What is woke? It's a set of ideas with a lot of influence, but they're often ill-defined so this piece by @Psythor is very useful. In the spirit of continuing that project, here's what I'd add/ disagree with.🧵

1) James starts with “identitarian deference”, an idea coined by @MattBruenig to describe how “privileged individuals should defer to the opinions and views of oppressed individuals"

In this characterisation, if you're debating racism, those with first-hand experience of racism have a kind of trump card that beats everything else — facts, reason etc.

This is an extreme idea and one that has problems (what if two oppressed individuals disagree?) and as always we have a measurement problem. How many people really support this idea?

However, James is right that one of woke's ideas is that people directly affected by an issue ("lived experience") should be included ("centred" even) in debates about it.

James argues a moderate version of this is obvious ("Of course…views of women should carry more weight in debates over abortion") but that underestimates how much this breaks with the liberal/enlightenment idea that a speaker's ID has no bearing on the merits of their argument.

Also, even if the idea of including minority voices was obvious, it wasn't acted on. There's been a big diversity push in public life in the last 10 years, evident everywhere from politics to experts on TV. I think wokeness can claim some credit for this.

2) The next element of woke, as James sees it, is that it prioritises harm reduction over free speech. E.g. woke Twitter worrying about the *lack* of censoriousness since Musk took over.

Here I'd say yes, woke puts more speech into the category of "harmful" (as opposed to just offensive). Though there is a new general caution around mental health which I'm not sure is distinct to woke. (I notice even Tory MPs complaining about getting abusive social media.)

Also, I agree there's a fresh scepticism that the best ideas win in a free speech environment and thus scepticism about whether free speech is worth supporting. (My liberal heart bleeds at this.)

3) Next up is intersectionality, the insight that someone can be oppressed in different ways (e.g. black women may experience both racism and sexism at the same time). I agree this is a key woke idea and for my money, a useful one.

(James says this translates into an ability to work with those from opposing sides on particular issues, a connection I don't follow.)

4) James says woke moves away from individual rights towards group or communitarian rights. Is reparations an example of this? Or policies explicitly for black people? Would like to know more.

5) James argues “woke is sceptical of progress". Hmmm… I agree faith in moral progress is part of liberalism , and that woke is less optimistic. (A contrast to MLK's "arc of the moral universe…"). But I see scepticism in progress as a conservative insight (a good one).

6) Lastly, James argues woke-types value loyalty to their cause over accuracy, and I don't think this is useful addition to this list. Most political movements are like this. Does Fox News support "accuracy norms"?

A good test for all of these attributes is is whether they can be applied to other political movements. For example some see in woke an obsession with victimhood. But doesn't everyone try and win sympathy? (Even Russia after invading Ukraine says it's a victim!)

(Similarly, I'd say there's nothing distinct about woke-types trying to control speech; being self-righteous; disregarding due-process; not putting their points across in a persuasive way; being unforgiving; cancelling opponents and acting in pseudo-religious ways.)

As I say, this is a really useful project. As @helenlewis and Aaron Rabinowitz discussed on @ETVPod there's a lack of woke popularizers and writers. So we need this.

Four quick ideas I also think are relevant:
a) New definitions of racism, including one based on power (thus black people can't be Racist to whites)

b) Interest in outcomes vs intentions. E.g. Ibrahim X Kendi's argument that any policy — even a interest rate change — which increases racial inequality is racist.

c) @Yascha_Mounk identifies (usefully) one woke idea as the "impossibility of mutual comprehension" e.g. a white person can never really understand racism. This idea can be good (try harder to hear from minority voices) or toxic (only a black writer can write a black character).

d) Cultural appropriation – though I feel society has absorbed and calmed down about this one now. (Though worth noting James got criticism for not acknowledging "woke"'s origins in black activism.)

Finally once thing I notice about woke is what it doesn't seem to include. It focuses on racism, gender & LGBTQ rights but not climate or poverty, which is odd as woke types like @AOC & @OwenJones84 talk about these topics a lot.

Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 1, 2023.

There is something confusing going on with the trans debate. I'm talking about the idea — on both sides of the debate — that what happens in nature (and how it's been defined in science) should form the basis for our political arrangements.

For example, on the anti-trans side, there's the argument that a trans woman has the biology of a man and should therefore (to pick one issue) only be allowed to use participate in men's sports. Society should follow biology.

On the other side, you sometimes get the argument biological sex is a myth – which if you can prove would be useful as it would disrupt the "society should follow biology" model.

