Marx Was Not Woke

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April 2023April 24, 2023By Paul Gottfried

Wokeism arises out of the failure of liberalism, not out of the theory of Marxism . . .

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Comments (34)

“Truth, for the woke left, is determined and redefined by those in power.”

Which, by definition, would mean that should the woke left take over the controls (as is happening right now) it would be “they” who would determine/redefine what constitutes truth.

In “The Godfather” Michael tells Kay “I’m not my father.” And he wasn’t, because in the end he was worse.

And so will it be with the woke left.

April 10, 2023 Hans Bosse Reply
One ism we could use more of: Namierism! That is: naming names and specifying individuals for attack. For starters: “woke” and a bunch of similar terms are unhelpful, distracting if not positively harmful. They are gratuitous and serve to divert effective targeting and opposition. The Democrats (and the RINO buffers like Liz Cheney) have established for 2020 Trump voters a casus belli bursting at the seams. The policies, actions, and agenda of the Democrats amount to a genocidal project against Whites (European-Americans) and traditional Christians (Christians who read Leviticus as God’s decree against homosexuality). We need less dissecting all the isms and more confronting and combating the Democrats and RINOs–individuals in our own neighborhoods and communities. Actions and forceful confrontations like the Democrats routinely carry out. E.g., if _you_ find an LGBTrans flyer on a bulletin board, rip it down. It is HATE SPEECH and a direct assault upon your religion. That is the spirit of zeal, like Jesus in the temple knocking over the tables of the blasphemers and desecrators. Holy War has arrived. Don’t hide in your closets and pray for God’s will to be done. You are that will. “I did not come to bring peace; rather, I brought the sword.” That’s the Christianity which scares Democrats. As soon as the Christians who voted for Trump take that to heart, we might finally see a battle, which the Democrats have fully earned. As soon as Christians shed their cowardice and realize that Muslims and Bolsheviks (Democrats) have no monopoly on holy war (jihad): Christians have their Crusades.

April 10, 2023 Nick Reply
Thank you. I am so tired from saying that Wokeism is not Marxism that I have to drink water. Yuck!

April 10, 2023 RICHARD T BECK Reply
As someone who was born and raised in a former communist country in Eastern Europe, I full agree with Paul’s theses. Communism, in practice, is almost the exact opposite of wokism in the US. The features which it shares…as Paul points out…are common to many other ideas and political forms throughout history.

From a cultural perspective, all the communist countries in E.E. were very socially conservative by Western standards. Not just today’s Western standards, but even the contemporary ones. Family, cultural tradition, a healthy nationalism etc. were promoted. If anything, I think communism was the best thing to happen to E.E. since it kept us separated from the diseases which developed in the West.

But, to be fair to those in the US who say wokism is Marxism…they are partially right. At least, not Marxism, but some forms of contemporary 19th/early 20th century leftism. At the same time as Marx, there were many adjacent leftist ideologies who had similar ideas as wokism in the US. And Marxism, in practice, in its early days was a mish mash of these ideologies. In the 1920s in the USSR similar ideas against “bourgeois morality” were evident. They had a nudist beach on the banks of the Moskva river in the early 20s, and even started doing gay weddings. All these ended with Stalin, who can be best described as a right-wing “Marxist” counter-revolutionary, and was described as such by Trotsky. To some degree, all those undesirable elements were exported to the West following Stalin’s victory. But there were certainly a lot more of them home-grown in the West.

And it is certainly true that many of today’s most militant woke in the US can trace their origin to Trotskyite or aligned groups. But this has little do do with communism as practiced in E.E. since the late 20s, and probably also little to do with Trotsky (who may or may not be called a Marxist). Even less to do with Marx. It has more to do with the fact that all sorts of social rejects gravitated to such organizations in the 60s-70s in the West.

But a historical, if not ideological, link to western forms of “communism” (not necessarily or fully Marxist) may exist.

April 10, 2023 EG Reply
Marx was not woke—but wokeism is another overbred version of socialism impregnated with modern liberalism, if only to see whether the present-day witch’s brew will work this time. And, oh my, did Marx ever have anything to do with socialism, communism, and Marxism, or do his apologists still want to prove that Christ was not Christian? Hazony’s argument about the “connection” between Marxism and the woke left is correct. Nobody claims wokeism is a direct outgrowth of traditional Marxism, but it is the hybridized variation of socialist-communist and modern-liberal ideologies.

