Agreed, mobs and ignorance tend to go hand in hand. But when you say there is the potential for anti-woke to become just as ugly as woke mobs, isn’t that potential already actualized? As bad as leftist cancel culture is on social media, right cancel culture makes its way into actual policy. For example, the CRT hysteria on the right over the last year or two has resulted in book bannings and potential legal consequences which silence teachers from discussing the realities of race in America. I think by any measure, right wing populism, which takes anti-wokeism as its core tenet of belief, is far more influential and effective politically than left-wing populism, which tends to stutter and fail when up against far more powerful and entrenched establishment left. This is why Trump won and Bernie was edged out. True he represents economic left populism not cultural populism. But I think the center left wants to keep a lid on both and is generally successful; whereas the center right now just IS right populism, with anti-wokeism being one of the most influential ideologies both on the internet (like Rogan being the most popular podcast) and in real life (where the only question as far as the right is concerned is the anti-wokeism of Trump versus that of someone like DeSantis). I think this demonstrates that in fact the opposition to wokeism has made the choice to live and die by the mob, because that’s what it is now. And if you’re looking for ignorance, there’s a lot more of it on that side considering how anti-intellectual it often is.
Agreed, mobs and ignorance tend to go hand in hand. But when you say there is the potential for anti-woke to become just as ugly as woke mobs, isn’t that potential already actualized? As bad as leftist cancel culture is on social media, right cancel culture makes its way into actual policy. For example, the CRT hysteria on the right over the last year or two has resulted in book bannings and potential legal consequences which silence teachers from discussing the realities of race in America. I think by any measure, right wing populism, which takes anti-wokeism as its core tenet of belief, is far more influential and effective politically than left-wing populism, which tends to stutter and fail when up against far more powerful and entrenched establishment left. This is why Trump won and Bernie was edged out. True he represents economic left populism not cultural populism. But I think the center left wants to keep a lid on both and is generally successful; whereas the center right now just IS right populism, with anti-wokeism being one of the most influential ideologies both on the internet (like Rogan being the most popular podcast) and in real life (where the only question as far as the right is concerned is the anti-wokeism of Trump versus that of someone like DeSantis). I think this demonstrates that in fact the opposition to wokeism has made the choice to live and die by the mob, because that’s what it is now. And if you’re looking for ignorance, there’s a lot more of it on that side considering how anti-intellectual it often is.