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Wokeness is on the wane almost everywhere
Wokeness is on the wane almost everywhere

Irish Times

time3 days ago

  • General
  • Irish Times

Wokeness is on the wane almost everywhere

Some say there's no such thing as wokeness. Others accept there might be such a thing but it's just an abusive right-wing jibe at those who have a sincere commitment to social justice. Others again say wokeness does exist and that it's a rigidly moralising form of left-wing identity politics. And there are those who believe that the word accurately describes everything irritating in modern life, from cycle lanes to health warnings on wine bottles. Lately there have been signs that, whatever your stand on wokeness, it's on the wane. Centre-left parties in different countries are wondering why they've lost the support of the working class, with many blaming an undue deference to a set of esoteric ideas about gender and race that those voters often find alienating or irrelevant. Even in Ireland, a place in thrall to extreme wokeness if you believe the right-wing UK and US media, last year's defeat of the family and care referendums suggested the alleged fever might indeed be breaking. Most critics define wokeness as a postmodern form of left-wing politics that rejects traditional Enlightenment values as being imperialist, patriarchal and Eurocentric. Now, though, a new phenomenon has emerged: the 'woke right' mimics many of the tactics of the 'woke left' that it claims to oppose. Its emergence offers a new perspective on the original idea of wokeness: if its methods and mindset can be so easily mirrored by those with opposite political aims, then perhaps the approach itself is fundamentally flawed. READ MORE [ 'Woke' keeps coming up in elections but it is a meaningless insult Opens in new window ] Like its progressive alter ego, the woke right claims that words are dangerous, and that vulnerable groups must be protected from them. Like its opponents, it deploys the language of psychotherapy to justify itself. In Florida, under a 2022 law written using terminology that uncannily recalls words previously used to justify 'safe spaces' on college campuses, schools are now banned from teaching anything about historical racism in the US that could make students 'feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress'. This in a former slave state where legal segregation continued until the late 1960s. Meanwhile, since coming to power, the Trump administration has shown more enthusiasm for enforcing language codes than the most radical cultural-studies theorist, running word searches through every official document and excising blasphemies such as 'diversity' and 'inclusion' wherever they occur, often with ludicrous results. And mobilisation tactics usually associated with left-wing activism such as boycotts and cancellations have been enthusiastically taken up by protesters objecting to LGBT-friendly messaging by brands such as Bud Light and Target. The woke right defines itself as an oppressed minority, subjugated and silenced by an elite liberal consensus. But its supposed commitment to free speech is skin-deep and its hypocrisy knows no bounds. JD Vance lectures Europeans about US tech companies' right to free speech in their countries, while his own government runs ideologically driven checks on the social-media accounts of US visa applicants. Unlike their left-wing counterparts, woke right-wingers don't have the intellectual ballast of decades of unreadable doctoral theses to bolster their claims. Some of their actions, such as bringing Afrikaner farmers as refugees to the US – are simply provocations designed to troll the libs. But others take the successful activist playbook of the past 10 years and put it to their own use. And both movements share a postmodern antipathy to the idea that there can be any such a thing as empirical truth. Rather than embracing free inquiry and institutional neutrality, both sides now use institutional power as a weapon in culture war battles. In doing so they validate the idea that might makes right, rejecting liberal democratic ideals. [ The Irish Times view on Trump's war on woke: an unwarranted interference Opens in new window ] Some on the left will argue that drawing such parallels is unfair or downright false because progressives are motivated by admirable humanitarian goals while the reactionary right clearly is not. As a letter writer to The Irish Times put it recently , 'progressive values are not censorship,' seemingly oblivious to the fact that they can be and it just depends on how they're applied. The idea that if your ends are justified (which in itself should be open to debate) then your means will be too does not have a happy history. One reason the ideological extreme right is in a position to instrumentalise these tactics so effectively is because the institutions it attacks had already ceded the high ground. Consider the disastrous performances of the heads of some of America's most prestigious universities when brought before a hostile congressional committee last year to defend themselves against accusations of tolerating anti-Semitism on their campuses. Their wan attempts to defend the speech rights of pro-Palestinian demonstrators were fatally undermined by their colleges' long records of failing to do the same for perspectives that had been deemed unacceptably heterodox by students and faculty alike. An early casualty of the emergence of the woke right is likely to be the marriage of convenience that had developed in recent years between some anti-woke conservatives and anti-woke liberals concerned about the rise of intolerant groupthink in universities, the media and the wider culture. Australian journalist Claire Lehman, for example, whose magazine Quillete was a flagship of this uneasy coalition for its dissections of the excesses of the progressive establishment, now finds herself disowned by part of it for her criticism of Trumpism. Both critiques are grounded in exactly the same principles. At its worst, woke leftism demands conformity to an ever-evolving set of progressive values. Those who question or fall short of these values, even inadvertently, are often publicly shamed or ostracised as racists or bigots. The woke right has adopted a nearly identical posture: conservatives who do not conform to its own orthodoxies on gender and race are dismissed as traitors, RINOs (Republicans in name only) or globalist shills. This growing trend of ideological absolutism across the spectrum undermines reasoned debate. Both the woke left and right encourage in-group loyalty and out-group hostility, fostering a culture of mutual suspicion and self-censorship. When disagreement becomes synonymous with moral failure, democracy suffers, and open discourse retreats.

