Tag: right wing (Page 2 of 2)

German-owned Politico publishes piece defending SS veteran

2023-10-05 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

The European edition of Politico, which is wholly owned by Germany’s Axel Springer conglomerate, published an op-ed by Keir Giles on the Yaroslav Hunka affair. Giles, a British Russia expert, claims that SS-Galizien was cleared of all crimes in a Canadian investigation (but not the Nuremberg trials) and that Hunka was forced to make a difficult decision because of the threat the Soviets presented to the Ukrainians. He dismisses the complaints of Jewish groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, even though it is Jews who were the Nazis’ primary victims. Every acknowledgement of Ukrainian nationalists’ complicity with the Nazi regime is Russian propaganda and no more.

If I didn’t know it was from Politico and not Euromaidan Press or Ukrainska Pravda, I’d have thought Giles’s essay was Ukrainian propaganda.

The Nuremberg Trials declared all SS divisions criminal organisations with one exception: the Equestrian SS [second link is in Russian]. This means that SS-Galizien was not cleared at Nuremberg. In an article (rehosted by the author on academia.edu—the actual site is paywalled and unavailable on Sci-Hub) for the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, the historian Per Anders Rudling makes clear that the the volunteer members of SS-Galizien were not mere dupes or heroic Ukrainian freedom fighters. Members of the division had to swear oaths to Hitler, and they were educated in Nazi ideology. SS-Galizien committed multiple war crimes against Poles and civilians. Ultranationalists affiliated with the Ukrainian government—especially Volodymyr Viatrovych, the former head of Ukraine’s Institute for National Remembrance—have attempted for years to play down the atrocities that fascist and Nazi-affiliated Ukrainian nationalists have committed.

I don’t get why some of Ukraine’s supporters have to bend over backwards to defend its worst elements. By doing so, it simply hands the Russians more material for their propaganda.

Bad pro-Ukraine arguments: “Svoboda barely got any votes” and “Jewish President”

2023-10-03 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

A common refrain among Ukraine’s uncritical supporters is that Kiev is free of far-right movements because extreme nationalist parties (e.g. Svoboda) barely got any votes in the last election. But this is a poor argument, since movements outside a country’s legislature can still exert influence on politicians’ decisions. For example, the British Conservative Party has been pushed further to the right because of more extreme parties and movements. The UK Independence Party has held only two seats in Parliament since its creation, and only one of those MPs won his seat in a general election. Despite UKIP’s lack of parliamentary representation, however, it was successful in achieving their main goal: withdrawing the United Kingdom from the European Union. UKIP accomplished this by pushing the Tories to the right on immigration. Not wanting to be outdone by Nigel Farage & Co., the Tories introduced more and more xenophobic policies designed to appeal to the base. Theresa May introduced the hostile-environment policy, designed to discourage migrants from settling. Tabloids like the Daily Mail and Daily Express launched incessant “crusades”—as the Express terms them—to drive out economic migrants from poorer EU countries like Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland. (The United States, on the other hand, seems to incorporate its radicalising elements into the party structure—consider the Tea Party movement and its eldritch offspring, the Trump/MAGA movement.)

The other irritating argument I come across is “Ukraine has a Jewish president, so there’s no more antisemitism now.” Sadly, I see this coming from the same people who would see the absurdity in the statement “Obama was Black, so there’s no more racism in America.” Zelensky’s election does show real progress in Ukrainian society, just as Obama’s election showed progress in American society. But that doesn’t mean that the work is over. It’s far from over when Ukraine has streets and monuments in honour of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, or when the American South is full of statues to Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson. It’s not over when the Ukrainian press bends over backwards to defend a member of the Waffen-SS who was given a standing ovation by the Canadian parliament, and it’s not over when people continue to sing the praises of the Confederate Army, even though they fought for the right to “own” other people and extract their labour.

Ukraine doesn’t need far-rightists in parliament for them to influence its social policy, and Zelensky’s Jewish background does not insulate the country from criticisms of its ultranationalist tendencies. Claiming otherwise is merely spouting Kiev’s state propaganda.

