Woke: a Libertarian Viewpoint

"inverted fascism (woke fascism) is perversely destructive"

woke  Being “woke” started out as alertness to alleged racial prejudice, discrimination, and injustice. Over time the scope of the word has expanded to include a variety of alleged injustices to a variety of alleged victims. It now encompasses, and has partly taken over from, “political correctness”; which ideology is a small subset. “Wokeism” is sometimes humorously described as “political correctness on steroids”. And that metaphor seems apt.

Some people still use “woke” in a positive sense, possibly restricting it to their preferred range. Other sympathetic people now reject the term for being too pejorative. It is, indeed, intended negatively by critics. But there is no inherent insult in the word, unlike its adaptation as “wokel” (you’re welcome). And there doesn’t seem to be another convenient word for what it has come to represent. After all, “Tory”, “Whig”, and “Liberal” even started out as pejoratives but became accepted as convenient and neutral names for parties or ideologies. Otherwise, how could we refer to the ideology “that cannot speak its name”?

That said, “woke” is here given a more damning interpretation than most of its critics have. Many pundits vehemently opposed to it, even writing books denouncing it, do not understand clearly what it is and how bad it is in its most extreme or complete form. Nor do they understand its main original and continuing causes. To state the two theses briefly: 1) full wokeism is inverted fascism plus hypocrisy, 2) its causes are the overcorrection of historical state (government) initiated impositions on various groups plus a bandwagon effect.

1) An inverted snob is still a kind of snob. He inverts snobbism’s usual class values and then uses whatever means he can to favour and disfavour people on that basis. By analogy, an inverted fascist is still a kind of fascist. He inverts fascism’s usual social values and then uses the tools of fascism (the state allied with corporations to impose extreme authoritarian rule) to favour and disfavour people on that basis. Fascism, roughly (there is no official or definitive list), aims to promote and preserve traditional versions of the nation, ethnicity, culture, custom, religion, heritage, history, law and order, morality, sex roles, and the family. The inverted fascist aims to denigrate and destroy all those same things. By their methods both are anti-libertarian. But inverted fascism (woke fascism) is perversely destructive: it would ultimately involve the elimination of the existing society. (Ironically, it might then be replaced by Islam: the most anti-woke religious ideology.)

In addition, wokeism always claims to be for “equality” and against racism, sexism, etc. But it actually, or in effect, privileges its favoured groups (non-whites, females, homosexuals, “transgenders”, disabled, etc.) and denies equal rights to, even persecutes, its disfavoured groups (all the opposites). Otherwise, it would not be inverted fascism. This is the hypocrisy that is also an inherent part of wokeism.

2) When considering all the groups that wokeism favours there is a clear pattern: they were all once historically disadvantaged, persecuted, or even enslaved largely thanks to the state. And wokeism typically seeks to switch from the previous initiated imposition to its opposite: e.g., where there was compulsory racial segregation there is now compulsory racial integration (ignoring the possibility of voluntary association). This is a form of overcorrection. However, once the woke bandwagon is rolling many people jump on for other reasons: rebelliousness, hatred, self-hatred, grift, etc. Extreme wokeism is an unintended consequence of constant overcorrection plus pressure from opportunistic interest groups. Not every wokel is at the extreme, but there is social pressure to move towards it. To be, or seem, “more woke than thou”, express views further in the inverted-fascist direction and with more woke hypocrisy.

An alternative causal theory is that “civil rights” legislation started it (see Richard Hanania). Undoubtedly, that was a mistake that has caused deleterious unintended consequences. But what caused that legislation in the first place? Another theory is that “the essence of wokism is the equality thesis about race and sex” (see Nathan Cofnas). This is also a big factor. But it seems entirely possible to accept that the races, women, homosexuals, disabled, etc., are inherently differently abled and believe this is precisely why they deserve treatment that not only “corrects” for their historical abuses (such as reparations for slavery) but also achieves a Rawlsian “fairness” that stops their being “underprivileged” or “exploited” for their unchosen differences. In any case, wokeism only hypocritically advocates equality.

The idea that wokeism is left-wing is due to an empirical, or questionnaire, view of left and right: see what the people thus self-describing say they believe. On this basis Brian Caplan thinks the “left” are mainly anti-market and the “right” are mainly anti-left. But to make some ideological sense of left and right it seems better to have the modern (20^th century) left as personal-liberty and the right as property-liberty. This leaves room for a useful orthogonal axis that is north libertarian and south authoritarian. By this theory wokeism is clearly totalitarian. The combination of totalitarianism, hypocrisy, and other parallels in Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell [1903-1950], 1949) has prompted the popular joke that the woke have mistaken it for a handbook instead of a warning.

Although wokeism has various parallels with religion—also a type of ideology—it cannot literally be one (see Nathan Cofnas or David Ramsay Steele, for instance). Any plausible theory of religion requires an alleged “supernatural”, “spiritual”, or “transcendent” element. It is really only rhetoric to call wokeism a “religion”. The motive appears to be “any stigma to beat a dogma”. But far from all anti-wokeists are anti-religious. This tactic risks alienating potential allies.

Full wokeism ranks among the most pernicious ideologies that have ever existed. Even its limited current form is in the process of eroding many nations in the Western world (e.g., with mass immigration but not, yet, full open borders). The solution is primarily to explain how wokeism is factually false, philosophically confused, and morally evil. But it may also help to mock it mercilessly.

(This is an entry from A Libertarian Dictionary: Explaining a Philosophical Theory [draft currently being revised].)