How ‘Wokeness’ Is a Product of Marxism

“Wokeness” has become the nomenclature for the ideology or mentality of radical leftist activists on college campuses, at protests, and on social media.

But wokeness has not been limited to just a handful of activists. It’s becoming a dominant mindset in the American workplace, in both the public and private sectors, as a method to promote “anti-racism.”

A Heritage Foundation panel on July 24 addressed first what wokeness actually is, but also how it has crept into corporate boardrooms and why it’s such a problem.

Angela Sailor, vice president of The Feulner Institute at The Heritage Foundation, said that “pervasive trends under the guise of equality makes diversity training in government, and corporate America, and schools, destructive, divisive, and harmful.”

James Lindsay, the co-author of a forthcoming book, “Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody,” says wokeness is actually a combination of many different ideas.

“Wokeness is a fusion of the critical theory school of neo-Marxism, which is a form of identity politics, and radical activism that has a very particular worldview that separates the world into liberationists versus oppressors or oppressed versus oppressors,” said Lindsay, whose book is set for release Aug. 25.

It marries that, Lindsay said, with postmodern theory, which holds that “all applications of truth are actually applications of politics by other means.”

In other words, the truth is malleable, based on power and who drives the narrative of what truth really is. In effect, the truth is replaced by my truth.

Marxism is a mostly economic theory, with origins in the 19th century. Those ideas, he said, led to some of the worst atrocities in world history.

Traditional Marxist ideas were adopted but changed in the 1920s by Italian communist Antonio Gramsci and others, and became the project of the Frankfurt school of critical theory. That new theory focused more on shaping culture, Lindsay said, marrying traditional Marxism with Freudian psychology and other social theories to change the way people think.

The goal of postmodernists who were part of that movement was to “deconstruct the very meanings of things,” said Lindsay.

Those ideas reached a new phase with the writings of Herbert Marcuse, a Columbia University professor in the 1960s and 1970s who advocated radical activism based on identity politics.

But this radicalism burned out, Lindsay said, because its violence ultimately made it unpopular.

The radicals then left the streets and embedded themselves in our schools and universities.

“It has all of the conflict theory—separate the world into oppressor-versus-oppressed classes—with zero-sum conflict, no ability to agree or understand one another across those, and then takes on the postmodern understanding of truth being just politics by other means, which removes all of the brakes standing up against it,” Lindsay said.

Seeing the world through that lens is what constitutes wokeness.

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation and author of the new book “The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics Is Dividing the Land of the Free,” explained how these ideas entered the workplace under the guise of combating racism and why they are so toxic.

“Anti-racism training is a con,” Gonzalez said. “These consultants get paid exorbitant amounts of money. Often these fees come from taxpayer funds.”

Though many of the advocates of wokeness are con artists, we have to take them seriously, Gonzalez said, because there is a strong ideological component to it.

“The true name of anti-racism training is consciousness-raising struggle sessions,” he said.

It’s used to demolish the “hegemonic narrative,” which in simpler terms, Gonzalez said, is simply “the American story, the American dream, the promise of liberty and prosperity that have attracted about 100 million immigrants from all over the world from 1850 to the present.”

Christopher Rufo, the director of the Center on Wealth and Poverty at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and contributing editor at City Journal, has delved into how “anti-racist training,” together with the Black Lives Matter movement, has invaded the boardroom and government.

“This is now becoming the default ideology of the bureaucracy, and people are making, in some cases, millions of dollars offering essentially political indoctrination on the public dime to public employees,” Rufo said.

All levels of government, as well as nonprofits and corporations, now have human resources departments that have adopted critical race theory as their dominant functioning ideology, he said, adding that it’s become a particularly big problem at the federal level.

“You have an apparatus of federal power that has grown extraordinarily since the days of Woodrow Wilson through [Franklin Roosevelt] through [Lyndon Johnson] in this kind of permanently expanding power that until recently, at least theoretically, operated under the ostensible ideology of the social sciences, of neutrality, but it’s really been abandoned,” Rufo said.

The permanent bureaucracy, no matter who the president is, has adopted critical race theory as its ideology of choice.

That’s leading to a “change in regime” that has never been voted on or approved by the American people, Rufo said. The result is that the machinery of the bureaucracy will be weaponized against the American people.

Rufo spoke of potential ways to stop this form of regime change. He said that it’s important to create institutional infrastructure to protect people from being targeted and “canceled.”

Gonzalez said that it is essential to inform other Americans of the transformation taking place and warn them of the radical changes to come if these ideas are not stopped.

“The more we write about this, the more we expose people to what has taken place, to why, who did it, how they did it, and what is their real goal here, we can start to demolish this idea that ‘no, this is nice because people need … justice,’” Gonzalez said, adding: “Let’s really be honest, and without rancor in our heart, just expose them. Sunshine can be a great disinfectant. Let’s really allow in the light and expose this for what it is.”

