The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 151

What is "Woke"? What is its relationship to "Social Justice"? Why did so many people explain Woke as "Critical Social Justice" for several years? In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay takes you into the book that first opened his eyes to what "Woke" really is: Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo's Is Everyone Really Equal? (first edition) (https://amzn.to/4eHH5Ed). This book could truly serve as an eye-opening "Woke for Dummies" guide to where Woke comes from, what it really means by "Social Justice," and how it thinks about the world. It, like all Woke books, is also a Woke grimoire, drawing the reader in and putting a Woke "spell" on her as she reads it and considers its contents. Join James for his introduction of this book to you, so you can better grasp the basics of Woke Marxism.

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Woke for Dummies

In October 2019, James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose, and filmmaker Mike Nayna gathered in London for a panel moderated by Michael O’Fallon to reflect on the infamous "Grievance Studies" project (https://grievanceproject.com/), often called "Sokal Squared." This provocative project involved writing and submitting intentionally absurd papers filled with ideological jargon to academic journals. Their aim was to demonstrate how deeply critical social justice ideologies had compromised academic rigor, making it possible for nonsensical submissions to be accepted as legitimate scholarship.

During the panel, Lindsay traced the project’s origins to a simple yet unsettling question about whether fields like gender studies had become akin to a secular dogma. This led to a series of papers, including the now-notorious "dog park" paper, which absurdly linked canine behavior to human rape culture. Mike Nayna, who documented the process, admitted his initial skepticism but explained how his own research into these academic fields revealed the seriousness of the problem.

The panel highlighted the broader societal implications of their work. Lindsay and his co-authors warned that when ideology replaces the pursuit of truth, it threatens not only the integrity of scholarship but the foundations of public discourse itself. For them, the "Grievance Studies" project was a stark reminder of the dangers of allowing political agendas to override intellectual honesty and critical thinking.

Viewers will find this look back five years in time interesting and informative not just in the content as presented but also in how the panelists' insights have developed and matured over the intervening years.

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Panel: Grievance Studies | Boghossian, Lindsay, Nayna, O'Fallon, Pluckrose

The EVILution of Communism Workshop, Session 3

Communism is a religious view that has evolved and adapted over the last two centuries, including right up to the present day. Understanding the developments and threats in our present world requires understanding what Communism really is, especially in its Marxist variants, and how it has developed and changed over the years. In response to this need, James Lindsay of New Discourses held a four-lecture workshop series on the EVILution of Communism in Dallas, Texas, at the start of August 2024.

In this third lecture in the series, Lindsay continues discussing the development of twentieth-century Communism along its second track: Western Marxism. The Western Marxist tradition contains many threads, virtually all of which start with either the Fabian Socialist Society in the UK or, more infamously, with Cultural Marxism elsewhere throughout the Western world. Cultural Marxism itself gives way to Critical Marxism (that is, Critical Theory) through the middle of the twentieth century, particularly in America, and informs other movements such as feminism, radical racial movements, critical education theories, and eventually the development of an intersectional "Woke" Marxism we're dealing with today. Understanding this requires understanding the influences of many Marxist thinkers including Mao Zedong, whose most culturally destructive ideas were imported by the Critical Marxists and Critical Pedagogues. This in-depth lecture describes the development of a whole new "Social" Communism that sought to find ways to penetrate Western Civilization to make it soft to socialism and Communism.

Notes (PDF): https://newdiscourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/DallasWorkshop24-Evilution-of-Communism.pdf

The other three lectures in this series can be found here: 
Session 1: Communism 1.0: Theoretical Communism: https://newdiscourses.com/2024/10/communism-1-0-theoretical-communism/
Session 2: Communism 2.0: Industrial Communism: https://newdiscourses.com/2024/11/communism-2-0-industrial-communism-james-lindsay/
Session 4: Communism 3.0: Corporate Communism: https://newdiscourses.com/2024/12/communism-3-0-corporate-communism/

New book! The Queering of the American Child: https://queeringbook.com/

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© 2024 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #communism

Communism 2.5: Social Communism | James Lindsay

Hello and welcome to this audio cast of ‘becoming a refugee in the time of covid’. My name is guy duperreault from Oaxaca México. Today I share with you what started out as an epistle to my dead father. The 6th one since I started writing to my dead father two years ago on the day of the dead here in Oaxaca. 

Although I started this one with clear intention rooted in past epistles, my experience of writing this one quickly went sideways. It has become a something, not really a letter and not really an essay. It is fully awash in synchronicities, some of medium significance and others astonishing. And the more I wrote, the more significant the synchronicities became until I faced the reality that this wannabe epistle had become a singular expression of an elaborate multiplicity of interdependent synchronicities, an embodiment, perhaps, of what Gautama Buddha calls ‘dependent co-arising’.

