Die Wokeness-Bewegung - Richard David Precht im Gespräch mit Susan Neiman

Vogeness Vigilance is a new word of our time, many young people in particular describe themselves as VOG as vigilantes against evils such as racism, sexism, violence, oppression and the destruction of the environment to such an extent that perceived injustices with vigilance they should be eliminated immediately, if possible, is VOG the new left or simply replace vogness culture Bad with something else I'm talking to the philosopher Susen neimen, the director of the Einsteinforum in pozter Mrs. Neiman if you were young today you would be VOG I hope not really I've been pretty consistent politically and morally I'm in the southern US right now I grew up in the civil rights movement, my mother was involved in it, we also got threats from the kuklat clan and this idea that we should universally work for justice for all was something I was born with, so to speak, but I may be a little confused by the fact that they are woke, as I believe many young and not so young are today, many of our viewers won't have a very good idea.

Precise definition of vogness or being VOG in your heads. You can outline in a few lines what characterizes someone who is VOG, it's funny that I was accused of not defining the work, but I actually wanted to define the left, and because W. It's an incoherent term, that's why everyone says What it really is is based on very left-wing emotions. When in doubt, you want to trust that you want to be on the side of the oppressed, if not. For the crimes of history, at least commemorate them, yes, those are all the emotions I share, learn from them, yes, absolutely, absolutely.

W literally means vigilant, vigilant, yes, you want to be vigilant against oppression and against injustice in the world, well, yes, against racism. Originally, the word was first used in 1938 in a song by blues great LED Belly Ok and was about being awake against racism against which absolutely nothing is right and later played an important role in the civil rights movement of the 60s. That's not like that. It is true at all, the word was not used. I've been there, so there were a few decades when the word wasn't used and when it appeared again. That's very interesting, which is why it didn't appear in the mainstream media, for example, in 2016.

In the election campaign people were talking about political correctness then, the word wasn't used, so it was after the inauguration of Donald Trump and I think it was partly a reaction that came from students at American universities who were, rightly, outraged against Donald's racism. and sexism Trump and the indignant disappointed and resigned of this transition were Obama's hope, which for this generation was no longer an achievement but simply normal, it was normal for an intelligent left liberal president with a beautiful black family who were also all smart and cool in the White House 8 years ago and for this generation I think it was the norm that the disappointment with Trump and his family was an even bigger shock than it was for me, it was a shock for me too and then the idea came up.

It emerged that we really have to fight against that. Racism and sexism work, I had nothing against it, but little by little you realized that generations, including mine, had not been paying attention, that the right really entered the discussion. and I would like to name three points that for me are traditionally leftist and are not taken into account by the walkokken, first of all, universalism, they are rightists who assume that you can only have really deep connections with people who come from the same tribe , whether it is the tribe of the same gender or the same ethnic origin, we have to take the first step expand yes, then there is a way you can say that being right is characterized by the fact that you prefer members of a certain tribe, as they like to say, of a nation or what you consider a race and so on, mhm and not just other things I prefer that you really find your home there, that you say that I define myself by this: I am German and nothing more than German, yes, and I'm only human in the last category or that I don't care after this infamous quote from Karl Schmidt W.

Humanity says they want to cheat, it's not about being human, it's about whether I'm German, I'm German first and foremost, that's classic right-wing thinking, so to speak. On the other hand, they say that leftist thought is universalism that says it doesn't really matter if you are or not. If you are German, Chinese, Latvian or Hungarian. Whether you are from Africa, Shams or wherever you come from, human rights apply to everyone, human dignity is equal for all human beings and I have to base my moral standard on equality, that is, on fundamental principles. moral equality of people, that is the contradiction and now comes the point.

Are you saying that people here are not in the left tradition but in the right tradition without realizing it? Yes, that is correct. But I would say it. a little different than how you did it. I'm not saying that it doesn't matter if you are German or Chinese culturally there are differences and they are wonderful, but morally it is not moral what counts when we think morally and politically is the fact that. We can have deep connections with people of all cultures if we want and therefore we have obligations to them, okay, and we woke up, so let's take the whole discussion about cultural appropriation, that a culture only belongs to one tribe or the idea that when white people demonstrate, for example like the majority did when George Floyd was murdered, at best they agree with allies and that is actually very interesting because that assumes that you are not actually protesting against injustice in general, but against the disadvantages of your own tribe and other people.

