“The Elite 'Social Justice’ Scam” with Musa al-Gharbi

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

Comedy Interviews, Self-improvement, Society & Culture, Education, Comedy

4.6 • 863 Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The full conversation is almost two hours long and sbolitely fascinating. Enjoy this free preview or, to hear the whole shebang, subscribe at Uncomfortableconversations.substack.com

"Woke” is such a tired word. Yet there remains a cultural elite which uses the language of social justice to gain power and status, without helping the disadvantaged. What’s going on?

Musa al-Gharbi is an assistant professor of sociology who studies how knowledge workers have improved their cultural power by deploying the language of social justice to justify their own influence -- and to portray the losers in the knowledge economy as deserving their lot because they think or say the “wrong” things about race, gender, and sexuality.

Far from being a right-wing anti-woke crusader, Musa is a Black Muslim academic who explores how we think about about social phenomena. His new book is “We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite”.

Here, Musa and Josh wrestle with what the “Great Awokening” was really all about, how ideas are the currency of the knowledge economy, and how we can actually help the marginalised and disadvantaged. This episode is part of Permission to Think, a collaboration with the University of Technology, thanks to Professor Alan Davison.

As always, you should do yourself a favour and get all of Josh’s shows in full, ad-free, via Substack. You can also watch this interview on YouTube. Follow Josh here:

http://twitter.com/joshzepps

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Gahy humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. This is the show that rejects the
0:07.9	phony binaries of left and right or even right and wrong and instead tries to get its hands dirty
0:13.7	by wrestling with some of the biggest subjects in culture and society and politics, caring only
0:18.9	about whether or not people make sense.
0:21.4	Today's conversation is a fascinating one.
0:24.2	The word woke is so tired these days,
0:27.7	there are so many people on all kinds of platforms banging on about how bad woke is
0:32.1	and woke this and woke this, that it's lost all of its meaning,
0:36.1	except for in the mind of today's guest, who makes the
0:40.3	point that there remains a cultural elite, which uses the language of social justice to gain
0:46.8	power and status without really doing anything that benefits the lives of historically
0:51.5	disadvantaged or marginalizedised people.
0:59.7	This episode is part of permission to think, which is a collaboration that we do with the University of Technology, Sydney, thanks to Professor Alan Davison.
1:03.9	And Musa Al Garbi, today's guest, is an assistant professor of sociology who studies how
1:09.8	knowledge workers have improved their cultural power by deploying
1:15.4	the language of social justice to essentially justify our position and our status, and also to
1:21.2	portray the losers of the knowledge economy as somehow deserving their fate because they
1:27.4	haven't been, I don't know,
1:29.2	sufficiently woke to how to say the right things about race and gender and sexuality.
1:36.5	Musa is by no means a right-wing anti-woke firebrand.
1:42.0	He is a black, Muslim, American academic who wrestles deeply with these ideas. His latest
1:48.6	book is called We Have Never Been Woke, the Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. Here, he and I wrestle
	...

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