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In contrast, the word woke was first used by left-wing protesters themselves (borrowing from African-American slang) and used as part of BLM. It later assumed negative connotations because many self-proclaimed wokes were seen as:
- hypocritical, e.g. BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors resigned after a media expose showed that she used BLM funds to buy expensive houses for herself, all the while talking about Marxism.
- intolerant, e.g. cancel culture and the hate campaign again JK Rowling, where she was given death threats
- unhinged and irrational. I'll also use an Indian example here. A lady from the North East posted a complaint online claiming she felt violated by a hospital ward boy, who knew she was getting dressed behind a curtain yet barged in and saw her exposed. The Wire's audience editor Naomi Barton actually criticised the lady for being "privileged" and not seeing the incident through the lens of class and caste! The tweets can be seen here:
There are thousands of such examples.
https://www.opindia.com/2022/04/the-wire-journalist-naomi-barton-woman-violated-hospital-weaponise-privilege/
- hypocritical: sure, but name a single person alive nowadays who is not... That's not really an argument for why wokes are the worst of all the bad people, is it?
- intolerant: sure, quite possibly some of them. Though you'll often find that wokes are the most intolerant towards those who are intolerant themselves (say, against racists, or mysoginists or arguably the JK Rowlings who their opponents find are intolerant of trans women - though of course there are two sides to every story).
However, last anyone checked, JK Rowling is still alive and not in fear of her life and still the richest woman in the UK who still best-sells all her new books and other media empire, despite going out of her way to pick fights with an often mistreated minority. Doesn't sound like a very good cancelling by the wokes...
But yes, death threats are obviously not cool, and some people online are obviously assholes, but that's saying more about assholes online than about 'wokes'.
Nr is it common for wokes to make death threats. Has a woke actually ever killed anyone out of their wokeness or for woke reasons? If so, presumably far fewer than non-wokes doing school or racist shootings in the US, fundemantalists of different persuasions doing lynchings or beatings, etc.
- you may disagree, but surely arguing about whether the event was mis/perceived through a lens of privilege or not, is a valid discussion that can be had, and in any case, should be protected by freedom of speech, especially by the non-wokes who believe that freedom of speech is the highest good in the world (even if it kills us)?