If you-re woke, you-re left. If you-re left, you-re woke. We blur the terms, assuming that if you-re one you must be the other. That, Susan Neiman argues, is a dangerous mistake. The confusion arises because woke is fuelled by traditionally leftwing emotions: the wish to stand with the oppressed and marginalized, to address historic crimes. But those emotions are undermined by widespread philosophical assumptions with reactionary sources. As a result, wokeism conflicts with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. Without these ideas, the woke will continue to undermine their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right. One of the world-s leading philosophical voices, Neiman calls with passion and power for the left to return to the ideals that built the best of the modern world.