One of the points they make is that whatever criteria you use for defining biological sex (sex organs, size of sex cells, chromosomes, hormones) there are exceptions.

For example, women with AIS have XY chromosomes; some women don't have any sex cells; intersex people might have ambiguous sex organs (but be very clear in their identity); and basing things on hormones excludes biological women (e.g. runner Casta Semenya).

And so with this many exceptions and grey areas can we really say sex exists? Hence biological sex "isn't real" etc

But of course categories can still work with grey areas. For example it's hard to define to know when red becomes orange but that doesn't mean that red and orange don't exist. Many phenomena (most?) don't have sharp defining lines.

And on the gender-critical side the consequences of these exceptions are ignored. If the biology isn't a simple binary, "society should follow biology" might not be an ideal way to arrange things.

The fundamental problem with both sides when they go down this line of argument is there's no necessary link between nature and society.

For example, the scientific definition of a father usually about biology, they are (to use Wikipedia's definition) the "male genetic contributor to the creation of the infant".

But in society, if a child calls their step-dad "father" we don't object. In fact we allow adoption where there's no biological link.

There's a scientific definition of father and a political definition of father. And the second doesn't have to follow from the later.

Another example is marriage. It used to be understood as a male-female arrangement, as the way to raise children. Now that connection is broken.

Pronouns, sports, bathrooms, all of these are political questions, that will be worked out by balancing up conflicting interests, compromise and so on. But using nature or science as our guide isn't reliable, useful or necessary.

Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on December 30, 2022.

When Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was asked what the greatest challenge for a statesman was, he replied: 'Events, dear boy, events'. It's a famous phrase but at time when people are making predictions for 2023 its worth reconsidering.🧵

Unpredictable things happen, often upending everything. Think of the Sep 11 attacks in 2001. The credit crunch in 2008. Trump and Brexit in 2016, #MeToo in 2017, Covid in 2020, the Russian invasion and Tory implosion last year.

In fact one thing we *can* predict is that the big stories and events of 2023 aren't likely to be anything we can see currently.

One implication for those who work around politics is that you can't be too busy. If you fill up your schedule there's no room for the next big unpredictable thing.

Also, while you can try and find moments to lead the conversation, most of what you'll be doing is reacting. Get good at it.

Another lesson is that politicians seeking success have to understand the importance of waiting. I think of all the young Tory MPs quitting, or the Labour MPs like Chuka Umunna who lost patience with Labour under Corbyn and blew up their careers trying to start a breakaway party.

Part of the art of politics is putting yourself in the best position possible and then having the patience and faith to wait until the circumstances turn in your favour. People entering politics should understand this better.

In such an unpredictable environment, your best strategy is often what @Dannythefink once called the Travolta Micawber strategy – staying alive and hoping something will turn up.

Politics is one unpredictable event after another —good and bad. I remember a Labour supporting friend telling me, *promising* me, two years ago there would never be a Labour gov without electoral reform. And yet…

The lesson is: if you're down you might soon be up (take heart despairing Tories), and vice-versa (be cautious optimistic Labour supporters). All you can do as 2023 begins is understand this reality and get ready to do the best you can.

Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on December 31, 2022.

“Cheems mindset is automatically dismissing an idea on the basis that it cannot be done, or would be hard to do. Cheems mindset isn’t a wholly bad tendency in its steelman form. Knowing and being clear-eyed about the barriers that exist to implementing any policy is important. However, it becomes a deadly cause of sclerosis if it is the reflexive reaction to any new idea or policy proposal… Instead of reverting automatically to thinking “why can this idea not be done”, we need to cultivate a positive political culture of ‘how can this idea be implemented’.”

From Jeremy Driver

Much has been written trying to understand what Putin wants, but I think there is one aspect of his thinking we tend to underestimate.

Transcript and sources:

What is Putin up to? 

I’m not just talking about now, but for years, the West has been trying to understand how Vladimir Putin thinks. 

Well, when I was researching this topic I came across something kind of crazy: a book – published before Putin came to power – that appears to lay out his every move.

The invasion of Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014… Even the operations to support Brexit, and to seed social conflict in the US… It was all argued for in this book: Osnovy geopolitiki… [fails to read Russian]

Okay, in English: it’s called “The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia” [Online copy of the book]

The author was this guy, Alexander Dugin.

Yeah I know, he’s definitely going for the Rasputin-Bond villain look; 

But although the book was ignored in the west, in Russia, it launched Dugin’s career, with his ideas gaining prominence in Russian politics. [See this article by Chance A Nelson and this article in Foreign Policy by Charles Clover]

But this video isn’t just about this one guy or the current crisis in Ukraine. 

