Politixia
In the course of an interview on ABC’s This Week, the Democratic Socialist congressional representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) laughed and said, “Woke 1 was crazy!”
Other progressives agree with her admission. Many on both sides of the political spectrum felt relief at the “vibe shift” against “woke” hyper-political correctness that came with the re-election of Donald Trump, including many Americans who disapprove of him.
But now, a new kind of wokeness has emerged. Call it “Woke 2.0.”
Noah Rothman has written a piece for National Review entitled The Future of Woke. He begins by citing some of the craziness of Woke 1. For example,
“The knitting community is racist,” declared a (white) Scottish knitted-clothing designer, hailing efforts by people of color in that community “to try and educate white knitters” and end the “abuse.” A New York Times contributor tsk-tsked that the “jogging craze” was a phenomenon in which “Black people have not only been excluded” but “relentlessly depicted as a threat to legitimate, white joggers.” GreenAmerica.org contended that tilling your own soil in America carelessly mishandles the memory of the “forced labor of German prisoners of war and Japanese internees.” A Washington Post report, “The Racist Legacy Many Birds Carry,” quoted one ornithologist lamenting that “Western ornithology, and natural exploration in general, was often tied to a colonialist mind-set of conquering” and exploitation.
Whereas Woke 1 purported to champion blacks, says Rothman, Woke 2 champions Palestinians.
Woke 1 discredited Western civilization, but retained some of its elements, including a secularized religiosity, extreme moralism, and appeals to transcendent ideals. Woke 2, says Rothman, is more cynical and overtly opposes virtually every aspect of the Western heritage.
The movement’s loudest voices seem most offended by liberalism, the theory of social organization that emerged out of the Enlightenment and on which most Western governments are founded.
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The socialist movement overtaking the left, for example, proposes doing away with the Senate and the Supreme Court as conceived in the Constitution, and with them the separation of powers that has preserved liberty and stability in America for generations. Its leading lights flirt openly with the exotic allure of Maoism. At the center of it all is what one Democratic Socialist of America national committee member, Cliff Connolly, confessed was his movement’s “hatred of the Constitution.”
Woke 2, says Rothman, also “has fetishized violence, for example, particularly against what it construes as the symbols of the dominant American political culture: its statues, its courthouses, its law enforcement officers.” Thus the lionization of Luigi Mangione for killing the CEO of United Health Care, the celebration of the murder of Charlie Kirk, the support for Lindsay Clancy for killing her children, the excuses for the October 7 massacres of Israelis, and more. (My examples.)
Others, both analysts and leftwing activists, have also written about Woke 2.0.
The Economist published an article entitled Woke 1 was about identity. Woke 2 is about class.
USA Today quotes activists who say that progressives should move away from mere critique–as in cancel culture, virtue signaling, and performative gestures such as land acknowledgments–into actually seizing power and making changes. Silvaria Lysandra Zemaitis published an article in Liberal Currents entitled The World That Woke 2.0 Seeks to Build, also focuses on power and the necessity of building power-wielding institutions.
So perhaps we can say that whereas Woke 1.0 fixated on antiracism, Woke 2.0 fixates on antisemitism. Woke 1.0 wanted D.E.I. for corporate executives; Woke 2.0 wants DIE for corporate executives. Woke 1.0 advocates claimed that everything can be reduced to power; Woke 2.0 advocates say that therefore they should seize power. Woke 1.0 activists claimed that culture is nothing more than oppression; Woke 2.0 activists are concluding that it’s time for them to initiate oppression. Woke 1.0 focused on identity struggles; Woke 2.0 focuses on class struggles.
Class, power, violence, revolution–sounds like Marxist-Leninism 2.0.
Photo by Cory Doctorow from Beautiful Downtown Burbank, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
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