I think what's most interesting is that we're basically having a revival without religion. Secular revivalism! While I absolutely detest the absurd Cultural Marxism Hypothesis, it's not hard to observe that Marxist revolutions/governments often did have movements with secular and revivalist elements. In the West, we don't often think of them as "revivals", but the Cultural Revolution was essentially an attempt to harness youth energy into stochastic violence to help Mao consolidate his power. Mao framed it as a moral awakening of the youth to return to purer forms of traditional communist class struggle.
But it's absolutely agreed that the origins of the Great Awokening are deeply American and Protestant, not Marxist.
If anything, the secular aspect is merely the culmination of other long-term trends with roots in American and Protestant history. Protestantism has always been associated with cosmopolitanism and individualism. The individualism was a defining aspect and driver of earlier American Protestant revivals. But moreover, its focus on an individualist relationship with the divine at the expense of a communal one, means that once the individual choices shaped by cosmopolitanism veer toward the secular, there's not much stopping them from eventually landing at the atheistic. Atheism is on the rise globally, so it can't take all the credit for secularism, but it's no surprise that it got its start in Protestant societies first.
It's a strong thesis. Quasi-religous movements also share the same weaknesses as religions: schism, dogmatism, the selling of indulgences and similar grifts. When religion does not respect the church/state divide there is a strong push to sieze power for the righteous but no agreed political program, often leading to dysfunction.
After reading this (typically) excellent piece, I am left with a few take-away thoughts, some of which are affirming, and some of which are critical.
I think Noah's piece does an excellent job of explaining some of the "zeal" behind "wokeness," and in general, many movements akin to it in American history. The Protestant influence in our culture is very strong, and always has been (Kurt Andersen's book "Fantasyland" is a good book to start with to learn more about both the effect of Protestantism, but also the idea of the New World representing and welcoming anyone's ability to do anything they want to do, as being strong influences on the American character). Granted, it is impossible to disentangle this quasi-familiar zealotry from the amplifying effect social media has had on our culture since its inception, which I would argue is to increase attention-seeking behavior and to flood our brains with fragmented narratives, more than anything. Fundamentally, however, I think Noah is right on this aspect of "wokeness" culture.
I disagree with Noah's contention that this is so related to Marx; I think it is much more related to the post-modernist experiment, chiefly, Michel Foucault. Lindsey, whom I do not particularly like, as I find him to be more of a troll than anything, was correct to point out that a lot of the more obnoxious and bad-faith aspects of what we call "wokeness" doesn't come from a dialectical theory (and, in fact, explicitly rejects modernist theory overall), it comes from the more Foucault-based idea of power being a grid, or web, and power imbalances existing everywhere (and this must be remedied, I guess). This, he argues, was adopted by the European and later American left, as the failings of Marxism to explain, well, everything, became more and more readily apparent. This explains the infinite terminology, never-ending victimhood, and in general more eyebrow-raising aspects of what "wokeness" often sounds like. So, to my mind, Noah missed the mark, here. I could, however, be misreading the argument or be incorrect in my interpretation.
Having said all of the above, I think the proper stance to take on what we see today is to be critical of the more disingenuous or outlandish "woke" statements that are made, but to realize that, as Noah rightly points out, this style of zealotry is actually a familiar characteristic of American social movements. Also, we are still a country founded on Enlightenment principles of freedom, including freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and the sanctity of the divide between the private and the public life. This more modernist ideal is, in many ways, in conflict with the post-modern or critical theory-based stance of needing to correct injustices everywhere. From my perspective, I think we're having a real moment as a country right now. Times like this can be very uncomfortable to live through, but I think that, in general, the goals tend to be just ones. I only wish that academics, commentators, and public intellectuals could do a better job of guiding these passions; zealotry without guidance and restraint is a vice, not a virtue. Letting these things go unchecked damages the aim of progress by causing unnecessary consternation, and, in some cases, actual life-altering consequences, some of which are hard to justify.
I welcome replies to my thoughts, so please, have at it, fellow readers. Cheers!
You know. I guess what I want to know is... what exactly is the definition of wokeness. If you had asked me a few years ago, I would of said wokeness was being aware of all the history and issues with race in this country. Which I think is more in line with the historical roots that you mentioned.
Unfortunately though, like many things, wokeness has evolved to encompass a way of social signaling. The path from anti-slavery efforts of abolitionists to appending an “x” to another cultures gendered words is pretty long and winding.
I do think the comparison to religious movements is pretty accurate. Religions include everything from lip service dedication to fundamentalism to evangelicalism, which I see echoed in today’s wokeness movement.
But as Ewen states below (or above), it’s when religion intersects with government, that inevitably leads any movement to be co-opted by those who want to use it as a weapon to wield power.