You can join in a little if you want and that is a fundamentally different idea than the international solidarity that comes from the left, so I understand you correctly when I now look at the protests of the black civil rights movement in the 1960s and compare them to Back then. So, the racial question was mainly a class question; At that time, prominent figures in the civil rights movement like Angela Davis, for example, were also decisively opposed to capitalism. , communism is great and this dimension has been lost in the movement for black lives. Unfortunately I have to correct you, okay, first of all, I know that Angela Davis is very well known in Germany, she was not a leading figure in the civil rights movement in Germany. to the US it came much later, it was organized with the Black Panthers and with communism and unfortunately that did not have importance in the US.

I know what I felt when I came to Berlin in 1982 for the first time as people of the RDA I visited her often and I always wondered if she was a friend of Angel Davis and unfortunately she had to explain that she does not play an important role and that criticism of capitalism plays no role. No, it was about race, but. it was about the injustice that everyone had experienced and seen. Children were shot, people didn't talk about class at all when Martin Luther King talked about class for the first time, that was shortly before his assassination.

There are people who say that too. he maybe he wasn't murdered. I mean, the murder was never solved, um because he had started fighting not only for black civil rights but also against the Vietnam War, which was even more controversial and because it raised the economic question, but unfortunately. It's a good image from a European perspective, but it wasn't like that, it was too close. The McCarthy times even used the word communism or class, but then they make it very clear again where you see the big difference between the civil rights movements. in the black struggle in the 60s and today because there were a lot of white people, by the way, mostly Jews too.

They got involved because of injustice, they risked their lives and in several cases they lost them, yes, then. it was about racism, but it was different, how should I describe it, a different idea of ​​justice, it wasn't more power for my tribe, it was, there are some ideal human rights that are written in the Declaration. of Independence of the USA and I would not be fulfilled. There is a claim to universality that is not met and that is a completely different attitude than what my tribe wants more of. Yes, they would actually say that the Black Life Matters movement is what my tribe wants. more at the beginning, not at the beginning, not really, 54% of the people that were on the streets in June 2020, right after the murder of George Floyd, 54% were white, okay, so there was a lot of outrage, is okay and a great willingness to take risks that there was at the beginning of the pandemic, there was still no vaccination, there was still no cure, there was a wave of indignation at the injustice of the murder of unarmed black citizens and then, in addition, it contributed to making it seem more of a power struggle.

I think it was Trump first and his people then said ah, that's just a power struggle, an identity struggle, you can't say that black lives matter, okay, so you would have to explain, but you should say that all lives matter. or what was that, it was actually a right-wing accusation because of course it should be used. But in fact, empirically speaking, proportionally more black people than white people are killed by police officers, but then both sides got agitated so that, first of all, the right-wingers said that's just depoliticizing and we don't want that, but then the people who led black people sort of held on to this identity and said yes, white people can be allies but they shouldn't get involved in any Ah, okay, so the most important difference, if I understand correctly, the rights movement civilians included whites who defended the rights of blacks, just like here, it is a different self-confidence of blacks because they say that we are, that is our business, you as allies can support us, so to speak, but it is our fight and it is not their fight that is the decisive difference and this saying that it is our fight is from their point of view.

They always use the term tribe. , which will not be clear to anyone who looks at us, yes, tribalism, identity politics, these are other terms for the fact that they say the focus here is on belonging to a group and, if I understand them correctly, that would contradict the idea of ​​the universalism. Here you consciously differentiate yourself, you don't say that we are people like everyone else, but that it is exactly about us. But the problem began already in the 1960s, there was a decisive decision by stokelyy carlmichael. , a civil rights activist, who said white people have to get out, okay.

One of the most important parts of the civil rights movement included people who had almost died. There were also white people in these groups who were murdered by the K and. There was that, that was problematic. I understand that B was thought to be okay, we were supposed to have the lead role, but ST Carmichael said shortly before he died that that was the biggest mistake he made, but it started from the civil rights movement to this separation. to Black Power and then to where we are now I really have to say that not all people of color, in the US or elsewhere, are for it.

