Left Is Not Woke by Susan Neiman, and: After Black Lives Matter: Policing and Anti-Capitalist Struggle by Cedric Johnson (review)

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In Left Is Not Woke , the moral philosopher Susan Neiman attempts a sorely needed intervention against the woke left in the hope of rescuing it from its addiction to identity politics in their most reduc tive form. Neiman is the author of, among other acclaimed works, Learning from the Germans , an account of how a country can come to terms with its barbaric past. Her new book will hopefully be read by those whom it critiques. It is also a missed opportunity. Neiman is an American who directs the Einstein Forum in Potsdam; she has lived in Germany for many years (and has written about the experience of being a Jew in Germany). Despite its essen tial insights, her book illustrates the great intellectual gap between the left in the United States and Europe—in ways that, frankly, left me profoundly dispirited. And it illustrates the intellectual abstraction that bedevils parts of the left.