Army Gen. Mark Milley pushed back on claims from Republicans that the military is “woke” and as a result not prepared to take on modern threats, saying he’s “not even sure what that word truly means.”
“What I see is a military that’s exceptionally strong. It’s powerful; it’s ready. In fact, our readiness rates, the way we measure readiness, is better now than they’ve been in years,” Milley said in a CNN interview Sunday.
Republican politicians and candidates have blasted the Pentagon for so-called woke policies, pointing to efforts to recruit a diverse group of military service members and be inclusive to transgender soldiers.
Those claims have also headlined efforts to reduce military spending.
No one knows what the word woke means. Even people who use it can’t define it. It’s just a boogeyman word for things people don’t like or want, and even they can’t agree on it.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that a “woke” person is anyone who calls right-wingers out on being overtly racist/sexist/fascist. Or maybe anyone who just isn’t obviously racist/sexist/fascist.
It’s a catch all just like “communism” and “socialism” were/are. Big words that people don’t know the actual definition of that can sound scary
At least “communism” and “socialism” have theoretical definition. But yes, they were so heavily pulled into propaganda warfare, that they basically are used as synonyms for “enemy”, as opposite of “democracy” and “freedom”, and so on.
Btw “free speech” is another term that is watered down more and more. Also again by the right wing fuckers who complain that whenever they are criticized it would be an attack on “free speech”. Which is also bullshit. You can say (mostly) what you want without being suppressed. But you can’t expect those that hear it to just swallow it.
Last December, a Federal judge asked DeSantis’s general counsel to define “woke,” and he did, thusly:
He answered woke is "the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”
fascinating…
Really that’s the closest we’ve come to an actual proper definition of the term “woke” by a conservative (and I’m like 90% confident that DeSantis’ lawyers got that definition from the first few lines of the Wikipedia page on this term).
Yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, other conservatives give very different definitions, or none at all. VICE asked several conservatives at CPAC for a definition of the term and got a bunch of different answers (and vague non-answers). During an interview a conservative author who wrote an entire book about “wokeness” couldn’t give a definition of the term. A few weeks ago Noah Samsen made a response to an anti-woke YouTuber by the name “Think Before You Sleep”, who simply defined woke as “communism” (whatever he thinks that means).
For all intents and purposes, “woke” might as well just mean “anything vaguely progressive that I don’t like”.
Ok a court filing, DeSantis lawyers defined “woke” as, “the belief that there are systemic inequities in US society and the need to work against them”.
Which is not bad as a definition, really.
It still means what it always meant. Being aware of society’s injustices to the poor, downtrodden, or minority population and wanting to do something about it. They can’t fucking stand that.
Being against being “woke” truly reveals who they are. That they just want to sweep it all under a rug and forget about it.
I think that’s insufficient anymore if we are considering the right’s usage of the word. Marketing or selling products to those groups counts as woke to the right.
The right doesn’t use language genuinely, so personally I don’t really care to consider their usages. The actual definition of words doesn’t matter to conservatives, it’s not how their brains work. That’s why it’s so easy for them to form a big tent party, they just need to say meaningless feel good phrases like “law and order”, “1776”, or “make America great again” to attract voters. That’s also why when they get power, they dissolve into infighting and can’t govern at all, because it turns out those phrases mean different things to all of them.
No the problem is that woke does have a meaning, and most people know what that meaning is. The problem is that if republicans actually defined it out loud they’d have to admit what they actually take issue with and what they’re actually fighting, and doing so would basically be admitting that they’re the baddies. It’d be saying the quiet part out loud. By avoiding acknowledging the actual meaning of the word they get to pretend that wokeness is a nebulous Bad Thing that should be fought against.
“Woke is now defined in this dictionary as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” and identified as U.S. slang. It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
Everyone knows what the word means, it’s just impossible to define without sounding like a bigot. Because it means “not a bigot.”
for me, for example, it means “people who are all over their head with cancel culture”; it also means people [who use the word] are probably a bunch of far right crazies.
