Yeah, I’m levelling some heavy accusations against the woke here. But I’ll back it up with evidence and logic.
This isn’t (just) some right-wing rant, tinged by hysteria and fuelled by a pitiable need to win on the internet. That never ends well. Instead, I’ll lay it all out. If I’m wrong, then dispute my reasoning.
First, we need to know what woke is.
It isn’t left-wing, although there’s quite the overlap. If it were, we wouldn’t need a new word for it.
It’s not telling stories with female characters in it. Obviously not. The Bible has plenty of strong independent women in it, but the woke don’t like it.
It’s not treating people with respect. I’m not woke and I respect billions of people. Meanwhile, woke folk don’t respect people like me. And besides, if you don’t know what Motte and Bailey Reasoning is, then you’re not qualified to comment. On anything.
One definition of woke is it’s Neo-Marxism. Even if that’s accurate, it’s not useful, so let’s get specific.
Woke philosophy is the following assumptions:
- There’s a rigid hierarchy of oppression – a modern-day caste system.
- This hierarchy of oppression is based on demographic details – sex, sexuality, race and so on.
- This hierarchy of oppression is one of the strongest, if not the strongest force in the Western culture.
- The hierarchy of oppression permeates every aspect of society, from entertainment to dating to groceries.
- Fighting the hierarchy of oppression is the most important thing – the duty of every person, no matter the costs or collateral damage.
If any of these assumptions is wrong, woke ideology falls flat.
And they’re all wrong. Not questionable, not situational, not debatable – simply not how reality works.
“You’re biased!!!” Yeah, who isn’t? But let me check my biases here. I think Communists are among the greatest group of fools around. Whatever flaws they point out in Capitalism are significantly worse under Communism. But even I’ll say they have some valid complaints. The woke, though? The entire paradigm is irredeemably and unambiguously wrong.
My biases don’t matter anyway, since I’m laying out my reasoning so tightly.
Two things should be obvious here:
One, this is what being woke really is. If woke folk didn’t worship the hierarchy as a truth, they’d say different things and make different decisions.
Two, these assumptions are ridiculous. None of them describe the world we live in. Yes, racism exists and people abuse power, but these assumptions are obviously wrong.
I have to debunk them anyway. Some folks are too far gone.
Woke Assumption 1: There’s a rigid hierarchy of oppression
Do the woke really believe this?
I don’t know how anyone could deny this. Oppression is so fundamental to woke ideology that, if you try to eliminate it from the definition, you get something so vague that it also applies to conservatives and nationalists.
Without all those pesky -isms and -phobias to talk about, there’d be no woke ideology.
Is this assumption true?
There are power imbalances in the West – I won’t deny it. Some folks have tremendous wealth, clout and influence.
But who are those people?
“Mostly white men!” That mostly is hiding a lot of nuance. Show me a monarchy led mostly by royal families. Show me Communism where the power lies mostly in the hands of the Communist Party. Those don’t exist. Those hierarchies are absolute.
If there is a hierarchy in the West, you can join it. Anyone can become a billionaire in the West. Citation: they have. Plenty of billionaires are women or have darker skin. Plenty of billionaires were born into poverty or the middle class, then climbed out of it.
And folks fall out of the top echelons of wealth all the time.
That’s a porous hierarchy indeed. And if it’s oppressive, then join it. Use your position of influence to dismantle the system from within. Wield power to spare you and yours from the evils of the system.
Oh, you won’t do that. You don’t have the ambition, talent or resilience. But someone in your position with the ambition, talent and resilience could.
You’re not a slave. You can move interstate, change careers and marry whoever you want. That’s more freedom than could ever exist at the bottom of a hierarchy.
So, no, there’s no rigid hierarchy here.
But in fairness to the rest of the assumptions, let’s pretend there is.
Woke Assumption 2: Your demographics determine your position in the hierarchy of oppression
Do the woke really believe this?
The Patriarchy is the idea that men have all the power in society.
Critical Race Theory teaches that white folks are inherently privileged and biased, while other races will never be successful.
Gender Studies teach that sex and sexuality are spectrums, always have been, and have only been called a binary because the Patriarchy demanded it.
Also, this is how they can say things like you can’t be racist against white people. Of course you can. All you need to do is treat them badly based on their skin colour, which is the favourite woke pastime.
But according to the woke, you can’t. Men and white people allegedly have so much privilege that you can’t treat them badly. A peasant can’t discriminate against a king – that’s how the woke see modern culture.
Is this assumption true?
Woke folk believe that men oppress women, that white folks oppress all the others and that normal people oppress those who mangle their genitals.
That’s why they say things like “you’re lucky women just want equal rights, not revenge!”
