A mistake of the Marxist Left is the belief that society is systemically created and manipulated in order for the oppressors to opressively oppress the oppressed oppressingly. A mistake of many Marx (and Gramsci) appreciating Right is to fall into the same delusion, adopt the same framework/worldview, and engage in the same Praxis while expecting different outcomes.
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This is what people mean when they talk about "woke right."The idea that the entire culture is a system of ideology operating at the subconscious level that brainwashes the masses comes directly from the radical-leftist counterculture of the 60's.
It's also totally wrong馃У https://t.co/HZuEfCclt5 pic.twitter.com/twBayHNM01
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
IOW, many have accepted a worldview that was designed to achieve Communist ends.
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There is a segment on the right who saw the dominance of the left and have been studying the leftist counterculture literature. They accept the left's view regarding how culture and society work, and have decided to adopt the radical lefts worldview, methods and tactics…— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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as well as the leftists intellectual tool of "critical theory" in the service of achieving right-wing political ends.It's a huge mistake to adopt the left's worldview and it's understanding of culture because that worldview is the reason the left went insane from 2016-2022.
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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In short, Marx thought the Masses only accepted capitalism because they had been brainwashed into accepting the capitalist ideology. They thought the solution to this was to ruthlessly criticize capitalism (hence the term "critical theory") until the workers rejected it.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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MArx thought once the workers rejected capitialism he could go about replacing capitalist democracies with communism or socialism.The problem is that capitalism continued and the workers rejected Marx's criticism, so the commuist/socialists needed a theory to explian why…
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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the workers had continued to agree with capitalism even though the Marxists had (they thought) debunked capitalism entirely.They eventually settled on a theory that combined Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony with Frankfurt School theories about how society works.
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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Antonio Gramsci said capitalism created false consciousness in the working classes by establishing a complete cultural hegemony, to reinforce the system. He thought the entire culture was saturated ruling class ideology, which made that ideology the default belief for everyone pic.twitter.com/g5MGcVTsJ3— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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The Frankfurt School in wanted to understand how social conflict functions and why people adopt political views that (according to the Marxists) are not aligned with their class interests. To this end they turned to Freudian psychoanalysis and other forms of social analysis… pic.twitter.com/11y8EmOeOd— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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to understand why people refused to adopt the radical left's political program.They eventually concluded that the entire culture is essentially a total system of ideology that has embedded ruling class values, goals, beliefs, and interests into every aspect of social life…
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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creating a sort of mental prison that keeps the masses from revolting against the system by brainwashing them into accepting their place in the hierarchy, the authority of the ruling class, the legitimacy of the evil capitalist system that makes all this oppression possible.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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There are essentially three problems with the counter-cultural view:1. It's unfalsifiable.
2. It's epistemological bankrupt
3. It leads to an unstoppable, uncontrollable, and vicious cycle of self-radicalization by those who adopt it.I will explain why this is the case.
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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The problem with saying everyone else is brainwashed is that it's impossible to say what counts for or against this idea.There are many factions (socialists, libertarians, conservatives, liberals, woke, dissident right) how do we know who is brainwashed and who isn't?
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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If each group says the other groups are brainwashed, how do we settle the matter in a way that can't be dismissed by a group saying "of course you think we're brainwashed, the system brainwashed you so you think we're brainwashed but really you are the brainwashed ones…"— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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Worse yet, how can you tell genuine reasoning from brainwashing? After all, the counter-culture theorist can say that all disagreement and all counter arguments are merely expressions of cultural of brainwashing (and if you don't believe that theory you must be brainwashed)— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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If you say the entire culture is total ideology it becomes impossible to find a neutral standard by which to adjudicate that claim, and any evidence against the claim can be dismissed as an attempt by the system to manufacture false evidence to hide all of its brainwashing.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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The second point is that the counter-culture claim is epistemically broken.This is because if the entire culture is a system of brainwashing, then all the standards of rationality, reason, truth, and knowledge which are culture accepts must also be part of the system…
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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And are therefore complicit in the social and psychological conditioning that the system uses to brainwash the masses. This is what the 60's counter-culture thought, and it's why the postmodern attacks on truth were adopted by leftists in the 80's. They thought all the…— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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intellectual arguments against leftism were propped up by ideas about reason, logic, truth, and knowledge that were complicit in the capitalist system and thus needed to be deconstructed. The result is as Searle pointed out the adoption of anti-rationalism by the left. pic.twitter.com/oYGrzsDQD2— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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This antirationalism (men can become women, facts are social constructs, attacks on objective truth) is a product of the view culture is a system of total ideology. If you accept that claim, it follows that truth, logic, reason, knowledge, etc, are ideologically corrupt.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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This is exactly what the counter-cultural left thought, and it is what lead them down the path to the anti-rationalism that was part and parcel of the postmodernism that intersectional feminism, postcolonial theory, and Critical Race Theory adopted in the 80's and 90's.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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Finally, the view leads to unending radicalization. This process is described by Joseph Heath. When the critics activism and criticism doesn't lead to change, the critics begins to think he missed something. Perhaps he wasn't thorough enough, or deep enough… pic.twitter.com/m8KoSDRlF1— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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So he dedicates himself to finding what he missed, and seeks to locate the pieces of oppressive ideology which remain hidden in the culture. As a result, the counter-culture critic ends up analyzing using twisted logic to find evil ideology in even the most mundane areas…— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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The process of finding fault with ever more mundane things is how the woke left ended up saying that such things as milk, exercise, butter, band-aids, cartoon characters, paw patrol, applause, and front lawns are all "problematic" and "racist"https://t.co/deW9XDFiCc— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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Further, the search to find the remain pieces of hidden ideology (which the theory says *must* be there somewhere) results in increasingly odd, complex, and baroque theories as the critic tries desperately to show that the culture really is a system of total ideology…— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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and all of this continues in spite of the fact that all the previous criticism done by generations of theorists has not yet resulted in the socialist utopia.This is where we are now with the woke left. While the woke left sought to take over institutions, and succeded…
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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The result has not been the acceptance of leftist hegemony, the result has been a total loss of trust in the institutions, the rejection of wokeness, the election of Donald Trump, the boycotts of woke companies, and host of other backlashes against wokeness.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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The left had almost total control of government, the arts, entertainment, social media, the financial system, the education system, universities,k-12 schools, the mainstream media, corporate HR and advertising firms and most other social institutions on top of all that…— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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And the result was not a leftist hegemony and an acceptance of their views…the result was the election of Donald Trump, the repeal of Roe V. Wade, the boycott of woke companies, the rise of MAGA as a political coalition, and the taking back of school boards by moms.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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If ever there was a time when the theory of cultural hegemony as a system of control could be tested the last 5 years were it, and the theory totally fails to explain the results.The reason is simple: people are not helpless NPC's brainwashed by culture…
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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That picture is completely wrong, and it totally fails to effectively explain the last 5 years.So, the right should absolutely not adopt the methods, goals, and worldview of the left. This is a huge mistake. Yes we need to study thier methods so we know how they…
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
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operate and what we can do to avoid getting our institutions hijacked. but we ought not to adopt their understanding of culture, psychology, society, or anything else.It's wrong, and we need to reject it.
/fin
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) May 7, 2025
If you accept Communist premises, then you鈥檝e already accepted Communist ends.
