Ever since Donald Trump was reelected, a prevailing narrative has emerged: mostly, although by no means exclusively on the mainstream Right, that wokeism, a movement that exploded online and has since completely redefined life in the United States over the course of the past 10-15 years, is now over and life will go back to normal. But this hope is misguided and based on a misunderstanding about how wokeism came to take over the vital institutions and why the elites have seemingly abandoned it.
What first must be understood are the two prevailing theories as to how wokeism gained control. The first theory is what I call “the short view.” The short view is predominantly observed within the mainstream Right, and especially what remains of liberal critics of wokeism. The best advancement of this theory can be found in The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. This theory holds that in the 1990s and 2000s there was a seismic shift in parenting tactics. Historically, most parents understood that children need to be put in challenging positions, as this would toughen them up for adulthood. But beginning with millennials, and taking full form with the Zoomers, parents began to heavily restrict their children’s behavior. Part of this was out of concern for kidnapping, but also out of fear, especially among upper and middle-class parents, that their children would become downwardly mobile (from an economic perspective). Hence, playing outside until dark became staying inside, and pickup baseball games became highly regulated soccer games. However, all this safety came with a terminal catch – when these kids grew up, they expected this safety-ism would follow them into the real world; in turn, they began to demand that the real world conform to their childlike expectations. This is why something as juvenile as “trigger warnings” are a possibility. According to Lukianoff and Haidt, the reason why these woke young people were able to advance so rapidly and so far, is due to the prevailing revulsion over the Alt-Right. Consequently, a coalition was formed between mainstream liberals and the woke to combat the Alt-Right.
There is a great deal of evidence for this theory, and it should not be dismissed totally out of hand. And while I think wokeism is far older, I do think the sterilized childhoods common in the 1990s and 2000s is a reason children raised during that period are more susceptible to wokeism. But this is not the entire story. After all, if the mainstream liberals capitulated to the Woke Left because of the Alt-Right, then the coalition should have begun to breakdown when the Alt-Right became less visible around 2017. Instead, it was strengthened. In reality, it was not a coalition out of necessity, but rather a far more natural one. To understand that entire narrative, we must turn to an alternative explanation – “the long view” of wokeism.
The long view of wokeism understands its rise as simply the end result of a decades’ long process of undermining the West. Beginning in earnest in the aftermath of World War I, a group of mostly, but not exclusively, Jewish academics began to undermine the West; they considered the West and its focus on nationalism and honor as to blame for the horrors of the Great War. Therefore, the West needed to be brought to its knees in the name of world peace. It was also around this time that they began to understand that the path to their communist utopia was not in the industrial, working-class as Marx had predicted, but rather through racial minorities. As a result, anti-colonialism became on important pillar within leftwing political thought.
After gaining a foothold in academia in the 1920s and 1930s, they began to slowly influence more and more of the future elite until they finally had a far more openly radical generation of students by the 1960s. In many ways, these students were even more radical than their professors; hence, their militancy in the face of their older professors’ patience. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, although these once-students were now professors themselves, in its place was a far more radical and openly anti-White cadre. This is when the various “X studies” began to crop up across the nation. They were now open that the West is/was the source of all the world’s evils, and it needs to be brought to its knees. There are now several generations of elites that have been brought up to view both the West and, in particular, the White working-class as “the enemy.” The White working-class, in their view, is guilty of nothing less than high treason for siding with their nation and Christianity over the desired communist utopia. The real reason the elites gave the campus agitators so much, especially in 2020, is became they already had the same basic world view. The young, as is so often the case, were simply a little less patient and much more absolutist in their hatred.
But this just raises a question – if the elites and the campus protestors had the same basic world view, then why are the elite now turning on them? There are two reasons for this. The first, and most important reason, is the Israel-Hamas War. The war caused protests to erupt on college campuses, as the young, far more consistent Third Worldists than the elites, began to protest, especially after it became apparent that Netanyahu took the mask off and made no qualms about wanting the Palestinians wiped off the face of the earth. The campus protesters, though extremely anti-White, were unable to comprehend why it was good for France or Germany to be enriched by diversity, but not Israel. Accordingly, the elites began to move to put them “in time out” as punishment for opposing ethnic cleaning in Gaza.
The other reason is because the elites know that a major war is coming soon. It may start with Iran, it may start with Russia, or it may start with China, but it is coming, and they know they need young White men, especially Southern men, to fight. This is why they are no longer openly acting like White men are a national tumor that must be excised. No one will fight for a country that hates them. It should go without saying that no young Southerner should fall for this. Nothing has changed, this country still hates you and wants you dead and replaced. They just need you for cannon fodder in the near term.
Wokeism is far from dead, certain events merely mean the elites are less willing to play ball with its more radical form (for now). But they share the same evil world view. As soon as these events change, they will be right back at it, much like how the campus radicals from the 1960s were temporarily iced in the 1980s as a massive backlash brewed in the nation. Don’t fall for any of it, they are not defeated, they’re just quiet for a spell. As soon as the Israel-Hamas War fades from memory and the elites no longer need young White men to die far from home, they will be right back to demonizing us.
Good summary.
It is understandable that people forgot the origins of “woke”, before it became a catch-all shorthand media phrase, because it was during the heyday of negrophilia in which the entire social and media apparatus was an open-mic night of anti-White slam “poetry”.
Lecturing Whites on the various infractions of being White unearthed daily by the jewish merchants of anti-White blood libel was the national pastime. Including lecturing us on why we were forbidden from using the very word “woke”. Which is itself a retarded ebonics dog whistle that became popular the in NYT-NPR megaphone which was approaching its apex as the official blackwash narrative generator at that time.
This black idolatry continues, obviously, but the narrative of illegitimate White culture and nationhood became so successful that “woke” spilled into the commons, along with an awful lot of ghetto culture that has risen in social status as the decracinated and extremely online youth have succumbed to the melting pot.
In fact, all of the anti-White programs that Trump is now peeling back were so successful that the convergence into this “woke” catch-all was inevitable. Just like the white knights who now see themselves as heroic for passing a “law” keeping men out of women’s sports. This after 50 years of codified anti-male law, policy, and “soft” social power in every institution and corporation. Success like that always jumps the shark.
But to your point, the economics never leave the building. Corporations and tech grifters and the rest of the global ponzi machines understand that paying tribute to the prevailing social order is a cost of business but when it becomes too costly to hide/bury/offset it moves out overnight. Same goes for the war machine. Which is just another division of the merchants.
I fully expect the rollback of “woke” to be successful in that it will melt back into the pot, but this should not be confused with anything pro-White or Nationalistic or even truthy about the nature of man and the West. The marketing term is retired but the marketing continues. They need Whites around long enough to complete this phase. The boomers are about to hand over the largest wealth transfer in human history and the boomers are the last majority White generation. That is no coincidence.
Trump’s speech laid out the path. They want to rebuild White America without all the Whites. They need us to invest in the mythology of our founding stock while progressing into the brown female future in the same way most young girls don’t identify as “feminists” because that term has been retired because the entire culture is fully feminized and there is simply no point in naming it such. So goes “woke”.