The Unwitting Authoritarianism of Woke Culture
The real people in charge don’t care about ideology, human rights or oppressed people. They have no ideology other than power itself, and the drive to keep it, forever. Know your enemy.
The fundamental rift within society is the gross disparity in wealth and class. Power is concentrated in the hands of a corporatised, wealthy few, who lobby and capture the democratic process and direct lawmakers towards their own ends. These people have inordinate control over the political and economic life of millions, if not billions of people, and control over critical issues such as arms proliferation and climate change.
This is not to dismiss the very real social issues which also exist, are regressive, and need to change. Issues such as racism, feminism, and LGBT rights.
But the crucial point to remember is that the most basic duty of power is to ensure its own, ongoing existence. There is very little ideology operating here - rather a ruthless pragmatism narrowly focused on financial profit. Institutional power is apolitical - it hates the far-Left as much as it does the far-Right - not because of any moral objection to their ideas, but due to what they represent - agitation for change. Power’s primary task is the preservation of the status quo.
The oldest method of maintaining power is to divide-and-rule. As long as the population is at each other’s throats, all the better for the powerful and the architects of policy. It is indisputable that such an environment currently thrives. And it is a sad irony that much of its most effective smear tactics, derive from the language and practice of social justice activism and ‘woke’ culture.
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Woke culture had its beginnings in emotional responses to people’s subjugation and lack of rights. This is very human, right and understandable.
Unfortunately, emotions and feelings are poor substitutes for rational thinking, and more often than not distort our ability to see clearly. At some point rationalism has to take the reins. It appears it has yet to do so broadly across culture, and those with a duty to speak out against a rising tide of aggressive, quasi-totalitarian activism either did so and were destroyed, or meekly acquiesced to demands.
But the ruling class, and their power structures were not so meek, nor so stupid. They rightly recognised the utility of this emotional reasoning, this detached, free-floating anger and frustration, which would, like clockwork, predictably latch on to the issue du jour. Next would come a deeply ungenerous fight between different parts of the population over a particular issue, one claiming a moral righteousness and superiority over the other. The common ground died, the principles of debate died, and all that was left was animosity and divided groups. And those with real power watched on with relish.
Our current cultural malaise is deeply structural. The greatest trick has been to boil it all down to interpersonal problems. Instead of focusing efforts and energy towards systemic changes - changes that actually would affect those in power - we became obsessed with modifying our relations and interactions, with a delusional view that such scrutiny would lead to a more progressive future. We failed to notice that this kind of revolutionary spirit was completely acceptable to power structures, as it never truly threatened them.
All of this led to the explosion of an entire culture of ideas and activism that fundamentally missed the point. It created an ungenerous, censorious, humorless environment where dissent itself is the problem - where we have convinced each other that if we only adopt the right comportment and speech, deep-seated issues will start to melt away.
This is a fantasy. It is also not achievable, nor desirable. The logical conclusion is a homogeneity of thought and belief, a constant internal self-censoring, and the maintenance of a hegemonic cultural belief structure, deviation from which will be punished.
Sadly, this environment has provided the architects of policy and power with a new playbook of tactics and villains, which it will use to smear any criticism of power or any real challenge to its hegemony.
Both Bernie Sanders 2016 and 2020 presidential runs were deliberately attacked using these strategies. The ‘Bernie Bros’ smear attempted to paint all Bernie supporters as aggressive, white, latently racist men. He was accused of being sexist, making certain women “uncomfortable” with his gesturing and hectoring. He was accused of being unconcerned with black lives and problems, and at worst of being a bona fide racist. He was accused of being unsympathetic to the LGBT community, the support of which Hillary proudly touted, despite the fact the Clinton Foundation is funded by Saudi Arabian and UAE money - countries with no tolerance for such minorities. The examples go on. And all of this, despite the fact (more accurately, because of the fact) he advocated for systemic change that would actually help all of these groups, but which is simply unacceptable to institutional power. So they destroyed him, twice.
