[skissane]

Complaints about "woke"/"wokeness" aren't confined to one part of the political spectrum. Many present the term as a "right-wing talking point" – but if you go looking for it, you can find Marxists invoking the term critically too (for example, the noted African-American Marxist Adolph L. Reed Jr.)

I think it is an attempt to name a real phenomenon – a particular strand of left-of-centre thought, with a great deal of contemporary influence, which (among other distinctive traits) foregrounds issues of race and gender/sexuality, in opposition to the classic Marxist emphasis on economic class as the "underlying cause" of all those other issues. If you don't want to call it "wokeness" – fine then, what should we call it?

[rnd0]

>what should we call it?

My personal suggestion would be to go back to what it was called when I was a kid; "knee-jerk". "knee jerk" doesn't have a specific axis connotation (unlike "woke" which refers explicitly to progressive issues). It was primarily aimed at (knee jerk) liberals but could easily be aimed at reactionaries without any change of meaning.

[skissane]

I asked what we should call "a particular strand of left-of-centre thought, with a great deal of contemporary influence". Your answer ("knee-jerk" which "doesn't have a specific axis connotation") isn't actually answering the question I was asking, because a term intended to apply to people with widely differing ideologies (obviously) isn't appropriate as a label for one particular contemporary ideological stream.

[rnd0]

I misunderstood your intent -I thought the idea was to suggest a term which could be applied to the True Believer regardless of ideology. I didn't realize you simply wanted another phrase you could sling at the left.

My apologies.

[skissane]

You absolutely have misunderstood my intent – I was asking for a descriptive term for a particular current of contemporary left-leaning thought, to replace a term which has admittedly become rather pejorative in connotation – yet you seem to misunderstand me as looking for another pejorative instead. And "woke" is still not exclusively pejorative–it is not hard to find people calling themselves "proudly woke"–maybe much of that's ironic, or "reclaiming"; but couldn't also some of it be in homage to, or even in continuity with, its origin as a positive self-descriptor? And not all critical invocations of "woke" are fairly labelled as "pejorative"–such as when Reed criticises "woke" from a Marxist perspective. [0]

Surely it is valuable to find descriptive terminology for different ideological currents – across the totality of the political spectrum? The traditional Marxist answer is "yes" – followed up with an analysis of the endlessly diverse ways in which those various currents support class interests, which is what Reed presents for "woke".

[0] https://newrepublic.com/article/160305/beyond-great-awokenin...

[gilded-lilly]

But this is a type of knee jerk reaction confined exclusively to folks on the left.