The Vancouver Sun on Susan Niemann's Latest

On Thursday the Vancouver Sun newspaper ran a piece by Douglas Todd regarding philosopher Susan Niemann and her latest book, Why Being Woke is Not Left Wing.

Going by the article Ms. Niemann's case regarding the difference between being left and being "woke" (the Enlightenment-based left stands for universalism, justice and progress; the "postmodernized" and therefore anti-Enlightenment woke for a tribalism and pessimism that easily leads rightward) will be familiar to many. Certainly leftists have been making this case for as long as the identity politics now traveling under the "woke" label have been around, with an obvious example the World Socialist Web Site. Their distinguishing between practitioners of identity politics has been a significant part of their criticism of what they call not the left but the "pseudoleft," and their stance toward it reflected in their attitude toward the #MeToo campaign and the New York Times' 1619 Project).

Still, the center's tendency to take an "any publicity is good publicity" attitude toward the left and accordingly deny them any (in contrast with their attitude toward the right, constantly lavishing right-wing figures, opinions, publications and organizations with publicity, often respectful and usually at least civil publicity, even where they claim to not endorse them) means that the criticism of identity politics, "wokeness," etc. from the left is virtually unseen in the mainstream. Indeed, it is the kind of thing that "fake news" alarmists endlessly call on search engines and social media sites to censor (with the WSWS, for its part, claiming that along with their website generally their criticisms of the 1619 Project specifically has been subject to such censorship). Of course, one should not have to be a leftist to come to the conclusion that wokeness is not a left ideology--only conversant with the most basic ideas of modern political philosophy--but to go by all the evidence that is something that those who have access to major media platforms most definitely are not. Accordingly, rather than any shocking originality of the fundamental conception, Ms. Niemann's stating the obvious and indisputable before people who do not often get to hear it is what makes Douglas Todd's discussion of her views in the Sun of interest. However, whether her book will make any more difference than the other attempts to correct the profound misapprehension about postmodernist identity politics somehow being a left ideology (rather than the Counter-Enlightenment ultra-right ideology it actually is) remains to be seen.