True power’s concessions are only ever performative. So for example, we can’t cut the defense budget or reign in endless war, but we can drape the Pentagon in a rainbow flag. That image is the height of absurdity. The most nefarious organisation on the planet, the CIA and Department of Defense, ‘pinkwashing’ its actions. Just to be very clear, LGBT rights are important and should be acknowledged and respected. But that’s not what this is about. The real question people should ask in this scenario is “what kind of dissent is actually allowed?” It is only in answering this that we begin to see the contours of acceptable activism and discussion. And ‘acceptable activism’ is oxymoronic.
We also have examples of this unfolding in real time. The GameStop scenario is an extremely direct and, to the hedge fund managers, highly disturbing attack on institutional, Wall Street power, and as one of the pillars of institutional power, Wall Street is scrambling and wondering how to respond.
It is therefore not surprising that the reddit forum was shut down citing “hate speech”. It is not surprising that major media outlets and commentators are doing their best to conflate these reddit users with Trump supporters, sexist and racist behaviours, the alt-right and the general instability of the ‘fake news’ era. They have labelled them anti-Semites, but are yet to label them as outright fascists, as far as I can tell, but give them time.
The media outlets and opinion-creators will also invoke the need for greater monitoring and surveillance of such subversive behaviour, in concert with their allies in the national security and intelligence apparatus, many of whom go on to lucrative and influential jobs spreading disinformation for MSNBC and CNN. Most ominously, such cheerleading for censorship and ‘rooting-out’ undesirables has become a staple of the liberal left. Traditionally the right saw themselves as the arbiters or moral life (e.g. abortion, gay marriage etc), whereas the left stood for free speech, open dialogue and the belief that people’s moral lives were their own business, provided they didn’t impinge on the rights of others. We are watching a historic reversal of this tendency, and this should alarm anyone, like me, who considers themselves a true progressive.
Not only is this cheerleading troubling, it’s also incredibly dumb and short-sighted. Why would we want to vest large multinational corporations, social media giants, and the political establishment more power to control what we see, say and think? Today it may be the widely unpopular alt-right being shut down. But tomorrow it may be you, or the left - in fact it has already begun.
The real people in charge don’t care about your ideology, about human rights, about oppressed people and minorities. They don’t have an ideology other than power itself, and the drive to keep it, forever.
It may be uncomfortable to some to discuss, but I believe much of what we see with regards to cheerleading censorship demonstrates the shared goals of institutional power, and the most fervent social justice activists. Post-modern ideology is soaked in discussions of power, ostensibly as the enemy to be destroyed, or leveled down. But the next question is simple and always left unanswered - well what then? Once the activists dismantle these cultural power structures over which they obsess, who or what replaces them? The only logical answer is that they do, along with their ideas. Inherent in their struggle is thus a thirst for power and subjugation. And so on this matter their goals and the state/institutional power are the same. Perhaps this is why so many of these activists are so easily swept up into the beliefs and practices of authoritarianism.
The over-arching point is that any challenge to the dominant power structures will now be smeared with the language of woke culture, and the proponents of that culture will cheer as if they have achieved some victory, when all they really have done is act as useful idiots in the service of maintaining the status quo. This is deeply regrettable, and a prescription for disaster.
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Many people today no longer feel at home with themselves and their world. People clearly can harbour prejudiced views, and many have been enlightened by the discussions around social justice. This is obviously a good thing. But many others have been left with a creeping insecurity and fear. Free expression is constrained. We have become increasingly paranoid, emotionally confused, and subjected to the consistently disapproving gaze of a tyrannical super-ego in the sky. The hedonistic ethos is dead. Pleasure is no longer a simple affair. Interactions with our fellow human beings are fraught with danger. We are angry at the idea of being labelled as something we know we aren’t, but we fear the labelling more and so restrict our free expression. We question the validity of our thoughts. We fear hurting or offending others, while simultaneously resenting others for making us feel that way.
These are not inconsequential psychological conflicts. They breed stagnation of thought and action, and they certainly don’t aid the formation of a broad coalition of the powerless against the ruling elite. As we have noted, they actually do the opposite. From a mental health perspective, we are gravely ill, ambivalent and unmoored from a central ethic or sustaining idea.
And divide-and-rule continues its reign as the most effective tool of oppression in history.
Know your enemy.
Kia kaha
Todd