I have said over the past few articles, there are hard truths which must be faced. This self-reflection began with the bullet that was fired at President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024. The attempted killer had been accredited with very conservative opinions on gun rights and abortion. It seemed impossible he could be put in the same category as those against these, even if he was obviously unstable and capable of evil. He didn’t hold common ideas with a specific ideology of “Woke”.
Now I ask the question, is “Woke” even real? It pains me to say it, as someone who was such a strong proponent of the belief that Wokery had a metaphysical element akin to religion. I, like many notables including the mighty Charlie Kirk, thought Wokery, with its supposed belief in self-choice, had a Gnostic and Hermetic element. A spiritual belief system of the ancient world which focuses on personal development and discovery of a hidden inner self, which ultimately produces, through hidden knowledge, a means of discovering the divine. In short, a way to heaven without the need for the presence of Jesus Christ or any other external force in our lives.
Such an analysis was flawed. Buddhism, Jainism, and many other beliefs have a similar basis. We could see the same pattern in Sikhism and Taoism. Even in Islam, normally seen as a legalistic religion, we see it in its Sufi branch. In the Jewish mystical tradition in the Kabbalah, we see a similar thing. Even in Christianity, we have ideas which may reject hidden knowledge, yet suggest our own virtue and hard work can be critical to our salvation, and that we must seek to improve ourselves to be worthy of God.
We never batted an eyelash, and we certainly didn’t rage against this idea as an existential threat to our way of life. The New Age movement is still massively present in California, but formerly nationwide, in the 1960s to 1990s, it held similar ideas.
So, saying that the view of self-improvement through seeking greater knowledge is part of Wokery, suggesting that Wokery has resurrected or created a metaphysical religious system, is less likely than suggesting its followers just have a variety of religious beliefs which happen to capture that understanding.
Wokery, it hurts to say it, is too disorganized to have an organized cosmology or doctrine of metaphysical belief. Its internal diversity demands religious pluralism, which means that it has no cohesive religious understanding; thus, no common belief of the divine can be found in it. Saying this is embarrassing; I wrote an article in The Thinking Conservative, my first article as a contributor. I have to go with the evidence: Wokery isn’t religious. It doesn’t seem to battle religion.
So what is it? I have tried to articulate this here so many times. I go back and forth. Is it a Hobbesian philosophy of chivalry? It does center on the strong protecting the weak, as generally humans are deemed exploitative, so they require a strong state to keep them in place. A logical deduction seems to hold water. Then again, Woke never sought to create the needed class of protector to do this function, instead making some ad hoc policy here and there which didn’t do much.
However, alternatively, I normally go with the majority opinion that it is a new kind of Marxism, which looks to control the state to create equality. I use this out of convenience mostly, and to avoid massive backlash. Wokery’s lack of desire to capture state power to lift the working class and its emphasis on social issues makes it highly unlikely that it Marxist. The Woke rarely mention workers . It does have merit in the fact that professed Marxists seemed always associated with it. This took me in for a long while.
After some examination, we find these people are not directing the movement. Facing this, I decided to talk to the ones we call “woke.” The first thing to note is that no one who we consider “woke” calls themselves by that name. They certainly do not believe they have a lot in common with each other.
Here, dear Charlie Kirk did glimpse this when he claimed Marxism and Islam had come together against the social order. This was a partial understanding. It does miss the mark just as the truth is more shocking. It is wider, as I encounter the woke. They aren’t mere Marxists or Muslims, but anyone who isn’t a Republican conservative in America, united in fear.
Let’s put together a hypothetical example: a highly conservative Muslim in Michigan who has strongly anti-homosexual views, while an LGBTQ white man in Florida may be very anti-religion. Both vote Democrat in 2024, not because they share an ideology or anything else. Then we have a disabled woman who doesn’t care about any of it, who is merely scared her welfare will be cut by Republicans. It is merely a fear of an agenda they think is out to harm them, mainly a result of a media campaign of slander against it.
Also, the poor communication strategy by the grassroots of many conservatives, where the point being made is exaggerated beyond what is actually being made, can be seen in amateur media like podcasts, social media videos, and much else. Even some of the official rhetoric of conservatives in the Republican party, excluding the president himself, has helped such mistranslations.
Also, the Democratic party insists they represent values, rather than admitting they are an odd coalition of the fearful. Where the enemy of my enemy is my friend, this has created an alliance to battle a perceived, also mythical, threat conservatives represent to anyone who feels somewhat outside of “Main Street America,” by which I mean the majority population which is white and Christian.
The idea of “woke” has been exported abroad to try to describe groups who aren’t conservative as a slur. In the UK, for example, we describe the British Labour party as “Woke.” The other day I discovered that this year they had deported 30,000 illegal migrants, which shows they can’t have a common understanding of belief based on the open-border rhetoric we accredit to the “woke ideology.”
So, “woke” has become a term which means “not conservative.” A simple slur rather than an ideology. Which means that all our efforts against it are based on a misunderstanding. We are fighting something no more real than a unicorn.