April 11, 2023 Peter J. Sandys Reply
Both Hazony and Gottfried have it wrong: wokeism is neither an upadated version of Marxism nor did it arise out of the failure of liberalism to stop the rise of cultural Marxism.. Marxist communism was defeated by liberalism, as was announced by Fukuyama in the early 1990s. Cultural Marxism was an attempt to articulate an updated version of Marxism, but eventually became part of the updated, or, more accurately, the progressive logic of liberalism. There was no “march through the institutions” of liberalism by cultural Marxists.. Gottfried seems to recognize this when he writes that “late modern liberalism moved in the direction of what became the woke left even while clinging to the illusion of openness.” But he can’t stomach the idea that the liberalism he likes from the 1950s was eventually rejected by a new generation of improved liberals seeking to advance human emancipation.

Gottfried is trying to save liberal capitalism from wokeness while unable to deny that corporate capitalists are benefitting from wokeness. They are benefitting because the progressive logic of liberal capitalism leads to wokeness. The woke left did not “outflanked self-described liberals in the media”. Rather, liberals progressively became woke.

Postmodern liberalism, or wokeness is not for collectivism but is consistent with the cardinal liberal principle that all individuals regardless of sex, religion, race, nationality should be afforded the right to decide which sexual identities they prefer to be identified with, rather than being boxed into a male-female “collectivist binary.” The same logic applies to the way critical race theorists use racial categories. They don’t believe in races. They believe that in our current society minorities are “racialized” by dominant whites, and that overcoming this racial hierarchy necessitates race identity politics. Their aim is to transcend altogether any form of racial identity for the sake of a society in which everyone is judged as an individual.

April 11, 2023 ricardo duchesne Reply
It seems to me that the US had resisted Naziism, Fascism, Communism, etc. so successfully that Marcuse had to come up with other ways for the Left to gain power, but ultimately all these movements were trying to overthrow Christianity. It is obvious here in San Antonio perhaps more than around the rest of the US that the Trotskyites are very much on the minds on GenZers because they don’t shut up about Frida Kahlo who represents a quick way for Leftists to control the argument. Any criticism of course is met with the usual charges of racism. San Antonio also has a gigantic head of Lenin on display downtown now that reminds me of the colossal Olmec heads. Anyone who was dumb enough to support closer ties with Mexico through free trade and open borders is responsible for bringing all of this crap across the border. Most people know about the damage caused in the rust belt by Globalism, but few people in the US are aware of the damage caused by Globalism in Texas. Looking back to when I was a young child in the 1970s, San Antonio was basically unchanged from the 1950s. Between the time Henry Cisneros was elected and Nafta was passed which was only about 10 or 15 years everything shifted and John Wayne was replaced with Frida Kahlo.

April 11, 2023 Louis Reply
I think the main error here is to call the Democratic Party or the American left of the 20th century “late stage liberalism”. This shrunken liberalism that the author describes wasn’t in fact liberalism at all. It was Progressivism which was the American flavor of 19th century socialism. It was already infused with secularized Christianity having a spirit of secular Post-millennial pietism. It was already against individualism, Christianity, and freedom. It was the Progressive Left that welcomed and funded the Frankfurt School intellectuals in America after they fled Germany.

Instead what we have witnessed was the creeping growth of Marxist Socialism in America as it transformed into something uniquely American to attack America.

As for Marxist sexual morality, let us not forget the Weimar Communists celebration of homosexuality and transgenderism. As for Marxist scientific materialism let us not forget Lysenkoism. Their claims to a basis in science were always a farce.

https://thecrosssectionrmb.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-ethics-of-liberty-children-and.html

April 11, 2023 RMB Reply
Woke is animated by the same spirit as Marxism (the spirit of ur-leftism embodied in the ressentiment of groups at the bottom of natural hierarchies). The surface level differences should not distract from the fundamental similarities – the form of Woke is the same as the form of Marxism, the substance has morphed through memetic evolution and cross-pollination with other ur-leftist movements to accomodate a new environment. That Marx was not woke doesn’t mean he would not be woke if he was active in the current year.

As always with ideology, the substance (philosophizing) is just dressing for the form (acquisition and maintenance of power).

April 11, 2023 anon Reply
Have you seen James Lindsay’s April 10th attack on Gottfried on Twitter calling him an idiot?

Lindsay reminds me of those same senior women, liberal friends of mine, I’ve know for years, who called me names the other day and unfriended me on Facebook for simply stating that Trump’s indictment might help him rather than hurt him in 2024. What a frenzy!

