The Woke Wars

In this Twitter thread, publication of which coincided with Trump’s overblown appeals to what all sensible people see as the worst in US culture – the writer strives to defend the freedoms of capitalism, the neutrality of money and the infallibility of science - by attacking what he calls the “Woke war on merit”.

“Woke” has been ripped from its roots in the African-American vernacular and is applied by the Right to the pretty much anything it wants to belittle or to demonise in order to protect or advance its political and economic interests. 

The term has replaced “political correctness” – which morphed into the once ubiquitous “PC madness” – a phrase so beloved of the right-wing when in hot pursuit of political advantage in the 1980s and 90s. 

 

The Woke – inasmuch as it can be said to be a definable 'thing' – is especially aligned with identity politics and critical social justice theory and praxis – much like political correctness before it was aligned with interest group politics. 

 

For the person who wrote the Twitter thread, the “woke war on merit” is actually an attack on “equality” -– by which he means "liberal equality” – by which he means, as far as I can ascertain, equality of employment opportunity which, because of the existence of innate differences in ability, results in “winners and losers". 

 

Liberal equality both enables and rewards merit, which is a real and measurable thing. The more liberal equality we have, the more merit becomes an important determinant – ie winners are more meritorious than losers and are therefore more deserving of tangible and status rewards.

 

People who are comfortably ensconced in secure positions in the academic, corporate, bureaucratic, technocratic sectors of the buffer class are obviously pretty happy with the neo-liberal status quo and will often defend that position by insisting they got there and deserve to stay there – entirely or mostly – on their own merit. Their success is due to their innate ability and hard work and is objectively demonstrated by such things as having a doctorate, getting published, and rewarded by being employed and well paid.

 

He cites examples of liberal equality that have been discovered and lauded by folk like him. 

 

First up we have capitalism, which he sees as a system that enables people to rise on their own merit –a sort of socio-economic helium that inflates them and allows them to rise above, and be distinguished from, the less meritorious. 

 

He fudges what capitalism is – especially the finance and the commodity-fixated corporate capitalism that dominates the world today – and just says it’s the “freedom to use one's property to one's own profit as one will” which sidesteps some mega issues, like private property, but okay, it is Twitter.

 

Nor does he comment on why it is that corporate capitalism has commodified equality and diversity and is busily making profits from selling it, and saving profits by using it to avoid engaging with genuine economic equality. The diversity industry may have been kickstarted by the Left but it didn't turn it into a multi-billion dollar global market.

 

Second up is money; because currency is “a neutral and universal form of capital"  which doesn’t care who you are and, as such, it’s a major driver of fairness, equality and justice. In fact, he goes as far as to say that “Neutral currency is genuinely anti-racist” i.e. with liberal equality, a genuinely meritorious person of colour will receive lots of it, which will serve to eradicate racism.

 

He does acknowledge that it’s all far from perfect but all we need is more opportunity for money to do its neutral, natural thing i.e. by some mysterious alchemy of market forces and individual merit -  gravitate towards the inherently worthy, and it will abolish racism by the simple mechanism of making some black people rich. 

 

As we say down here in the roaring forties, Yeah Right.

 

The Woke, who are opposed to liberal equality, are trying to destroy this neutral, value free currency, and replace it with the devilish device of social currency – an example of which is, if you are “cancelled” by the Woke banks will refuse to take your business and deny you access to currency. 

 

There is no questioning of course as to why banks have been able to position themselves as the controllers and dispensers of this apparently politically neutral and universal form of capital, or in what absurdist universe, the banks are controlled by the Left, let alone the Woke section of the Left.

 

The Woke also apparently hate science because science deals in facts which, according to the tweeter, are entirely unproblematic in terms of their universality and their application. There can be no dispute about scientific facts.

 

Merit counts a lot in science because “no-one’s pet theory is special”. 

Ideologically motivated doubters may point to the regularity with which science prostitutes itself to militarism, national interest and to corporate capitalism but that’d just be more Woke anti-science, or the exception to the rule that the scientific method is incorruptible and the universality of its results is its foundation and its validity. 

All hail the god of corporately-funded science.

 

And finally, there is the equality in the truth which is true because it’s the truth and the truth is true.

 

Apparently the Woke hate the truth, especially objective truths like test scores, demonstrated competence, having money, producing results, or  the "reasonable person" standards in law.

The tweeter loves them because he’s good at all that stuff, he relates to it, he’s paid lots of it and it reinforces his idea of what equality is ie – it’s what that lets people like him rise to the top.

And no doubt he can very easily answer all those awkward questions about what tests actually measure and why; how competence and results are measured and to what end; how it is that so much of that neutral, naturally levelling currency happens to gravitate towards persons who are demonstrably not meritorious, and by-passes others who demonstrably are; and how many times in history the reasonable person standard in law has fallen flat on its face – or if he can’t, well, he’s also pretty good at taking the piss.

In fact, he made quite a name for himself by somewhat unfairly taking the piss out of the Woke in American academia. IOW he enhanced his own merit by seeking to reduce the merit of others –not by means of utilising the neutral, infallible scientific standard that he lauds but by means of a hoax.

 

He and his collaborators in this hoax were not interested in, and hence did not tackle the reasons why some sectors of the social sciences, especially in the USA, have been channelled into a cul-de-sac of navel-gazing, individualising nonsense, nor whose interests that ultimately serves. 

I suspect at the heart of that little enterprise was nothing more scientific and academically defensible than enjoying taking a swing at a very soft target.