How do we define “woke”? Supposedly this question stumps critics of wokery, but Adam Baldwin has no trouble with it. “It’s identity Marxism,” Adam says, quoting James Lindsay. “It encompasses critical race theories, race Marxism, gender theories, gender Marxism, queer theories, sex and gender Marxism, all-in on intersectionality, which comes down to identity Marxism.” Karl Marx’s obsession on class has been replaced in this Americanized version with identity. But what makes this so attractive to the Left?
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Welcome back to my VIP video series “The Amiable Skeptics,” featuring my friend Adam Baldwin! Adam is well-known for his long and storied Hollywood career, starting with My Bodyguard, and especially for his roles in Full Metal Jacket, Firefly, its film sequel Serenity, Chuck, and The Last Ship.
The result of this prioritization of identity above all other considerations, I argue, is the vaporization of individuality and the necessity of a totalitarian order to distribute societal goods on the basis of identity equity. “Woke requires a top down authoritarian government to divide the public goods by these categories, regardless of what the individual merit is for each of the people who’s in those societies,” I explain. That is what makes this so attractive to the socialists, and why it has nearly eclipsed “climate change” as their preferred means to their totalitarian end. And that is precisely how it plays out as well, with woke activists attempting to silence critics either through attacks on their identity status or through more direct means, such as seen at Stanford this month.
Furthermore, contra its advocates, it’s not at all difficult to define wokery or point out its totalitarian nature. “The Left is now trying to distance itself from the term,” Adam points out, “now that the word woke and its philosophy has been is being defined for the broader audience to understand and comprehend that it is really an anti American philosophy.” And thus we have the effort of late by the Left to claim that conservatives can’t actually define “woke” when its detritus is all around us.
Be sure to watch it all, and join the conversation in the comments!
