Don't Be Woke About the Woke Right: Part II

What Paranoid "Woke-Centrist" Lindsay Gets Wrong About Liberalism

This is Part II of a multi-part series as the whole James Lindsay saga is massive, and he, as well as his opponents, are crazily prolific. He has for example published over 272,000+ X posts (tweets). Part I detailed the background of James Lindsay as well as arguments for what he is right about. This, Part II will focus on where he is wrong, or at least where he is much more paranoid than he should be, as well as how he is falling into the same sort of mimetic dialectical trap that he critiques. Part III will discuss the future, and how the right should view and relate to Haywood and Lindsay.

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In Part I, we addressed what James Lindsay’s critiques may get right about the danger of the “woke right.” Here, I will look into how he is wrong, or if not wrong, at least overly paranoid. It all starts with the inadequacy of the panacea Lindsay, over his career as a whole, has been trying to defend against all comers, classical liberalism.

Lindsay’s critique of both the “woke left” and the “woke right” comes as he has proclaimed in many of his 272,000 posts on X from his classically liberal politics, or, in other words, those proclaimed by most 1990s Democrats, like Trump, Musk, RFK Jr., or by much of the current Republican coalition today. His opinions, or at least the core ones, seem rationally to emerge from strict adherence to the principles laid out by the generally agreed upon founder of that tradition, John Locke, such as ontological empiricism albeit within certain limits, individual autonomy, and freedom of religion.

For Lindsay, classical liberalism is the name of the project that follows from the fact that none of us are God:

In summary, we are not God. The consequences of this self-evident proposition are vast. None of us possesses the authority to compel another or his belief because we lack in our limitation understanding of the significance of any error against his intrinsic value and potential purpose made in that way. We therefore self-evidently start the project of organizing our society from a position of political equality with certain rights that are inalienable, among these life, liberty, property, capacity for their use toward our happiness and purposes, and a reasonable expectation of privacy in which we can maintain their sanctity. Lacking authority to rule over one another, we are ruled instead by law and merit and lend social and political authority in limited ways as such through processes that are open in their nature and that may best determine these as objectively as we may. Individual belief is sacrosanct not because any man is God but because every man is not. The individual is politically inviolate because he is the vessel of his own sacrosanct individual belief. Together, these provocative and humbling ideas and the social and political project they define have a name. These are classical liberalism.¹

Looking at another brief summation by Lindsay of the spirit of classical liberalism, one can’t help but notice the close alignment to the best summation Locke made of his own philosophy:

“Men being nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.” - John Locke, Second Treatise on Government

But the crucial distinction between the Lockean roots of liberalism and Lindsay’s preferred version is that Lindsay leans into libertarian autonomy ever so slightly more than does Locke, desiring not merely religious toleration by the government like John Locke but that faith itself be kept out of politics and power, and that no one having power over others should be able to make moral claims that impinge upon individual autonomy without the agreement of the one whose freedom is being constrained.²

This goes further than Locke’s mere “without his own consent” catchphrase by stating that there ought to be no power or even influence over others derived from hierarchical standing, morals, or virtues. Everyone ought to be free, equal, and independent, because, for Lindsay, they are all equally qualified to judge for themselves in every practical question that does not impinge upon others’ happiness.³

This evidences the influence of John Stuart Mill upon Lindsay. James Lindsay takes the Lockean idea of negative liberty, freedom from compulsion and extends it in a Millian way to emphasize positive liberty, that each man, because of their assumed individual ability to understand the world and come to moral judgments, must become their own moral compass, free from social and ideological compulsion and encouraged to pursue their “true self”, an ideal of complete individual autonomy for each person that shares much in common with Ayn Rand’s libertarian objectivism. For Lindsay, following Mill, the harm principle is absolute, and the beginning and end of politics: don’t hurt other’s and then do what thou wilt.

