He considers it, or dominant tendencies within it, to have degenerated from soaring moral and intellectual heights with Rosa Luxemburg, W.

Who is to say your definition of "socially harmful" is, in all cases, the right one, or that your application of it is always right? One might argue that in this chapter Finkelstein's profound contempt for the "Elmer Gantry in blackface" at the head of this gaggle of amoral mediocrities gets the best of his prodigious literary gifts, since the ruthless mockery goes on and on and becomes somewhat tiresome, but it can't be gainsaid that it's all well-deserved. Admittedly, it might have strengthened Finkelstein's discussion to consider in more depth possible counterarguments.The reason, it seems, is that he doesn't think the internet has raised significantly new questions about free speech, and in any case there is already an extensive literature on web censorship. Wokeness is what happens when the destruction of the labor movement proceeds so far, and social atomization becomes so all-consuming, that even the "left" adopts an individualistic, moralistic, psychologistic, censorious, self-righteous, performative approach to making social change.

It is, after all, very unfortunate that media operatives like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and the whole stable of Fox News social arsonists have brainwashed millions of people. It proceeds from the fatuous, almost juvenile, conceit that fastening binary, wooden labels on the actors and ideas incident to Black history will shed light on it. Finkelstein seems to take particular pleasure in disemboweling this (as he says) non-scholar and non-activist, for his critique/massacre is a full 110 pages long and features withering juxtapositions with a titan, DuBois.Second, one would certainly not love all the individuals who are alleged to constitute "one's people.