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Don’t like wokeness? What do you have to hide?
Wokes interrogate critics of wokeness by asking what it is that wokeness has inhibited them from doing. The implication is that they want to do bad things, like shout racial slurs, and would be doing it right now even if it wasn’t for wokeness. To be a leftist is to see the world as being in a state of fundamental conflict between opposing forces. Leftist politics, violent or non-violent, totalitarian or libertarian, become the only hope of redemption for mankind from the forces of capitalism, nationalism, the patriarchy, and whatever other evils are added to the menu.
This battle for the human soul requires the total triumph of the Left over everything else. And thus also total control over everyone and everything to root out all these many human evils.
What wokes see as liberation, critics of wokeness see as total tyranny.
To understand why these two groups see wokeness so differently requires also understanding the leftist mentality and the concept of wokeness. To be ‘woke’ or aware is to see the entire world as political. While to oppose wokeness is to see wokes imposing politics on everything.
Critics of wokeness protest politicization while wokes insist that everything is already political.
This premise lies at the heart of leftist politics and also the opposition to it by apolitical people who may not be conservative or have any political agenda of their own except being free.
Leftism is a giant conspiracy theory. Its paranoid schizophrenic view of the world is not unique. The perception that the world is invisibly controlled by forces and agendas that most people are not aware of pervades many cults, conspiracy theorists and radical movements. But what is unique about the Left is its image as an intellectual movement and a cultural force that has enabled its paranoid worldview and its raving hostility to the world as it exists to dominate the discourse at the expense of the ideas, beliefs and cultures that predated it.
The central leftist conspiracy theory is wrapped in academic theories taught in every university, and its premises are as deeply embedded in our culture as they were in the USSR and much of the western world, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, has come to see at least some of reality through the lens of leftist conspiracy theories and to echo its messages.
Wokeness is the act of ‘awakening’ people to that alternate reality by imposing that lens.
Leftism is a way of seeing the world and a moral system about how the world should be. This morality is premised on seeing invisible systems of power, whether it’s capitalism or systemic racism, that it defines and seeks to dismantle to make way for its new moral order to take over.
Freedom is incompatible with that worldview. Leftism assumes that the vast majority of people have been incorporated into systems, ideologies and ways of being that they have to unlearn or be forced to unlearn. Under the impetus of identity politics, leftists may concede that some ‘indigenous peoples’ untainted by western capitalism might be pure enough to function on their own without a ‘wokening’ being imposed on them, but most of us will have to be ‘untaught.’
And the unlearning of the old and the awakening to the new is a repetitive process that requires constant monitoring to avoid backsliding. Individualism is subsumed by collective monitoring. Workplaces, schools and eventually all of society become a giant panopticon where activists seek out errors and sins to punish through public humiliation, financial loss and even violence.
The more intensive wokeness gets, the more extreme its activists become in monitoring everyone’s habits, associations and speech. And this is what most people view as ‘wokeness’ and come out against. They see wokeness not as leftist politics, but as being monitored and forced to be afraid and to censor themselves because of the total politicisation of everything.
Much like Communism, wokes argue that freedom might one day be realizable, but not until everything bad has been unlearned and everything good has been taught. And since the Left keeps generating new evils to unlearn, like heterosexuality and cis’ness, the final unlearning and the embrace of true wokeness or Communism is an event that can never actually arrive..
Since everything is political and since everything not fully woke is evil, everything must be destroyed. The habit of seeing the world through a lens of leftist conspiracy theories, and identifying more things to destroy as part of the larger goal of justifying the destruction of everything becomes the fundamental intellectual and cultural activity of leftist wokeness.
This system of deconstruction that defines impossible utopian ideals against the worldly evils that it identifies is the political engine of the machine. Its purpose is not so much to find new things to celebrate, like transgenderism, as to use them to wage war on old things. New things are of no use unless they are destroying the old and then they too must be destroyed.
Opponents of wokeness come to see this as a totalitarian assault on their freedom and their individuality. What begins as a war against systems quickly becomes a war on individuals. Dismantling ‘isms’ stops being just about waging war on institutions and boils down to waging war on individuals. The war on capitalism or the patriarchy isn’t out there, it’s inside you.
There is no freedom without individualism. And there is no individualism when everything is politicised. The backlash to wokeness is a backlash against that tyranny of conformity.
Wokes view any resistance to wokeness as immoral. Cancel culture they argue is just consequences culture. Individualism doesn’t exist. The people who claim to be individuals are just complicit in the systems such as capitalism or colonialism that they seek to preserve.
