Beware of sophists who reject ‘woke’ culture without explaining what it was

The rise of wokism in recent years has been an absolute disaster, and we are pleased that even on the left there are those willing to acknowledge this – albeit a few years too late and with a few too many scalps on their conscience. However, the debate on the shameful aspects of wokism – which is taking on a tone somewhere between a comedy of misunderstandings and a theatre of hypocrisy – is turning into a second disgrace, no less dangerous than the first, through which the enforcers of political correctness are putting on an obscene spectacle: talking about the errors of wokism without having the courage to explain what wokism really was, and without having the courage to call a spade a spade. Wokism, contrary to what we have been reading in recent days, was not merely a distortion of a just cultural war. Wokism was a method of intimidation through which the champions of political correctness armed the thought police to stage summary trials in the streets, violently enforced by the people’s tribunal.

The illiberal leap occurs when one moves from saying ‘racism exists’ to saying ‘anyone who challenges my interpretation of racism is a racist’: dissent is no longer an error to be refuted but a fault to be punished. Promoting a ‘woke’ against the culture of wokism does not mean sidestepping the issue timidly, beating about the bush, resorting to sophistry, or focusing solely on the excesses of moralising applied even to art (Giuseppe Conte), on ‘defund the police’ and the rhetoric of those years (Ocasio-Cortez), or on good intentions that have turned into excesses (Ezio Mauro). Wokism has not confined itself to cutting scenes from a few films, advising against the republication of a few books, imposing certain actors on the cinema, or removing a few statues. Wokism has used a major struggle – that for rights – to divide the world into good and bad and to transform any idea differing from that imposed by woke culture into an idea to be put on trial, thereby turning any individual wishing to offer a viewpoint different from the dominant one into a target for cancellation, through a casual and accepted system of social sanctions (universities that isolate, companies that sack, newspapers that expel, social media platforms that organise public shaming).

The problem with wokism has not been the statues that were removed, but rather the ‘statue game’ played by the champions of progressive culture in the face of recurring scenes. Are you a supporter of the traditional family? No doubt about it: you deserve to be put on trial for homophobia. Are you a critic of radical Islamism? No doubt about it: you deserve to be put on trial for Islamophobia. Are you seeking solutions to illegal immigration? No doubt about it: you deserve to be put on trial for xenophobia. In recent years, wokism has not only caused chaos, promoted hypocrisy, encouraged cancellation culture and led to dismissals. Wokism, if we must really talk about it, has promoted such an acute form of illiberal thinking – a left-wing fascism, or if you like, a contemporary form of Stalinism, complete with purges – that it has transformed into heroes of freedom – where ‘freedom’ means liberation from wokist culture – political figures such as Donald Trump and his followers – who have very little that is liberal about them and who, incidentally, have long been doing everything in their power to counter left-wing woke culture not with a culture of openness but simply with right-wing woke culture, consisting of conspiracy theories, a perpetual sense of siege, and intolerance towards those who dissent from the tribe.

The radical left, as the Financial Times noted a few days ago in an article on right-wing wokeness, usually identifies the oppressors as white people, men, capitalists and colonialists, whilst the ‘woke’ right identifies them as a liberal elite, a political class, a Muslim mayor of London, lawyers, journalists and civil servants who intentionally disadvantage white Christians, seeing conspiracies in multiculturalism, immigration and environmentalism. ‘Wokeness’, in other words, is not a deviation. It is a method by which one tends to demonise one’s fellow human beings through an effective system of social sanctions that transforms dissent into guilt.

Wokism has caused collateral damage such as purges, cancellations, quotas and DEI, but what the pseudo-repentant followers of wokism will never have the courage to place at the centre of any self-criticism is that approach denounced years ago by a great left-wing intellectual such as Mark Lilla: a bogus liberalism that slips into a sort of moral panic surrounding racial, gender and sexual identity, using the defence of rights to moralistically assign itself a cathartic function, without realising that if everything is discrimination, if everything is fascism, then nothing is discrimination any more and nothing is fascism any more – as Aesop taught us years ago in the famous fable ‘The Wolf! Wolf!’. Wokism has spawned monsters that its creators cannot fully denounce because, to do so, they would have to look in the mirror and recognise that there is something far more worrying about wokism than a removed statue or an edited film.

Wokism has now become a weapon used by the West’s enemies to weaken the West, like a cultural Trojan horse, and before getting bogged down in debates about statues, a reimagined Snow White, or retouched art, the true ‘woke’ individual, eager to show signs of awakening by criticising ‘wokism’, should ask themselves how a movement born to defend freedom has so often become a useful tool for the enemies of freedom to defend their own interests (and any reference to pro-Palestinian ‘wokism’ hand in hand with Iran is not entirely coincidental). The tragedy of ‘wokism’ is not a deviation but the method of the ayatollahs passed off as a defence of freedom. Those who engage in self-criticism of wokism try to clear their conscience with generic phrases about the the “excesses” of wokism, yet they fail to realise that if there is anything more ridiculous than the full-time, career wokist, it is those who promote bogus self-criticism, driven by the fear of looking in the mirror and having to admit that the most fearsome form of extremism is not the one they were fighting, but the one they were promoting. Have a nice nap, everyone.