Woke: A Culture War Against Europe | James Lindsay at the European Parliament
On March 29, 2023, James Lindsay delivered a short address before a conference at the European Union Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. This speech has been widely recognized as making the nature of the Neo-Marxist Cultural Revolution engulfing the West extremely clear, with a sharp warning to Europe not to follow in the footsteps of the Anglophone countries. In the two months since, this speech has gone viral and received incredible praise and feedback for its clarity and ability to articulate the true nature of the so-called "culture war" or "Woke" phenomenon threatening the West. Join him to understand what's happening all around us and why we must take it seriously.
I appreciate Lindsay's address, and I think his analysis is good.
Except for one thing: I don’t think that the doom-saying is justified.
The parallels Lindsay draws are excellent, especially as they point up the fundamental aspects of the doctrines being compared. One thing that might be missing, however, is the aspect of leadership. Is there a leader comparable to Mao or Lenin nowadays, one who could have a degree of influence even remotely similar to that which this pair had?
The reason I ask is that Lindsay, for instance, understands the doctrines better than do most of those I’ve met who actually hold these doctrines. At university, for example, I heard mostly woke-leaning slogans from students and professors; but I did not usually hear someone elaborate the tenets of the theories here in question as fully as Lindsay does.
The tenets, of course, are discussed at length in the authors Lindsay cites, but many of the students and professors who agree with these authors and their tenets are not able to explain them properly. Not to mention that many defenders of the theories either disagree among themselves about some fundamental principles or they have no cross-departmental collaboration at all and so stop large-scale practice based on the principles short.
This makes me think that there is more “sentiment” than there is “program” coming from the supporters of these theories. And after all, the authors themselves do not appear to be leaders in the way Mao and Lenin were. Most of them are academics, who are settled rather comfortably in academia. The power and influence they wield there is of course often detrimental. And that influence does spill out, maybe more often these days than ever before.
And yet I don’t think it spills out in a consistent or unified way. And unless there were a leader, or a small group of leaders, to channel these leaks into a steady flow, I don’t see how the doom-saying can be justified just yet.
But I could be missing something. . .
Phenomenal speech. The west is facing a cultural revolution in the same way China did 60 years ago. My father had a front row seat to both - here is a podcast featuring his stories: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/cultural-revolution-podcast-father#details