Woke Is Just Repackaged Cultural Marxism
Cultural Marxism is not a conspiracy theory, it is real, it is happening and it is spectacularly widespread.
I got into an online exchange with a young wokester who claimed nothing I said about the "woke" was true and that I couldn't even define what "woke" means.
"Au contraire, mon ami," I sarcastically replied - she didn't get the sarcasm or understand the phrase. "You are the one who doesn't know that everything new, like being "woke", is almost always based on something old and that what you are is nothing new."
"What do you mean?", my useful idiot protege asked.
"You are little more than what people my age called a Cultural Marxist, someone who is simply a Marxist who fights battles in a social and cultural level rather than an economic level. You are only different from revolutionary Marxists of the past in methods, not madness. Same contents, new package.”
“But Cultural Marxism is a far-right conspiracy theory.”
“It is not and whoever told you that is probably another Cultural Marxist. Look at what you believe and substitute economics for identity and race and see if your ideology isn’t a perfect fit for Marx and the output of the Frankfurt School, Critical Theory. The focus of your ‘movement’ shifted from economics to identity because capitalism spreads wealth and opportunity too wide. I’ve been writing about you people for longer than you have been alive.”
And I have – most of what follows is from something I wrote in 2014.
White privilege, racism, micro-aggression, manspreading, the heteronormative patriarchy, income “inequality”, “social justice”, sexism, changing public service and military fitness/strength testing to accommodate weaker candidates), radical feminism, slut-shaming, fat-shaming, thin-privilege (yes, that’s apparently a thing now) are all considered “legitimate” by our intelligentsia and elitist politicians.
Let’s call all of it what it really is – it is Cultural Marxism - a progressive shit-storm ginned up to destroy the individual. Look at it – it is all intended to keep any individual from expressing discrimination (properly defined as “choice”), recognizing the limitation or superiority of others or generally calling out the lack of success of this group or that group because we aren’t supposed to notice the differences in people – that their successes or failures are the result of some act of oppression and not the presence or absence of individual skills, abilities or talent driven by individual want, need or desire.
There is nothing “fair” or “equal” about any of it. This is probably not an organized Marxist movement but it doesn’t have to be – it is growing the same way that insipid (yet mesmerizing) YouTube clips of rednecks doing stupid crap behind a Ford pickup, dogs playing a piano or a cat in a shark suit riding a Roomba propagate in the American consciousness – in this age of superficial electronic immediacy, shallow thinkers are helping the unasinous detrius (a nice way of saying stupid shit) of Cultural Marxism go viral in society just like the aforementioned videos do on Al Gore’s Greatest Invention.
The true Marxists are laughing their collective asses off at the weakness of western culture (classical liberalism) right now. They know that they just have to sit back and watch as we make their work easier by destroying ourselves – maybe they give it a little push every now and again, as they have done with the anarchists who protest the G7 meetings, the anti-war crowd when a GOP resident is in office. It also pays to notice that war isn’t such a big deal when the progressives are in office (remember Cindy Sheehan? Me neither) or when Occupy Wall Streeters protest income “inequality” (while communicating via iPhones or iPads), LBGTQers looking for “equality” (while they are really asking for special “rights”) and memeing “Hand’s up, don’t shoot!/”I can’t breathe!” themes on social media.
This erstwhile viral “movement” has turned our language upside down where racism means treating everyone the same, discrimination can be cured by more discrimination (just to the benefit of a favored group) and sexism is simply noting the natural differences between men and women (and in opposition to the GLBTQ agenda – that there are men and women, and they are different).
If I wrote a book about it, I would title it “Cultural Marxism for Morons”, mostly because it is real and it is happening – and has been for a long, long time.
Of note: Andrew Breitbart opined, "Politics is downstream from culture".
Specifically they had to move from economic oppression to basing the whole oppression schtick on immutable characteristics such as melanin content, ethnicity of plumbing (indoor vs outdoor)
The problem with their previous focus on economics was the success of free markets. Particularly in countries like the USA one could start at the bottom and end up at the top. Can’t have that can we?