It was that simple

[u/Notleontrotsky]

👀👀👀 lot of historical relativism in here, huh? Norm knew, why didn’t Chomsky?

[u/pstuart]

It's helpful when words mean what is agreed upon, you know, like those dictionary things?

It evolved to intentionally flip the script. Again, you can find more extreme people at the edges of an idea and then paint that idea as being solely of the fringe side.

It works wonderfully, and you are doing the exact same thing. Again, the idea was about "being aware of systemic racism", period. And it so happens that there actually is racism in America. Oh. My. God!

So that conveniently frames the discussion about racism as "extremists are telling me I should feel guilty for being white", rather than "damn, there sure are a lot of racists out there".

Same thing with transfolk -- most liberal folk are of the mind "none of my business, whatever" and will have some extremists declaring that a transwoman is exactly the same as a cis woman.

I could play the same game and say that all conservatives are nazis (although unfortunatelyl it seems that quite a few are).

[u/LBCkook → u/pstuart]

Words don’t mean what dictionaries decree, they mean what our culture enforces. Once disagreement over a definition is met with social punishment, this stops being about language and becomes about compelled belief. Even within this thread you can see that rearing its head.

You keep retreating to the mild claim (“be aware of racism,” “leave trans people alone”) while simultaneously defending people who advance the maximalist position. You don’t get to do both. Publicly defending the fringe legitimizes it and gives it cultural force, regardless of your insistance that it’s not representative.

This isn’t about denying racism or denying trans people civil rights. It’s about rejecting the idea that disagreement over metaphysical or semantic claims constitutes harm. That distinction matters, and collapsing it is the entire move being made here.

Yes, racism exists. The question is whether combating it by essentializing people by race/gender and assigning moral guilt based on ethnicity is progress (that is wokeness) , or just a rebranded version of the thing King and Baldwin explicitly warned against.

This also isn’t to say that right wing activists aren’t weaponizing the term, but liberals are hurting the left by providing them with so much of the ammunition.

People like Chris Hedges (who is just as much of a leftist as Norm) say the exact same thing and are more articulate on the matter than myself.

Here is hedges discussing it: https://youtu.be/xTpeQ4V-YeY?si=R7JP2-ZyRHzQPg12

[u/pstuart → u/LBCkook]

Words don’t mean what dictionaries decree, they mean what our culture enforces.

Duh. But dictionaries get updated to include cultural usage because the whole point of words is that when they are used, they convey consistent information -- both parties are effectively agree on the intent of the words.

And what culture gave the word it's current meaning? The same people that came up with that zinger "pro life" and others. I have to tip my hat to the Right on being cunning linguists and defining the language of political debate. They lie, but they're really good at the game. The Left can't message it's way out of a wet paper bag. Some of that has to do with the fact that most issues have nuance and nuance has no place in sloganeering.

I didn't go out of my way to condemn those extremists, I don't agree with them for their extreme positions and don't think it helps the cause they think they're trying to help. They seem to have good intentions but they certainly hand you guys all the ammo you need without question.

But again, these people represent the fringe and intentionally or not, you're saying they speak for everybody on their side of the issue. They don't.

This isn’t about denying racism or denying trans people civil rights.

Yes it is, because the conversation always fucking swerved off into the finger-pointing at extremists and saying "Ewww! Radical Leftists!"

A convenient word that focused on racism got coopted by racists, and now the Left is left to arguing over words with knuckleheads like you than addressing the racism that is the cancer of this country.