Putting aside the question of revenge for what, I have good news for these end-stage feminists:
Women have equal rights. They’ve had them for, oh, a few generations now. There’s no right a man has that women don’t, outside a few jobs which a) they don’t want and b) wreck uteruses.
But that simple fact goes against this assumption, so they’ll moan about their imaginary lack of rights.
Of course, having laws isn’t the same as having those laws enforced. Women and ethnic minorities could, in theory, have equal rights under the law but, in practice, face discrimination. Except you can’t play that card to defend woke delusions because it cuts the other way. Under the law, you can’t deny someone a job or promotion because he’s a straight white man. In practice, this happens often. Any company that tried to discriminate against minorities would get roasted by the media – legacy and social. That’s why such companies are so rare these days.
It’s the same with hate speech. Michael Moore wrote a book called Stupid White Men and no one blinked. Try publishing a book called Stupid Black Women. Go on, I dare you.
All of that is abstract anyway. Open your eyes and look around. I’ve worked under more female bosses than male ones – that happening once to any man disproves this assumption. Every Western country has had women and ethnic minorities as business leaders, scientists, entertainers, politicians…
Few white men have the wealth and influence that Oprah does – and Oprah hit her heyday decades ago.
“But it’s easier to succeed as a white man!” Oh, so there’s no hierarchy, just a slight benefit to being the favoured demographic.
Interesting how watered down that is from the original claim.
But not even that’s true.
If you think it is, cosplay as a straight white man. Women who aren’t too voluptuous can pass as men with a suit and the right haircut. Anyone can pass as anyone if they work remotely.
Test that assumption.
You might not like what you find, though.
Woke Assumption 3: The hierarchy is insurmountable
Do the woke really believe this?
I wish this was a strawman argument, but it’s not. The woke folk want young boys to publicly apologise for being men. They said black folks can’t succeed unless affirmative action gives them an advantage.
Every day, there’s some new patronising comment about how all men somehow oppress all women. According to this assumption, an eight-year-old boy raised in poverty can oppress a 55-year-old female CEO with two post-graduate degrees to her name.
And he’d better apologise for his male maleness right now.
Is this assumption true?
Obviously not. Again, the success of anyone other than a straight white man disproves this one.
“Women need to work twice as hard as men to succeed!” First up, that’s not what woke folk are saying. They say that, because of the patriarchy, women can’t succeed, ever. They’d need infinite effort to overcome the systemic systemicness of society.
(“And this… ‘patriarchy’ you speak of… Is it in the room with us now…?”)
Besides, even that claim – which is much milder than wokeness – is dubious. I’m not sure how you could know that women need to work twice as hard. It’s not easy to measure – putting in twice as many hours to get the same result just means the other guy was smart, efficient or lucky.
Needing twice the (eg) sales to get the same kudos as a man is a) illegal and b) not something that happens. If it were, any woman could start a company with a fairer culture.
Women get praised for showing up. They get their own dedicated awards, then they win the gender-neutral ones too. It wouldn’t be proper for straight white men to win all of them, after all.
A theory of mine: many women judge the ease of the life of men by how often we complain. They complain about everything – any excuse will do – while the men around them stay silent. But that’s because we don’t complain. We expect life to be hard, we’re punished when we complain and there’s no use yapping when there’s work to be done.
So if a man complains half as much as a woman, she might think he has it twice as good.
I don’t know, that’s just a theory. It would explain a lot.
In any case, sometimes women succeed. Sometimes minorities trounce straight white guys. It happens often, and every case disproves this assumption.
Woke Assumption 4: The hierarchy is everywhere
Do the woke really believe this?
I had an idea for a movie the other day. In it, a strong independent woman fights against entrenched sexism to prove she’s tougher, smarter and better than all the boys.
Ah, you’ve seen that movie.
Dozens of times over the past few decades.
Incessantly over the past few years.
Well, don’t tell the feminists that. Every time a big studio announces some new project with a girlpower protagonist preaching the virtues of feminism, they – and the media – act like it hasn’t been done before. This movie will “break new ground” – only it’s the same new ground as the last hundred.
“You just can’t handle seeing diversity on the big screen!” Decades of filmmaking contradicts that. The biggest movies over the last 50 years have had smart, capable women in them. This wasn’t new back in the 1970s and it’s certainly not new now.
But talk to the woke and they’ll moan about how sexist and backwards the movie industry is.
Video games, too, don’t you know. It’s a popular industry so the woke have sunk their fangs into that, bemoaning about how some video games have attractive people in them and how that’s misogyny.
But, for the woke, it doesn’t end there. Coffee is racist. So is punctuality. Fitness is white supremacy.
If I typed out the full list of what offends the woke, I’d break the internet.
Every noun and every verb has accusations of misogyny against it or a decolonisation movement. Give it time and, as with all purity spirals, they’ll turn on each other. “Decolonise the fight against misogyny!” That’s not a joke – it’s a prediction.