It’s hard to have perspective while living through a historical and cultural movement, but it will be interesting to read retrospectives on the evolution of wokeness.
My impression is that wokeness is slowly being co-opted from a racial (primarily black) centered movement to a gendered (or should I say, anti-gender) movement.
Anyway, I love posts like this that educate me, and send me down rabbit holes of new knowledge. But, then again... you do love rabbits.
I suspect you're likely to get some responses here comparing this view to Moldbug/Yarvin's notion of the "Cathedral"-- where McWhorter criticizes the religious aspects of wokeness from a liberal point of view, Moldbug/Yarvin does so from a neoreactionary POV, but they both see how modern social justice liberalism is an evolution of American evangelical Protestant reformist zeal. You may or may not want to engage with Yarvin's version-- certainly couldn't blame you for wanting to stay far away from it, in fact-- but it's something to keep in mind if you haven't already.
I'm not sure I agree with your characterization of Linday's critique. His book ultimately points to late 80s, early 90s as the point where the inventors of wokeness (as listed in its wiki page) tweaked this ideology to it's current formulation that allowed it to take off (by making it more palatable for lower cognitive ability people.) It worked...*really* well. An ingenious concoction of facts and propaganda theory for the less erudite.
For me, saying wokeness comes from ____ isn't always so useful (I come from a long line of Quakers on both sides of my family but I don't get the impression even my mom, who is a practicing Quaker, really understands what critical theory is.)
To me, it would be kind of like saying that Qanon has Christian roots which is sort of useful and also sort of not.
It's pretty clear that "wokeness" isn't marxist. It's a pretty nebulous and convoluted term that seems to mean different things depending on your politics etc.
But I just want to make sure that you aren't saying that CRT didn't grow out of the Frankfurt School, because I thought that was pretty much established (at least according to wikipedia).
Relatedly, I do think you're downplaying CRT a bit by relegating it to the nerdy fringe. The Kendi book Stamped is showing up in the curricula of many liberal schools, as are DiAngelo inspired trainings. DiAngelo also appears to be behind the creepy and counterproductive corporate trainings that people are being subjected to. Certainly CRT jargon like intersectionality, white supremacy, etc seem to have leaked into the popular discourse.
A friend's children go to a private school where CRT is basically being taught as fact. All I can think is that the administrators there aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, because I can't think of a greater factory of white privilege and thus white supremacy than poncy private schools. If they really believed in what they were teaching, they'd dismantle themselves.
I am not sure these are contradictory stories. Christianity, and particularly Protestant Christianity, is… quite communist actually. One would expect predictable synergy between Marxism and Christianity (the fact that it played out differently in Russia is to a large degree a consequence of the peculiarities of Russian Orthodox Christianity, which has always been much more state-integrated and state-supporting than even Catholicism).
I have made very clear to John McWhorter that I don't agree with this wokeness as religion thesis even if woke people share some customs with religious revivals. I think he got backed into a corner sufficiently about that that he decided that religion and theology are just rhetoric which would make his point emotionally better than "ideology".
I decided that I had absolutely no use for James Lindsay as soon as I heard of him which was when he was setting his minions on Kareem Carr for no reason. But even if woke people take the concrete policy outcomes for which they agitate from the traditions of abolitionism and the civil rights movement the addition of postmodernism to the woke view of how people should know things and have relationships in the world really makes it a unique thing in history. It makes it easier to not speak of justice but speak of punishment with apologies to Ursula K. Le Guin since many of the woke media types feel like representatives of a community but also very isolated in their struggles with identity and not having many strong allies.
I generally agree with this account as an origin story for wokeness, but I think many of the problems play out more as tactical or theory of change type problems. The key issue and what I think drives many conservatives crazy is not even that they oppose a more just society, but that the means by which the woke suggest that society is changed relies entirely on white guilt as it’s impetus. An account of social progress built on a genuine desire for mutual thriving is deemed insufficiently woke because it does not first grovel at the feet of Americas victims and profess personal ownership of inter-generational guilt for which one must seek recompense. To me this is the fault of the particular strain of intersectionality that atomizes people as fundamentally alone across any real difference and casts social progress as a zero sum game among innumerable identity groups.
It's a bit parallel to your main argument, but I see a ton of echos of William Lloyd Garrison's anti-Constitutional non-participation in the anti-Democratic party Left. For example, some of the people who were part of Bernie's campaign who didn't support Clinton or (less so) Biden. The belief that the System is saturated with irredeemable sin and any participation in it (esp. the Democratic Party, but mainstream electotal politics in general). It doesn't map perfectly because I think the 13th, 14th, and 19th amendments rendered the Constitution itself much more acceptable in the abstract, but I see a lot of the same Christian influence.
Love the historical angle.