Wokeness claims to be pursuing liberation through tyranny which it can only justify by claiming that its tyranny is saving people from a much worse invisible tyranny all around them. And if they don’t feel saved, that’s because they’ve become complicit in that tyranny. And need to ‘check their privilege’ and ‘decenter’ themselves. And thus freedom becomes slavery.
And slavery becomes freedom.
Wokeness is not a temporary phenomenon, under its varied names it’s the inevitable next stage of leftist politics which begin with promises of utopia and end with a tyrannical dystopia.
Most people don’t recognize the nuances of leftist politics let alone understand that behind the grab bag of causes, some seemingly random, solar panels, Gaza, drag queens, is a larger operating modality, but they know when they are being threatened and intimidated.
Leftist policies seem good to people when they offer financial benefits, like free healthcare, or feelings of heroism, like civil rights, without looking into the details, but the package deal is that the integrated whole is a machine built to destroy everything they love and care about. Underneath the smiles and buzzwords is a paranoid hostility to people as they are and a worldview trained to see the bad in everything old and the good in everything new it does.
Wokeness is the transition from leftism as an economic and social benefit to a mandatory worldview. And it is here that people wake up and realize that it’s not freedom: it’s slavery.
Wow. Beautiful summation, Daniel.
Wokeness is a bogus ideology that ordinarily I wouldn’t care much about. But it’s also a political agenda with mandatory dictates. Worse than that, to disagree or oppose its dogma gets you an instant label of racist, sexist, homophobe, and generally malevolent human being. How can you deal with that? Well, you can’t. You can only stand your ground while ignoring the tantrums. It there’s one thing I’ve learned in life is that you can’t argue with leftists, lunatics, or angry drunks. I guess I’ll have to add wokies to the list.
Especially leftist lunatics who are angry drunks and flat earthers.
I know that FPM readers, most especially, those who comment here frequently, have noticed over the years how few if any Leftwing or mainstream news outlets ever allow reader commentary.
So why do Fox News, FPM, Breitbart, Substack and of course YouTube allow comments (You’ll notice on YouTube the MSM videos usually disable the comment section.)
It’s my contention that YouTube and other podcast and video platforms truly helped drive this Trump victory, as millions of Americans finally had the ability to do their own research on breaking news stories, major issues, phenomenal scholarly interviews and most importantly, can study the history of Marxism and other totalitarian ideologies that the legacy media will not dare delve into. (Think Hillsdale College)
Sure there are ne’er=do-wells posting rude and idiotic yammerings but they’re scattered amongst the normally great citizen insights… and the alternative of zero commentary is effectively mass censorship.
I frequent the San Diego news sites as it’s where I was born and raised. I ran across the “Times of San Diego” last summer, and literally one week before the election, they posted a big note. “The Comment section has been disabled until after the election.” As of today, it still has not been reactivated.
And as you can imagine, there’s a ton of issues So Cal is dealing with, and the ToS articles and opinion pieces that previously seemed to be fairly balanced, have now become the standard Liberal group-think bilge… with no way for readers and taxpayers to raise the BS Flag. And that sucks.
What I’ve noticed here that some, if not many of the rebuttals are not much more than juvenile troll bait. Radio commentator Dennis Prager has this simple maxim when it comes to discussion and debate: “Be honest, then state an opinion.”
Yes. It’s a brilliant analysis. Thanks, Daniel.
Excellent article.
I think of government being needed in one out of 10 situations, and harmful in 9 out of 10.
Or maybe needed in our out of 100 case, harmful in 99, or whatever.
Government is generally too remote to have knowledge of or interest in local cases.
Local government is generally better than far off government.
International government is generally even worse than national government.
Also, law was twisted at least since Roman times, to serve the interests of certain parties, combined with mediating conflicts between parties, which was often needed. So there is a kind of dual aspect to law, profound corruption combined with necessary search for justice in conflicts.
I’m speaking as an amateur, of course, legal experts here may differ 🙂
This amateur who has had lots of experience with lots of governments around the world, including the world government called the UN, agrees with you.
Thanks Mo !!!!!
It is disappointing to see one of my favorite authors, in an otherwise excellent essay, include libertarians with those who help the cancer of wokeness metastasize.
This libertarian wants smaller, fiscally responsible government. When criticized, it was no less than candidate Trump who responded “this is called the Republican Party, it’s not called the Conservative Party.” It was Trump who stole a page from the Dems’ playbook when he demonized DeSantis when Ron suggested we needed to address the unfunded liabilities on Medicare and Social Security. As a libertarian, I don’t think it is the responsibility of my government to provide for my health care or retirement. Crazy dat!
Anyone surprised neither of the two main parties has done anything to address the problem should contact me about some ocean front property I am selling in Nebraska that has a Bigfoot nearby.
