Woke used to be followed by up and it meant to stop sleeping.

It still means all that, conservatives are just anti-enlightenment.

I wouldn't go so far as calling those people leftists (same as tankies aren't leftists) but "math is racist" is definitely a thing that happens. People were suing in Canada that the tests to become accredited as teacher includes maths tests, and because some statistic somewhere showed that black folks score statistically lower on maths, they claimed that the requirement to pass it is racist. That completely ignored that they could re-take the test as often as they pleased and that plenty of education was given to prospective teachers that enabled them to pass those tests. A lower court agreed with the claim of racial discrimination, the constitutional court then struck it down pretty much saying "lulwut" in legalese.

No, maths is not racist. The people claiming it is racist were the racists here, thinking that being black makes you somehow inherently incapable of passing those tests, so much that you can't even pass them with studying. Also I bet the disparity in maths scores by skin colour vanishes if you control for socio-economic status but the complainants would've needed maths to understand that so they didn't.

OTOH, optically those kinds of fucks are associated with leftism and I'd say it's important to openly respond to that kind of silliness with "lulwut" before the courts get around to doing it.

As to black lives matter: I think it was a strategic mistake to oppose "all lives matter". The slogan, that is, not the racist fucks. Instead, it should've immediately been appropriated by the movement precisely to define it and to leave no doubt in anyone's mind that you don't mean "non-black lives don't matter", which is understandably a reading lots of people had because they're projecting their own racism, or just racist realism.

“Sure, I’m cool with trans people (maybe I’m even trans myself), but neopronouns are where I draw the line”

Neopronouns are an enby thing, not trans and yes I'm completely fine with calling you they/them and have no issues with your ingroup using as many different pronouns as there are members, but I'm not going to fucking remember all of them. I very much draw a hard, red, line at "difficult on purpose" as that would validate people's vulnerable narcissism, "prove that you don't hate me by jumping over random hoops I come up with". Leftism is not the defence of maladaptive personality traits.

Oops, my bad, I forgot liberal means something different in America. I meant it as a synonym for left.

Why would we play by their rules when they always change them?

Common misunderstanding is we're playing the same game. The game they're playing is "own the lib-tards". At the moment, we are scoring own-goals and it's fucking embarrassing.

And as aforementioned, it's the own-goals which are causing people to switch sides.

The game the left is playing is "who has the best idea", which doesn't matter to the right, because they're either deliberately taking us out of context, or believing on face value what is being said by those who are consciously misunderstanding.

The only way to win both games is to stop giving them ammo and present our ideas with a modicum of sanity.

I don't know how much the left can police the right, if at all.

I don't think the left need to police ourselves more, I think we need to police less, but with more patience, respect and insight (better).

I see the left eating its own all the time. A lot of it is the No True Leftist fallacy. Let's say you're a gay vegan communist hippie who just so happens to think trans women shouldn't use the womens bathroom, then you're not reasoned with, you're immediately a bigot. This is the wrong kind of policing and causes people to seek validation from people who think the same.

I'm leftist for sure, communism is the end-goal. I'm vegan, I hate animal exploitation and suffering. We need to save the planet and ourselves. Discrimination sucks. Rehabilitation is more important than punishment. I'm atheist, religion is harmful. What am I missing?

The phrases are meant to get a reaction and spark a conversation sure. That happens on the left, but the right take it at face value and run with it.

The meanings behind the slogans.

"All cops are bastards" systemic issues inherently make the duty of the police, not a community hero, but a revenue generating, fear mongering enforcer of dumb laws.

There are good police officers though who do want to help. That's why I don't like it.

"Black Lives Matter" yeah, they do. End of story.

"Trans women are women" the word woman used to exclusively mean "female at birth". Now it means "those who identify as a woman". Therefore, identifying as a woman makes you a woman.

How'd I do doc? Did I pass? Or am I literally Hitler?

I'm feeling like you're deliberately misunderstanding me.

The people I'm appealing to are centrists. The last thing we need are more votes for Trump. It was too close last time, and it'll be too close this time too.

No, that’s not a good example at all. This is closer to Orwell’s Newspeak, in which the government makes a word mean its opposite in order to force a change to the way people think.

A more relevant example is the use of the term “fake news.” The term was originally coined to talk about Trump making up “facts” on the fly that were completely disconnected from reality. Then Trump started using the term to refer to news articles he didn’t like.

He was even asked at one point if by “fake news” he meant the story wasn’t true. He said no - he meant he thinks it’s not something the media should be talking about, true or not.

For his fans and for the media in general, it’s come to mean “false,” but that’s an inversion of the original meaning, which is that Trump was inventing “facts,” mutated to Trump thinking the media shouldn’t be reporting on his extensive dealings with Russians, and finally being interpreted as challenging whether those fully documented and verified meetings even really happened.

You're also not wrong, it is widely used on the right to discredit it.

I appreciate your thoughtful reply, and I hope you didn't feel like I was trying to act like you're a bad person or something. I've definitely done similar things, and glossed over origins. I guess I was just thinking about it, and trying to not minimize the history of it.

Also, considering black Americans are only something like 12% of the total population, of course more right wingers are using it because there's sadly apparently more shitty right-wing dinguses in the US than there are black people. Which means traditional use of "woke" is simply just drowned out by the right.

Anyway, cheers.