The Maoist Rage of Woke Ideology

April 2023May 5, 2023By Michael Rectenwald

Unlike Marxism, wokeness is primarily a “morality” based on an abstract notion of social justice, which takes its inspiration and methods from Mao’s Cultural Revolution . . .

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Comments (14)

Yes, the Cultural Revolution is a much better parallel to what is happening in much of the West today than anything associated with Marxism. But even the Cultural Revolution or ideas of “social justice” do not encompass entirely a parallel to the thrust of what currently is taking place in the West, with what is taking place encompassing everything from “social justice” to forced “proper” attitudes about health, from forced narratives about what goes on in the minds of animals to the proposition that humans are an extension of certain animals, and much more, and obviously not all of this has to do with advancing “social justice,” but rather with a overarching desire, probably always present in human nature but now fused with effective technology, to forcefully control thoughts and narratives in general. So unless the author is separating Wokeism from the totalitarian methodologies and desires of those doing the imposing today of somewhat disparate approaches and ideas, I think one needs to broaden the definition of what currently is going on to perhaps entail the idea that “wokeism” is simply a strain of the greater, and even more dangerous, overarching tech-enabled totalitarian movement underfoot in the West.

April 4, 2023 Michael Kaiser Reply
Michael, I have addressed this here: https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/essays/social-justice-and-emergence-covid-tyranny

April 5, 2023 Michael Rectenwald Reply
Michael Rectenwald: Yes, it looks like in many respects you have.

April 6, 2023 Michael Kaiser Reply
This analysis fails to get to the root of the matter. To do so requires understanding that socialism is atheist Christianity: now social justice. The “woke” morality–that justifies cancel and brutality–stems from the Christian morality. It receives its impetus and potency from the latter. So, 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 we have Burnham’s discourses on suicidal “liberalism,” which are very easily read as 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, again, it is Christian morality (Sklavenmoral) that blesses most of the “woke” agenda. Thus, again, its redoubtable, seemingly irresistible, potency.
Accordingly, “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, the Sklavenmoral, causes guilty conscience and facilitates the “woke” massacres. (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, on the contrary, proven by their vanquishing and slaughtering of others.) Now of course for the Whites in power, they are merely presiding, like Pontius Pilates, 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.
Ergo, 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–war on the heteros by the homos, etc. etc. In other words, “woke” is recognizably a very late, decadent form of the atheist Christianity, Sklavenmoral, known as socialism, Marxism, Communism, and all the other blah blah blahs.

April 19, 2023 Nick Reply
As for all this chatter about “totalitarianism.” When you don’t like the king, call him a despot. When you don’t like the government, call it totalitarian. When you are in the majority, call it democracy. When you are in the minority, denounce the tyranny of the mobocracy. (Hobbes covered all that rhetoric, paradiastole, in Leviathan.) Burnham long ago established that totalitarianism was here to stay…just a question of which flavor. Managerial Revolution happened AGES ago!

April 19, 2023 Nick Reply
Maybe the proper umbrella that all these ideologies fall under is Leftist anti-liberal (meaning against freedom) anti-Christian technocratic totalitarianism.

The solution against this movement is to reestablish liberal things like free speech and individual rights, but to adopt a strictly illiberal stance against “tolerance of oppositional views.” This violates absolute free speech rights. However, I think this is the only way to win. All other speech should be allowed with this one specific exception.

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

April 19, 2023 RMB Reply
There are other parallels with Mao’s China as well. Mao insisted on pushing for steel production among the peasants when producing steel was completely unworkable. The Left’s push for electric vehicles & “sustainability” when the US cannot ever acquire enough rare earth materials to produce enough the batteries that would be necessary seems as doomed to failure as Mao’s push for a steel industry when there was never enough fuel to build the fires necessary to produce steel in China. In some villages they even dug up whole cemeteries just to get the wood coffins to throw on the fire in the futile attempt to produce steel. Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalism replaced the Imperial monarchy in China and then Mao’s Communism replaced Nationalism. When looking at 20th Chinese history If Globalism replaced America’s Nationalist phase then we haven’t actually reached our Communist 2nd revolutionary phase yet. This will happen when the US government becomes so weak the gangs and Aztec drug cartels take over large parts of this country. The George Floyd riots were a preview of that future second phase.

April 19, 2023 Louis Reply
To Kaiser: I agree. And since it’s spring…like I’ve said, I’m tired of fighting this battle with people who landscape their arguments with big trees but call the flowers blah, blah, blahs. I can see the big trees from down the road but I need to be part of the landscape to see the flowers.

Call me anytime for a metaphor.

April 19, 2023 RICHARD BECK Reply
The Maoists have claimed that they will kill all Christians. I don’t think there will be any reeducation attempted.

April 19, 2023 JAMES H Shanley Reply
from the (vanishing) old left–excellent article!! Those few of us remaining have watched the triumph of western Maoism (starting with the weathermen) for years. I would argue that its roots go back to the french revolution–to terror of the french revolution where for example 7 day weeks were denounced and a ten day week was proposed. Same with the decimal system as EP Thompson observed. The french communist party could never decide whether its roots were 1789 or 1917 (though as a colleague of mine has written 1789 is more likely ) which led to its involvement in France’s war in Algeria. I would not be surprised if the woke support Ukraine This is to say “woke” derives from a nationalist totalitarian impulse . I do not ask you to agree with these remarks —but I do think they are apposite

April 19, 2023 Robert Alpert Reply
Exactly. The Left must be destroyed. They will not permit themselves to be persuaded by their moral and intellectual superiors.

April 20, 2023 Leon Reply
you may think the left must be destroyed — ok but that is another conversation The point of the article is that there is nothing “left” in woke ideology. I struggle to make sense of it and its historical antecedents but I am inclined to say it is a mechanism for the preservation of empire–that is a long conversation. One thing is for sure Eugene Debs would be appalled by it. Just because the woke calls itself left does not make it so.

April 20, 2023 Robert Alpert Reply
“Wokeness inherits standpoint epistemology from them and holds that membership in a subordinated identity group grants members exclusive access to knowledge—their own knowledge— which is inaccessible to others.”

Sounds like a 21st century version of gnosticism.

May 2, 2023 Hans Bosse Reply
It is notoriously difficult to come up with a genuinely new heresy, but perhaps the Western Maoist Woke Gnostics have done it—as hybrid and eerily cobbled-together a monstrosity as it would seem to be.

May 3, 2023 Mark Henrik Reply

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