A few years ago I was engaged in a discussion with a married couple, both of whom were professors of the humanities. I asked about the increasingly stifling intellectual environment on campus. They glanced at each other with unease, and hesitantly agreed that it was a problem. This was clearly a discussion they had in the privacy of their bedroom. Pushy as I am, I asked if professors and students could even broach the role of culture in explaining differences among groups. This time I got a look of utter horror. I had hit a third rail, which, in earshot of the wrong people, could be a career extinction event.
Woke ideology has achieved a near total victory in crowding out cultural explanations for disparity in the world. It has become difficult if not impossible to speak about the effects of cultural differentiation among subgroups in the West, among rich and poor countries, or among regions of the world. No other question has plagued humanity more and caused greater resentment than why some people have more money, power and success than other people. The woke have successfully branded cultural explanations as racism.
The reason woke ideology was so dead set on de-legitimizing cultural arguments is that the woke want to disempower the people in charge and empower historically marginalized groups. Cultural explanations get in the way. The woke needed to demonize the cultural argument because it was the only other explanation for why society is the way it is besides structure. The cultural argument weakens the case for the grand shift in power that the woke pine for. If the cultural argument has any validity whatsoever, it means that differences among groups are at least partially a function of varied cultural traits and that people in power might not always be holding others down. Entertaining such a complex mix of factors is just not going to spark the desired change in power. The woke project requires an ideological monopoly.
In banishing culture, the woke prohibitionists leave only one viable explanation: structure. If you can’t explain disparity by differences in culture, then you are left to explain it by differences in power.In the words of Andrew Sullivan, “Woke activists have brilliantly managed to construct a crude moral binary to pressure liberals into submission. And it’s worked like a charm.”
Classical liberals barely put up a fight. We got to this point because for many years non-woke liberals outside academia rarely ventured into theories of disparity and seldom challenged woke structural explanations. We supported social policies that address discrepancies in wealth and achievement but tended to be agnostic as to why there are differences in the first place. Woke ideologues, on the other hand, came to the party fully equipped with a theory of disparity. And either because many liberals had not thought enough about the roots of disparity, or were conflict-averse and didn’t want to be labelled racists, we gave away the store to woke idealogues.
The successful discrediting of cultural explanations is a singularly impressive feat considering its utter absurdity: that differences in cultures cannot and do not explain any differences in economic and social outcomes.
Here are four fallacies they are committing:
- The Fallacy of Cultural Ubiquity. The prohibition on cultural explanations must be counterintuitive to nearly everyone. I imagine that even the most ardent woke ideologue would, if they took a truth serum, admit to the influence of culture. You mean to tell me that people all over the world or in a given Western country who live differently, view the world differently, speak differently, approach life and work differently, experienced history differently, and think differently about gender and sex—that none of this boundless variation—has any bearing on why certain societies are richer and poorer or why certain subgroups are more or less successful in a given society? The argument is absurd on the face of it.
- The Fallacy of the Dominant Culture. Woke ideology treats all culture as irrelevant except that of the dominant culture. Structure cannot explain the behavior of the dominant class because the dominant class is at the top of the food chain. The only other explanation for how the dominant class behaves is culture. The woke do think it’s perfectly legitimate and even imperative to criticize the culture of the oppressor. It’s fine, for example, to talk about “white fragility” or “toxic masculinity”—the machismo culture of cis-men—or “rape culture.” But how can culture not be a factor at all for marginalized groups but be the sole factor for dominant groups? Are they really saying when structure comes to play culture goes away?
- The Fallacy of Selective Agency. If structure really is an all encompassing force, shouldn’t it also explain the vitality of the Black community? As Thomas Burgess wrote in Quillette, “if whiteness is responsible for black vices, isn’t it also responsible for black virtues? Wouldn’t all culture be its creation, and not just the undesirable parts? This is the logical conclusion of this kind of thinking, and it is what happens when you cede omnipotence to the oppressor. When you create a puppet master, you create puppets missing some of the most basic attributes of being human.”
- The Fallacy of Differential Outcomes. If “white supremacy” is truly the all powerful force woke ideologues make it out to be, why do so many other ethnic populations substantially outperform whites? One would think that in a white supremacist society whites would be allotted such advantages as higher average incomes and higher levels of educational achievement than other groups. Many White Americans are, in fact, doing poorly. In addition, some African immigrant groups that came to the U.S. under disadvantageous conditions have on average done better than American blacks and segments of the Hispanic population. Wouldn’t a white supremacist system subjugate African immigrants too?