They're just not the loudest, they're not in favor of it. maybe, but the wognis movement is not just talking about America, it plays in many western countries. In industrialized countries, it actually has a quite influential role, and not only among them. It's not a generational conflict either, so. The people of the 60s and 50s, the gatekeepers of the cultural sector, are as aware of this as anyone else. They're not always happy about it, but they don't say it out loud either. Maybe it's a point because you said there are identity politics. One of the reasons I don't use the word is that it assumes what really needs to be proven, which is that the essential parts of our identity are ethnicity and gender, and I question that.

Well, I liked that about your book and I liked it too. happy to be convinced of it Well, I would still use the term and maybe I have a trick on how to do it, but what I think is more important is when you say that the problem of being VOG exists, it means that I. I base my identity primarily on racial or gender affiliation, perhaps also on whether I'm young or old, so to speak, based on biological characteristics, while in reality people don't have a very significant influence on their identity as far as to their psychological self-determination. esteem These things determine exactly whether, but there are a thousand more things where I choose how I see my identity, I can also see my identity as an intellectual or I can merge with my profession and say I am a doctor or I am an architect I have so many possibilities to define my identity.

Why should I choose those parts of my identity that I can do nothing about? Why should I consider them more authoritative than the parties I have sought for myself? I would still maintain your criticism of the term identity politics, but we don't have to worry about that here. I would argue with you because in reality what one claims or proclaims as identity is belonging to something, whether not from oneself but from outside, you He is German, yes, he is a man, yes, these things areobviously more important than the universal idea that you are a man and now we are talking about the fact that identity politics was actually predominantly a right-wing issue, we were just talking about that: you are German, this is your people, this is Your nation, the white race was actually right-wing and they belong to the circle and there are several of them.

We had as a guest omri Böhm, who shares the same opinion that the term identity politics or, as they say, tribal thinking can also be applied to the left, at least in regards to the Wognis movement that bases people's identities in biological characteristics, so I've known umri since I was a PhD student and I also appreciate him, I mean, I'm happy to admit it, we Okay overall, I'm glad I can give you an example. I am Jewish and in Germany they identify me as such, maybe not always because of my appearance, but you know. Enough about me now that this is part of my life! identity, but for me it is a hundred times more important that I come from the universalist tradition of Judaism, which is as old as the Bible and which teaches us that, as foreigners in Egypt, we have a special duty to treat foreigners well. being that is said 33 times in the Bible, well, a tradition of thought so long and actually including all known German Jews, one regrets whether it was Moses Mendelson or Karl Marx or Albert Einstein or Hanne Arn, they all came from this universalist tradition of Judaism, that is much more important to me and I also grew up with it, of course, my mother participated in this civil rights movement, but I also adopted it as my own when I studied and also lived in Israel, but that is a hundred times more important to me than this biological one, so I share some genes with the right-wing nationalist government in the State of Israel right now, but the genes I share with them are not important to me at all, apart from tradition. where I fall into and I think the same applies to all people who have a certain ethnic background.

I mean, they certainly don't want to hear what non-Germans said about Germans a few decades ago, yeah, um, so there was just until a long time ago, an identification of Germans, the association is Nazi and that's it, so in that sense We think about what we do if we reduce someone to their ethnic origin mhm mhm and that's why you are convinced that the wognis The movement is doing itself a disservice if you are there for the oppressed of this world, we do, reduce it to biological characteristics or at least putting it at the center of your thinking would mean that the practical consequences of saying that this position should be occupied by a dark-skinned woman, for example, yes, such a consideration says that we must see proportionally that those who have been oppressed in history The losers of history have heard that they are fighting for their proper place in society, in institutions, in universities, etc.

They wouldn't support that because they say what's important is what this dark-skinned woman thinks and does and not the question of whether she is a dark-skinned woman. Because she shouldn't. matters and I think it is up to all of us to look when we are in some commission where positions or university places are assigned or whatever, I overlooked someone, that is clear when I came to Einsteinform, for example, I realized that because everyone in front of me was a man, relatively few women were invited to the Einsteinforum and of course I set myself the goal of changing that, but for God's sake, how should I automatically say that?