You should support Ukraine’s fight against Russia, even if your support is strictly harm reduction, as mine is. But for the love of God, please stop airbrushing over Ukraine’s far-right movements. Argue on humanitarian grounds. Argue on anti-Putin grounds. Argue on national-security grounds. But don’t pretend that extreme nationalism and far-right movements don’t exist. This does no one any good—especially not Ukrainians.

’Once a foreigner, always a foreigner’: How transphobia in the UK looks like xenophobia

2023-10-03 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

The UK has gained the epithet ‘TERF Island’ for good reason: the Conservative government and its supposed opposition have launched a sustained attack on trans people’s right to self-determination since Boris Johnson took control of Downing St, and Rishi Sunak is probably even worse than his predecessors, including Liz Truss, whose premiership had the lifespan of a mayfly. I focus on the Tories here for expedience, but Labour are no improvement: the pusillanimous Blairite Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has simply parroted the Tories’ views with slightly less vitriol.

As nauseating and pervasive as it is, however, transphobia is only one of the prejudices the Tories have expressed and encouraged over the thirteen miserable years they have been in power, either on their own or in coalition. Disabled people, working-class people and job-seekers, and migrants have also been persecuted, vilified and dehumanised by the Tory regime.

Russia’s Own-Goals: How Moscow Fuels Ukrainian Ultranationalism and Far-Right Movements

2023-10-02 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

Last week, I talked about how Ukraine constantly scores own-goals by doubling down on extreme nationalism, Nazi apologias, and other toxic tendencies that seem to give credence to Russian propaganda about Ukraine’s being a “Nazi state.” I would be remiss, however, to ignore Russia’s role in the rise of reactionary Ukrainian chauvinism. After all, it is Russia that initiated the Ukrainian crisis, starting with its annexation of Crimea and ending with the full-scale “special military operation” launched last year.

By attacking Ukraine, Russia is enabling Kiev’s most chauvinistic, anti-Russian politicians and activists to pass new laws restricting the use of the Russian language, openly display Nazi and fascist imagery, defend the reputation of Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera, marginalise predominantly Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the South and East, launch dumb campaigns to “cancel” the use in English of Russian names for Russophone cities like Kiev and Kharkov (a practice I have not adopted here), lobby international theatres and concert halls to ban Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, pulp thousands of Russian and Russian-language books from Ukrainian libraries, encourage the harassment of people who use “non-state languages” (that is, Russian), go on witch-hunts for fifth columnists who are merely critics of the current regime, ban opposition sites like Strana from being accessed within Ukraine, rehabilitate the reputation of the Galician SS, hire military spokeswomen who call Russians “Mongols” who aren’t “real Europeans” with “real European values,” name streets after Bandera and other Nazi collaborators, and make threatening promises to cleanse Crimea of all Russian cultural or linguistic influence should it fall back under Kiev’s control. Because of Russia’s attacks, many Ukrainians are adopting nationalistic views—the kinds the Russians loathe for their unsavoury association with Nazism and fascism—to distinguish themselves from their larger neighbour. Ukraine has formed its entire post-Maidan identity around Not Being Russia—and Russia has contributed to it with its actions. It is hard to want to have a close relationship with Russia when Putin is behaving the way he is. He is merely inflaming the thing he has supposedly set out to fight. If he wants to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, he is doing a miserable job at it.

None of this is to excuse Ukrainian politicians for their vicious chauvinism, especially when it is directed at Ukrainian citizens who refuse to adopt the ultranationalism imposed by the post-Maidan governments. I will never defend the Kiev regime beyond supporting its military victory over Russia. But Russia’s actions have contributed to the noxious extremism emanating from Kiev. The biggest losers in all this are the Ukrainians, especially those in the south and east. The Russians bomb their cities and abduct their children, but the Ukrainian authorities have no desire to integrate them into its increasingly ethnonationalist, chauvinistic state.

