PowerSwitch

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. ~Noam Chomsky
(Book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-th ... 0241145388

(original link to seller replaced with ethical seller)

And woke political correctness feeds that limiting of discussion. Well said Mister Chomsky.

Here's an example. By making any discussion about the desirability of mass immigration a matter of race those people who wish to limit discussion on the desirability of perpetual economic growth which that immigration is designed to feed stifle that most essential discussion. No one will talk about how mass immigration feeds the requirement for new road building, new railways, mass house building, new factories shops and offices because to discuss mass immigration is racist! Despite the fact that a person is arguing against all immigration from anywhere to discuss limiting something that might impinge on some of the world's population means that you are a racist!! That is how woke political correctness works. Daft.

Huge corporations are then allowed to drive the covering of the countryside with new roads, railways, houses, factories and shops to make themselves huge profits because they have stifled debate by labelling any discussion of the matter as racist. People then protest about individual acts of environmental destruction having stifled debate on the driver of all these acts of destruction, mass migration.

Thank you My Chomsky for pointing this out

I have been thinking about this for a while , Ken.
Another simile that is in fashion at the moment is 'white privilage'

If you do not accept that the way you think about things is because of your white privilege, then, by necessary implication, you are a racist.
Therefore, everyday, we are committing 'thought crimes'

Mad world or wot?

Chomsky isn't really attacking ID politics though. His point is broader and deeper than that.

For a serious demolition job on the philosophical foundations of woke ideology, you won't do much better than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynical_Theories

I needed to consult the dictionary about a dozen times in the first paragraph of that Wikipedia piece! It's all about pseudo scientists criticising other pseudo scientists over their differences over pseudo science. Too much pseudo science for me!! And too much giving big word names to small theories about tiny bits of human behaviour. That is where the money comes from to support all this "research" is suppose; you get more research money for the more big new words that you put in a paper proposal.

My original Facebook post on this, and where I got the reference from, was on the page of an anti roads protester who is also very left wing and, I suppose, Woke. It has engendered absolutely no response at all from either the friend or her friends so I suppose it must have made them think a bit. I was expecting a flood of anguish from them.

kenneal - lagger wrote: ↑29 Jun 2021, 14:17 I needed to consult the dictionary about a dozen times in the first paragraph of that Wikipedia piece! It's all about pseudo scientists criticising other pseudo scientists over their differences over pseudo science.

No. The people who wrote this book are real scientists, and the people they are attacking a post-modern philosophers and socio-political theorists. One of the key purposes of the book is to demystify this language. It is to cut through all the technical bullshit to explain what has actually happened in plain English. The reviews on the dodgy bookseller website might make this clearer.

UndercoverElephant wrote: ↑28 Jun 2021, 22:18 Chomsky isn't really attacking ID politics though. His point is broader and deeper than that.

For a serious demolition job on the philosophical foundations of woke ideology, you won't do much better than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynical_Theories

I liked reading that and especially the link about "fat studies". Being someone of elevated BMI I liked the fact that I have people fighting my corner. I sleep easier knowing I am a post-modernist fatty. Now for more research on Chomsky.