Pointing out and dismantling these four fallacies can help make room for cultural arguments. We just need to make them.
63 comments
Where I grew up, the Jewish kids studied after school. We played out in the street – stickball, football, hide and seek, etc. So it’s no surprise they got better test scores, went to better schools and got better jobs and made more money. The system was perfectly fair. Choices have consequences.
When Marxists talk about power, they exclusively talk about political power and sometimes social power. This type of power is then exclusively painted as a means to manipulate and oppress others.
Marxists never talk about the most important power, which is the power to create, take personal responsibility, and achieve things.
Marxists imply that if we eliminate any and all “oppression” then the world will automatically start to function. It will not. That requires people taking responsibility and creating stuff.
Please could everyone stop capitalising the word “black”. It isn’t a proper noun or a cognate of one. Most especially, please don’t capitalise “black” if you are not capitalising “white”, because that is racist.
Been saying that forever.
Woke ideology, which has a strongly dominant Marxist tinge and basis, rejects any explanation for anything other than privileged and oppressed . Challenging those assumptions is imperative for our society to survive
gmmayo70-
Hello. As to visuals: my suggestion is conditional on the listener being “wiling to listen”/ willing to think about anti-woke ideas. Make the visuals very simple (draw a picture) as you only have a short time to convey your point before their doubt sets in. I agree such visuals would be an utter failure with the committed wokeist! Watch the film, Idiocracy, and you will see what I mean.
I still think people who are willing to listen may also be influenced by the idea of risk/harm. Remember anything that is efficacious enough to help is also powerful enough to hurt. Not everyone knows this. If you control the conversation properly, you can elicit an “ohhhh, I guess I wouldn’t like that” kind of response re: how wokeism can harm them. For example: “Hmmm. I guess you’d be ok resigning/being terminated/letting someone (insert marginalized group of choice) else have your job. Oh, but how would you support yourself? Geeze, could you still keep your car…” You may get a “ohhh.” and a head nod.
Here’s a better example re: climate change-I guess you’d be ok/fine with not having any heat in your apartment in the winter if that would prevent climate change. If they say yes, they’re a lost cause.
Also, recall that humans are the worst specie on the face of the planet with respect decision-making. If you’re not already, I strongly urge you to familiarize yourself with the work of cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman!
Human decision making is largely influenced by heuristics and cognitive bias. Humans are extremely primitive, including the “ones who should know better”.
You wrote about the “education system”. I agree this is important. It should be the first point of attack against woke ideas. Sadly, I think we may be too late there. It has only gotten more intense and entrenched in all levels of education-including the elementary system. It’s little more than a place for the teaching of a secular catechism on such notions as recycling, climate change, LGBTQIA rights ad inf.
Let a paragraph in Farenheit 451 be a portend to us all. Montag and others believe Benjamin Franklin established the firemen to start fires in order to burn all English-influenced books.
Unlike some other commenters here I suspect, I became aware of woke ideas infiltrating academia about 20 -25 years ago. My first experience was in 1995-96 when I was required to take a course in multiculturalism for license renewal.
Off topic: Head’s up here-I see that psychology helps steer the direction society takes. While it may seem like “crazy talk”, don’t be surprised if in five to ten years you begin to hear rumblings about how people with pedophilia can’t be criminals and shouldn’t be punished. They should only be helped.
Take a moment and look up Fred Berlin’s and other’s work on how people with pedophilia are just born that way. You may think what I’ve said is absurd. However, think about it and you should begin to see how it fits nicely in woke ideology. It’s unsettling!
By the way, I understand the difficulty talking with a woke family member. I too have one.
Cal,
I can no longer watch Idiocracy, since it seems less and less a comedy/social commentary as present day unfolds.
The examples you provide are much more helpful in understanding. For what it’s worth, I’d like to see you flesh out some realistic conversations along those lines and other of the points you’ve made.
Regarding the state of the education system, rather than commiserate, I would offer that now is probably the best (and last) chance for any real reform or pushback given how much of it is being held outside of brick and mortar schools. But this is another discussion.
gmmayo70-
Re: hypothetical conversations-How much detail are you interested in seeing?