Rather it’s about something bigger, an idea that will help you understand the news not just now but in future too. It’s the idea, right here in the title of this book: Geopolitics.

In many parts of the world, geopolitics is highly influential but it’s less well known to us in the West, partly because — as we’ll see — it has an unexpected and dark history. And the way to explain all this is to go back to where we began: Russia.

The Ideas That Explain the News: Geopolitics

The word geopolitics is often used in a general way – something vaguely to do with international relations – but actually, it has a more specific meaning: the way geography affects politics; especially how countries act in diplomacy and war. [Wikipedia]

To get a sense of how this way of thinking works, let’s look at things from Putin’s perspective. This is what Russia’s territory looks like today, but go back in time to the original borders, and you’ll see two problems. [Wikipedia]

First: no natural defences. 

Unlike the channel that makes the invasion of Britain more difficult, or the Himalayas that have meant few wars between China and India, this area is surrounded by nothing but flat grasslands. 

Historically this region – the North European Plain – has been especially vulnerable to attack, with invasions from the Poles, the Swedes, the French under Napoleon, and the Germans in the Second World War. [As well as Dugin’s work, Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography is good on this]

Russia’s response to this weakness has been expansion, so that by 1900 its territory reached north to the Arctic sea; east to take in the huge frozen expanse of Siberia; south, to take in the Caucasus and Central Asia; and west – occupying the plains that today are Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. 

The idea was to create a buffer zone, a place to retreat from, with attacking armies slowly defeated by the huge distances and savage conditions.

The second problem is the lack of ports that can be used all year round. 

Because although Russia has thousands of miles of coastline, for many months the ports on this coastline look like this. In fact, there’s only one warm water port anywhere near Russian territory, here in this area of Ukraine called… [clips of “Crimea”]

Okay wait, I’m sure you can see where this is going, but first I need to tell you about one more important part of this.

Geopolitics is the connection of politics and geography but it’s not just physical geography – mountains, seas – but human geography too: demographics, religion, culture

This is what Dugin does in his book when he looks at Ukraine, arguing it’s best understood as four different regions. [Chapter 5 of Dugin’s book is the key section]

These areas, so his thinking goes, are Orthodox, and have more Russian speakers, and should be under the control of Moscow, whereas these areas, historically part of Austria or Poland, are more Catholic and pro-Western and should be split off to remove their disruptive influence from the other parts.

Like much of what Dugin says I don’t have time to go into all the dark implications of what he’s saying – I mean splitting up a country based on “ethno-cultural” groups is not an idea with a strong history of success. 

But the main point from a geopolitics perspective is that different parts of Ukraine have different attitudes towards Russia, partly based on the underlying demographics, something that will become important because now I want to bring together these various elements to tell the geopolitical story of Russia and Ukraine.

Okay, let’s do this.

At the end of the Second World War, the Russian leader, Stalin, remembering Hitler’s recent invasion of Russia across the north European plain, takes over this area, and for the next 40 years, Russia keeps it under brutal control.

But then in 1989, the USSR starts to crumble, and two years later these countries become independent. 

Putin would later call this moment the “greatest geopolitical disaster” of the 20th century. [BBC]

Note, not “disaster”, “geopolitical disaster”.

Before Russia had buffer states, but now many of those states would go on to join Nato, a defensive alliance, but one set up against Russia. 

As Putin put it later, Russia found itself in a position it could not retreat from.” A phrase that, if you know the geopolitics, becomes much more significant.  [BBC]

1991 is also when Ukraine – after 72 years under Russian control – regains its independence. But from the start, a clear geographical divide is evident in elections, and although this is simplifying things, in the years that follow it will be the west of the country that is more pro-European, and the east that is more pro-Russian.  

Putin’s approach in many other neighbouring countries over this period is to support pro-Russian leaders as they rig elections and consolidate power.

But in Ukraine, when the pro-Russian President tries to do this in 2004 he’s stopped by mass protests.

In the following years, the country swings between pro-Russian and pro-European leadership until things reach another climax at the end of 2013.

Mass protests are followed by a brutal government response, and finally the pro-Russian leader fleeing the country. At this point, Putin acts. 

News clips: ”We begin this hour with Russia’s invasion of Crimea.”

Russia invades, then annexes this part of Ukraine and sends soldiers into these eastern areas: the start of a series of hostile acts that is still ongoing.