If Russia wants to put a stop to Nazism in Ukraine, if it wants to regain its influence on the world stage, if it wants to prove its strength, it must withdraw itself from this needless war of attrition. It is time for Russia to remove its troops and come to the negotiation table. Ukraine’s counteroffensive has fizzled, but that does not mean that the Russian “special military operation” is successful. Not by a long stretch. This—and only this—is how Putin can “denazify” Ukraine.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right” is a cliché, but it’s an accurate one

2023-09-27 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

Apologias for, and minimisation of, Russian and Ukrainian fascist and far-right movements span the political spectrum. Tankies and Christian nationalists alike present Russia as a strong counterpoint to Western—well, American—dominance, either because of its foreign policy or its repudiation of social-libertarian values like feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and due process. Liberals, progressives, and centrists view Ukraine as liberal, progressive David fighting off the authoritarian Russian Goliath. And neoconservatives who have never got over the Cold War simply hate Russia reflexively and want to see it challenged once and for all. These varied interests have made strange bedfellows out of Moscow’s and Kiev’s supporters—but one thing ties together uncritical supporters of the Ukrainians or Russians: a refusal to acknowledge far-right and fascist movements in either country.

The pro-Ukrainian/anti-Russian coalition

Liberals, centrists, moderates, progressives, certain leftists, Brexiteers, neo-Nazis, anti-imperialists, white nationalists, and neoconservatives contort themselves to defend, excuse, or minimise fascist and far-right movements in Ukraine. This is clear through the motley band of countries that supports Ukraine or condemns Russia: the centre-left American, Spanish, German, and Canadian governments; the centrist French government; the centre-right British government; and the right-wing Italian and Polish governments. Poland’s social policies, especially for LGBTQ+ people, are only fractionally better than Russia’s—though at least Poles have freedom of movement thanks to the Schengen treaty.

Although liberals, progressives, and leftists stand for freedom of speech and expression and rightly oppose reactionary political movements in the West, they are unaware of, or choose to ignore, Ukraine’s far-right movements and their influence over the country’s civil society.

The pro-Russian/anti-Ukrainian coalition

Tankies, certain non-tankie leftists, paleoconservatives, progressives, soi-disant libertarians, neo-Nazis, multipolarists, anti-imperialists, Trumpers, Brexiteers, white nationalists, and alt-righters contort themselves to defend, excuse, or minimise fascist and far-right movements in Russia.

Ironically, rightists who defend Russia will raise the matter of Ukrainian far-right movements while promoting Christian nationalism, homophobia and transphobia, misogyny, and other reactionary ideas that sound just as fascist as they claim the Ukrainians are. Many tankies, meanwhile, will profess to be against gendered discrimination and right-wing religious movements, but excuse Russia’s repressions because it is a bulwark against American and NATO hegemony.

Right-libertarians’ motivation is a bit different—they are obsessed with minimising government spending if it has no direct effect on their lives, and so they focus on highlighting Kiev’s failings to stop their governments from providing Ukraine with weapons or humanitarian aid. In many cases, their motive is primarily selfishness, rather than true support for Russian policies. “Libertarians” who do actively support Russia are better called paleoconservatives.

Whitewashing Ukraine

The Kiev government has a tendency of scoring own-goals and appeasing nationalist movements, but it is far from being a Nazi regime. It is a worker-unfriendly neoliberal state whose social policies are usually more progressive than Russia’s. It is a wobbly democracy riddled with corruption, ethnic discrimination, and polarisation, but it can probably be fixed in the next decade under competent leadership.

Ukraine more than deserves support to fend off the Russian invasion—but that doesn’t mean that we can dismiss the relationship between Ukrainian nationalism and fascist movements. We do not have to defend the Azov battalion or claim that Ukrainian SS troops were victims of the Nazi regime when it is they who helped slaughter countless Jews as a trial run for the gas chambers.

Zelensky is no Nazi. But the Ukrainian government has been too spineless, too afraid of the far-right movements, too stubborn to admit that Ukrainian nationalism has an unsavoury side, to call these movements out for what they are. This is doubtless because Russian propaganda has unfairly caricatured Ukraine as a Nazi regime.

Whitewashing Russia

As for Russia, its position is indefensible. Any legitimate criticisms the Putin regime raises about far-right movements in Ukraine are hollow, since Russia itself is a far-right state. Nazis are primarily characterised as enemies of Russia, rather than persecutors of vulnerable minorities, including Jews, Roma and Sinti people, disabled people, queer and trans people, and political dissidents.