In practice, Lindsay’s philosophical basis explains why he walks the narrow line of rejecting the “woke left” while still agreeing with many of their individual issues of concern, like supporting the LGBTQ rainbow circus in general, even as he opposes it being pushed or forced in any way upon society or upon children as he sees this as improper government compulsion. I’m not sure how you realistically thread that line, but in his many writings and podcast appearances, he at least tries. Similarly, from his views, he tacks in the other direction with regard to any restrictions on homosexuality or the like. For him, you are free not to like it, and to oppose it being forced upon society, but you can’t in any way socially compel anyone against it either using any power. Similarly, any type of public Christianity or governance on its basis is also anathema to him, because, for Lindsay, it is the exact same situation, ideology and not mere autonomous individuals being connected to and having power over others.

In sum, Lindsay has a Lockean, yet even more extreme, blank-slate view of human nature and wants the 1990s back. He thinks that if you just give everyone liberal principles like tolerance, objectivity, and opportunity, everyone will flourish from their own internal “true self” shining forth, unhindered by ideologies of any kind that might tarnish self-expression. Lindsay wants a secular tolerant America where he can be an atheist in peace but also one that is just intolerant enough that woke craziness or any other particular ideology can’t get a hold of any political power and swing the ship of state—or of culture—in any way differing from the 1990s consensus, either in the direction of Christianity or that of left woke craziness.

But how long can one—or a culture walk—the tightrope of classical liberalism that Lindsay lays?

According to my friend and reportedly a prominent leader in the “woke right”, Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos (who has just started his own Substack), not for long:

The American regime, and all similar regimes, even if founded upon Lockean classical liberalism, require something more to buttress themselves than the extreme individual autonomy that Lindsay desires. For only a virtuous and morally united people can, and only temporarily so, operate a regime with the type of Millian⁴ liberty he desires. And for a simple reason: men can never be fully autonomous in their habits, desires, goals, and dreams. Man is not fully a blank slate. I monotonously refer to Rene Girard, and will do so again here, because the great philosophical step forward he made for mankind, emphasizing that man is socially not autonomous, explains why classical liberalism will always devolve and breakdown into either chaos or tyrannical imposed order. The mimetic nature of man’s desire exposed by Girard means that all choices and desires by everyone will always affect everyone else—and specifically their desires. A classically liberal regime with seemingly perfect individual liberty, with the basic original principles that Lindsay wants, and like the American founders set up will always be a temporary proposition because the vast bulk of men, when given complete freedom and autonomy under such a system will choose to follow the will of the crowd rather than becoming their own guarantor of knowledge and desires—and will in the end by doing so hand over that freedom to an ideology. Given freedom, they will use it to choose what they really desire in political life, assuredness.

Since a classically liberal regime offers no transcendent certainties of its own about the nature of the universe and man’s nature, anthropology, and ends in the way that ancien regime absolutism or even a constitutional monarchy would provide, such a regime offers no safeguards on a populace sliding, by way of mimetic desire operating upon them as a whole, into absolutism of its own making, of the wildest and most unfounded kinds, specifically those ideas which are most virally contagious due to their utopianism, over-simplicity, or because in the lingo “they meme.”⁵ And once an idea takes hold of a society, as Jose Ortega y Gasset and Oswald Spengler have noted, all of the implications that follow forth from it are worked out within that society, as, of course, we can see with “woke leftism” as an ideological offshoot of the 19th century Marxist principles, a point Lindsay himself often makes.

This is why, as Dr. Papadopoulos argued above, the American founders did not see the system they set up as permanent. Only a virtuous people with tacit moral agreement between the bulk of their number, which, for the American founding, meant their sharing at least an elementary Christian faith, keeps the minds and hearts of the populace from falling into or being infected by novel ideologies of any kind. Perfect individual liberty is only temporarily possible, and only virtually so. Man is always subject to ideas and forces outside himself⁶ and is never really even fully autonomous in the first place, as even the desires that he thinks he has developed completely on his own were at the very least influenced, if not wholly mimetically copied, from others. And in order for man not to completely waver in the wind of each new idea, and each new ideological current, he must have some source of at least some certainty. Classical liberalism, even though it is far better, given its objectivist epistemology than the subjective assertions of post-modernism, still falls short of granting the moral certainties needed to root one’s thoughts and desires, a human anthropology, or all politics for that matter. One always has to have something to ground and affix oneself and one’s society that goes beyond the base claims of liberalism. Otherwise, any successfully mimetic ideology, offering greater certainty, will easily infect and take over human desires—and through them human politics.