Can I tell exactly when you want to invite me to something? because we need a woman, okay, and that is very offensive and colored and black people know exactly how they are being exploited and how some people are exploiting the same thing, that is very clear, yes, then you can, but a regigide, it is say, a university. It has to accurately reflect the conditions of society, how could that happen? So the problem is that there really was discrimination, let's take my field in philosophy when I was studying there were almost no women who studied philosophy, it is still not the case, yes, how?

There are supposed to be really good, qualified women from this generation if they haven't studied there, but both some women and some black and brown people make a mistake? I know who criticized it for that, but I'll still do it. Say it, many women who dedicate themselves to science do women's things, that means that in a way you understood correctly, we need someone who does feminist theory, does feminist theory, we need someone in history who does women's history or we need someone to do um, I hate the history of African American literature and I have absolutely resisted.

There are so many women who make literature that everyone, or even men, has to read women's literature and literature by great black authors, yes, but the idea that yourself. are being ghettoized has become a problem again When I look for someone for a general topic for a conference, for example, it often turns out that people have become ghettoized and are not enough. I would like to do a PhD on the disadvantages my tribe has suffered. I would advise against this, couldn't it simply be that all social progress requires exaggeration of the oppressed of racism, all varieties of male oppression of women, etc. all of this exists without? a doubt and, the moment we accept it, the fact that one can go from one extreme to the other is not a completely normal dialectical process.

We end up settling again somewhere in the middle, the problem is that it's not in the middle. Okay, yeah, we're not there yet, but maybe we're halfway there and that's where you get to the point of why I wrote this book in the first place. I'm working on a completely different book, this one. book about heroes and victims and then I got an invitation to a big conference at the University of Cambridge in England and I thought there was a confusion about W and left and I would like to delve into that somehow and that was very well received there and a The editor came to me and said if I didn't write a short book and the reason I said that was that I really see danger right now, proto-fascist parties are rising and that is an international problem, so I really use the Keep in mind He says that if we wait, a colleague of mine, an Indian historian, says that if we wait until the concentration camps are built, it will be too late to call a spade a spade, so what is now growing in many places In the world there is a proto-fascism.

That would be important in the sense of being alert, but what would not really be important is fighting each other within the progressive camp in such a way that the insider cannot be seen. in front of the trees and one thinks, for example, that the Wognes movement harshly criticizes the Enlightenment; the Enlightenment, of course, plays on both liberalism and leftist self-image, the great modernization movement that was imagined in the 18th century. and which at some point led to liberal democracies in several Western European countries plays a very important role and now there is a lot of criticism about it from the Wognis movement because some illustrators benefited from colonialism, such as John Lock, who even worked in the Colonial Ministry and received Indian lands for their services, or others who were completely against colonialism, like Emmanuel Kant, but who never reproduced clichés about blacks in their books.

If you have seen a dark-skinned person in your life but you spread the common clichés of the time, then they say that we have to completely throw away the old white man's tradition and they say that if we throw away this tradition completely then we are essentially depriving ourselves of the foundations of universalism and we never will. achieve human progress, so it is, to put it briefly, because the book argues that this accusation is so fashionable that you cannot now say the word Enlightenment without immediately saying Eurocentrism. That irritated me because I've never met anyone who does it. attack like it does in the Enlightenment, so in the world I move in it doesn't happen.

I'm sorry, where do you live? I don't live in Berlin Mitte for example, this is the first question you would ask. m magazines, so that's in, for example, now I don't want to name any institutions, but this is the first thing you hear. I heard that 20 years ago almost that comes from postcolonial theory and I found the accusation I made so absurd. I didn't even address it in a book back then because I thought it would go away, that's so absurd that the idea that the Enlightenment is Eurocentric fails in the first place because the Enlightenment made the accusation for the first time It was the Enlightenment that said we have to understand the world from non-European eyes.

