(Last in a three-part series on where American culture currently sits, and how we can course correct.)
The woke mob stalking cyberspace is very good at rooting out heresy and holding the accused up for public shaming and abuse.
But fear can only go so far in damping down unfavored viewpoints.
And it is absolutely useless at creating a community.
Let’s face it: As marketing slogans go, “Join our movement and we’ll promise not to attack you unless you say something we don’t like” lacks a certain universal appeal.
The signature power play of the woke movement is its own grandiosely self-proclaimed ability to “cancel” people accused of violating the unwritten social norms du jour. Those so accused of what are, in effect, political crimes can see their social media accounts shut down, their jobs taken away, friends and even family shun them out of fear of being accused of guilt by association.
This “cancellation” is meant as permanent — not so much punishment as banishment, much as former Communist Party bigwigs were simply written out of subsequent editions of the Soviet Encyclopedia if they were similarly cancelled by the Stalinist regime (either by bullet or permanent consignment to a labor camp).
Similarly, in the world of the woke, there is no mechanism for redemption. The most heartfelt of apologies only hardens the response, reinforces the notion that anyone begging for forgiveness must certainly be guilty of even more egregious offenses not yet brought to light.
It is not unlike the Leninist-Stalinist systems that Kafka, Koestler and Solzhenitsyn wrote about — where people were arrested, tried and sentenced without even knowing what they had been charged with.
It the hands of our modern online woke, it is a system of guilt by acclamation, with no chance at self-defense, no opportunity to examine the evidence.
It is madness — a madness that millions have died trying to escape in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Vietnam and now China.
Yet today in the West, we have supposedly educated elites attempting to impose a similar approach to guilt and innocence on democratic societies.
It is all too easy to wilt in the face of such unthinking demands for conformity; to lose heart while watching once powerful, well-connected professionals lose all standing in society for expressing a thought unpopular with the online mobs.
But rather than throwing in the towel and accepting the wokesters’ premise that their ascendancy to power is inevitable and irresistible, it is, I think, well worth looking at the history of similarly repressive movements and seeing how things turned out.
One of the best documented is that of the Roman Empire, which had replaced the Roman Republic after Julius Caesar stripped the elected Senate of meaningful power. Imperial Rome was cruel, ruled through fear of its well-trained legions, and punished dissent through execution or forced participation in gladiator matches.
And yet, at the height of its powers, Rome’s state religion was suddenly supplanted by a small sect from the hinterlands. Based on the teachings of a small-town preacher who had been unceremoniously executed at the request of local authorities, this new faith taught that there was only one god, the One who had created all the universe. And that this God loved all his people equally, rich and poor, slave and master. Further, all men and women were flawed and prone to sin — yet all could redeem themselves through honest repentance.
Christianity spread rapidly across the globe in the centuries after Jesus’ execution because its teachings spoke directly to truths all humans know: We are all flawed. We do all make mistakes. And we are all capable of taking responsibility for those errors, learning from them, and attempting to do better.
Islam, too, flourished in the centuries after it’s founding because it also spoke to our better selves: That we have obligations to the poor, and a duty to the One who created all.
Both faiths stood in stark contrast with the pagan systems preceding and surrounding them, in which life was cheap, morality was based on power, and the weak had no recourse to justice.
Whether one is a believer or not, it is impossible for anyone to actually buy into the woke narrative that holding to unpopular values or beliefs is worthy of permanent exile. When the mob turns on a fellow true believer — as is inevitable when millions of human beings are involved in any enterprise — the newly accused almost always reacts with disbelief: How could this happen to me?
And suddenly they are all in favor of forgiveness, second chances and redemption after all.
What is at work here is, I think, a reflection of a generation that inherited the worship of youth culture from the 1960s, but acquired knowledge of almost no history prior to that.
The English form of a legal system that we enjoy in the United States — in which a defendant is presumed innocent and the burden of proof is on the prosecutor — rose as a response to centuries of abuse by oppressive rulers. On the other hand, the Napoleonic system, which was based on the Roman system and is still prevalent in many nations in the West, holds that the accused is presumed guilty — unless they can somehow prove their innocence.
It is clear which model the woke movement has adopted in policing acceptable social discourse.
On whole, the woke have convinced themselves that every generation before theirs (and they tend to be on the youngish side) was selfish, ignorant and hateful — and that they are the chosen ones sent to liberate the world from this ignorance and bring about a new age of enlightenment and justice. Not sent by God, of course, who doesn’t exist. Just vaguely kind of sent by someone somewhere.
Anyway, here they are, they’re better than their ancestors or the rest of us, and so they have every right to impose their beliefs on society and punish those who dare stray.
This arrogance makes it very difficult for them to understand the tough lessons that history has taught previous generations.
Such as the value of grace, the importance of peacefully co-existing with multiple viewpoints, or the dangers posed to all of us when a self-appointed clique decides it knows what is best for everyone else.
Despite (or maybe because of) our many faults as a nation, the unique freedoms of the United States continue to manifest in measurable progress over other cultural models. China, for all its top-down control, still relies for much of its technological progress on simply stealing tech from us. (On the other hand, the democratic Chinese island state of Taiwan is at least a generation ahead of the rest of the world — including the United States — in manufacturing ultra-small circuitry for computer boards.)
One cannot be optimistic in a totalitarian society where one must fear immediate, brutal retribution for stepping out of line — even accidentally.
And without optimism, it is difficult to act on one’s dreams about the future — it is this freedom to act on one’s dreams that is the engine that drives innovation.
It is neither accident nor luck that nearly all of the new life-saving drugs developed each year come out of U.S. laboratories. That a recent advance in nuclear fusion came out of a U.S. lab. That an inordinate number of Nobel prizes in the sciences are awarded to American university researchers.
It was humans’ deep-seated desire for freedom, coupled to the optimism that it could be achieved, that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, along with that of fascist Spain, the apartheid regime of South Africa, Cromwell’s nightmare in post-Medieval England, and over time, nearly every repressive system in history. The people of Cuba and North Korea, Burma and China still await liberation, but the fire of freedom can never be fully extinguished.
Even here in the United States, where a certain weariness with the nonsense that so often accompanies democratic governance is likely in part driving support for the woke agenda, resistance to censorship and cancellation is increasing.
It is likely that much as we saw with McCarthyism three generations ago, wokeism will not slink into the night quietly — but rather the end will come quickly, unexpectedly, definitively.
The human spirit craves both freedom and forgiveness, and a value system that rejects both cannot hope to compete for hearts or minds over the long haul.
-30-
Hi Jim,
I’m Dale Hansen, a fairly new subscriber to your newsletter.
I enjoy your posts, and I look forward to seeing what’s next.
In this article, you wrote:
“wokeism will not slink into the night quietly — but rather the end will come quickly, unexpectedly, definitively.“
I too, think that ‘wokeism’ is an embarrassing, American ‘acne’ problem that will disappear in due time.
I’m just curious as to what you might think about the hows, and whys of its coming demise. I’d like to compare our theories.
I’m also a relatively new writer here on Substack, and I’d like to extend my invitation to you to browse my ‘stack of stuff’, if you’d be interested.
Thanks, & keep up the good work!
DH
I think also, maybe because of improved connectivity, our youth actually feel responsible for fixing the world. They are taught to be social Justice warriors. And just taking care of your own, being kind, bettering yourself, being a blessing to people you meet. These things are not enough anymore. I feel sorry for this generation