The Rise, Impact, and Potenial Decline of Woke Ideology | 12.28.24
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What is today called woke ideology is a complex and polarizing topic with origins tracing back decades. After expanding during the political correctness of the 80s and 90s, it's culminated in cancel culture and various protest movements that have swept across the U.S.
In this episode, we speak to the author of The Third Awokening on how this woke ideology intersects with religion, culture, and education, and how he says the U.S. can reduce its influence. I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's December 28th, and this is a special edition of Morning Wire.
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The following is an interview conducted earlier this year. Joining us now to discuss so-called woke ideology and efforts to dismantle it is Eric Kaufman, author of the book, The Third Awakening. Eric, thank you so much for joining us. So first, the title of your book is interesting. It's obviously loaded and suggests a pattern going back decades. The Third Awakening, what does that mean? Right.
Well, the book is a critical analysis of the woke phenomenon. I should say I have an analytical definition of woke. You know, I know it is used as a political epithet, but the definition of woke I use is the making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender and sexual identity groups. That's the one sentence definition of woke. Hmm. You know, from that flows a fuzzy ideology, which says that any inequality of outcome in desired social, you know, income, social status, et cetera, between racial groups, between men and women is an outrage in a way. It's a violation of a sacred value. And the second proposition is anything that harms women. whether physically or psychologically, members of these historically marginalized groups is also an outrage. So any speech which offends members of such sacralized groups constitutes a kind of blasphemy, and you therefore are liable to excommunication or being canceled, in other words. So that is basically what woke is. You know, what I argue in the book is that we've had
three waves of this ideology. It's not just post-2015. Post-2015 is the third of these waves. So the first wave, I trace this back to the late 60s, where you did actually have cancellations occurred. Perhaps the first one was the Moynihan Report of 1965 on the Black Family, which was shelved by the Johnson administration. And we then had affirmative action, of course, in the late 60s. And then we move into what I would call the second awokening. And these are waves of mobilization and emotional energy. And so we get speech codes and political correctness in that second wave. Then in the third wave, this is where we are. We have cancel culture, microaggressions. But there's a lot of continuity. Affirmative action and DEI is something with roots back to that first awokening.
So I kind of stress that. This is very much about continuity and acceleration of an ideology rather than a deviation. There are people around who seem to say, oh, everything was just fine in the 2000s. We didn't have a problem. And then all of a sudden this cancel culture came in because of the smartphone or something. I'm accepting that things like smartphone and social media accelerate this, but... I'm arguing the problem lies with an ideology, and that ideology, in my view, is very much rooted in left liberalism and not so much in cultural Marxism.
A couple of questions prompted by your answer. The Moynihan Report, for those who are not familiar with it, can you explain what that found and why it was buried?
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