Thankfully, capable intellectuals are fighting back against the neo-Marxist “woke” ideology, which encompasses critical race theory, intersectionality, LGBT ideology, queer theory, gender studies, feminism, postcolonialism, disability studies, fat studies, and social justice. For a partial list of counters to the woke coalition of malcontents, see my recent blog post entitled “Farewell, Cedar City.”
With so much literature refuting wokeness, this post offers a different kind of contribution to the cause: woke theory distilled down to 19 words:
People in Group 1 are doing better than people in Group 2. Therefore, Group 1 is oppressing Group 2.
That’s it. The mountain of woke books, articles, lectures, podcasts, videos, etc. is mere elaboration on this central idea.
Here are examples:
White people are doing better than black people. Therefore, white people are oppressing black people.
Woke guru Ibram X Kendi famously writes,
Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy.
LGBT activists state or imply versions of the following:
LGBT people are committing suicide at much higher than average rates. Therefore, non-LGBT people are oppressing LGBT people.
Israel is vilified on the following grounds:
Israel is doing well. Nearby Muslim states are doing poorly. Therefore, Israel is oppressing the Muslim states.
Men are vilified as follows:
Men make more money than women do. Therefore, men are oppressing women.
The central woke idea can be derived readily from the Marxist slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Communism demands that everyone have equal wealth. Therefore, if there is any inequality of wealth, it follows that the wealthy have taken too much, and the less wealthy have been given too little. Therefore, the wealthy are oppressing the less wealthy.
The woke interpret production and happiness as proof of sin, and they interpret poverty and misery as proof of virtue.
Statistically, Asian-Americans are doing well. To the woke, that means that Asians are “White-adjacent,” guilty of emulating the “White” oppressors. How do the woke know this? Asian-Americans are doing well.
The central idea of wokism reveals why there will always be socialists, no matter how many times socialism causes mass death. Socialists will always evade the failures of socialism. When a capitalist nation such as the U.S. succeeds, while a socialist nation such as Cuba fails, socialists will claim that the capitalist nation must have oppressed the socialist nation. To the woke, capitalist success and socialist failure merely prove that capitalists oppress socialists.
The same woke idea operates on the level of individuals. In any capitalist country, some individuals will do better than others. To the woke, therefore, a capitalist country will always be evil, because the people doing well must be oppressing the people doing less well.
There will always be individuals who evade responsibility for their own failure. They will never ask, “What virtues can I learn from those who are doing well—virtues such as rationality, objectivity, independence, productiveness, respect for individual rights, monogamy, parental responsibility—so that I can emulate them and do well too?” Instead, they will embrace an ideology that gives them a pretense to blame the virtuous and to try to erase the indelible reproach of virtue.
A simple calculation shows that the total number of hours of freedom robbed from Americans since the 1960s to pay for the socialist welfare state is an order of magnitude more than the total number of hours robbed from all the slaves in the history of the United States. If anyone today deserves reparations, it is the Americans—still alive—who have been oppressed to pay for socialism. But the woke are blind to such oppression, because the Americans who have been robbed are still doing better than the wretches who believe they can get ahead through robbing.
What can the virtuous do in the face of wokeness? Stop falling for the central woke idea. Be proud of your productiveness, your happiness, your virtue. To the woke, offer only this: your example.