‘Exploding inequality': The fight for the hearts and minds of Poland's left
‘Exploding inequality': The fight for the hearts and minds of Poland's left

Al Jazeera

time17-05-2025

  • Politics
  • Al Jazeera

‘Exploding inequality': The fight for the hearts and minds of Poland's left

Krakow, Poland – As Adrian Zandberg, leader of Poland's left-wing Razem (Together) party, prepared to speak to the large crowd at his rally in one of Krakow's central squares on Wednesday this week, he wasn't just getting ready to contest Sunday's presidential election. Speaking with a revolutionary zeal to the cheering crowd, Zandberg put forward his ideals: Quality public services, affordable housing for all, investment in education and science and the end to a toxic right-wing duopoly in Polish politics. Zandberg is one of two presidential hopefuls of Poland's left – the other is Magdalena Biejat of the Lewica (The Left) party. Between the two of them, they represent a political force that has long remained on the margins of politics. Sunday's contest is also a fight for the leadership of this movement which is popular with urban, generally younger people. Opinion polls suggest that the final presidential battle – first-round voting takes place on Sunday – will be between the two favourites, Rafał Trzaskowski and Karol Nawrocki, representatives of right-wing parties Civic Platform and Law and Justice (PiS) which have dominated the country's political scene for the past 20 years. Nevertheless, Zandberg was confident and full of passion as he addressed his supporters. 'I believe that we can build a different, better Poland. I believe that we can afford for Poland to become a country with decent public services,' he declared. 'That we can afford for people in the 20th economy in the world to stop dying in line to see a doctor. That we can afford for young, hard-working people to be able to rent a roof over their heads for a normal price, so that they can afford to start a family.' Calling the current system 'unconstitutional' and one which 'explodes with inequalities', he called for a change. The system, he said, 'is a threat to the future of Poland'. Like other left-wing politicians, he has been a staunch critic of the neoliberal views of the two main candidates, their lack of commitment to securing affordable housing for people (which is a constitutional right), attempts to privatise the healthcare system, and their seeming embrace of rising anti-migrant sentiment within the country. The day before, in another square in central Krakow, Biejat, Zandberg's main competitor for the hearts and minds of Poland's left and deputy marshal of the Senate, stood before her own crowd of supporters. Unlike Zandberg's Razem, her party, Lewica, is part of the ruling Civic Coalition along with the centre-right Civic Platform. Lewica's decision to enter the coalition government in late 2023 prompted criticism among some on the left, and has become the main bone of contention between the two leftist presidential candidates. Speaking at her rally on Tuesday, Biejat defended the decision to join the coalition as the right one. According to her, it has allowed her party to have a real effect on politics in Poland. She listed their achievements: 'It is thanks to Lewica being in the government that we managed to introduce a pension supplement for widows. We managed to introduce a pilot programme which shortened working hours. We managed to increase the funeral allowance,' Biejat said. 