Lindsay uses the same name calling tactics as the Wokists. He’s not concerned with truth just converts.

I wrote this in a Chronicles Commentary a couple of days ago. I didn’t think that its truth would be so demonstrable so quickly:

“I think I know why some Substack and Twitter Conservatives contrive to blame the Marxist boogeyman for Wokeism. Their sales pitch reminds me of info commercials. We have a history of blaming Communism for every world ill just as Progressives blame Whiteness for every world ill. Communism and Whiteness are easy targets because they’re popular scapegoats, comfortable for the masses to unite against, and with a couple of clichés easily understood.”

April 11, 2023 RICHARD BECK Reply
As RMB mentions, Weimar was homo-depraved and filthy-debauched, on Heliogabalus scale, almost at the US 2023 level. And I have some news: Nazis get rid of such regimes. Not “conservatives” or “Christians”–let alone “Republicans.” Many Christians initially supported the Nazis precisely because the latter were clearly recognized as a purifying disinfectant–a chemical to cleanse–and certainly, in 1933, had no notions that a Holocaust would occur. An anti-Sodom and anti-Gomorrah force: the anti-Bolsheviks under the title “National Socialists” were perceived by many in that light. Now in this country we’ve got plenty on the Right (those who voted for Trump) who don’t give a shit about the atrocities and abominations of abortion, homo-coupling (“same-sex marriage”)–or systemic anti-White racism, for that matter. There is yet to emerge any force whatsoever that could serve as our disinfectant. (Again, “Christians” and “conservatives” are the last people I expect to use FORCE against pollution and depravity. The world can go to Hell, because _they_ are saved. In fact, why not do nothing, as this will hasten the Day of Judgment?

April 11, 2023 Nick Reply
Communism, liberalism, fascism, Bolshevism, capitalism, anarchism are all tools of Zionism, and Zionism is the tool of a world theocracy in the form of Messianic Judaism/kabbalah.

Where do Noahide Laws fit in? Why will nobody, whichever of the above ‘isms’ they subscribe to, discuss/debate? Name *one* public intellectual who has delved into the significant topic of a proposed global religion and brought the topic to the fore? Signed on to by all US Presidents, and being promoted by the UN? James Lindsay WILL NOT TOUCH despite his forays into gnosticism as the basis of Marxism/wokeism. Nor Sam Harris. Nor the ‘IDW’. Nor anybody. This reveals the truth of these supposed competing ‘isms’. They are not competing at all, else atheist communists would be loudly protesting them, as would neo-Nazis, as would free speech/freedom of religion libertarians and anarchists. But nothing, from anybody…

April 11, 2023 Karen Reply
Karen, I think you could pass the test with flying BIPOCS (colors). Pro-Black: Social Justice. Pro-Jew: Judaism (religion). And Pro-WASP?? That’s right: only the latter are not allowed to STING. Or even sing.

April 11, 2023 Nick Reply
What test is that? The noticing test?

April 11, 2023 karen Reply
The old fascination of the two oppositions was revived.

Putin supporters unite, fascist and communists, far-left and fa-right!

The extreme right and the extreme left attract each other, just like they did in 1939. And they are closer than you might think. Quite frankly, they are not opposites at all.

Dear reader, please check what is called the Horsehoe Theory (Wikipedia).

April 11, 2023 Trifleas Reply
Nick, I could never figure out how the supposed ‘fascist’ anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, anti-atheism, anti-liberty Noahide Laws could be represented by the LGBT rainbow symbol. In the requisite kabbalist dialectical reversal, I figure it’s a trap, in the same way communism was a trap for gays in Cuba. They want LGBT on board the rainbow train because they are a key part of the destruction of the west…but I am pretty sure they will be thrown off the train once they have served their purpose. They are pushing the LGBT circus so hard, into such confrontational absurdity and obscenity, that I think the violent snap back is close at hand. Look at Israel now, the gay rainbow capital of the world now becoming the anti-gay Noahide capital of the world.

The Bolsheviks and Nazis were funded by the same people. As they are now eg. left wing Soros in bed with right wing Chabadnik Kushner and libertarian atheist Thiel. The Star of David and the Swastika adorn the same Zionist Haavara coin, and there is o photo of Franco in a room adorned with both also. Antifa waves ‘I stand with Israel’ flags while Stalin gave ‘Roman’ salutes. ‘Based’ white nationalist Putin is a Chabadnik praying in a kippah for the Third Temple while fighting Israeli-funded neo-Nazis, yet the Chabad leader was rescued by the Nazis, who are lauded by rabbis in IDF military colleges. The left wing Democrats fund the right wing Kahanists, whom Biden recently delisted as terrorists.