Is this assumption true?
It’d be exhausting and pointless to debunk all these claims, so I’ll pick one. The woke say coffee is racist because it’s good and popular. The KKK is racist and all its members are white, yet coffee drinkers come from every ethnicity. Same with those who profit from coffee. It’s the world’s favourite beverage. It’s one of the few things that truly unites us.
But the woke mind can’t handle that. It has to be problematic because it exists and people like it.
Woke Assumption 5: You must fight the hierarchy with all your power
Do the woke really believe this?
That’s why the culture war is so hot – everything is a battlefront and they refuse to concede any of it.
This, right here, is why the woke are so dangerous. Read Vox Day’s Corporate Cancer for a full analysis, but the gist is this: Hire woke people and they’ll deliberately sabotage the company’s goals. They’re worse than hiring no one at all. They’re not team players and nothing is more important to them than their ideology.
After all, they’re not on your side.
Is this assumption true?
If the hierarchy of oppression existed, they’d be right to fight it. But not at any costs. If you have to resort to racism to fight racism, something has gone wrong.
It gets worse than that. The woke go to extreme lengths to fight against a patriarchy that doesn’t exist. Their targets are often innocent of what they’ve been accused of, and there’s collateral damage along the way. Most men aren’t sexist. “They’re inherently sexist!” Even the ones who fought for your rights? Women didn’t seize equality in a bloody uprising – men gave it to them because they thought it was right.
Now, a woman might be oppressed. And racism exists. Not every white man can be responsible for both crimes – there’s too long and rich a history of white men fighting against intolerance.
Imagine a group decided that parrots caused all pollution in the world, so they decided to eradicate them. Every bird they killed would be an act of stupidity and evil. Every rainforest they carpet-bombed would be a terrible waste.
The woke are exactly this stupid and evil. Every assumption underlying their worldview is wrong. They know racism and sexism are problems, decide they’re the biggest problems, then go after innocent targets.
Most white people aren’t racist – the ones who freed the slaves certainly weren’t.
Most men aren’t sexist – otherwise they wouldn’t have voted for and passed laws to let women work.
If you’re woke, then you have a misapplied sense of the problems facing the world and a warped targeting system. You’re confused about how the world works and you’ve blinded yourself to reality.
There’s no rigid hierarchy.
Your skin and genitals are relevant but not decisive.
Women and minorities succeed when they put the effort in. White men fail when they don’t.
Diversity and representation aren’t new. Adding minorities to your business, movie or game doesn’t fight intolerance.
You want to end hatred and bigotry? Great. At best, being woke will achieve none of that and will likely make things worse.
Well… that explains a lot
Once you understand that the woke see everything – everything – through the lens of this nonsensical hierarchy of oppression, some of their weirder beliefs make sense.
“Yay Islam!”
You see plenty of “Queers for Palestine!” banners. I’ve never seen a “Palestinians for Queers!” banner though.
Islamic countries tend to oppress women, outlaw homosexuality (not homosexual marriage – homosexuality) and spit in the face of progressive ideology.
They’re not shy about that. They’ll say, in no ambiguous terms, that gay people should be locked up for the good of society.
And yet the woke celebrate this style of Islam, while saying white Westerners – who generally support these things – are -ist and -phobic.
Woke folk lack nuance, so they see Islam as the religion of brown people and Christianity as the religion of white people. Therefore Islam is oppressed, and therefore it’s good and an ally.
Muslims would disagree but, hey, the woke haven’t let reality get in their way before.
“Believe all women!”
If you ask a woman if another woman has ever made up lies about her, you’ll get a story. It’ll likely be vicious and concerning – lies that hurt the woman deeply, and maybe even cost her something like a job or relationship, and probably told for petty reasons.
That same woman will turn around and say “believe all women!” She knows that some women lie about important things just to hurt people. She’s experienced that.
Even so.
Under the hierarchy, women are oppressed by men, therefore you have to believe them.
“Black Panther 2 is so diverse!”
Diverse used to mean… diverse.
Now it just means non-white and non-male.
Making a movie that’s mostly black women is just as diverse as one that’s mostly white men, by any reasonable definition of the term. Now, though, it refers to anything involved the so-called oppressed.
“MLK Jr was a far-right Nazi white supremacist!”
Martin Luther King Jr famously taught folks to judge others by their character, not the colour of their skin.
Which goes against the hierarchy of oppression.
And any opposition to the validity of the hierarchy is -ist and -phobic.
It’s one of those times the woke will rabidly go after people they normally see as oppressed. When a woman stands up for a man, she’s a pick-me with internalised misogyny. When a black man says we should judge each other by our deeds and personality, he’s a racist.
The hierarchy of oppression is supreme and beyond questioning.
Given how obviously wrong it is, that’s a problem.