Susan Neiman, welcome to Within Reason.

Glad to be here.

So you wrote a book called Left is Not Woke,

and you've said somewhere that some of your friends practically begged you to not write a book with the word

woke in the title. Why is that? Because woke has become a slur by the right and it's used to attack anybody who is engaged in working against racism or

sexism or homophobia. I don't really know anybody who would define themselves as woke.

It's turned, you know, it's really turned into a term of abuse. And people were afraid that I would,

you know, I would be instrumentalized by the right if I that my book

would be seen as contributing to that and it's even the case that my French

publisher decided not to do the book,

although she had just very successfully published two of my older books,

because she was afraid of giving aid and comfort to the right.

Now, actually a larger French press is going to publish it in the fall.

I did two things to avoid being instrumentalized because I am very much not a creature of the right,

number one I wrote on the very first page of the book that I consider myself a socialist which makes it sort of hard for right-wing people to

instrumentalize you and the other is that I've refused to do interviews with blatantly right-wing media.

And you know, I've certainly had invitations, but I have not done that.

You know, and I don't actually think,

it seems clear that people who actually read the book

or listen to me talk that it is not another right-wing

rant about, you know, anybody who objects to discrimination and domination.

It's a very different argument.

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