April 11, 2023 karen Reply
The Bolsheviks were mainly Jewish, the Frankfurt school that gave us wokeism were virtually all Jewish. And Marxists. Judith Butler is Jewish, most of the prominent feminists were/are Jewish, DiAngelo of ‘white fragility’ fame is Jewish, Ayn Rand, preaching atomised, liberal individualism (trans ideology?) was Jewish, and the 8 genders of the Talmud is Jewish! Is this a coincidence! Gottfried’s explanation of present day Jewish radicalism and anti-white, anti-Christian hatred as revenge for the Holocaust doesn’t explain the ethnically focused slaughter *by Jews* of white Christians in Russia that occurred BEFORE the ‘Holocaust’ ( a Jewish religious term that predates WWIi, denoting a sacrifice, a burnt offering).

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342999,00.html

April 11, 2023 karen Reply
Karen, whoever is “behind it all,” and some even say it’s God, there are Democrats wherever you are in this country, and miscreant Republicans who collaborate (like Liz Cheney) with them, all of whom are quite worthy of confronting and scourging. I can’t touch Biden. But I can confront those who voted for him and constantly attack me, who voted for Trump, as blah-blah-blah-ist. Suppose Satan exists. You think you’re gonna kill him? You can at least pursue his worshippers and adherents. Evil spreads and evil PEOPLE thrive when good people do no more than damn the Devil for being the Devil. Precise targeting…or no one will ever be struck by your weapons.

April 11, 2023 Nick Reply
And for the record, be it noted: among the many worthy services Paul Gottfried has provided: publicly, in print, PG has defended Dr. Sam Francis, against all manner of malicious and venomous attempts to misrepresent and defame that late, great intellectual warrior, disciple of James Burnham.

April 11, 2023 Nick Reply
All these “-isms” are just ways of explaining to the targeted victims why they should allow these tyrants to run their lives and make adjustments to the victims’ societies to align with the tyrants’ “Right Thinking” ways. It is an attack upon the victims’ traditions, customs, beliefs, Way of Life, System of Law, etc… and should of be opposed, defeated, and eliminated as the existential threat to the targeted victims that it is. Don’t waste too much time and energy analyzing the “flavors” of these particular forms of Tyranny. They ALL are opposed to Liberty, and the proper response is uniting under that banner that says “Don’t Tread On Me”. It is time.

April 12, 2023 Larry Bowen Reply
With due respect for Ricardo Duchesne, I don’t recall saying anything in my essay about saving liberal capitalism from its woke counterpart. If my critic is alluding to the fact that I wrote a book that treats the bourgeois liberalism of the nineteenth century with sympathy, then he is correct about what I did. But I don’t see much evidence of that historical liberalism about which I wrote in modern corporate capitalism, which is becoming almost uniformly woke. In my essay I was arguing that whatever “liberalism” the woke Left and even its quasi-woke opponents claim to represent is so denatured that it would be best for the Right not to reclaim this exhausted heritage. Where Duchesne and I obviously disagree is in our assessment of that heritage when it was still flourishing. For me it was once admirable but became a cadaver a long time ago. It is hardly thriving in such would-be exponents as James Lindsay, Bari Weiss, and Douglas Murray.

April 12, 2023 Paul Gottfried Reply
Dr Gottfried….how is it that neither you nor James Lindsay nor Pete Quinone, nor Douglas Murray, nor indeed anybody, will answer any questions about Noahide Law? How can you all be in agreement about them, if you are ideological opponents? Ditto ALL supposed opposing US Presidents? If you are all too scared to talk about them, then what is the point of pretending any political movement can tackle TPTB? Or are Noahide Laws the already agreed to answer in the dialectical problem-reaction-solution play, and you’re all just arguing about the cause of current madness for our entertainment, whilst working towards the same goal.

April 12, 2023 karen Reply
No doubt I’ll be sorry I asked this, but here goes. I’m passingly familiar with Noahide law as expounded in Jewish (Talmudic) theology, but what is its relevance to what we are discussing here?

