People are downvoting you because they don't trust that your argument is in good faith. It's a foundational argument for manipulatively moving goalposts, and sketchy as far as redefining commonly accepted words. No, 'woke' and 'liberal' don't make sense to paint as opposite ideologies, much less set up straw-men for trying to plant the idea that 'woke is abandoning liberal ideas, you wouldn't do THAT, would you?'

And that is why you're earning downvotes :)

This is honestly a great HN thread for wilfully burning karma in fires of brigading. I know my own interaction with it, is in the full knowledge that if I do correctly identify and explore ideas, I'll be massively downvoted for sheerly tactical and ideological reasons. You could hardly have a thread less conducive to the stated aims of HN discussion.

I wouldn't say they're opposite. But I would say they're ok in abandoning liberal ideals in order achieve their goals. I.E Mob justice, "positive" discrimination, silence is violence, ostracization of people who dare think differently, etc etc

But if you don't take liberal ideas seriously, suddenly you validate authoritarian tactics. The only difference then is that it's ok to use authoritarian tactics just as long as they push my ideas, and not yours. If you don't like authoritarian tactics that right wing people use, you can't use authoritarian tactics to promote left ideas without being a massive hypocrite. Either using authoritarian tactics is ok or it isn't.

Most atrocities in the world come from the authoritarian parts of politics regardless of where you are on the left/right spectrum. My ideas are the right way, and I'm going enforce it using law, mob justice and violence. As opposed to liberalism where diversity of thought is welcomed.

Karma's for spending. Once I accepted that, my posts got way better, and the number still goes up.