Furthermore, classical liberalism’s claims are themselves, even with their highly limited character, themselves at least a proto-ideology. For on what basis are Lindsay’s axioms of classical liberalism themselves justified? They seem rather intuitive to us, I grant, but given Humean skepticism a leap of faith into trusting the process of induction, for example, is still necessary.

Furthermore, it’s hard to see very much left of classical liberalism around us in terms of people actually wanting to live and let live by its principles. The left has switched from permissiveness, free speech, and being against government, military, and corporate overreach to being for all these things, whilst promoting the dogmatic reinterpretations of the world, a.k.a., wokeness. Yes, there are 1990s Democrats left who ascribe to all these prior principles. But they’re all Republicans like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, etc. now. But classical liberals themselves are actually quite few in number, because Republicans, at least the realistic non-corporatist conservatives among them now realize that these classically liberal principles are basically dead in the water as a viable political force against the left. Yes, it may sound great in theory to ascribe to these principles, but in a fight against left dogmatism and the levels of hell brought up to earth by “woke left” craziness, they are revealed to be the empty shell that they always have been.

In a Christian society with implicit Christian moral assumptions like we (mostly) had in 1950s America, classical liberalism appeared to work as a political foundation, because, under the surface, Christianity was doing the hard work of providing adjudication amidst diverse interests and individuals. At that time, classical liberalism merely meant that you did not want to change the undergirding of politics in any direction away from what they were at that time. Today, however, all holding classical liberalism does is tell your opponents that you don’t want to fight them but want to preserve the appearance of an orderly status quo. And all that means is that you’re putting out the welcome mat for them to slip in leftism, but with the facade of politeness, and with a few fewer public executions—at the beginning at least.

Lindsay’s critique of the “woke right” may be justified about some individuals like Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes. He is right to tell us to be wary of and avoid a political future for the right that looks like the politics—or lifestyle—of either of those figures or the many like them. But as I will look more into Part III, figures like Charles Haywood need not be counted amidst this number because such figures are ideologically grounded by political propositions and beliefs that at the very least separate them from the Tate/Fuentes crowd, but also likely argue in favor of adopting something like Haywood’s principles of foundationalism, albeit with caveats.

However given all this, we also begin to see something very interesting about James Lindsay.

Why is Lindsay so zealous about the current status quo? Why is he paranoid about threats far and wide to the current sinking status quo?

Hmm, isn’t it also his belief that all-powerful and dangerous "woke left" and "woke right" movements exist and are hidden power structures that secretly control the world and are actively conspiring to destroy the liberal order and oppress classical liberals such as himself? Does he not constantly decry how few people besides himself can see this terrible reality?

See for example his view that this image/icon of Mary is a “woke right” attack to install a Catholic tyranny over America:

Or, of course, his theory that Trump’s posting of the St. Michael prayer is really a top-secret gnostic psy-op infiltrating American politics to turn everyone into either a supporter of Catholic warlordism or of woke-leftism?

Everywhere Lindsay looks he seems to see deep and hidden power structures fighting against the light of true reason, a flame kept alive by only a lonely few like him who have seen the truth, and come back to warn us all, to wake us up to the dark reality. Or to, pardon the phrase, to make us “woke” to these facts.

What seems to be happening to Lindsay is exactly the same epistemological pattern that he critiques with regard to the “woke left” and “woke right.” He’s just woke about classical liberalism and is thinking in what I’ll call a “woke centrist" or "woke-establishmentarian” type of way.