Putin persecutes many of the same populations that the Nazis did, especially queer people and dissidents, as well as Ukrainians who do not want to be “governed” by Russia (which is most of them). Paleoconservatives, alt-righters, Trumpers, and some white nationalists understand this—and this is why they want to cut aid to Kiev and serve as mouthpieces for the Kremlin. As for the tankies, multipolarists, and other leftist Russia apologists, they couldn’t care less what authoritarian regimes do to their people or the countries they attack as long as they’re rivals of the US and its allies.

Concluding remarks

Leftists—usually anarchists, Trotskyists, and democratic socialists—appear to be the only ones who condemn oppressive movements and policies in both Ukraine and Russia. This is the morally correct position to take.

We cannot tolerate fascism from either the Russian or Ukrainian side. It is possible to show solidarity with Ukraine and provide them support without sweeping its problems under the rug. We can reject linguistic and social discriminations against Russian-speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Russians without defending Putin’s monstrous actions in Ukraine. We can repudiate the excesses of Ukrainian nationalism while supporting their resistance against Russian domination. And we can defend Russian dissidents, as well as critics of the Ukrainian government, without assuming that any of these people support repression from either Moscow or Kiev.

Ukraine’s Own-Goals: How Kiev Unwittingly Feeds the Russian Propaganda Machine

2023-09-26 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

Although Ukraine is much further along the path to a functioning democracy than Russia is, it still has disturbing authoritarian, ethnonationalist tendencies—and many of those tendencies have caused Kiev to score own-goals, thereby feeding the Russian propaganda machine¹—and possibly leading many Ukrainians to collaborate with Vladimir Putin’s tyrannical regime.

Putin’s pretexts for invading an independent country are bogus. No, Ukraine is not conducting a genocide against ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The Ukrainian government is not led by Nazis. And the presence of the US and NATO in Ukraine is not an existential threat to the country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Nonetheless, the refusal to acknowledge the country’s role in World War II, its rigid linguistic policies, and its suppression of dissent contradict the image of progressive democracy that Ukraine wants to project. What’s more, Ukraine’s embrace of ultranationalist policies is a threat to the country’s national security.

Erratum: In an earlier version of this post, I referred to Ukraine’s interim minister of free speech and information as “Nestor Shufrych.” Shufrych is the official who was replaced after being accused of high treason. The interim minister is Yevgeny (Yevhen) Bragar.

There is no such thing as the “collective West”

2023-09-15 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

If I see the expression “collective West” in English-language articles, I tune out immediately, since I know that I’m going to encounter undiluted Kremlin propaganda, either from Russians or foreign admirers of the Putin regime, including tankies, vatniks, so-called libertarians, and ultraconservatives, and it often comes alongside disparaging attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people, feminists and others who challenge the patriarchy. For some, it reflects a hostility towards liberalism—that is, non-authoritarian politics, rather than the European sense of deregulated free markets or the American sense of barely-left-of-centre views. And for others, it is merely a catch-all term for the United States, NATO, the European Union, and possibly Australia and New Zealand alongside them.

But this unity is a myth—and Russian officials and propagandists know full well that there is no singular “Western consensus.”

Here’s why.

Trumpers, Tories, and TERFs—oh my!

Russian propaganda may portray Ukraine’s supporters as libertine, decadent states devoid of conservative “family values,” but this is not in keeping with these countries’ domestic policies. We’ll use four countries as examples: the United States, Poland, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Though I’ll be sticking to four countries, we could easily substitute France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands, all of which have right-wing governments or nascent far-right movements.

United States

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of American politics knows about our extreme polarisation. The idea that this country is a free-for-all feminist and LGBTQ+ paradise is easily disproved by the spate of anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-woman bills, laws and executive orders pushed through by doctrinaire Republican legislators, Supreme Court “justices” and state governors over the past two years. Our rights may have advanced in more progressive states like California, Massachusetts, and New York, but they have regressed in red states, including Texas, Missouri, and Florida.

Russian officials will find a lot in common with governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, all of whom have launched crusades against LGBTQ people, Black activists, and anyone else who challenges the established conservative order. And Donald Trump is back on the campaign trail, this time using culture-war issues like trans youth to keep his ultraconservative voters engaged—and ensure that he doesn’t lose support to DeSantis and other Republicans who appeal to Christian fundamentalists.