April 13, 2023 Kirt Higdon Reply
How is it relevant? Are you serious? These public ‘intellectuals’ have nothing to say about *theocratic* laws that forbid BLASPHEMY and IDOLATRY? Defined by Talmudists/kabbalists? How does Marxism OR Wokeism OR liberalism fit with theocratic law? They have nothing to say? At all? A global religion (also being pushed by the UN) is of no passing interest? Nothing? lol Who defines the terms? Religious laws that are currently in US legislation, with Rabbis opening Congress stating they are the basis of society, and being introduced by stealth to children via the ‘Moment of Silence’ in schools? eg. DeSantis in Florida. Why are atheists like Sam Harris silent? Yuval Noah Harari? Gay atheist Murray? Why are libertarians/liberals like James Lindsay silent? He’s into theology lately, yet avoids the topic totally. How is this possible? Why are *free speech warriors* like Peterson silent? Pronouns! Why are prominent ‘antiSemites’ and ‘antiZionists’ like EMJones and Nick Fuentes silent? Even the Church of Satan won’t comment (they’re OK with blasphemy laws now, and worshipping a God they reject? Really?) Democrats for a Secular America are not protesting theocratic laws, they’re only concerned about ‘Christofascists’? Atheist Marxists and wokeists aren’t protesting them, *even when their arch enemy Trump was called a champion of the Laws*. It seems they are all working for the same global project, while pretending to oppose each other.

https://stopnoahidelaw.blogspot.com/

https://t.co/XnP4is8C9e

https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/07/why-is-the-us-honoring-a-racist-rabbi/

April 13, 2023 karen Reply
Nick, the Christian Nationalist movement is what has a chance to displace wokeist immorality. They are calling for a right wing strongman to establish Christian morality by force of the state. I don’t even think the strongman needs to be a believer in Christian doctrine. He just has to oppose all the cultural things wokeism is pushing.

April 13, 2023 RMB Reply
RMB, the Noahide Laws currently biding their time within your legislation forbid idolatry, which according to the Talmud, includes, (indeed targets) Christianity. The Laws are variously described as tools of communists, fascists, or both (ie. Zionists). The globalist laws are intended to syncretise all religions (á la Theosophy), under a world authority ( who will that be?) especially the main Abrahamic religions, hence the multifaith project in Abu Dhabi. Well, this sounds nice, but the devil is in the detail, including the fact that the Rebbe who pushed these laws stated Jews should *not* indulge in interfaith discussions. ZioPropagandists grooming conservative audiences, like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, pretend the laws will allow the practice of different religions and cultures under the universal laws, but this is *not* what the Talmud says, it is not what Christianity-hating rabbis are saying, it is not what Likud or Chabad is saying, it is not what common sense dictates. Noachidae is also a Masonic degree, which might explain the secrecy and refusal of all those with a public platform to answer reasonable questions from the public concerning these *public* laws? Contact your Congress representatives and ask them what these laws are about. Biden recently reaffirmed the laws, as all Presidents since Carter have done.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/290464

April 13, 2023 Karen Reply
The basic disagreement I have is that Gottfriend thinks of liberalism as a political theory that can be frozen in time and taken as complete at varoius points in history, at your preference, without examining the inherent dynamic of this ideology, how it progressed according to its own internal principles from Locke all the way to John Dewey, Karl Popper, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ralf Dahrendorf, Ronald Dworkin, Martha Nussbaum, Will Kymlicka…Woke.

His claim is that cultural Marxists took over (without a gun being fired marching into very lucrative careers). The way I see it the civil rights movement that abolished racial segregation and disenfranchisement, and called for affirmative hiring to remedy the “injuries of the past” and persistent “systemic racism,” was consistent with liberalism. So was the abolition of white only immigration policies treating immigrants differently based on their race in violation of the right and dignity of all humans to be treated as individuals with equal rights to comfort and happiness. Postmodernist demands are also consistent with liberalism in striving for the right of individuals to decide the sexual identities they prefer.

April 14, 2023 ricardo duchesne Reply
My interest in Marx ended when I learned of his extensive smoking (cigars) and drinking habits, and that 4 of his 7 kids died because he wasn’t bringing home the bacon, You can’t push the blame for any of that onto capitalists. Get a job, work hard, save your money (10 % of all you earn) and be a decent parent. And stop reading Marx. Thanks to the author here trying to clear his name, but it can’t be done.