So overall I guess it’s a way to describe the two far ends of the same thing
Cancel culture isn’t a thing, or at least it’s not a new thing. People are facing consequences for their actions, as they always have. The difference now is that bigots are facing consequences. Used to be, you’d get cancelled for being gay, or for refusing to sleep with a superior, or for suspicion of being a communist. Powerful people would have to fuck with someone more powerful to have their lives ruined. Now, the powerful people fear the public scrutiny, and viral social media can bring down just about anyone (with notable exceptions proving the rule). So now they’ve given it a name, hoping to make people fear and hate the backlash enough to make people forget why someone has been cancelled.
It’s bullshit.
I guess you can have your own personal definition, but woke actually means being aware of systemic racial problems and working to correct them.
There is actually a real definition to it. For example one day I realized that black people live in a world different than mine.
It woke me up to the realities of black existence
That’s why it’s “woke”.
When i had my kid and i read a bunch of stuff on parenting, i also came across those articles where black families needed to talk to their sons about police. It never occurred to me that people would need to so that.
Woke is whack
Edit: LOL I meant the concept of “woke” being pushed by current GOP morons, not the concepts being described as woke
Based General for not even entertaining the idea of knowing what the W word even means.
It’s too bad all our journalists are sold out to corpos otherwise they should respond to anyone wanting woke with “what is that? Idk what you are talking about please elaborate”.
Not that “based” makes sense here either, but yes, exactly: “woke” means whatever the speaker wants it to mean at the time, like “cromulent”.
Jesus Christ, we all have the goddamn internet:
Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more woke verb past of wake1.
This isn’t hard!
The first few times I heard “woke” used, it was in the context of people who don’t follow the sheep because they aren’t asleep. Hence, they have woke up.
It was always a vacuous ambiguous way to say someone was liberally enlightened without having to justify the claim with anything specific. That is true for both the positive and pejorative use of woke. I enjoy the song “Wide Awake” by Parquet Courts that made fun of the term in it’s original use.
That is true for both the positive and pejorative use of woke.
At this point, from what I can tell, there is no truth for the pejorative use of ‘woke.’ It means whatever the Republican saying it wants it to mean. If they want it to mean anything at all but ‘this is a bad thing.’
How can a military be “woke”? They literally tour the world killing brown poor people.
The word has no meaning any more, and likely never did.
Before the right co-opted it, it was a reference to being awake to social injustice and aware of systemic discrimination. Then the right grabbed onto it and decided that everything social justice is ‘woke’ and pretty much replaced SJW with it. Today it means anything ‘liberal’ with regards to social matters per the American Overton window metric.
They caught a lot of criticism for being ‘woke’ (in the sense of being socially progressive) a few years ago when they air this video as parts of an recruiting campaign.
https://youtu.be/MIYGFSONKbk?si=CmbnyWYptJfnxOH8
For the lazy it’s an animated story of a woman that became a soldier who was raised by two moms. It touches on her advocating for the LGBT community and empowering women in the video.
It’s stands in contrast to the typical recruiting method of portraying tanks and generic disposable 18yr old men blowing things up by highlighting a personal story of a woman.
It was part of a series of other similar videos released at the time. I think the controversy was from the perception that it was an attempt to appear socially progressive in a performative manner without actual resolving any of their problematic behavior like covering up sexual assaults.
Another example of it I’ve heard from a LT I know is holding suicide prevention meetings and then treating soldiers in a way that makes them hate their life.
Authoritarianism requires the support of the military and a military that’s full of LGBT people won’t support authoritarians that wants to execute LGBT people.
It’s got nothing to do with the actual quality of readiness of the military. It’s theatrics to let minorities know they’re not welcome, using the currently fashionable trigger word.
Didnt they already prevent the military from trying to purge white supremacists or am I miss remembering?
How’s not being woke working out for the slowly imploding Russian military?
They aren’t able to shoot anyone who retreats, because they aren’t issued rifles.
I hear that they have green blood, and are incapable of emotions. That’s why the Russian government has to assign couples, otherwise their society would collapse from lack of love like it did in the 90s.
In fact Russia is so weak that its also a massive threat to the world and stability.
