The Rise of Symbolic Capitalists

Musa al-Gharbi is an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. He is also a columnist for The Guardian and the author of the phenomenal—and phenomenally timed—new book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite.

As Musa described it when we spoke last month, the book explores how “social justice discourse is increasingly used by symbolic capitalists, by the winners and the prevailing order of people who have been succeeding and flourishing, to justify inequalities.”

For many of us on the left, We Have Never Been Woke makes for an uncomfortable read. But I think this discomfort reflects what makes the book so compelling and so urgent—particularly as we try to figure out where, exactly, we might go from here.

This is the complete audio of my conversation with Musa. Head over to The Ink to read a condensed and edited version: “Is ‘wokeness’ enabling inequality?”

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