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Identity Politics Divides America

America’s founding creed is “e pluribus unum.” “Out of many, one.” That is the motto that appears on the seal of the House of Representatives. The greatness of America comes from the melting of many cultures and ethnic backgrounds into one American family.

Neither Congress, nor this nation, can function when it is divided along demographic lines. But that’s exactly what a dangerously large group of individuals in the modern Democrat Party are now intent on doing.

To make matters worse, these same individuals falsely smear Republicans with vile labels like racist and sexist during honest policy debates, while excusing blatant racist acts on their own side.

For example, it was discovered last year that Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam literally wore either blackface or a Ku Klux Klan hood—he couldn’t decide which. But he was let off the hook, and he still has his job.

Let’s be honest here: No fair-minded person could deny that if that were a conservative governor, he would have been run out of office the same day by the very leftist politicians who allowed Northam to skate.

Why is that? Because it’s assumed by liberal coastal elites who dominate our media and shape our popular culture that Democrats have pure hearts and that Republicans are diabolical.

To leftists, producing liberal policy victories is more important than standing against hate on their own side. How else do you explain the consistent mainstream media narrative that reports Republican mistakes as news, but buries Democrat errors under a headline of “Republicans Pounce”?

While leftists use the Black Lives Matter movement to excuse the destruction and looting of black small businesses and black homes, we hear nothing from leftists on the House floor pushing back on this violence.

We don’t hear about the death of St. Louis Police Chief David Dorn. He was killed by rioters. Our hearts break for his family because his life mattered, too.

Furthermore, it is offensive for leftists to insinuate that law and order policies don’t matter to African Americans. The silence is perhaps most deafening when it comes to abortion in the black community, a killer of more than 20 million black lives in the United States since 1973. Our hearts break because unborn black babies’ lives matter, too.

The woke mob is now “outraged” over federal officers defending federal buildings in Portland because leftist mayors refuse to do their job. I’ve heard those opposed to the presence of federal agents argue that this is about a Republican president trampling on Democrat governors’ rights. They are missing the point. This issue is not about conservatives or leftists, it’s about the difference between safe streets and lawless anarchy.

It just so happens that the lawless anarchy only happens in cities with liberal mayors. If they don’t want to protect the life, liberty, and property of their towns, then the federal government, at the direction of this president, will do it for them.

But I suspect that these bad-faith accusations would be different if the parties were reversed. It all comes down to weaponizing identity politics to divide this country and achieve power.

Those who traffic in unfair name-calling don’t want to unify Americans as part of a shared history, a shared pursuit of justice, or economic prosperity. Identity politics stands diametrically opposed to e pluribus unum, and therefore, stands diametrically opposed to the values of the United States of America.

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What the Silence Over Bill's Alleged Visit to Epstein's Pedophile Island Tells us About the Acela Media

The Acela train is Amtrak's flagship high speed service along the Northeast Corridor in the Northeastern United States between Washington, D.C. and Boston via 16 intermediate stops, including Providence, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City

In VIP, we noted how Bill Clinton is earning his “slick Willy” moniker regarding the latest bombshell from the trove of Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell documents that unsealed last week. That being former President Bill Clinton being spotted on Epstein’s infamous pedophile island. Of course, the Clinton camp denies the former president was ever there, but Maxwell has alleged that there are tapes of two prominent politicians having sex with minors. Maxwell, Epstein’s alleged partner in coordinating these depraved sex acts with underage girls, was recently arrested by federal authorities, denied bail, and being held in the same federal facility as Epstein before his highly suspicious suicide. With three passports and numerous accounts with millions of dollars, she’s a flight risk. She’s reportedly been given paper clothes to prevent self-harm.

Still, the former president being spotted on the island with minors That seems like at least something to look into, right? Epstein was a Clinton ally. He was connected with some of the world’s richest, most powerful families. To simply put it, there’s definitely a motive regarding seeing both Epstein and Maxwell be put six feet under. I’m not saying that’s what happened to Epstein, though the circumstances surrounding his death are amazingly irregular, almost a perfect alignment of events and actions that would make way for his death. Anyways, the point is he’s gone. And with these new documents, you’d think there would be at least some mention on the mainstream circuits. We’re not expecting much, but it’s been quiet. I mean, like German U-Boats in the Black Pit silence. Nothing. They’re suffocating this story with a pillow and those who do report on it barely give it the light of day. Is it shocking? No. Is it expected from these clowns? Yes. A former president was seen dabbling on some debauched island with an indicted child sex trafficker. That seems…like a problem (via Fourth Watch) [emphasis mine]:

A federal judge on Thursday unsealed a trove of court documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, as the latter awaits trial. In it, Virginia Giuffre, who has accused Epstein and Maxwell of sexually abusing her, details incidents she says she witnessed of the pair having sex with girls as young as 15-years-old.