'We have changed the definition of rape, so that women no longer have to explain to the judges that it was not their fault that someone had hurt them. Thanks to us, parents of premature babies have received additional leave days for each week spent in hospital with a small child.' The Krakow crowd, albeit smaller than Zandberg's, cheered Biejat's declarations of support for the rights of women, LGBTQ people and those with disabilities and for affordable housing. The two-term presidency of the left-wing Aleksander Kwasniewsk, an independent but also one of the founders of the Democratic Left Alliance, was highly successful. Under his presidency, which ended in 2005, Poland joined NATO and the European Union and introduced a new constitution. Since his departure, however, the left has been in crisis. While the ideals of the left-wing candidates barely differ from those of left-wing candidates in other European countries, their appeal in Poland is limited these days as people have become disillusioned with immigration, and resentment towards the one million Ukrainian refugees taking shelter from the war with Russia has grown. According to Politico's latest aggregate poll, the two leftist candidates are each expected to win 5 percent of the vote. In the most recent European election in 2024, Lewica secured just 6.3 percent of the vote, the lowest score in its history. In the most recent parliamentary elections of 2023, the party secured just 5.3 percent of the vote. The question now is whether leftist parties can start to make a comeback. Some observers see signs of a possible resurgence – but it is fragile. 'Any result above 5 percent for each of the candidates [in the upcoming presidential contest] would be a good score. And below 4 percent – a bad one,' said Bartosz Rydlinski, a political scientist at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. He credits Zandberg with 'restarting the Razem party project' by appealing to younger voters. 'Recent studies show that he is competing with Slawomir Mentzen [the highly popular ultraconservative and free-market-enthusiast leader of the Confederation Party] to be number one among the youngest voters. 'Magdalena Biejat, on her part, represents women from the middle class, living in large cities. She is their mirror image. The election will show which one of them is more popular,' Rydlinski said. At the last presidential election five years ago, Robert Biedron of Lewica, who now serves as a Polish member of the European parliament (MEP), won just 2.2 percent of the vote. This time around, the left is expected to do better, but its appeal remains limited. According to experts, the left has lost much of its traditional support base to the nationalist conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, which attracted voters with generous welfare packages. In this presidential election, Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by PiS, is expected to take 25 percent of the vote in the first round, according to Politico's aggregate poll. This is despite the fact that Nawrocki has abandoned Law and Justice's commitment to social welfare and has embraced free-market thinking with a focus on strengthening an alliance with the US while distancing Poland from the EU. His main competitor,Rafał Trzaskowski of the centre-right Civic Platform, is polling at 31 percent.'The left is continuously trying to win back pro-social Law and Justice voters, but so far it has failed,' Jakub Majmurek, a commentator at the left-wing Krytyka Polityczna media outlet, told Al Jazeera. 'First of all, because these voters are often calculating and feel that the Law and Justice is a much more credible welfare provider than the weak left. 'Second, these voters are largely pro-church and much more conservative when it comes to social issues than the left.' A good result for the left in the Sunday election could have the effect of bringing left-wing politics back to the agenda, analysts say, and make some inroads into reversing the long-term trend of far-right and centre-right politicians dominating government. 'If the combined result of Biejat and Zandberg is around 10 percent, in the second election round, Trzaskowski or even Nawrocki will have to try to claim this left-wing electorate somehow,' Majmurek explained. 'That would be the best scenario for the left. Especially if both candidates receive a similar percentage of the vote. That would show that none of them is a hegemon and cannot build the left without the other.'

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