I have a long attention span. Do your worst.
gmmayo70-
Here’s another thought: it’s important for everyone (especially in situations with manipulative people) to boundary set. In other words, establish your limits as to what you will share. There are non-hostile ways of accomplishing this. Google this search: communication techniques for someone with porous boundaries. You’ll get detailed explanations as to what are psych boundaries are and techniques to defend yourself/say no to something. Worksheets can be found here too.
Yes, I understand that will not prevent a societal takeover by the woke. However, it should help the individual to more easily repel questioning by the D&I “teacher”. As such, people should feel less powerless.
Hello gmmayo-
I’ve been giving thought to the possible vignettes. I’m having some trouble creating concrete responses. The reason: I’ve not had the opportunity to be forced into D&I training. My exposure has been in the context of reading about and continuing education ed courses. Here, no one is asked about their feelings and there is nothing to lose (except time and money if the class is crappy).
So, please give me some typical questions presenters ask and the info that is typically presented. I’ll then be better equipped to give more concrete, situation-specific techniques for you.
You mention the researcher/author Danial Kahneman. I’ve plugged his book/research on this site before and will continue to do so. His book “Thinking Fast and Slow” has been incredibly informative as I read articles posted on this site. I highly recommend it to everyone. It doesn’t address wokeism or social justice directly but rather provides a very enlightening backdrop from the research-based sciences of human behavior and ties to much of what is discussed on this site. Great read!
I think it’s important for people to have some understanding of psychology since Critical Theory relies on it so heavily!
Re #4, the Woke do try to adress this by claiming those groips have “internalized Whiteness,” which, if one actually thinks about it, proves that it’s culture, not Systems, that make or break people. The Woke think the ‘Gotcha’ is that the group (say Nigerians, or Asians) has internalized White Culture (being in time, sense of urgency, rational thought, etc – https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333 ) which they a priori (gnostically?) say is bad. They are saying who cares how successful they are, they Sold Out! To someone who sees culture as a major factor in success or failure that Gotcha is further proof that culture matters.
My woke family member gets incredibly angry if I question the woke orthodoxy. I’ve taken to just asking questions, but even then, anger is apparently the appropriate response to the wrong questions. I’ve kind of given up, mostly. I also view them as slightly sub human. NOT because they don’t agree with me, but because they seem to lack the critical faculty I always associated with normal intelligence. Is it a fault with their ideology, or their personality?
This is a personality problem. A person who strives for finding the truth of reality should also be introspective about their own faults and limitations. A person who believes in the inherent truth of their own beliefs but cannot question the meaning of their own beliefs are not interested in finding the truth of reality. This implies their own beliefs are perfect and never needs any examination – this is a form of hubris and this hubris will find a way to backfire on them.
Which species are better than humans at decision making? By what metric?
Queer theory is already embracing stigmatization of “minor attracted individuals” as “problematic” in the Neo-Marxist sense. That and framing the “debate” on incest as a “genocide” against disabled people (offspring with genetic deformities due to incest).
The Queer theory is the absolute worst because it flags even common sense and rational thought as “normative” (to be abolished). Their priority is to complicate definitions and confuse.
This is the purpose of gender bending family events and getting children to change their gender in school: to confuse them and damage their personality development.
Hello gmmayo70. As to #3 of my points: A good way to “get” people to buy into an idea is to ask them, “How does this help you? or Help me understand what you get out of it” Never tell someone what to do-the wall of resistance will be raised. Also, if someone takes your advice and it ends poorly, you will get blamed. Truly, work to understand what the wokeists see as a benefit to them.
The concept of risk/benefit ratio applies to human behavior, not just business. Ask wokesits if they’ve ever thought about how wokeism might harm them. I’ll give some more thought to #3 and get back to you.
As to #4:You may encounter a situation where people are willing to listen to you. It can help to have some graphics (if you’re in a corporate environment, you know what I mean). Visuals help.
Show pie charts. Show the normal curve. Simplify and explain it. Ask if anybody could do (fill in the blank with ie, be a NFL quarterback, a model, concert pianist, etc.
So, pull it all together and help people understand that there really aren’t that many Black/other minority group individuals in America (almost 60% is White) and a even smaller number of them can be a star.
I’ll give some more thought to #5 and get back to you. Also, just curious here, I suspect you may be trying to repel wokeism at your place or work.
Cal,
And what if the Wokeist articulates a way in which they perceive their idea to help them? This doesn’t strike me as difficult to do and indeed I could probably muster up a rough version of the their point myself.
