Indeed, he compares the current moment to one of the most important turning points in world history: “In The Final Pagan Generation Edward Watts recalled how the cohort growing up in the mid-4th century watched, helplessly, as their culture was overwhelmed by the tidal wave of Christianity. He too doubts that wokeness will fade away. I think it is entirely bad, and that even if it fades - I’ve got my doubts - the damage it does in the process is going to be immense.”Ī yet more disturbing scenario is presented by Ed West. David thinks it’s not all bad, but it will fade in time. As Dreher puts it: “the core of our disagreement is over the effects of having a leadership class radicalized by wokeness. Thus nothing good can come from its growing influence. It has hijacked the struggle against oppression to perpetrate a divisive and destructive ideology of its own. If that’s true, then wokery isn’t the latest in a long line of vehicles for social justice, but quite the opposite. For a start, says Dreher, there is no good side to wokeness - it is a “naked attempt to exercise tribal politics, and to do so by (brilliantly) deploying moral language and victim status to disguise what it is being done.” Thus Brooks and Cowen seem to have history on their side.īut there is a counter-argument, made by Rod Dreher who is a friend of Brooks, but horrified by his complacency. But despite us imagining the idea of “no possessions” for the last five decades, capitalism continues to sell them in ever greater quantity. This was an immediate and enduring hit - the biggest of Lennon’s solo career. Tyler Cowen makes a similar argument, referring to another song from 1971 - John Lennon’s Imagine.
We weren’t turned into hippies by Coca-Cola teaching the world to sing 50 years ago and we won’t be turned into wokelings by the posturing of corporate PR departments today. For instance, David Brooks of the New York Times argues that while the “thing we call wokeness” produces “fringe absurdities” it also has “at its core… an honest and good-faith effort to grapple with the legacies of racism.”įurthermore, he has faith in the “American establishment’s ability to co-opt and water down every radical progressive ideology.” The rise of the woke corporation is not therefore a sign that wokeness is taking over, but rather proof that the process by which capitalism defangs the Left is once more in operation. This model of permanent-progress-with-temporary-excess is how some conservatives seek to contextualise the current moment.
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