And although some “America First” Republicans (e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene) have questioned the need to provide Kiev with more military support, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives has approved multiple military-aid packages.

Poland

Poland, one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, is an extremely conservative Roman-Catholic-dominated country not known for its LGBTQ+ friendliness or feminist attitudes. It’s probably a hair away from Russia in this regard—the dictatorial repression may not be as extreme, but the conservative environment is still suffocating for queer Poles. The country even has “LGBT-free zones” (mostly in the south-east): something unthinkable even in the reddest of red states, at least not formally. There are liberal and progressive Poles, just there are liberal and progressive Russians and Italians, but they do not control the national government. Poland is considered one of the worst countries in the EU for LGBTQ+ people, and yet it works closely with Kiev in the anti-Putin war effort.

Italy

Italy is an unwavering supporter of Ukraine’s efforts to repel the Russian invasion. It is also led by Giorgia Meloni, who is the furthest-right Italian leader since Benito Mussolini. Her Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party is an outgrowth of old-school fascist movements. Far-right politicians in other countries—for example, the leaders of Germany’s AfD and the French Rassemblement National (National Rally, formerly Front National)—have balked at providing Kiev more support, but Meloni is not among them.

Although Italy is a safer place for LGBTQ+ people than Russia or Hungary, it has the fewest legal protections or rights for LGBTQ+ people in Western Europe; it lags far behind countries like Germany, France, the UK and Spain, which have all legalised same-sex marriage, allow for legal transition, include hate-crimes protection, and more.

United Kingdom

The Conservative-led British government has consistently supported Ukraine throughout the full-scale invasion, but their support for Kiev in no way suggests that the country is as liberal or progressive as Russia claims it is—unless they mean “classical liberal,” rather than “non-authoritarian” or “social libertarian.” Some of the loudest pro-Ukraine media outlets are also some of the most conservative, especially the Daily Mail and Daily Express, along with the more genteel Times and Telegraph.

Although British politicians are comparatively less hostile toward queer and trans people than their Polish, Italian, or Russian counterparts, there has been an alarming rise of homophobic and transphobic rhetoric coming from both Tory and Labour politicians, as well as the press. Some Tories, such as Suella Braverman of the Home Office and the “Equalities” minister Kemi Badenoch, are especially hostile. Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were not known for their social progressivism either. The days of David Cameron and Theresa May are long over. The UK, once listed as the most LGBTQ+-friendly country in Europe, no longer has that reputation—it has been slipping in the rankings over the past eight years.

It’s also important to remember that the UK has been the primary exporter of homophobia and transphobia. For example, the “anti-buggery” laws in African and Caribbean countries like Nigeria, Jamaica and Uganda are colonial leftovers that the locals now see as their traditional values. Before “muscular Christianity” arrived on the African continent, many cultures, such as the Igbo of what is now Nigeria, had more fluid views of gender.

Why the “collective West” charge is disingenuous

The Russians’ condemnation of the “collective West” has nothing to do with the political composition of NATO or EU states. It doesn’t have jack shit to do with LGBTQ+ rights or “moral decay.” It is just an excuse to legitimise its attempts to annex the entirety of Ukraine to the Russian state. No self-respecting leftist should use the “collective West” narrative; it’s merely self-serving Kremlin waffle.

In fact, American evangelicals have worked with Russian Orthodox fundamentalists to persecute queer and trans Russians. The media has covered Russia’s exploitation of our internal tensions for its own geostrategic interests—for example, the “Heart of Texas” and “Black Matters” Facebook groups that popped up during the 2016 election.

There is no such thing as the collective West—only countries that aren’t lining up to do Russia’s bidding.

Dump Bandera!

2023-09-10 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

Follow-up, 2023-09-14: Apparently the CIA link was a translation of a Russian-language magazine that was published later—but that still doesn’t excuse Bandera or his collaboration with the Nazis. Dump Bandera.