I’m not convinced that a Ross Perot-like display of pie charts and graphs are going to be convincing, let alone practical. As we’ve discussed before, CSJ is a rejection of reason and irrationality for narrative and emotion. Presenting reasoned arguments to a Wokeist is like throwing a rock into fog.
And no, I’m not trying to repel this in the workplace since my personal circumstances don’t fit that paradigm, but I see the proliferation of this dangerous ideology into workplaces and our education system as a danger to society as a whole. I do see it among some friends and family, and have had some mild successes, but also many failures.
reason and rationality*
My kingdom for an edit function!
gmmayo70 and Mr. Bern-You raise some good points. Here are a couple of things I would add:
1. Don’t expect anyone of being able or willing to engage in meaningful, logical, polite discourse. Listen to others and feel out their cognitive/affective processes first. Never forget that 49% of the population on measures of intelligence are below average. The 50th percentile is average.
2. Typically, most humans aren’t really that interested in profound, intellectual conversation-you’ll see what I mean by visiting Tik Tok or Instagram. Facebook is mostly for older folks and suburban moms. Shape you comments to your audience.
3. When people feel threatened physically or psychologically, the frontal cortices (executive function/logic) shuts down and the limbic system (emotions) takes over.
3. Find a way to get people to see how they benefit by opting out of wokeist theory. Allow people to believe they’ve chosen to do this. Nobody likes to be told what to do.
4. If you must, help people to understand simple things like: the racial proportions in America. Example Blacks comprise about 13%, Hispanics about 18% and Whites about 60%. Secondly, help them understand that traits and abilities are normally distributed. Point out that not everyone is beautiful, thin, athletic, smart, etc.
5. Finally, don’t forget more people would rather be liked than respected.
Good luck.
Regarding your second #3, this is the sort of stuff that interests me most right now because it plays into a theme I tend to pursue on multiple threads here. How would you show the benefit of opting out of wokeist theory?
I’m not sure I follow your purpose in point #4.
To me, it seems point #5 to me plays into #3 and as usual, I’d like to see you expound on this; or, if I’m misconnecting these ideas, I’d still like to see you flesh #5 out.
I totally agree with your points. I want to write a piece on How to defeat Woke ideology… I think there are competing approaches. James L tends to be very aggressive and builds allies with people to his right. His partner Helen P seems more geared to winning over the fence sitters. I intuitively favor her approach. But it sorta goes to the big strategy dillema of any change campaign: do we go after the “independents” or build our base?
I see no reason not to build the base AND go after those on the fence. I favor any approach that works, be it Lindsay’s or Pluckrose’s (I find both useful and effective), and then some.
As I mentioned to commenter Cal, whose background appears to be in psychology, I’ve lately become far more interested in analyzing the psychology in play with the Wokesters and their intellectual manipulators, and thus effective psychological responses. The radicals who have foisted this ideology upon us have long understood and exploited psychology to promulgate their radicalism. The crazy part is – it’s no secret. What’s been done as a response?
As I see it, CSJ exploits the desire among many for positional good, where the traditional Western approach is to seek out truth through reason and inquiry. And it is this gap that must somehow be bridged for dialogue to occur. Right now, dialogue cannot happen because those concerned with positional good see Wokeism as dominant (they are collectivists by nature), so the danger of being out-grouped is too great. Thus, we must build both a base and seek the “independents”.
If the recent US presidential election has shown anything, it’s that despite an overwhelming number of state and private institutions having an overtly hostile, sometimes violent stance toward anyone who doesn’t espouse their worldview, roughly half the country still isn’t buying what they’re selling.
That tells me that we’ve got a lot more room to grow.
The lower half of an average population is below average? You don’t say.
How could it be anything but?
It’s the Woke response to these arguments where the real challenge is.
In each fallacy, some form of the standard Marxist power dynamic will be the response. It has it’s own sort of internal logic to sidestep these legitimate critiques. In a more traditional rational argument, Woke claims disintegrate under the mildest scrutiny. Not so with the convenient oppressor/oppressed dynamic.
1. Those non-Western countries around the world have been victims of colonial oppressors at some point in history, or more recently of American imperialism. Subgroups within these societies that fare worse than others are victims of historical oppression or exploitation by the institutions within a society that colonialized other cultures.
2. Yes, that’s exactly what they’re saying and they’ll invite you to prove them wrong from that point (provided they even care to listen). Much like when structure comes to play, racism goes one way. And structure always comes into play. The oppressor is evil by their very nature, thus only their culture is up for criticism.