I think what's most interesting is that we're basically having a revival without religion. Secular revivalism! While I absolutely detest the absurd Cultural Marxism Hypothesis, it's not hard to observe that Marxist revolutions/governments often did have movements with secular and revivalist elements. In the West, we don't often think of them as "revivals", but the Cultural Revolution was essentially an attempt to harness youth energy into stochastic violence to help Mao consolidate his power. Mao framed it as a moral awakening of the youth to return to purer forms of traditional communist class struggle.
But it's absolutely agreed that the origins of the Great Awokening are deeply American and Protestant, not Marxist.
If anything, the secular aspect is merely the culmination of other long-term trends with roots in American and Protestant history. Protestantism has always been associated with cosmopolitanism and individualism. The individualism was a defining aspect and driver of earlier American Protestant revivals. But moreover, its focus on an individualist relationship with the divine at the expense of a communal one, means that once the individual choices shaped by cosmopolitanism veer toward the secular, there's not much stopping them from eventually landing at the atheistic. Atheism is on the rise globally, so it can't take all the credit for secularism, but it's no surprise that it got its start in Protestant societies first.
It's a strong thesis. Quasi-religous movements also share the same weaknesses as religions: schism, dogmatism, the selling of indulgences and similar grifts. When religion does not respect the church/state divide there is a strong push to sieze power for the righteous but no agreed political program, often leading to dysfunction.
After reading this (typically) excellent piece, I am left with a few take-away thoughts, some of which are affirming, and some of which are critical.
I think Noah's piece does an excellent job of explaining some of the "zeal" behind "wokeness," and in general, many movements akin to it in American history. The Protestant influence in our culture is very strong, and always has been (Kurt Andersen's book "Fantasyland" is a good book to start with to learn more about both the effect of Protestantism, but also the idea of the New World representing and welcoming anyone's ability to do anything they want to do, as being strong influences on the American character). Granted, it is impossible to disentangle this quasi-familiar zealotry from the amplifying effect social media has had on our culture since its inception, which I would argue is to increase attention-seeking behavior and to flood our brains with fragmented narratives, more than anything. Fundamentally, however, I think Noah is right on this aspect of "wokeness" culture.
I disagree with Noah's contention that this is so related to Marx; I think it is much more related to the post-modernist experiment, chiefly, Michel Foucault. Lindsey, whom I do not particularly like, as I find him to be more of a troll than anything, was correct to point out that a lot of the more obnoxious and bad-faith aspects of what we call "wokeness" doesn't come from a dialectical theory (and, in fact, explicitly rejects modernist theory overall), it comes from the more Foucault-based idea of power being a grid, or web, and power imbalances existing everywhere (and this must be remedied, I guess). This, he argues, was adopted by the European and later American left, as the failings of Marxism to explain, well, everything, became more and more readily apparent. This explains the infinite terminology, never-ending victimhood, and in general more eyebrow-raising aspects of what "wokeness" often sounds like. So, to my mind, Noah missed the mark, here. I could, however, be misreading the argument or be incorrect in my interpretation.
Having said all of the above, I think the proper stance to take on what we see today is to be critical of the more disingenuous or outlandish "woke" statements that are made, but to realize that, as Noah rightly points out, this style of zealotry is actually a familiar characteristic of American social movements. Also, we are still a country founded on Enlightenment principles of freedom, including freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and the sanctity of the divide between the private and the public life. This more modernist ideal is, in many ways, in conflict with the post-modern or critical theory-based stance of needing to correct injustices everywhere. From my perspective, I think we're having a real moment as a country right now. Times like this can be very uncomfortable to live through, but I think that, in general, the goals tend to be just ones. I only wish that academics, commentators, and public intellectuals could do a better job of guiding these passions; zealotry without guidance and restraint is a vice, not a virtue. Letting these things go unchecked damages the aim of progress by causing unnecessary consternation, and, in some cases, actual life-altering consequences, some of which are hard to justify.
I welcome replies to my thoughts, so please, have at it, fellow readers. Cheers!
You know. I guess what I want to know is... what exactly is the definition of wokeness. If you had asked me a few years ago, I would of said wokeness was being aware of all the history and issues with race in this country. Which I think is more in line with the historical roots that you mentioned.
Unfortunately though, like many things, wokeness has evolved to encompass a way of social signaling. The path from anti-slavery efforts of abolitionists to appending an “x” to another cultures gendered words is pretty long and winding.
I do think the comparison to religious movements is pretty accurate. Religions include everything from lip service dedication to fundamentalism to evangelicalism, which I see echoed in today’s wokeness movement.
But as Ewen states below (or above), it’s when religion intersects with government, that inevitably leads any movement to be co-opted by those who want to use it as a weapon to wield power.
It’s hard to have perspective while living through a historical and cultural movement, but it will be interesting to read retrospectives on the evolution of wokeness.
