The Wokeness retreat – tactical or inevitable?

[Nat Quinn]

The Wokeness retreat – tactical or inevitable? – Daily Friend

Although we may never know why Thomas Crooks tried to kill Donald Trump, his failed attempt has further wounded a freshly hobbled woke movement.

Easily recalled images of John Kennedy’s motorcade are associated with fraught politics and myriad conspiracy theories. Mistakes made by the US Secret Service (USSS) on 22 November 1963 were profoundly consequential, yet sufficiently understandable. The errors committed by the same agency on 13 July 2024 left a bystander dead while rocking a raucous presidential race. Failures were too numerous and widespread to attribute blame to one or two people, amid intense and long-lasting scrutiny.

The least-awful option for mitigating the damage involves persuading the American public that such incompetence is explained by the agency’s DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies and practices. Photos of a bloodied Donald Trump won’t soon drift into obscurity, and they clearly depict a man more than a head taller than the women assigned to shield him.

The Democrats’ trustworthiness was already suffering, as its most senior leaders, along with Washington’s top journalists, must have known for many months of Joe Biden’s vanishing capacity to serve as president. The chatter within the party, and among mainstream commentators about Biden’s dreadful debate performance has focused on who can beat Trump; not who can best lead the country.

The last vestiges of the woke movement’s innocence were exposed when Hamas’s savage attack on 7 October instantly triggered antisemitism on many elite college campuses and elsewhere. Immigration tensions have subsequently dominated headlines across Europe and North America. Favouring waves of refugees over struggling domestic households has triggered a backlash that promises to persist.

BEE, DEI

Americans with DEI jobs are loyal to Democrats because if Republicans sweep the White House and both legislative chambers, they will eliminate, or at least redefine, many, if not most, DEI jobs. The anti-DEI movement has been gaining momentum.

Like BEE, DEI promotes patronage by creating dependency, but this is harder in countries with healthy economies and low unemployment. Productive people in dynamic economies need not rely on government support. Therefore, DEI politics nurture victimhood narratives to persuade students to become redistribution advocates. This precludes their achieving their productive potential, thus making their employment dependent on DEI regulations.

Promoting diversity and inclusion is consistent with advancing productivity and competitiveness. Advocating for equity is a political ploy to sustain and exploit a permanent underclass.

Karl Marx was correct to admire capitalism’s potential to create wealth. History has shown that he was wrong to presume that this would lead to workers rising up to overthrow their governments. Rather, it turns out that some people are much better than average at managing complex organisations in a rapidly changing world. This creates more and better opportunities than having unions or governments running businesses. Capitalism and democracy are imperfect but effective, and better than known alternatives.

Marx’s impact is sustained by leftist intellectuals who cultivate his framing of history, economics and politics within conflict-defined narratives. Marx depicted social conflict as being between workers and the owners of the modes of production, such as factories or large farming operations. When it became clear, about a century ago, that workers didn’t see themselves as being exploited and they weren’t in a state of revolt, neo-Marxists sought to convince other groups that they were being oppressed by the wealthy. Over time this was expanded to include nearly every demographic except white males.

Power

How societies organise themselves is a fascinating topic which enthralls many intellectuals. Those that have had the greatest influence over the past half century have fixated on power relationships, as this makes them politically relevant. Their impact has compounded in recent decades, notwithstanding global poverty having plunged far faster than experts would have dared to predict.

“The long march through the institutions” is a seemingly subtle rallying cry that traces back to the student protests of the 1960s. The plan was for leftists to gradually take over universities, media, corporations, legislatures and judiciaries. This plan’s exceptional success across much of Europe and North America provoked a broad overreach. Many left-leaning moderates are now having a second awakening, as they realise they have been indoctrinated and exploited to benefit political elites.

The progressives’ basic formula begins with identifying a historical injustice with contemporary resonance that can be tied to a specific group of people. This works best with injustices that had previously been accepted or at least tolerated, such as racial bigotry, particularly slavery and apartheid.

Decrying slavery and apartheid can be depicted as a celebration of a person’s inner goodness and, thus, as an initiation ritual into ‘club woke’. That is, membership into the woke culture is predicated upon self-validation bordering on delusional self-adulation. Consider how different the woke movement would have been if the entrance criteria had been about identifying and advancing workable solutions.

Resentment

Woke culture is cult-like in that it offers ongoing validation to those who accept its indoctrination. A core feature is an infatuation with judging, along with hostility toward solving. If you consider this observation to be extreme, try to get a woke friend or colleague to objectively frame a contentious issue. It isn’t that they are the only group with many members who are bad at framing issues, it is the resentment which such a challenge can so easily inspire among the woke.

“The long march through the institutions” guided the woke movement in many ways as did the teachings of Herbert Marcuse, a key figure in the 1960s student protest movement. In his essay, “Repressive Tolerance,” he endorsed intolerance toward conservative movements versus abundant tolerance for progressive ones.

The intolerance that began by seeking to cancel conservatives expanded to demand that people accept the pronouns that so many progressives endorse. They have sought to control or diminish institutions and traditions as diverse as language, religion, family, gender, and patriotism. To ensure that the downtrodden groups they sympathise with don’t succeed, they also reject merit and productivity.

If progressives had promoted merit, inclusion and diversity, disparate groups could have found many midpoints resulting in less polarisation and more prosperity.

This year will long be associated with abrupt political events and realignments. The woke advocates have lost their ability to frame the prevailing narratives; their movement will have to adapt or die.

 

source:The Wokeness retreat – tactical or inevitable? – Daily Friend

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