I want to be allowed to buy from whomever wants to sell it to me cheapest. Here’s a really tough fill-in-the-blank for you: “consumers want ___ prices.” (Hint: three letters and it begins with “l.”)
For those who can handle that one, here’s a more difficult one. What happens to the deficit if Social Security, tips, and overtime are not taxed?
As for libertarians and free speech, that is putting a softball up on a tee to hit. Let the pathetic non sequiturs commence.
Mr. Greenfield is right to put libertarianism in the category of leftish politics. Although Libertarianism is not sufficiently definitive to offer good governance in toto, its various policies are embraced by both left and right. Libertarianism has much in common with the French Enlightenment — a core animating principle of “freedom” and “liberty” untethered to any unchanging moral principle. Non-aggression as a core principle is not enough and too subjective to create a great civilization. Unhappily, we here in the States have discovered that “freedom” and “liberty” are likewise insufficient.
It is hard to imagine normal men with their natural propensities for conflict building a great civilization upon libertarian principles.
Your failure to address the specific examples I stated is telling. Is demonstrable fiscal irresponsibility an important ingredient in building a “great civilization?”
As for the the allusion to the Enlightenment, human reasoning that questions what is can be used to improve lives. For example, people capable of reasoning should understand the demonstrable negative consequences of many policies supported by the left and right.
As for men’s “natural propensities for conflict,” we have enacted laws that sometimes justifiably penalize such propensities. It isn’t particularly difficult to cite many examples of such propensities undermining the creation of a great civilization.
We have a mentally ill house troll who has made libertarianism a toxic subject here, which is why noone defends it.
Policies aside, Libertarians are too smug to get elected. Even worse than liberals. By that, I mean their candidates. Like the last libertarian I checked out, Gary Johnson. Who had a moral hissy fit on camera over the use of the word “illegal alien.”
Hi Richard,
I was not classing libertarians with leftists.
What I wrote was that “leftist politics, violent or non-violent, totalitarian or libertarian, become the only hope of redemption for mankind from the forces of capitalism, nationalism, the patriarchy, and whatever other evils are added to the menu.”
I was specifically referring to leftist libertarians.
I’m sorry there was a misunderstanding.
The young and old nerds are desperate to be significant. That is the whole equation. They realize they have been accurately categorized as unattractive, uneducated, unintelligent and UNNECESSARY!
Under the old Soviet Communism, in order to build the “New Soviet Man”, all in inequalities must be stripped clean. Since some people are always more fortunate in having friends or having love, these too must be stripped away, all in the name of “equity”. So when feminists stated that “the personal is political” they expressed the Leninist/Stalinist view that everything is a power struggle. The permanence of the communist revolution means that freedom will never become possible lest individual characteristics re-emerge and bring the inequity that comes with them.
Leftism destroys all distinctions; those between animals and humans, men and women, good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood.
Inevitably it drags behind in its wake the curse of nihilism.
“When at last the veil is lifted, we perceive a wondrous landscape: a world of negations, a world in which, wherever we look for presence we find absence, a world not of people but of vacant idols, offers, in the places where we seek for order, friendship and moral value, only the skeleton of power. There is no creation in this world, though it is full of cleverness- a cleverness actively deployed in the cause of Nothing. It is a world of un-creation, without hope or faith or love … It is a world in which negation has been endowed with the supreme instruments-power and intellect-so making absence into the all-embracing presence. It is, in short, the world of the Devil.”
_____Roger Scruton
That’s a wonderful quote from Scruton.
Here’s another one of his that I like; I find it a good companion to yours:
“Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”
Brilliant quotes.
If only more people could see that we have been run by communists for a good while. Trump winning is akin to the collapse of the USSR. Hence their warning of oligarchs. It is an admission that they are communists.
So you’re saying a bunch of Marxists are upset that a bunch of super brilliant entrepreneurs get to be in charge for a while?
I got ChatGPT to admit that Marxism is a verifiably failed system, and that nothing but mass graves, misery and enslavement of the mind and body are its progeny.
Do your own query if you don’t believe me.
Few understand that AI is based upon a logic structure.
The Demo-Rats and the rest of them the UN/Globalists they want a Socialists New World Order with them running it all
Because they believe it is better!! And they are the only ones who understand. P. S. Most of them reject God or any God notions.
Politics by the hard core radical left is nothing more then what Marx followed per this short pithy instruction he left in one of his letters: “the ruthless criticism of all things.”—Marx
This is squeeky hinge that all marxists turn on.
The only thing worse than inequality is forced equality.
Forced equality ends up in genocide and disaster every time.
Every time.
There are millions of corpses throughout history to prove that this is true.
We should have learned this by now.