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It is difficult if not impossible to make sense of the big debates taking place in society today, whether we are talking about business, politics, education or even science, without having some familiarity with the controversial notion of “woke.”
Woke is widely used to describe a particular political and philosophical perspective that, just within the past few years, has risen to prominence seemingly out of nowhere.
Former Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy helped popularize the term with his 2021 polemic Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. Vivek’s book focuses on the impact of the woke mentality on the business world, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd and the intense pressure applied to support the BLM movement.
Just a few months later, Columbia University professor and New York Times columnist John McWhorter came out with Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. McWhorter, who is an African-American linguistics expert, attempts to unpack this new progressive ideology and explains his view that it will ultimately bring harm to the communities it purports to help.
“I know it when I see it.”
What exactly is wokeness, though? It’s not easy to define in a crisp and concise way. The struggle to pin down wokeness reminds one of the 1964 Supreme Court case on obscenity, when Justice Potter Stewart famously quipped, “I know it when I see it.” |
|  | Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart |
| Wokeness is fairly easy to call out when it is in your face. Just as certain visual images unmistakably indicate obscene material, wokeness is easily identified by words and phrases like “non-binary,” “hegemonic whiteness,” “systemic racism,” “white fragility,” “Eurocentrism,” “microaggression,” “implicit bias,” “cultural appropriation,” and perhaps most of all, the omnipresent “equity.” But explaining wokeness is more challenging.
Defenders of woke thinking use the fuzziness of the term and the confusing nature of the ideology it represents to their advantage. In a live interview on CNN, a conservative commentator fumbled a request to define woke, which was immediately seized upon to humiliate and discredit her.
Memes circulate that suggest wokeness is merely a concoction of conservative politicians and their allies to scare and manipulate the electorate. Woke is a “bogeyman,” one often hears, with no substance behind it. |
|  | Wokeness may be a slippery term, but, in our view, it is a useful shorthand to represent a very real and very entrenched cultural phenomenon. As frustrating as these abstract word games tend to be, those of us who (to borrow an Obama-ism) still “cling” to certain quaint ideas (like political and legal equality and the reality of biological sex) need to be equipped to engage in these games. Perhaps most importantly, we need to vaccinate ourselves intellectually from the “woke mind virus,” as Elon Musk and others playfully call it. With all of its deliberate rearrangements of previously well-understood terms and emotional manipulations, wokeness threatens to infect our own habits of thought and speech.
We need to understand what wokeness really is and where it comes from, not just what it looks like. We must avoid being gaslighted into believing wokeness is a figment of our own imagination or an invention of conservative media. We need to be able to articulate what is wrong with it.
We’ve had the opportunity to read two other books since their 2023 publication that we think deserve special attention, in terms of getting a grip on the profound changes that have taken place in the United States and much of the English-speaking world in just the past few years. The first is America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything by Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, who has probably done more than anyone else to connect the dots on all these issues. |
|  | Rufo’s book has been celebrated in conservative circles, and with good reason. He diligently illuminates how the terms and concepts that we all associate with wokeness did not just come out of the blue but rather are the product of interrelated academic and political movements that go back many decades.
Rufo’s account begins with Herbert Marcuse, the German-born Marxist scholar who deeply influenced the 1960s counterculture movement.
Traditional Marxism pitches a narrative of class warfare as part of a broader project of overthrowing the economic system of free market capitalism along with the political system of (small “L”) liberalism that inspired the American Revolution. Under Marxism 1.0, you had factory workers pitted against factory owners, the working class squared off against the bourgeoisie.
The problem with Marxism 1.0, as Marcuse observed, especially in prosperous post-World War II America, is that its messages of class antagonism did not resonate. As Rufo explains, Marcuse felt “that modern capitalist society had created the perfect means of repression, anesthetizing the working class with material comforts, manufactured desires, and welfare programs…” If the revolution were ever going to happen, a new marketing strategy was required that produced a deeper emotional connection to the targeted customer base. Marxism 2.0 required a new set of heroes and villains, an updated cast of victims and oppressors. Marcuse found this opportunity in racial conflict. Rufo quotes from Marcuse’s An Essay on Liberation: |
| | The fact is that, at present in the United States, the black population appears as the ‘most natural’ force of rebellion… [T]he ghettos form natural geographic centers from which the struggle can be mounted against the targets of vital economic and political importance. - Herbert Marcuse |
| | Rufo goes on to tell the stories of other soldiers in this Marxist or neo-Marxist movement to “liberate” the United States from the oppressive framework of individual rights with which America’s founders apparently burdened us. These characters include violent radicals from the 1960s like Angela Davis (Marcuse’s student) and later a group of kinder, gentler radicals like Erica Sherover-Marcuse (his third wife) who, Rufo notes, “created the model for modern ‘diversity and inclusion’ programming.”
