with keen intelligence. No chips on my shoulder ...after WWII we lived in poverty ... since the mid-sixties and my college degree., I earned my living in computer engineering in The Netherlands before co-founding a family enterprise. Trump and his cabal will not infect my mind. An extreme, far-right fascist movement led by a mentally troubled narcissist.
Dark Triad
ScienceDirect - Journal of Research in Personality : The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy
Mass murderers want glory and fame. Somehow, we need to stop giving it to them. | Vox by Ezra Klein - 25 May 2014 |
Elliot Rodger is the most dangerous possible shooter for an age of media saturation. His chilling clips were on YouTube -- and can be replayed across a thousand nightly news broadcasts. His posts litter forums, and more are sure to be discovered. His family is connected to celebrities. He was handsome in a way, and a student at a sexy, sun-drenched school on the California coast. His madness was a weaponized mixture of rich-kid entitlement, aching lonesomeness, and digital cries for help. He seems less like a person than like a character from an artsy slasher flick meant to comment on inequality, misogyny, gun violence, and online alienation. He will be irresistible to the media. And that makes him a threat even in death.
"The media will make Elliot Rodger a threat even in death"
There's a reason the media rarely reports on suicides. Sociologists long ago discovered that suicide is contagious -- and media coverage helps its spread. There are guidelines endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Mental Health, the Office of the Surgeon General, and others warning against "inadvertently romanticizing suicide or idealizing those who take their own lives by portraying suicide as a heroic or romantic act." They also caution media outlets against credulously relaying the testimony of the deceased. "The cause of an individual suicide is invariably more complicated than a recent painful event such as the break-up of a relationship or the loss of a job," they write.
Some characteristics remind me of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting. The perpetrator, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who shot and killed 26 people.
Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Connecticut ...
School shootings: Making sense of the senseless
School shootings have altered the patina of seclusion and safety that once characterized public and higher education. Callous and brutal, school shootings seem to make no sense. However, case comparisons and anecdotal reports are beginning to show patterns that provide clues for understanding both the individual factors motivating shooting events and the characteristics of schools where shootings have occurred. We describe these factors and characteristics as the bases for six prevention strategies: (a) strengthening school attachment, (b) reducing social aggression, (c) breaking down codes of silence, (d) establishing screening and intervention protocols for troubled and rejected students, (e) bolstering human and physical security, and (6) increasing communication within educational facilities and between educational facilities and local resources.
Exposed: Riots Left the Emperor Naked
Exposed: Riots Left the Emperor Naked
In the second wave as the Black Lives Matter Revolt takes hold in Trump's USA and equally across the Western White World 🌍🌎
More below the fold ...
Wischnowski, low-key and measured, as is his personality, told staffers on Wednesday that the paper had made strides in diversifying its 213-member newsroom, boosting minority representation to 27% of the editorial workforce, about a doubling in four years. He promised more such hires.
The session turned intense and emotional. Some journalists could be seen in tears in their Zoom frames. Critics, black and white, denounced the pace of change at the paper, sharply criticizing both coverage and the racial and gender mix of the staff. Several journalists pointed out that the newspaper could muster only one male African American reporter to cover the protests and police response convulsing a city that is majority minority.
Thus men in power will strife to suppress "dissent" and pass legislation to curb freedom of speech ... in addition to censorship already imposed.
Woke A Catch All Expression 😆
What a state ... as the crow flies, south of the Show Me State Ozark hillbillies 😂
From the great state of Arkansas ...
Harris lost the election due to her "wokeness"
Because her interaction with both the media and public was so limited, she also never had to develop anything resembling a coherent political philosophy, being content to merely mimic whatever was fashionable in ultra-woke San Francisco political circles.
Frank's diary ..
"Much of American business depends on cheap labour from (often undocumented) immigrants who they can fire at will or at their pleasure without problems from unions, the law, or the authorities. Many are in menial jobs with poor pay and conditions most Americans wouldn't want anyway."
Blacks and Irish Immigrants: 1840 to 1860 | New York City |
The Irish integrated into southern society without abandoning their ethnic identity. They displayed their loyalty by fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War and in particular by opposing the Radical Reconstruction [and Lincoln's Iron Clad Oath] that followed. By 1877, they were a unique part of the "Solid South." Unlike the Irish in other parts of the United States, the Irish in the South had to fit into a regional culture as well as American culture in general.
In the Southern United States, slave owners considered the Irish less valuable than slaves, as they were not property, and therefore a better population to execute cheap and highly dangerous labor. They were often employed for construction projects, in the course of which hundreds and thousands of Irish would die, often paid only a dollar a day for their trouble.
The Irish and the Atlantic slave trade 1612-1865