At some point in the craziness of what I was experiencing I asked my body for direction on this epistle: do I claw it back from a chronicle of chronic synchronicity or not. ‘Continue,’ was the direction I was given. Then even later, I asked the book of changes, the I Ching, about changing course. ‘Continue as you were,’ was the unambiguous answer. So, this began in mid-October and now it is past mid-November. During the writing I was directed to update a significant essay from 2022, called Q: 'I agree that [yogic calmness] is important, so how do we account for all the yoga teachers who fly Ukraine flags and require masks in their studios?' — Audio: A: Yoga as Drug.’ And that became a huge edit with its own plethora of new synchronicities that wound up weaving themselves into this Dear Claude Epistle #6, A Difunto Padre, to a dead father.

In this epistle the synchronicities wove in the US Presidential election, Clif High’s knights fighting giant snails, venom poisoned wells, the roots of progressive liberalism in marxism, an elaboration of how ‘abundance becomes humility’ and even the thorny issue of how do we know that what we see or think as true or perhaps even being truth is valid? It has come to me that this philosophical or spiritual sumo is actual yoga, the questing and questioning of truth in our experience in contrast to the ideas of our experience. And even as I write this, on the 19th of November, it came to me last night to watch James Lindsay look at Hegel’s dialectical arguments regarding the contrasting of experience and the idea of ideal as the means of moving our limited human understanding towards ultimate truth.

Eventually my body directed me to break this into ‘episodes’ because of length. Hard to imagine, perhaps, given the length of this one that there are more to follow! My intention is to finish the next one, or maybe two, at intervals of one week at a time going forward.

In the post with this audio I include some of the important links and the link to the written form of this essay for those who would like to read it or to read along with it. And for those who like music, I include the links to the playlists. And finally  the link to the talking videos is included as well.

So, now welcome to episode one of my 6th epistle to Claude, my dead father.

Dear Claude Epistle #6.1 A Difunto Padre

This episode of the OnlySubs Podcast with James Lindsay is available for FREE! To get access to all past and future episodes, consider becoming a contributor. Learn more: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/announcing-new-subscribers-only-podcast-james-lindsay/

What is the "Woke Right"? Does it really exist? Is it really Woke? If so, how? These are increasingly important questions in our present circumstances as a visibly radicalized Rightism is emerging from within the broader conservative coalition and aiming to distort its aims and values along some new (or new-old) path. In this special long episode of James Lindsay OnlySubs, my subscribers' only podcast, I take you through an essay (https://americanreformer.org/2024/05/is-there-a-woke-right/) about the Woke Right written by someone ostensibly on the Woke Right, C. Jay Engel, published in late May 2024 in American Reformer. Join me to explore the idea that the Woke Right really is Woke (and the Right hand of the Left) through an analysis of one of its members' own words.

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© 2024 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Woke

Is the "Woke Right" Really Woke? | OnlySubs with James Lindsay, Ep. 142

In this October 2019 lecture at the conference 'Speaking Truth to Social Justice' in London, James Lindsay presented a compelling critique of critical social justice and its ideological foundation in critical theory. He argued that this worldview fundamentally rejects objective truth, reason, and evidence-based methods, which are essential for genuine progress. According to Lindsay, critical theorists prioritize “strategic” theories over true or false ones, seeking to advance political agendas rather than to understand reality.

Drawing on examples from feminist and social justice literature, Lindsay illustrated how critical theory undermines fields like engineering, climate science, and education by prioritizing social power over truth. He contended that while these disciplines traditionally rely on rigorous methods to solve problems, critical theory disregards such rigor, treating knowledge as a mere tool for enforcing power dynamics. For Lindsay, this ideological shift threatens progress, as it ignores that “reality is the thing you run into when your beliefs are false.”

Ultimately, Lindsay called for a return to evidence-based inquiry and the liberal systems that have historically driven human advancement. By defending reason, scientific method, and open discourse, he argued, society can continue to make meaningful progress rather than regress into a cynicism that treats truth as a mere strategy for political ends.

Viewers will find this talk interesting not just for its contents but also for the glimpse back in time by five years, which allows them to see how the views expressed have matured and developed over the intervening time.

New book! The Queering of the American Child: https://queeringbook.com/

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© 2024 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Truth

The Thing You Run Into When Your Beliefs Are False | James Lindsay

The EVILution of Communism Workshop, Session 4

Communism is a religious view that has evolved and adapted over the last two centuries, including right up to the present day. Understanding the developments and threats in our present world requires understanding what Communism really is, especially in its Marxist variants, and how it has developed and changed over the years. In response to this need, James Lindsay of New Discourses held a four-lecture workshop series on the EVILution of Communism in Dallas, Texas, at the start of August 2024. 