They risked my life to say that Chinese texts are as moral as ours or that Persian or Tahitian texts are even better, so that's fine, by the way. You say it like a clever parlor game. no, you have the positions that you were not allowed to say in Europe, like Montesque put in the mouths of the Persians or like dierot in Tahiano, yes, of course, but I want to say that they were afraid, not only of the Twitter strikers, yes. , so actually they were afraid of life exactly and some of them lost their country and their chair and everything mhm is fine, but from today's perspective, isn't it easy to enter the 21st century society and accuse people of things that were so revolutionary and so revolutionary in their time were progressive and had risked their lives but in one thing or another they only reproduced one or two clichés, it was pubescent and I also think that there is a desire for purity, yes, that is not allowed . praise someone or even the religious component See purity yes absolutely absolutely I see it completely different, of course, Kant has a then he actually wrote the metaphysics of human rights, yes, what we are building on and of course he said some things really disgusting things about black people. and also about women, by the way, but Kant and By the way, you wouldn't count Lock as another Enlightenment figure, he's that, no, that's before the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment is really if you want to determine the classical Enlightenment, um, he is too. early for that, you can see that in his work, but let's leave that, that's uh for History, but I say dear Kant and Volte, who also said anti-Semitic things and would have been happy if you saw us today, some of us because they believe in the progress and that we have made progress behind you, that must be appreciated and that must also be understood because there are basic principles that we stand on our shoulders and there are basic principles that we have some that are really throwing them overboard do you think that this will become generalized every again in society or do you think that the peak has been passed and that many events can go in a different direction?

I know Gold said a few weeks ago that later? On October 7, the peak will be surpassed. I don't see that yet. I look at what happened on October 7th and after that I've already given some people something to think about because we don't have much time, that's a lot. To open up, um for me there are many people who say they are pro-Alestina, um the language seems absurd to me, I am neither pro-Alastina nor pro-Israel, I am not a football supporter, I am pro human rights and human rights they are raped on both sides, but many people who saw themselves as left-wing without knowing which river and sea they are referring to and not knowing anything about the conflict simply said it's my tribe and I'm on both sides they want to say yes yes yes on both sides, so without the poles it has polarized very quickly, so the voice of reason is really difficult to perceive at the moment, that could be a turning point.

I hope so, but I don't see it yet. I only see more polarization and more Despair is perhaps one more point for the first question of why this relatively small W movement has so much influence because we do not have a truly alternative left program, which is the breeding ground for the crisis of the left. They lost their classic clientele, the working class, relatively long ago, it was exactly when the leftists were looking for minorities as the big novelty. Theme and on this, so to speak, on this humus, the Wcke movement was able to prosper, but again they are speaking of politics of interests, so the workers were left-wing, so they represented the interests of the workers and now they want to represent them.

The interests of minorities or those who are discriminated against is not a description of being left-wing in general, which is why I interrupted her earlier when she described the three pillars of being left-wing, universalism, belief in progress and justice, but However, it is a historical fact that there were electorates in democracies and that the classic electorate was originally the working class. That's right, but Arend I'm just letting you read his book about violence last night. Arend said that the people who made the revolutions had never had them. That's it, they were always the ones who had no interests, so we only thought about Marx and Engels and many others.

It was about justice, yes, and not about representing certain interests, but about the idea of ​​universal justice. what we and what we are all working on, that is whatthat many people think that he died in 1991, yes, and that is the problem of why he went in this direction so we would like to include in the final question, you do not like the word optimism, no, no. and they would like to replace it with hope. I once had a conversation with Jane Gudell, who said exactly the same thing as beautiful and the question is what's wrong. Optimism is so wrong and what is good and important about hope.

Optimism is a statement about the facts, yes, that means it is a, that is, I know that everything will be fine, I know that everything will be fine, yes, so, for example, so sincere, volte the great. The subtitle of the book is about optimism and somehow everything will be okay and everything will be reinterpreted. To make it look good, I think it would be optional to say that at this moment in history, so we live in really dangerous times. Virtually every child can recognize that, well, I hope, then. By the way, K only says Chomski. which I didn't know came from Kant, but when we had a conversation he said that if we have no hope, we have no chance to act at all and if we don't act the world will really end - hopefully it's a fairly religious term and if its secular equivalent doesn't If it were trust, I would stay with hope.

First of all, it is a word that is easy to translate. My confidence doesn't work, for example in English, the other language I mainly speak. work, because it was called security, basically that could only be done because at this moment I do not have security and the certainty that everything is going to turn out well. I don't think hope is a religious term, it's something that lives within people. , is expressed in a certain formula in certain religions, but I don't see it as a religious term, so I hope that our hopes will not be disappointed. Ms.

Nemen, thanks for the conversation, you're welcome. Connection interrupted.