My impression is that wokeness is slowly being co-opted from a racial (primarily black) centered movement to a gendered (or should I say, anti-gender) movement.
Anyway, I love posts like this that educate me, and send me down rabbit holes of new knowledge. But, then again... you do love rabbits.
I suspect you're likely to get some responses here comparing this view to Moldbug/Yarvin's notion of the "Cathedral"-- where McWhorter criticizes the religious aspects of wokeness from a liberal point of view, Moldbug/Yarvin does so from a neoreactionary POV, but they both see how modern social justice liberalism is an evolution of American evangelical Protestant reformist zeal. You may or may not want to engage with Yarvin's version-- certainly couldn't blame you for wanting to stay far away from it, in fact-- but it's something to keep in mind if you haven't already.
Glad I found you through the Omni liberals stream, looking forward to reading your body of work!
I'm not sure I agree with your characterization of Linday's critique. His book ultimately points to late 80s, early 90s as the point where the inventors of wokeness (as listed in its wiki page) tweaked this ideology to it's current formulation that allowed it to take off (by making it more palatable for lower cognitive ability people.) It worked...*really* well. An ingenious concoction of facts and propaganda theory for the less erudite.
For me, saying wokeness comes from ____ isn't always so useful (I come from a long line of Quakers on both sides of my family but I don't get the impression even my mom, who is a practicing Quaker, really understands what critical theory is.)
To me, it would be kind of like saying that Qanon has Christian roots which is sort of useful and also sort of not.
Were you by any chance channeling Richard Hofstadter?
It's pretty clear that "wokeness" isn't marxist. It's a pretty nebulous and convoluted term that seems to mean different things depending on your politics etc.
But I just want to make sure that you aren't saying that CRT didn't grow out of the Frankfurt School, because I thought that was pretty much established (at least according to wikipedia).
Relatedly, I do think you're downplaying CRT a bit by relegating it to the nerdy fringe. The Kendi book Stamped is showing up in the curricula of many liberal schools, as are DiAngelo inspired trainings. DiAngelo also appears to be behind the creepy and counterproductive corporate trainings that people are being subjected to. Certainly CRT jargon like intersectionality, white supremacy, etc seem to have leaked into the popular discourse.
A friend's children go to a private school where CRT is basically being taught as fact. All I can think is that the administrators there aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, because I can't think of a greater factory of white privilege and thus white supremacy than poncy private schools. If they really believed in what they were teaching, they'd dismantle themselves.
I am not sure these are contradictory stories. Christianity, and particularly Protestant Christianity, is… quite communist actually. One would expect predictable synergy between Marxism and Christianity (the fact that it played out differently in Russia is to a large degree a consequence of the peculiarities of Russian Orthodox Christianity, which has always been much more state-integrated and state-supporting than even Catholicism).
I have made very clear to John McWhorter that I don't agree with this wokeness as religion thesis even if woke people share some customs with religious revivals. I think he got backed into a corner sufficiently about that that he decided that religion and theology are just rhetoric which would make his point emotionally better than "ideology".
I decided that I had absolutely no use for James Lindsay as soon as I heard of him which was when he was setting his minions on Kareem Carr for no reason. But even if woke people take the concrete policy outcomes for which they agitate from the traditions of abolitionism and the civil rights movement the addition of postmodernism to the woke view of how people should know things and have relationships in the world really makes it a unique thing in history. It makes it easier to not speak of justice but speak of punishment with apologies to Ursula K. Le Guin since many of the woke media types feel like representatives of a community but also very isolated in their struggles with identity and not having many strong allies.
I generally agree with this account as an origin story for wokeness, but I think many of the problems play out more as tactical or theory of change type problems. The key issue and what I think drives many conservatives crazy is not even that they oppose a more just society, but that the means by which the woke suggest that society is changed relies entirely on white guilt as it’s impetus. An account of social progress built on a genuine desire for mutual thriving is deemed insufficiently woke because it does not first grovel at the feet of Americas victims and profess personal ownership of inter-generational guilt for which one must seek recompense. To me this is the fault of the particular strain of intersectionality that atomizes people as fundamentally alone across any real difference and casts social progress as a zero sum game among innumerable identity groups.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001b420
It's a bit parallel to your main argument, but I see a ton of echos of William Lloyd Garrison's anti-Constitutional non-participation in the anti-Democratic party Left. For example, some of the people who were part of Bernie's campaign who didn't support Clinton or (less so) Biden. The belief that the System is saturated with irredeemable sin and any participation in it (esp. the Democratic Party, but mainstream electotal politics in general). It doesn't map perfectly because I think the 13th, 14th, and 19th amendments rendered the Constitution itself much more acceptable in the abstract, but I see a lot of the same Christian influence.