Great article in the Guardian about wokeism

I am not a Reform supporter. Being sick of woke doesn’t automatically make you a reform supporter.

Because you are, in part. The more you belittle, refuse to discuss and insult people who vote Reform, the more you’re pushing them towards that choice. Surprisingly, people don’t enjoy being spoken down to.

And you're calling me snarky. I've noticed this a lot with Reform supporters, it's like you're all reading from the same hymnsheet. You talk about calm and sensible discussions but I've never noticed you engaging in any. I've often asked people to kick-start the discussion but they don't.

I haven't noticed you attempting to engage with anyone in a calm and sensible manner. To me the thread looks like a bunch of Reform supporters giving 'lefties' a good kicking whilst complaining about how horrid the 'left' are.

Firstly, I made several points in that post so I wasn’t clear what you were referring to.

Secondly, you’d get further if you weren’t as snarky

Thirdly, I have tried. As have many others. We keep failing because you won’t engage with any of it.

I do t support reform, and am actually a Green Party member for my sins, but I also think people like that poster are, to some degree, responsible for pushing people towards Reform.

If she think speaking to people like that is going to do anything it turn them off and turn them away then I don’t know what else to say

Because you are, in part. The more you belittle, refuse to discuss and insult people who vote Reform, the more you’re pushing them towards that choice. Surprisingly, people don’t enjoy being spoken down to.

It's a small fraction of this thread that has been saying "how very sensible the hard right is", which is why it feels like a shoehorn to summarise the gist of the thread in that binary manner.

You were so excited to respond you missed the context. Why do Reform supporters keep telling other people that they're responsible for Reform's support?

Sorry, I assumed you understood what you wrote.

It’s impossible to have a sensible discussion with these people.

Start a sensible discussion. Lead the way.

It's a small fraction of this thread that has been saying "how very sensible the hard right is", which is why it feels like a shoehorn to summarise the gist of the thread in that binary manner.

I'm not trying to shoehorn anyone into anything, I'm summarising the jist of the thread.

Do you consider your understanding of politics to be more complex than "woke" or "the hard right"? If yes, why are you trying to shoehorn people into just those two buckets?

Plenty of reasons from all sorts of political perspectives (including progressive ones) to rue the sort of things the Guardian article highlights.

For a start, there's a large middle ground of people who dislike significant parts of "woke" left and of the "hard right" for the same reason. The authoritarianism.

I'd say that describes most of the MN posters who dislike "woke". it's not because they think the hard right is great. Many of them don't think any right is great. They are squarely left-wing, but liberal left not authoritarian left.

I can't remember but I'm not sure that's important. I think it's very important to tell the 'woke' how very silly they are and how very sensible the hard right are.

Did they start by defining “wokeism”?

Here we go again, referring to people who say anything remotely positive about Reform as ‘Farage’s minions’

Maybe they think Reform is the least worst option? Perfectly valid opinion to hold.

Lead the way with what exactly?

It certainly was a failure to engage with the substance of what I wrote , which (the substance) I clarified in my second post. Would you like to engage in the substance of that at all?

This whole thread is DARVO in action.

Why do his minions keep saying that?

@Lostcat

Absolutely not. This is a total failure to engage with the substance of what I wrote.

You may well have meant something different. But what you wrote, very clearly, was a complaint about people wanting to "reserve the right" to advance certain positions.

It wasn't about people who advance a position but object to disagreement. It was an objection to their right to advance X without also believing or stating some other thing Y that you think they should.

Let's look:

the right to "debate" the legitimacy of trans existence, while pretending they have no problem with trans people.

They want to complain about immigration, while refusing to acknowledge the broader injustices at stake.

They want to oppose environmental activism while claiming to care about climate change.

They want to defend a regime committing genocide, without anyone using the word genocide.

That's not about them objecting to disagreement. That's you complaining that they feel they have a "right" to make an argument in a way you dislike. You may concede them the right to say a, b, c, but only if they also say x, y, z.

But maybe you got onto the issue of disagreement later in your post.

You did. Was it to object to people who advance a position and then refuse to engage in debate?

Let's look:

They are also so entitled that they think it's the job of other people to persuade them to change their mind...

No it wasn't. The opposite in fact. Your objection is that they do, in your telling, expect argument back.

What should they have done instead? Well, it's:

[...] their own responsibility to behave in socially responsible ways.

Not only are they wrong to "reserve the right" to advance positions on terms they, not you, approve of, but they have an active "responsibility" to fall into line.

That's why I said your post suggests an authoritarian outlook. A closer reading, engaging with the substance of what you wrote, hasn't changed that.