3. Same dynamic as the previous point – If only oppressors can be racist, and we all agree that racism produces bad outcomes, then the oppressors are responsible for those outcomes.
4. Those first generation black immigrants have not had to deal with the systemic racism of the United States, and thus haven’t internalized it. (The rest of that point is incredibly hard for me to articulate from the Woke view, so I’ll leave only this.)
Each point runs headlong into Brandolini’s Law in what it takes to refute it. I’m curious how you would respond.
And thanks for taking the time to engage in the comments.
Thanks for the message and sorry for the delayed response. My sense is that someone who is already woke is not going to listen to any of my arguments. They’ve already embraced the “kafka trap,” which means that if you don’t agree with them than you are evil. Not exactly paragons of logic. So i don’t think exposing their fallacies will convince a far gone woke person. The question is will they convince a reasonably thoughtful liberal who has not drank the cool-aid? And if we keep making these arguments, can we eventually win the day (convince most reasonable people). BTW, love Brandolini’s law!
I’ve always understood the Kafka Trap to be more along the lines of ‘denial of accusation is proof of guilt’. It’s not only illogical, it’s ironic that these people no doubt consider themselves cutting edge progressive for having stumbled upon this medieval tactic.
I’ve seen many more high profile “thoughtful liberals” reject or at least criticize this ideology to some degree. Matt Taibibbi, Glenn Reynolds, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Gad Saad, Conor Friedersdorf, and Bari Weiss all instantly come to mind as examples – so it’s doable.
The real problem is how deeply ensconced this ideology is in academia and corporate training, thus giving it the veneer of intellectual legitimacy. Our credentialist culture has a difficult time rejecting the words of “experts” and “scholars”. Sokal exposed these frauds decades ago, and the dismaying result is that their ideology is now everywhere
So the real question is – how do you amplify the signal in an age when the flow of information is largely controlled by a few corporate entities who have embraced as truth the very ideology we’re critiquing?
“The real problem is how deeply ensconced this ideology is in academia and corporate training”
I’ve noticed that for sure in the Corporate world. There are many ostensibly benign and well-intentioned ‘unconscious bias’ training courses which freely mix up ‘traditional’ cognitive biases with newly invented interpersonal ‘biases’, e.g., ‘affinity bias’. The biases of cognition meet emotion itself framed as a ‘bias’ to the ends of accounting for certain outcomes in the social world. Needless to say, this analytical framework is laughably crude.
I’m not completely sure what to make of it yet but I’d be cautious about doing anything but ‘going along with it’, albeit reluctantly.
I’m not going to guess which ones you mean. Seriously, tell me.
I think most Wokesters have deliberately dispensed with logic or consistency – it’s the only way to avoid the discomfort of cognitive dissonance inherent in their frequent holding of contradictory ‘opinions’. I use air-quotes because I don’t think that many of them actually believe the things they profess – they’ve consciously chosen a narrative to follow without interrogating it, they suspect that they’d be doubtful if they did.
To illustrate: A woman was telling all within earshot that White, Western Culture was uniquely wicked and the worst to ever exist. When asked what the ‘best’ one was, she said that wasn’t one because all cultures are equal. It was pointed out that if all cultures are equal, then there can’t be a ‘worst’ one. If there is a ‘worst’, then there must also be a ‘best’.
She was unfazed and continued to spout these two completely incompatible ‘opinions’ – that all cultures are equal, yet Western culture is the worst. The (woke) majority in the vicinity were nodding in agreement.
Much as I appreciate this article, in practise it’s banging our heads against a brick wall.
There are many people who might be convinced not to buy into woke ideology if we only voiced the kind of argument you did. The target audience is not the hardcore woke person but intellectually curious people who may oppose if they knew the argument.
Agreed. The point of arguing is not to change the mind of your opponent (though bonus if you do), but the person on the fence.
The longer the CSJ narrative remains unchallenged, the more acceptance it gains.
i could not agree more. Email me at [email protected] if you want to collaborate on a piece on this
This is a well written article. Thank you.
Isn’t David missing the point here that from a ‘woke’ stance Culture is subservient to Structure and as such has no life of its own; it’s just a sublimated form of Structure. Now I realise that current ‘woke’ thought is a bit more nuanced than this crude Marxist point of view; it makes much less room for class and a lot more room for group identities, but we can go back to the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, Stuard Hall and books such as Learning to Labour by Paul Willis to inform our understanding. It definitely – to my mind – doesn’t make sense to give Culture a completely independent life of its own but otoh turning it into a completely sublimated form of Structure make no sense at all. I have to remain an agnostic here.