Rufo is well-known for bringing to public attention the key role of critical race theory (CRT) as the ideological basis for the innocuously named Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) movement. Critical race theorists emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as part of what Rufo describes as the “long march through institutions” that begins with classical Marxism but mutates along the way into new forms with new points of emphasis, such as race and gender.
When we ultimately arrive at the post-George Floyd era, with DEI having become a fixture in nearly every corporation and cultural institution in the United States, we have a fuller picture of the radical attitudes and hostility to the founding principles of American democracy that brought us here.
In the penultimate chapter, “DEI and the End of the Constitutional Order,” Rufo makes the case that the original Marxist project of subverting the basic philosophical foundations of the American political system is alive and well, even if the weapons now are seemingly harmless euphemisms rather than Molotov cocktails.
With our country being overthrown from within, Rufo concludes with a call for “counter-revolution.” |
| | The anti-democratic structures—the DEI departments and the captured bureaucracies—must be dismantled and turned to dust. - Christopher Rufo |
| | By recognizing the true nature of the adversary, Rufo encourages us, we have in effect taken the first step to “restore the mechanisms of democratic rule, reform the institutions that have compromised public life, and revive the principles of the revolution of 1776.” |
| Rufo does a solid job establishing the Marxist origins of 2020s progressive politics, but the emphasis on Marxism has also opened him up to criticism and claims of McCarthyism. The American public sometimes struggles with nuance and abstraction, which renders it vulnerable to simplistic rebuttals to complicated arguments.
When Rufo led the battle against teaching critical race theory in schools, for example, his adversaries countered that this was “misinformation” because critical race theory is a collection of complicated legal doctrines which of course were not being taught to first graders.
(Obviously, the point all along was that the core tenets of critical race theory were being infused into lesson plans, just as DEI represents a variation of Marxist ideology and is not literally a Bolshevik-sponsored endeavor.)
Understanding the Marxist influence on the contemporary woke mindset is valuable and helps draw attention to just how anti-American this mindset is. But at the same time, it potentially deflects attention from other influences that are every bit as pernicious, if not worse. This brings us to the second book we wanted to highlight for our readers, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time by Johns Hopkins political science professor Yascha Mounk. |
|  | Published shortly after Rufo’s book in fall 2023, The Identity Trap does not have as much of a natural constituency. Whereas Rufo is a self-described conservative political activist who has directly aligned himself with prominent Republican politicians, Mounk is a self-described liberal. In writing this book, Mounk set out to rope people on the left back towards the traditional center from the dead end of extreme progressivism. As a result, he appears to have irritated people on both the left and the right.
Folks on the left have criticized him for betraying their cause, while some conservatives were frustrated by his gentle and diplomatic attitude towards those who are actively seeking to destroy our country. While Rufo takes no prisoners, there is perhaps a sense of appeasement in Mounk’s approach and excessive charity towards the other side, which could rub red meat conservatives the wrong way.
Mounk identifies with the political left and reports with some understandable pride that all four of his grandparents had been imprisoned in pre-war Germany for being communists. He has written previously about the threats posed by the “far right” and refers to Trump as one of a number of “dangerous demagogues” imperiling democracy around the globe.
Yet Mounk is committed to “philosophical liberalism.” In this sense, he has a great deal in common with Rufo and the vast majority of conservatives today, who are interested in conserving the basic liberal (again, small “L”) architecture of our Constitutional republic. Mounk firmly believes in the moral value as well as proven efficacy of a system that is committed to political and legal equality and neutrality.
Whereas Rufo’s account lays heavy emphasis on the role of Marcuse, Mounk focuses on the French philosopher, historian and social critic Michel Foucault (pronounced, “foo-ko”).
In fact, one gets the strong sense that The Identity Trap was written partly as a response to conservatives like Rufo whom Mounk believes overstate the Marxist links to wokeness and overlook the impact of different (though perhaps equally detestable) modes of thought.
Who the Foucault is Foucault?
As he introduces Foucault, Mounk quotes left-wing intellectual Noam Chomsky who said of him: “I had never met such an amoral—not immoral, amoral—person in my life.”
Born in 1926 in Poitiers, France, Paul-Michel Foucault would go on to become one of the most influential thinkers of the late 20th century. He is known as one of the forefathers of “postmodernism,” the philosophical and artistic movement that rejects even the possibility of objective truth. |
|  | | For Foucault and the legions of academics he impressed, an idea is neither true nor false but rather a manifestation of a particular social context and an expression of a prevailing power dynamic. Foucault sought to illustrate this theory through historical analysis of various scientific disciplines and practices, such as psychiatry, which he discusses in his first major work, Madness and Civilization. |
| | Notions of who is healthy and who is mentally ill, Foucault argued, are not determined by some objective standard of sanity; rather, deviant behaviors come to be considered a form of madness when they disrupt the smooth functioning of the social order. - Yascha Mounk |
| | When one hears phrases like “my truth” or “lived experience” that seem to negate the very idea of universal truths or objective reality, this is the influence of Foucault and the other postmodernists.