Here are some better links about Bandera and his work with the Nazis, primarily from Jewish organisations—that is, Bandera’s primary victims:

Nazi collaborator monuments in Ukraine, Lev Golinkin for The Forward
The Cult of Stepan Bandera, blog post by Sheldon Kirshner for The Times of Israel
World Jewish Congress news release condemning the Kiev municipal government for naming a street after Stepan Bandera
A Foreign Policy piece by Josh Cohen warning Ukrainian leaders to avoid tying themselves to Nazi collaborators like Bandera
Binoy Kampmark for the Eurasia Review about Bandera’s collaboration with the Third Reich
A few pieces from Haaretz, a typically pro-Ukraine Israeli newspaper, reporting about Bandera’s collaboration with the Nazis

***

I wish Ukrainian nationalists—as well as some supporters of the Ukrainian cause, including Russian liberals—would stop holding up Stepan Bandera as a morally blameless symbol of resistance against Russian and Soviet domination. The man was a spy for the Nazis, according to a CIA report that was released in 2006. This isn’t fake news or Russian propaganda. It’s right there on cia.gov!

The Russians’ claims that all Ukrainians are “Banderites” who want to bring back the Third Reich are scurrilous lies designed to discredit Ukraine. But it would also be dishonest to claim that Bandera was anything but a Nazi collaborator.

Fuck Bandera. There are better people to look up to.

Russia–Ukraine link roundup, 2023-08-21

2023-08-21 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

I don’t agree with everything said, but these are all thought-provoking pieces about the Russia/Ukraine war, the events leading up to the full-scale invasion, tensions within Ukraine and other related topics. I’ve included a mixture of views, though I have consciously excluded work by Russian or Ukrainian nationalists, all state-run media, and anything that actively promotes the Russian invasion. (Admittedly, my links lean toward being critical of the Ukrainian government, but that’s only because most anglophone media is… very much uncritical of its policies.)

Socialists and the War in Ukraine, League for the Fifth International, Workers’ Power (probably the closest thing I’ve found to my position—yes, arm Ukraine to fend off Russian aggression, but don’t support the government’s policies)

The Rise and Role of Ukrainian Ethnic Nationalism, by Anatol Lieven, The Nation

Persecuting Ordinary Russians Won’t End Putin’s War, by Branko Marcetic, Jacobin

Answer to the article “War and Ukraine’s Anarchists,” by the Combat Organisation of Anarcho-Communists (in Russian—I used Google Translator for most of it)

Putin in anti-trans, anti-gay drive, by Rhodri Evans, Workers’ Liberty

The unique extra-parliamentary power of Ukrainian radical nationalists is a threat to the political regime and minorities, by Volodymyr Ishchenko, Foreign Policy Centre

Gone Rogue: The Left and Ukraine, by Joseph Grosso, CounterPunch

Multipolarity, the Mantra of Authoritarianism, by Kavita Krishnan, Z Network

Rampant Russophobia takes us down a dark path, by Anatol Lieven and George Beebe, Responsible Statecraft

What We Lose When We “Cancel” Russian, by Caroline Tracey, Zócalo Public Square

Israel lobby group ADL rehabilitates Hitler’s accomplices in Ukraine, by Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada

Russia, Ukraine, and Lasting Peace in Europe, by Nicolai Petro, Transatlantic Policy

The Tragedy of Ukraine, by Nicolai Petro, The Transnational

Why I hate both the “woke” and “anti-woke” movements

2023-07-01 / The Woke Contrarian / 1 Comment

Both woke and anti-woke activists are tiresome scolds who need to shut the fuck up and stop treating people as census designations rather than complex human beings. All they see is categories: Black, White, Male, Female, Gay, Straight, Trans, Non-Trans.