April 15, 2023 Pat ormsby Reply
Contrary to what RD says I do, I do not view liberalism as a political theory frozen in a past time period. Rather I treat it as the worldview of the European bourgeoisie which reached its high point in the nineteenth century and then became a tag attached to various leftist movements in the twentieth century. I have no idea how Alexis Tocqueville, James Madison and the Squad all qualify as “liberal” unless I stretch that term into a semantic pretzel. It is modern egalitarianism and a hatredfor Western civilization, not the constitutional structure created by eighteenth century liberal statesmen, which produced our woke culture and the ideas that fed into it.

April 16, 2023 Paul Gottfried Reply
I did not mention Alexis Tocqueville. Gottfried’s thesis that woke is a product of cultural Marxists marching through the institutions begs the question as to how an otherwise nicely liberal (presumably “paleoconservative” in 1950s America) allowed all their institutions (with lucrative careers) to be taken over by “collectivist” cultural Marxists ————————-including the minds of the foremost American liberals of our time, Rawls, Dworkin, Rorty, Fukuyama. All these guys have gone along with the progressivism that is built into liberalism and that now = woke.

April 17, 2023 ricardo duchesne Reply
If one wished to be glib about it, Nietzsche wrote the autopsy of the USA in his Genealogy of Morals. H.L. Mencken then provided handsome and copious footnotes. Sklavenmoral in favor of Aframericans. Next: Burnham’s discourses on suicidal “liberalism” were actually referring merely to a late stage of the Sklavenmoral. Thus, it is more accurate to speak of Christianity (an American form of Sklavenmoral) rather than Burnham’s “liberal syndrome” as the ultimate source of the Western suicide. (China has no such syndrome, whether you call it Christian or liberal.) All told, it is Christian morality (Sklavenmoral) that blesses most of the “woke” agenda. Thus, it’s redoubtable, seemingly irresistible, potency.

April 18, 2023 Nick Reply
And thus, “White guilt” is a function of Christian morality. Without the latter, it would be inconceivable. Why would Whites need feel any shame about being more powerful, or about having exercised that superiority as all humans have always done—and still do and will do? It is not a White but a human thing (for individuals and groups) to seek and maintain power over others. Why would the White, why would ANY, race feel guilty about being dominant against rivals? Christianity. I say again. Christianity causes guilty conscience. Jews in the OT felt the opposite of guilty as they annihilated rival peoples. They were proud; they felt blessed by Yahweh. Their righteousness and divine favor was proven by their vanquishing and slaughtering of others. Now of course for the Whites in power, they are merely presiding over “White guilt”–that is, administering the incineration of the White Trash. Your Gavin Newsomes, Cuomos, Bushes, and Bidens are crucifying the Chauvins and Babbitts, while granting the liberation and empowerment of all the Barabbas Floyds and Michael Byrds.

April 18, 2023 Nick Reply
…and surely even a half-wit will have noticed that “Christianity” in the USA long ago became merely a super-sanctimonious version of egalitarianism/socialism: war on the White-haves by the non-White-have-nots.

April 18, 2023 Nick Reply
Wokism does not come from Christianity. Christianity’s slave morality is charity + acceptance. Neither Christ nor the church preached social revolutions of turning the tables on the oppressor class or tearing down the natural social orders such family and gender. Marx may have wanted to immamentize the eschaton, but that is not true of single mothers who dress their boys up as girls or blue-haired shriekers trying to shout down everyone else. Moreover, Christianity can only come either from God or from man. If from God, then wokism needs to seen in the light of devilry and heresy–i.e., it is not Christian enough rather than too Christian. If from man, then wokism is something inherently potential in human psychology. As far as I know, Nietzsche didn’t have a well-developed theory of evolutionary psychology and comes down rather too hard on the side of cultural determinism.

The same is true for all other single-cause explanations–they are not adequate. Our historical moment arises from a multitude of currents. I don’t think it is a mistake that censorship is more popular in post-Patriot Act USA or that the USA that accepted the Patriot Act is the same one that is very worried about its Social Security benefits, etc. Like woke capitalism has appeared in a post-industrial society in which technology has somewhat insulated the wealthy from the negative economic effects of the nuclear family breaking down among the laboring classes. Acccident? Unlikely. Many factors are at play.

I am sorry to hear James Lindsay attacking Paul Gottfried. Lindsay’s ideas may not be totally correct from a strategic political perspective, his attempt to help every people who just want to grill make sense of wokism by explaining it i terms of Marxism is very powerful.

April 22, 2023 Chris Reply

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