Dr. Papadopoulos notes as much in a reply to Lindsay that he made a week or so ago:

Lindsay is a paranoid ideologue and utopian defender of classical liberalism, oblivious to liberalism’s limitations. He is of course not as far gone as many in the “woke left” or “woke right” as he is willing to critique classical liberalism to some degree, whilst you would not find Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or Nick Fuentes critiquing their own respective ideologies in any way at all. But he is pretty “woke” by his own definition of wokeness. Just substitute in “liberal values” for “‘trad’ values” in his below definition and he completely fits. As such, he fears people like Dr. Pavlos Papadopolous, Darryl Cooper, Charles Haywood, Aaron MacIntyre and the like offhand, and without nuanced dialogue and criticism because he sees them merely as “enemies” of liberalism without realizing that the liberalism he worships is already basically dead, and it is not necessarily participation in an evil gnostic manipulative movement to try to propose some better alternative to the present for society.⁷

Look I fixed it!

But even with this paranoia, mostly unfounded as it is, it isn’t entirely Lindsay’s fault that he came to be this way.

One thing that Lindsay himself does very well is to examine the pressures and circumstances that produce and guide social movements in all their forms. In the earlier phases of Lindsay’s career, he characterized very clearly the mimetic origins of such movements. In his first appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience he agrees with how I characterized the process above; mimetic desire operating upon crowds in a liberal society creates the conditions for ideologies to spread and take over. Lindsay at minute mark 38:47 in the below video calls this process in the origin and spread of wokeness, competitive victimhood. Elsewhere, he has mentioned that the origination of the “woke right” is a mimetic response to the incentive structure created by the emergence of the “woke left.”

But what he does not say aloud, or understand, even though hints of it can be seen in his character as revealed by Jordan Peterson’s 2023 interview from the outside, is that he himself is subject to the same mimetic process.

Lindsay, while oft revealing the dangers of mimetic dialectic, that one side choosing one extreme position will goad the other into automatically selecting the exact inverse position, extreme as it may be, for themselves, has fallen into the exact same trap.

James Lindsay has adopted the worldview of wokeness while merely adapting it for his own chosen “centrism” or classical liberalism. Since of all ideologies, classical liberalism is the weakest, and most mimetically impotent, this makes Lindsay’s “woke centrism” the least dangerous in itself of all three types of wokeness, and it’s more hilarious for the irony of the situation than problematic in itself.

What is a problem, however, is trying to find a realistic path forward for the conservative right that avoids adopting the epistemology of the “woke left” while also offering something more than the now thoroughly discredited platitudes of 1990s-era classical liberalism. Is there a way forward that can be progressive without being woke in terms of offering a better political order than the present while also being conservative without being stultified in terms of assuring that that future is in accord with human nature and man’s eternal ends? And what does that, in the ultimate analysis, make Lindsay to us?

We’ll look into that in Part III.

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In Part III we will evaluate a realistic path forward for the political and religious right that avoids the mimetic traps leading to wokeness in all its forms while discussing how one should relate to the work of complex and controversial intellectuals like Lindsay. I will try to put forward a synthetic view that takes what is right in his critique of the “woke right” but without falling into a false defense of failing classical liberalism. I will try to articulate how one can accept most of Lindsay’s points while also admiring and supporting the work of intellectuals like Charles Haywood on the right. Hopefully, it will be out by the end of the month.

1. James Lindsay, New Discourses. “The Basis of Classical Liberalism.” https://newdiscourses.com/2023/11/basis-of-classical-liberalism

2. https://x.com/ConceptualJames/thread/1843456140123738350

3. https://x.com/ConceptualJames/status/1866925944784449832 and https://x.com/ConceptualJames/status/1843460057242984806

4. Apparently, this is the right way to refer to followers of the philosophy of John Stuart Mill

5. As I cover in my review here, Jose Ortega y Gasset’s book A Revolt of the Masses discusses the problem of the overly mimetic, autonomous individual or “mass man” quite well and what this means with regard to the political evolution of society as a whole:

6. The Heavenly, or otherwise powers and principalities… (take that phrase as you will)

7. Even if some, as I argued in Part I, of the right are a real “woke right” with a gnostic, oppressor vs. oppressed view of society.