Foucault and his intellectual allies scoff at the rationalism and empiricism of the great Enlightenment philosophers and scientists, whose works filled the personal libraries of America’s founding fathers. When you hear critical race theorists dismiss the Constitution as a document that is little more than an exercise in white supremacy, think of Foucault’s interpretation of all philosophical “grand narratives” as nothing more than some kind of political power play.
Acknowledging that the term “woke” has become “deeply polarizing,” while at the same time recognizing the term does indeed mark the existence of a genuine ideology, Mounk proposes an alternative way to refer to wokeness: “the identity synthesis.” |
| | | For Mounk, wokeness, or as he puts it, the identity synthesis, has three main components:
Postmodernism
As discussed above, this is the philosophical movement that rejects Enlightenment notions of absolute truth and tends to contextualize all ideas as efforts by one group of people to assert dominance over another.
Postcolonialism
Edward Said, who was born in Palestine in 1935 to a wealthy merchant family and educated at Princeton, would go on to become a world-famous scholar. He applied Foucault’s “discourse analysis” to make the case that Western culture continued to dominate former colonies in Asia and Africa through language.
Postcolonialism represents the belief that white, Western culture still colonizes and subjugates people all around the world through words and ideas. Woke antipathy towards Israel as an agent of Western oppression is connected to this branch of postmodernist thinking.
Critical race theory
Like Rufo, Mounk acknowledges the profound impact that scholars like Derrick Bell have had on contemporary cultural debates. Similar to Said’s “Orientalism,” which views Western rationalism as a tool to oppress people of the East, CRT according to Mounk is another extension of postmodernist analytical methods, where all claims to objective truth are really just acts of domination.
Critical race theory specifically attacks the Civil Rights movement, which was based on expanding to people of all backgrounds the allegedly “self-evident” idea that all people are created equal. CRT supporters believe equality is a smokescreen for continued racial domination. The woke obsession with always acknowledging racial identity (along with its contempt for ideas like a colorblind society) grows out of this premise that equality actually means white supremacy. |
| | Even as he rejects their ideas, Mounk tends to speak in flattering tones of these leading figures of the identity synthesis and the “rich set of intellectual influences” they represent. He at times distances them from the more contemptible woke behavior patterns we see nowadays.
Readers who appreciate the “principles of the revolution of 1776,” as Rufo puts it, may be left with a craving for harsher treatment of those who have done so much to undermine these principles. Foucault in particular seems to get off with little more than a slap on the wrist.
While he is certainly a brilliant writer, Foucault’s extreme moral relativism can fairly be described as sociopathic. There have been allegations against Foucault that he sexually abused young boys in the 1960s. These allegations have been denied by scholars who support his legacy.
Foucault’s protectors point out that he is unable to defend himself, since he died in 1984. He was in fact the first major public figure in France to die of complications from HIV/AIDS.
Mounk may have a light touch in this regard, but for those of us who believe that wokeness is not only real, but a real problem, there is arguably value in it. Mounk is trying to walk his compatriots on the left back from the ledge of woke insanity. Perhaps obliterating their heroes is not the best strategy to do that. They are in a delicate emotional position, and he is trying to reason with them in a calm and sensitive manner.
Throughout the entire book, Mounk provides example after example of the pitfalls of woke thinking, while illuminating the benefits, beauty and wisdom of the classical liberal perspective. Whether wokeness is more Marxist or postmodernist, whether Marcuse or Foucault have more of their DNA at the crime scene, is arguably irrelevant.
What is most important is that people from across the political spectrum come to recognize the flaws of wokeness. What is most important is that the public regains its appreciation for our system of individual rights and intellectual and economic freedom, a system that wokeness is gradually eroding.
While Rufo certainly excels at playing bad cop, Mounk is perhaps the perfect good cop. The Identity Trap is the perfect book to give to left-leaning friends and family members. The book is well-suited for all those people who may be put off by the weird terminology floating around nowadays and all the other woke excesses and absurdities they repeatedly witness—but who for whatever reason simply do not trust and cannot listen to anyone who stands on a podium with Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump. So what is “wokeness?”
We will take a crack at this ourselves.
Wokeness is a worldview that rejects the universality of the human experience and instead sees life through the postmodernist lens of constant competition among various identity groups.
Wokeness seeks to fulfill the Marxist vision of bringing about the collapse of the Western liberal world order to pave the way for a more centralized system of authority that would somehow level the playing field for identity groups perceived as disadvantaged.
Wokeness is the elevation of tribal grievances over the ideals of liberty, equality and reason. |
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