I am fed up with the woke movement. But I hate the anti-woke movement even more, and I think a lot of “wokism” is a reaction against the rise of far-right movements in America, Britain, Europe, and elsewhere.
Why do I hate these movements? Because both sides focus on what people are, rather than who they are.
Sexists (which includes homophobes and transphobes, not just misogynists) and racists treat their targets as something, rather than somebody. Race is a what; cultural expression is a who. Sex is a what; gender is a who. If you fixate on race and sex, rather than culture or gender, you are likely to make hasty generalisations that flatten the complexity of human experience. I don’t trust anyone who calls himself a “feminist” and uses sex as a way to define the righteous and the damned, and I don’t trust anyone who calls himself an “antiracist” and uses race as a dividing line between the sinners and the saints.
TERFs are not feminists by any reasonable definition. They are reactionary fascist-adjacent ideologues who are just as sexist as their conservative counterparts. Their mentality is “penis = evil,” which is just the inverse version of “vagina = irrational hysteric.” Ironically, some woke activists end up sounding like TERFs, though their focus seems to be more on skin colour.
You can be antiracist or culturally inclusive without making excuses for oppressive behaviour by marginalised groups. I abhor Islamophobia, but I’m not going to defend Islamism or any other form of religious extremism. Islamists, along with other religious fundamentalists, deserve to be marginalised because their views are incompatible with a functioning civil society. This is why I have no patience for leftists who go out of their way to defend right-wing fundamentalist states like Iran. They’ll rightly criticise evangelical Christian nutjobs but give a free pass to their Islamic fundamentalist counterparts who ban women from being educated or cut people’s heads off for being gay. Just because Muslims, whether liberal, moderate, or extreme, are a minority in Europe and the Americas doesn’t mean that fundamentalist Middle Eastern or African governments are beyond criticism.
Sometimes I want to read criticisms of the woke movement, but these criticisms tend to come alongside a heaping dose of racism and sexism, including hostility toward LGBTQ people, a dismissiveness toward people who have real grievances about racial discrimination, and other forms of intolerance. All I can think about is “they are so obsessed with what I am that I don’t think they’d even see me as a who, and they hate me just for that.”
When I read woke writing, I come across essentialist bullshit about how if you’re straight, white, male, American, Christian, British, European, or non-trans, you’re the devil. Bullshit. This is the right’s hateful rhetoric inverted as a form of purported self-protection. And all I can think about is “they are so obsessed with what I am that I don’t think they’d see me as a who if I belonged to a ‘privileged’ demographic. And because I’m ‘multiply marginalised,’ they love me just for that.”
It is virtually impossible for me to read anything in the media about racism or sexism without my skin crawling.
Classism is a common feature in both woke and anti-woke discourses. A lot of it looks like elites playing off each other, though I don’t mean that in a class-reductionist way.
Claiming that any group of people, including white people, are inherently evil because of their ancestry or skin colour is counterproductive, essentialist garbage that should be wiped out of any social justice movement.
If I excluded everybody but LGBTQ+ non-white people (I hate the expression “people of colour” and will not use it here) from my social circles, I wouldn’t have many people to talk to. Some of the most virulent prejudice I have experienced has come from members of my “own” race, including relatives.
Both woke and anti-woke activists make me feel like a what, rather than a who. The problem is that I’m the right what for the woke movement and the wrong what for the anti-woke movement. Either way, I’m something rather than somebody.
If I hate something or someone, it’s because of who they are, not what they are. Donald Trump is odious because of his beliefs, not because he’s a white man. Candace Owens is also repugnant, though she’s a black woman. When woke activists say “listen to black women,” do they also mean Candace Owens, or do they mean only those who are ideologically similar to them? When anti-woke activists say that they should be listened to, do they include members of the “wrong” demographics who agree with them, like Caitlyn Jenner or Blaire White?
I’m a grudging supporter of affirmative action because of my who-not-what orientation. Although I hate the idea of ranking people based on what they are, I also acknowledge that historical injustices should be combated.
Fighting racism and sexism is important. But that fight should be focused on humanising people, rather than using demographic categories as a sign of virtue.
I feel I have to be woke to protect myself. But at the same time, I’m sacrificing a lot of my authenticity. I can’t say what I want to say without being told that I’m making excuses for bad actors, even though I have the same goals—that people are treated fairly and kindly. That’s why I’m blogging about this stuff anonymously.
If you focus too much on what people are, rather than who people are, I have little respect for you or your movement.

I want to see a fairer, more equitable world. But I want to do that without all the bullshit I see from the woke movement, or the reactionary racism and sexism that have arisen both as a cause and as a consequence of it. I want to be somebody, not something. Is that too much to ask?

(I’ll talk more specifically about sexism and racism later, but this is a good overview of how I feel.)