But that's not all. Giuffre reveals in the just unsealed interview from 2011 that former president Bill Clinton visited Epstein’s private island, Little St. James Island, along with Maxwell and “two young girls” from New York. “I remember asking Jeffrey what’s Bill Clinton doing here kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said well he owes me a favor,” Giuffre said in the interview.....

But this sensational story involving former President Clinton - last seen eulogizing John Lewis just this week - has barely caught the attention of the legacy media. While the story has been covered dozens of times on Fox News, CNN viewers haven't heard anything about it unless they saw the one report at 6am on Friday morning. Nothing this weekend. MSNBC? Literally not a single mention (according to TV Eyes).

Bill Clinton's alleged trip to "pedophile island" was not mentioned once today on the Sunday shows - in fact, it hasn't been mentioned at all by ABC or CBS. To NBC's credit, it was covered on the Today show Friday morning.....

What does this tell us about the Acela Media? Quite a bit. As Glenn Greenwald tweeted Friday night, "I don't think there's been a bigger gap between (a) the importance, multi-layered and fascinating aspects of a news story and (b) the mainstream media's weirdly steadfast avoidance of it than the Jeffrey Epstein saga."

The media has largely avoided this story, while the media remains intertwined with it. It was less than 10 years ago that Jeffrey Epstein was sitting down for dinner with some famous houseguests, a short 18 months after he was released from jail after pleading guilty to a lesser charge of solicitation of prostitution with a minor. ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos was there. Former NBC and CBS anchor Katie Couric was there. Former E! and Netflix host Chelsea Handler was too. Why were they there? They've all said it was the one and only time they met Epstein, and they were unaware of his past.

So on one hand, you have the New York elites who intermingled with Epstein. But then we introduce former President Bill Clinton. As Drew Holden documented in his Twitter thread, there was almost uniform silence connecting Clinton and Epstein after the Thursday night story from every major media organization.

Oh, and the FBI knew about Epstein’s creepiness as well and did nothing, despite being in contact with one of his accusers before his formal indictment on child sex trafficking charges last year. Also, they had that photo of Giuffre with Prince Andrew before their 2011 interview with her.

They’re deep-sixing a story to protect Bill. Typical.

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Big backdown by Leftist library

A sheriff in Nevada on Monday sent a letter to the county's public library board letting them know deputies would not be responding to its 911 calls. Douglas County Sheriff Dan Coverley cited the board considering a diversity statement that endorses the Black Lives Matter movement.

“The Douglas County Public Library denounces all acts of violence, racism and disregard for human rights. We support #BlackLivesMatter. We resolutely assert and believe that all forms of racism, hatred, inequality and injustice don’t belong in our society," part of the proposed statement said.

According to Coverley, the BLM movement has caused "violence, property damage and the closing of local businesses."

"The Black Lives Matter movement openly calls all law enforcement corrupt and racist on their website. They call for the defunding of police, and we have seen how a lack of active law-enforcement has worked in Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon," Coverley wrote. "Numerous Black Lives Matter protests have resulted in violence, property damage and the closing of local businesses, sometimes permanently. To support this movement is to support violence and to openly ask for it to happen in Douglas County."

"Due to your support of Black Lives Matter and the obvious lack of support or trust with the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, please do not feel the need to call 911 for help. I wish you good luck with disturbances and lewd behavior, since those are just some of the recent calls my office has assisted you with in the past," he concluded.

Following a backlash, Douglas County Library Director Amy Dodson met with Coverley to discuss the potential diversity statement.

"Sheriff Coverley and I had a very candid conversation about the statement and we both expressed our opinions regarding the intent of our exchanged correspondence,” Dodson told Fox News “We agreed that we both support the people of Douglas County and this may have been an unfortunate circumstance of misunderstanding. The library respects and supports the work of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office and appreciates everything they do to keep our community safe.”

“I am passionate about and proud of the work the Sheriff’s Office does for all members of this community,” Coverley clarified. “This has been a difficult time to be a law enforcement professional and can be disheartening when we perceive that our office may be under attack. My response was rooted in my belief that these issues need to be openly discussed in a way that values diversity and law enforcement.”

It's sad that we have to have this kind of conversation at all. Law enforcement officers should be respected and not feel like they're constantly on the defense. Their job is to help people, and yet they're having to do their job and worry about increased violence against them. Sheriff Coverley, however, is right. This is a difficult time for police officers but changes – especially when it comes to law enforcement reforms – should be discussed in a way that respects officers and the community.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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