Okay, so hopefully now you can see how geopolitics gives an insight on part of Russian thinking,

Crimea gives Russia access to the sea all year round; attacks stop Ukraine from joining Nato, keeping its rival out of this part of the North European Plain; and looking at the human geography reveals why these eastern areas are easiest for Russia to control, and why doing the same in the western areas would be much harder. 

But while all this is useful to understand, I’m not saying this means accepting all of Russia’s actions. 

Putin always argues that Russia is the victim, its neighbouring countries pulled into Nato and the EU until Russia is surrounded, part of a policy containment, that goes back to the Cold War and to centuries of Western actions designed to keep the Russian empire in place. [BBC]

But while he uses the language of defence – the reality of his foreign policy has been the opposite: invasion, annexation and aggression. 

Powerful countries – including Britain in its time – often dress up attack as defence. 

The danger comes when thinkers like Dugin use geopolitics to help excuse these actions, presenting them as the inevitable conclusions of a kind of secret science.

During the second world war, it was this version of geopolitics that became notorious in the west, with magazine reports talking of geopolitics being the “super-brain of Nazism”, and this contributed to it being shunned by western academia after the war.  [A Very Short Introduction to Geopolitics by Klaus Dodd]

By the time I was studying international relations at university, we never even talked about it

But look at Putin’s actions in Ukraine. While there are other factors in his motivation – the element we tend to miss in the west is this geopolitical thinking. That alone makes it worth understanding. 

And finally, geopolitics is worth understanding because it’s true that geography matters. It’s an important factor that shapes how things work, 

With the internet and globalisation — it’s easy to forget that space, real physical space — matters, and if we want to understand the news, we’d be wrong to underestimate its importance.

GENERAL SOURCES

A good introduction to geopolitics is Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall. Its language is a bit determinist for my liking (“Putin has no choice but to control Ukraine”) but very readable. 

Klaus Dodd’s work on geopolitics is very useful. I got a lot from A Very Short Introduction: Geopolitics.

Putin’s 2014 speech https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26652058

Useful article on Dugin in Foreign Affairs (pay-walled) https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-03-31/putins-brain

There’s a type of argumentative manoeuvre I find frustrating but which I don’t have a good name for.

I’m talking about whenever someone rejects the arguments of another, not by pointing out how they’re wrong, but by claiming they’ve been… well kind of brainwashed.

Examples include:

• “False consciousness” — the idea that the oppressed willfully support the ideologies of their oppressors
• Dismissing a woman who appears to be making anti-feminist arguments as having “internalised misogyny”
• The idea people need to “decolonize” their minds
• Attributing the left-of-centre views of college students to the influence of left-wing academia
• Blaming the tabloids for giving working class people conservative ideas
• Anything “The Media”

There are other arguments that dismiss but don’t engage the arguments of an opponent, with ad hominems being the obvious example. If you call your opponent a liar, hypocrite or in the pay of corrupt forces, then you don’t have to deal with their actual claims.

But what feels different here is the patronising tone. “No-one in your position could reasonably believe what you say you do so there must be some other influence at work.”

It’s not that you’re maliciously wrong, just sadly, don’t-know-any-better wrong.

I would call it a fallacy but it feels more aggressive than that. A brutal blanking out of what someone is saying.

It’s not that there is never a place for these discussions. Why do so many people believe in conspiracy theories? So many climate sceptics? Those are questions I’m interested in, but I just hope that such answers go alongside arguments that deal with the points of these positions, rather than simply replace them.

Very good conversation between Michael Ignatieff and Yascha Mounk in the latest episode of The Good Fight, especially this interesting idea:

“You can’t operate a political system without a premise of friendship between adversaries. Friendship, in the sense of, “We’re all Americans.” … and what has been terrifying in the United States is the replacement of a politics of friends with a politics of enemies. And this then makes any possibility of legislative comity just impossible. That’s why one of my friends has talked about a civil war, because a civil war is a state where a politician across the other aisle regards you as an enemy who is about to destroy everything you value most, and must be resisted by all means, fair or foul. That culture of antagonism is extremely dangerous to the stability of democratic systems.”

Essentially this is an argument for pluralism, accepting opposing points of view as legitimate and a valid part of the system.

I remember the first time I watched the UK Parliament from the press gallery being struck by how much the politicians seem to have in common. I was used to watching PMQs when the parties shouted at each other in fierce opposition but on this slow afternoon, it felt more like a members club. To be honest I found it repugnant but Ignatieff makes a good point here.

More at https://www.persuasion.community/p/ignatieff