I am specifically saying that culture and structure do not exist independently of each other. It’s nonsense to think that culture is just a sublimated form of structure (this should offend marginalized people), or the opposite that structure and power have no impact on social agency. The goal of our inquiry should be to tease these factors out in a given social setting. The problem is that wokeness makes that nearly impossible.
Surely, others out there are familiar with Erich Fromm, the humanist psychologist. Fromm’s ideas are taught in virtually all intro psych classes and theory of psychology classes. Here’s something he believed: In Escape from Freedom, he found value in the lack of individual freedom, rigid structure, and obligations required on the members of medieval society. I copy and pasted this from Wikipedia I admit. It, however, is factually correct.
Fromm was also a member of the Frankfurt School people-he was a critical theorist and a Democratic Socialist. Psychology has and continues to exert some pernicious affects and effects on individuals and society.
Human behavior is the result of the interaction between environment and genetics. As you suggest, many traits are heritable.
I suspect that ‘Wokeness’ arises from the Blank Slate fallacy – which Steven Pinker debunked in his 2002 book ‘The Blank Slate’.
If people are born as ‘blank slates’ then they can be ‘perfected’ by sufficient cultural education… and there are quite a few people on the Left who think they should be doing the educating.
If humans have varied inherent traits , of which 50% is down to genetics , then ‘perfection’ is not attainable, there is little chance of achieving utopia . Therefore cultural explanations *must* be wrong or The Cause is lost.
I am a huge Steven Pinker fan but think this analysis is off. The woke are blank slate people to be sure, but they believe structure is determinant, not culture. They deny both genetics and culture.
If we were just born as blank slates then we would never learn to read and write because a person can’t learn these skills on their own, so in that sense, our ‘Culture’ – of which language is a massive part – is something we inherit like an estate from our ‘society’ past and present.
It’s not either-or, but an explanation of society attributing all outcomes, all that is, to individual genetics doesn’t make a lot of sense even if they play their part.
There seem to be things going on in society which exist above and below the level of the biological individual. They are not easily grasped and are contentious but they seem to be a logical necessity.
I understand and agree. They don’t deny culture exists but insist that it’s fully a function of the power structure. The woke generally deny the importance of genetics. But one could acknowledge genetics and still be woke as long as one denies that the other major factor for oppressed people at least is structure not culture.
This whole argument goes back a long way in The History of Mankind! Philosophers have pondered on whence comes The Nature of Man. ” Is it Nature or Is it Nurture?” Because Education and History are the first dominoes to fall in Totalitarian Revolutions all lessons learned and all terms of reference fade and so here we are again trying to wrap our minds around the meaning of Our Human Nature and how to control it’s excesses in virtue and depravity! Or should it be said how can our Excesses be used to control Us and Others?
Night-Your comment makes me think you don’t understand Locke’s concept of tabula rasa or “blank slate”. You may want to learn it.
Kant makes more sense to me: “Concepts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”. A naive empiricism doesn’t readily explain how we come to acquire the concepts that allow us to make sense of observations in the first place. I do agree, however, that my argument above didn’t make complete sense, although undoubtedly some of the concepts we aquire are, roughly speaking, ‘inherited’ through our language and culture, making them compatible with the notion of tabula rasa, others seem to have a biological basis. Logically everything empirical would flow from a first concept need to grasp the first observation? Probably something Freudian there?
See here for a good explanation of the woke view point on Blank Slate:
https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-human-nature-ideology/
I have a more cynical take on all this. Privilege and Oppression came straight out of the Marxist Playbook. Marxists fell out with the Working Class and Herbert Marcuse allegedly said use Blacks and Minorities instead, in their long-term plan to destroy our Culture from within, to enable them to build their favoured Utopia upon its Ashes.
Look at what they are doing as an Assault upon the Pillars of our Society, and it all begins to make sense. Destroy the family, education, words, language, thinking, individualism. Create a rootless people who cling together in fear of the unknown, around an Insane Ideology and you are well on your way.
I think we can all agree that wokeism’s rationale and execution strategy is exactly the same as the plans of action for:
Soviet Russia (USSR),
CCP (Communist China)
Facist Italy
Communist North Korea
Nazi Germany or
Any other totalitarian government/society currently existing or in the past
It’s all about the acquisition of power and its retention-nothing else.
