I want to commend a post by David Anderson at The Moderate Voice to your attention. Here’s its opening:
The incredibly misguided 1619 Project and the new religious movement of “wokeism†has finally jumped the shark. Yes, fellow liberals: we have our own deplorables now.
The whole “White Fragility†nonsense has its own original sin, its saints (St. Di Angelo, St. Kendi, St. T.-N. Coates and other grievance grifters), its own dogma, its metaphoric witch burning, twitter pile-ons and career cancellations of the “problematicâ€.
Outraged? Keep reading and try cancelling me. Go ahead: my editors always defend me.
Read the whole thing. He places himself on the political spectrum:
Before you excoriate me below in the comments as a conservative, don’t: my lefty-liberal bonafides are bulletproof. I donated to, volunteered and worked for the Hillary campaign, I (also) write for far left Counterpunch and previously was a cheap defense attorney for impoverished minorities in the courtrooms of Queens and Manhattan. I’m no Fox News sucker, Jack!
I think that reflects a misconception. For the “woke” there is no such thing as “bulletproof left-liberal bonafides”. There is only adherence to the ever-changing script.
I’m gravely concerned that what Mr. Anderson refers to as the “Woke-Rouge” are waxing not waning and their power will only grow in the coming years.
I’ve read a lot about this phenomenon over the past several months – I find it interesting for some reason, don’t ask me why.
Although the woke inquisition is a real thing it’s primarily confined to the progressive elite. The vast majority of people who have been “canceled” are progressives. And that’s the thing about cancel culture – you can only really cancel people in your in-group. So this is a civil war among the left more than anything else.
That’s why I think the author of the linked piece is mistaken. The first instinct of the “Woke-Rouge” is hunting heretics; going after idolaters is second; seeking converts a very distant third. A “lefty-liberal” who does not subscribe to their orthodoxy is a heretic. He’ll be the first to go. That’s the way the Bolsheviks were, too.
The “progressive elite” as you put it now dominate journalism, education, the arts, and, I believe governmental institutions. Their power is real and we ignore it at our peril. IMO the biggest risk of a Biden Administration is that by “uniting the country” he means “uniting the Party” and the only form of unity that progressive elite recognizes is capitulation.
I hasten to note that I am not claiming benignity on the part of conservatives. In many ways they as bad if not worse. One commenter once put it that our politics is now dominated by Left Bolsheviks and Right Bolsheviks. But conservatives don’t occupy the “commanding heights” of the society; the progressive elite do. The Gramscian project is nearing completion.
If the cultural revolution (where the aggressors and victims were in theory on the same side) is a guide, it takes about 10 years before the desire for stability is so strong that the conflict ends.
So how long it goes on depends on when you date the beginning — was it 2014, when there was notable uptick in activism and espousing new ideas, or 2020, with a notable uptick in attempting to use coercion.
“Their power is real and we ignore it at our peril.”
I agree, but I think there are a lot of different approaches to how to respond, not all of them equal in terms of effectiveness. Approaches based on identity, ideology, or tribalism are likely to be less effective in my opinion.
I favor re-embracing federalism but that is unlikely to satisfy progressives. They tend to be much more in favor of central planning than I.
The progressive Elite is blind and enforcing compliance with their blindness.
This is from Albert Speer in prison.
… in normal circumstances people who turn their backs on reality are soon set straight by the mockery and criticism of those around them, which makes them aware they have lost credibility. In the Third Reich, there were no such correctives, especially for those who belonged to the upper stratum. On the contrary, every self-deception was multiplied in a hall of distorting mirrors, becoming a repeatedly confirmed picture of a fantastical dream world, which no longer bore any relationship to the grim outside world. In those mirrors I could see nothing but my own face reproduced many times over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wanJQC5KAfo