In this fourth and final lecture in the series, Lindsay picks up the loose threads from the previous two lectures and weaves them together to describe a new Communism for the twenty-first century, a "Communism 3.0" or "Twenty-first Century Communism." Lindsay characterizes this new model of Communism as the "Chinese model," derived from the practical implementation by former CCP leader Deng Xiaoping in the People's Republic of China, where it was tested first. Meanwhile, in the West, a parallel model was developed tracking not just with Deng Xiaoping Theory but also with the Western Marxist sensibilities of Herbert Marcuse, demanding a more "Sustainable" and "Inclusive" economy. Calling the model "Corporate" or "Corporatist" Communism, Lindsay explains how this model of Communism blends a Communist political theory and structure with a Fascist economic model of productive forces, creating the tyrannical hybrid that is intended to be the future for mankind both East, under the Chinese Communist Party, and West, under the United Nations and affiliates. This groundbreaking lecture provides a basis for completely changing the discourses around what's happening in our world today.

Notes (PDF): https://newdiscourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/DallasWorkshop24-Evilution-of-Communism.pdf

The other three lectures in this series can be found here: 
Session 1: Communism 1.0: Theoretical Communism: https://newdiscourses.com/2024/10/communism-1-0-theoretical-communism/
Session 2: Communism 2.0: Industrial Communism: https://newdiscourses.com/2024/11/communism-2-0-industrial-communism-james-lindsay/
Session 3. Communism 2.5: Social Communism: https://newdiscourses.com/2024/11/communism-2-5-social-communism/

New book! The Queering of the American Child: https://queeringbook.com/

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© 2024 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Communism

Communism 3.0: Corporate Communism | James Lindsay

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 152

On December 3, 2024, James Lindsay revealed to the world that he had perpetrated a hoax (https://newdiscourses.com/2024/12/a-communist-manifesto-for-christian-nationalists-testing-the-woke-right/) against the nominally "Christian Nationalist" magazine American Reformer in which he had rewritten a significant portion of the Communist Manifesto to flatter their "Woke Right" ideology. In the ensuing days, the hoax has caused quite a stir on the conservative side of the internet, generating a completely unexpected response in which, in addition to deflecting from the hoax and bashing James, many ostensible conservatives launched into robust defenses of Marxist analysis, critical theory, and postmodernism. How good was the hoax, though, and what did it actually say? In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay reads through a rough side-by-side comparison text (https://newdiscourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/CM-for-CN-Appendix-Docs.pdf) he prepared showing how close the hoax actually was so you can hear and decide for yourself. Join him and see if you agree that the hoax was good.

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© 2024 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Hoax

The Hoax that Broke the Conservative Internet

In the Panel: Why We Need New Discourses, held on October 13, 2019, in London, panelists Peter Boghossian, Andrew Doyle, James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Mike Nayna, moderated by Michael O'Fallon, came together to critique the influence of social justice ideology on academia and public discourse. Each speaker addressed the effects of ideological capture, particularly in social institutions and education, arguing that social justice’s rigid worldview distorts reality and suppresses open conversation.

Lindsay and the panel discussed how critical theory has infiltrated educational and social systems, creating an environment where questioning or debating its assumptions can be socially and professionally costly. Boghossian highlighted the importance of engaging others in genuine dialogue rather than retreating into polarized camps, despite the reputational risks involved. O’Fallon noted that "New Discourses" should reclaim the principles of classical liberalism, where diverse viewpoints are encouraged and respected, offering a much-needed alternative to the current divisive climate.

Throughout the discussion, the panel stressed that fostering open, honest dialogue across ideological divides is crucial. They called for a renewed commitment to evidence-based, compassionate conversation, empowering individuals to resist ideological conformity and to support a society that values free inquiry over dogma.

Viewers will find this panel interesting not just for its contents but also for the glimpse back in time by five years, which allows them to see how the views expressed have matured and developed over the intervening time.

New book! The Queering of the American Child: https://queeringbook.com/

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Panel: Why We Need New Discourses | Boghossian, Doyle, Lindsay, Nayna, O'Fallon, Pluckrose

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 105

We all know Communism is perhaps the world's deadliest ideology, but what makes it that way? As it turns out, there's a simple reason Communism leads to mass murder, starvation, and death, and it's this: Communists believe Communism can never be wrong. What this amounts to in practice is that when Communist programs start to fail, it cannot be that they were bad ideas in the first place. It can only be that someone failed to do them right, and, as it always happens, that hidden enemies are causing the problems. The result of this self-aggrandizing and paranoid belief is always a witch hunt and violent purge of the people who get scapegoated for the Communist failures. In this important episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay explains this catastrophic feature (not bug) of Communism. Don't miss it!

New book! The Queering of the American Child: https://queeringbook.com/

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© 2024 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay

Why Communism Is So Deadly

In recent years, I've become a refugee in the time of covid. I mostly write prose and poetry. I hope to return to reading with music.
My main focus is yoga, meditation and research of Gautama Buddha and health of body and society. I'm creating a yoga centre outside of Oaxaca City to share my discoveries of exploration in this place called 'truth in a pathless landscape', to paraphrase Krishnamurti.

Pursuing the light of objective truth in subjective darkness.

New tracks tagged #james lindsay