As has been noted by numerous writer, (not just here) the government policies designed to lift people up end up harming them. For example: LBJ’s “Great Society” actually made the lives of black Americans worse. Medicare made older people dependent of government policy and so on.
I will always believe that no matter how sweet, well-intentioned, kind, etc a person is, anybody is capable of committing heinous crimes under the right circumstances.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote (I paraphrase) the line between good and evil runs through the heart of all humans.
What about the various totalitarian societies backed by the USA ?
Agreed. I think the woke long ago recognized the connection between exaggerated claims of harm and danger and the bureaucratic mechanisms that could be created to protect them from those specters. It seems they now see that the central (federal) government can become the ultimate enforcer of the woke orthodoxy. That should tell us everything we need to know about big government.
Bravo, Mr. Bern! A fine summation of the Left’s #2 bugaboo: the role of culture.
Remember “Waiting for Superman”? The documentary about American K-12 and its dismal outcomes? It was directed by the guy who did “An Inconvenient Truth,” and the film was even a favorite of Barack Obama’s.
In one scene an interviewee discusses a poor black urban school and the thousands of dropouts the school has put on the streets.
“So what do they do? Let’s just say they’re not writing screenplays.”
Yes, a bit simplistic, but I always admired that man for acknowledging that personal choice is still a thing.
“Time to sic the Daleks on them.” Er, maybe you don’t realise the Daleks are a metaphor for nazis….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFyXqxZzLFk
I am aware of that. I was thinking more of the way they shrieked ‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’ when blasting away at their enemies. Just remember, that is what the Wokesters would really like to do to non-conformists. And they’re getting more open about it every day.
Davros tells it like it is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9NttGB9oOw
Great article, I appreciate how concise it is. Point #3 offered some new and enlightening info to me. I’d circled around those ideas but hadn’t taken them to their ‘logical conclusion.’ Many thanks.
Yeah I wish i came up with point #3!
‘The reason woke ideology was so dead set on de-legitimizing cultural arguments is that the woke want to disempower the people in charge and empower historically marginalized groups.’
No, the woke want to disempower the people in charge and empower THEMSELVES under the pretense they are empowering historically marginalized groups. The HMGs (other than the ideologically useful elements among them) will almost certainly do far worse (as well everyone else except the grifter class) under a Woke regime than they are doing now, but since the Woke will have complete control of the information flow down to what can or cannot be said in private, nobody within the Woke regime or outside the HMG community will ever know it. And that’s the way the Woke regime likes it. If it isn’t reported and published, it didn’t happen.
Other than that slight objection this is a to the point well-reasoned argument that doesn’t mince words or use jargon that most importantly doesn’t turn into an eye-glazing doctoral thesis.
The leaders of this movement are flat-out nihilistically evil. They know their ‘system’ is BS, and they glory in its BSery because it gives them power over the masses of emotional ignorants they have indoctrinated to can sic on anybody pointing out they are frauds. IMO the only argument they will listen to anymore is direct force. Let’s give it to them at a level they deserve. Time to sic the Daleks on them.
“No, the woke want to disempower the people in charge and empower THEMSELVES under the pretense they are empowering historically marginalized groups”
Totally. A key point missed in what is otherwise an excellent article.
The new Wole regime will assume power under the guise of “It’s only temporary – just until the HMGs get back on their feet”
I expect they’ll also need to assume power ‘temporarily’ so they have time to make sure the HMGs are cleansed of ‘counter-revolutionaries’.
Let’s face it.
All their good works would be all for naught if they ceded power to a group like Black Americans if the likes of conservative thinkers such as Thomas Sowell were included.
When we speak of the woke, we may be talking about different people. There are the hardcore ideologues and critical theorists, and there are the nice folks at your corporate human resources office who just want a fairer society but have fallen under the influence of the ideologues. So yes, there are the folks who want power for themselves, and there are people who want the disempowered to have more power. In both cases, they are motivated by a desire to see a change in power away from the current dominant class.
Agreed. I’m in school with woke people who are selfless do-gooders. They’re about as far as you can get from power-hungry.
“The leaders of this movement are flat-out nihilistically evil.”
The blunt truth.
You got it! This is all a big power grab by the people running the show. An allegedly “socialist” movement with nothing but contempt for the working class is a giant red flag.