Wokeness is Dying
The woke ideological stranglehold on society is slipping. People have had enough. We've reached peak woke.
The universe is in a constant state of attempted equilibrium. Checks and balances are found throughout nature to achieve a balanced ecological system, resulting in a relatively stable tension between predators and prey. When an outside force, such as humans, messes with the balance too much, it creates a disharmonious state. Balance is required for nature to thrive.
Western society is the same.
Despite what individual progressives or conservatives think about one another, society needs both of these groups to survive. They each act as a necessary counterforce to one another. Progressives are needed to make changes, conservatives are needed for their cautious predisposition. It’s a balancing act that society needs to perform between these two groups to remain intact. However, the balance of power in society in the last decade has been thrown off entirely by the ultra-progressive, far-left, ‘woke’ people.
When I talk about woke stuff, I am not using it as a synonym for equality, as dishonest members of the woke team will try to define it. You’ll be hard-pressed to find those who don’t want equality in Western culture.
When I talk of woke people I’m talking about the far-left, anti-liberal radicals. The bullies masquerading as the righteous. Ones who use the power they have in dangerous and shortsighted ways.
Fortunately for us, these radicals end up consuming themselves. It is but an inevitable consequence of their worldview. By pushing the Overton window further out, those who aren’t up to date with the new beliefs are cast aside and the total amount of adherents to the belief structure shrinks, ergo, wokeism is a self-consuming, self-defeating, ideology. We’ve seen this happen with many Left-wing content creators who have become ostracised. The same tactics they used against others are now being used against themselves.
Jordan Peterson knew this would happen when, Ethan Klein, mostly driven by his audience, denounced JP. And just as Jordan prophesized, within a year, large swaths of Ethan’s fan base had turned on him. The Overton window had shifted, and Ethan was left outside in the cold.
I want these people to be reined in and stop embarrassing the regular people on the left. The woke are anti-liberal and reluctant to engage in conversation. Why converse when you can coerce? Why convince when you can cancel?
These are some ways that will lead to the fall of the ultra-progressive ideology that has taken hold of society today.
Let’s dive in.
Destruction of Language
For the record, I’m centre-left, holding some progressive beliefs. However, I am utterly turned off by what I see the ultra-progressives doing and believe they are a threat to the sane left. My reasonable criticisms are oftentimes met with accusations of being far-right.
Their binary worldview tells them there's either the left or the far-right. Since I criticise the left, therefore I am far-right. I won't waste your time explaining why this surface-level analysis is wrong.
This speaks to their use of language. They do not use it to communicate, they use it to manipulate. They’ve overused the terms nazi, far-right, transphobe, bigot, Hitler, fascist - the list goes on, and in doing so, have utterly destroyed the meaning of these words. If ever I am called these, which is often, it’s just water off a duck's back now. I used to take insult and worry that people might believe them. I soon came to realise that since I don't believe these people when they call others that, why would other reasonable people believe them when the accusation is tossed my way?
My reactive response when I hear someone is called a nazi is to not believe the claim. These words were once useful in describing someone’s beliefs. But no more.
You may be wondering what happens when an actual bigot is called one. Well, these children have cried wolf far too many times. This is 100% their fault.
Why do they choose to use these words? Well, this feeds into my next point.
The Refusal to Engage
The best way to get your point across is to convince others why you are correct (duh?). Lay out your premises, prove them to be true, and the conclusion will follow. I find it concerning when people assert something to be true but refuse to explain why or to engage in any criticism. What they say may be true, but if you cannot substantiate it, how can you have any hope to convince us that you are correct? We simply will not believe you. I want the left to be strong. I want the very best arguments of the left to go against the best arguments on the right. Let the ideas battle it out
To give credit where credit is due, many woke people do engage in conversation and debate, but I find a whole lot more refuse. Those with the biggest voices certainly tend not to. Renowned racists Ibram X. Kendi, and Robin DiAngelo, who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak and have written books essentially calling all white people racist, decline all offers of debate.
These ultra-progressives refuse to discuss their ideas because their ideas cannot be held up to scrutiny. If one cannot defend their ideas (ideas they have thought and written about extensively) they are not serious intellectual contenders. They’re here to make money.
What reason do they give for turning down debates? They say they don’t want to platform fascists. This could be a convincing argument, however, the people they call fascists or racists are rarely so. It’s a double win for them. They look like the good guys by refusing to prop up someone they perceive as evil and they don’t have to engage with reasonable criticism. Safe in the wee echo chamber they’ve created. But certainly not a valid method for discovering the truth.
Anti-Free Speech
I wouldn’t compel anyone to have a conversation they do not want to have. But it’s not enough for the woke to not engage in debate. They go one step further and say that others aren’t allowed to have the debate. They want to be the authority on who should have conversations and on what topics.
It is one thing to protest people and views you disagree with, in fact, it is an integral part of Western society. But we cannot allow people to shut down the voluntary conversations of others, which is what we have seen constantly over the last few years. Disrupting events so people cannot speak is antithetical to free speech. This is what I mean when I say these woke people are illiberal and authoritarian at heart. They want to control everything.
Imagine you hear a speaker coming to a place near you. You head down to see what they have to say. Before and throughout the event people are shouting, screaming and blowing air horns. You are unable to make out anything that is being said. When you look at those protesting, are you going to look at them with sympathy, or with disdain? They just ruined your entire experience. You wanted to hear someone’s ideas, maybe not because you agreed but out of mere curiosity, and because of these miserable monsters, you cannot.
So you are not only unconvinced by these people because they refuse to give any arguments for their position and just scream ‘racist, fascist’, but you also feel contempt for them. How can an ideology like this survive when it proudly broadcasts such brutish behaviour?
It can’t.
Popular YouTuber and speaker Sargon of Akkad had a talk of his interrupted by the radical left. The stage was rushed by masked individuals in a despicable attempt to shut the event down. This is what people do when they feel they’re losing power. They lash out. They resort to desperate, unreasonable tactics. This is reminiscent of actual fascists - the real ones of the 1930s - shutting down speech they disagree with.
So what we see is an unwillingness to engage in conversation, and when the conversation is taken elsewhere, there are attempts to get it shut down. But STILL, that is not enough. Punishments must be handed out to those who engage in ideas that are deemed inappropriate.
This is mob rule.
Cancelling and Coercion
Cancelling is the modern-day act of ostracisation. We have seen cancelling take on different forms, one such popular technique is contacting universities or places of employment to remove the accused from their position. Some may deserve this, however, because this process is done outside of the justice system, there is no due process, and many innocents are caught in the crossfire.
There is no proper way to defend oneself against accusations by the woke mob, not only are they not interested in such defences because, as I just pointed out, they are not interested in conversation. During the cancelling process, there are no guardrails of the justice system to ensure this does not get out of hand. Like a snowball causing an avalanche, the punishments usually do not fit the apparent crime.
In these rapidly changing times, self-censorship has increased. Censorship is no longer just an external force, but an internal one. It is easier to keep quiet and go along with the current woke narrative, lest one succumbs to the same fate as those before them.
Opponents of the sane argue that cancel culture doesn’t exist. They’ll justify this by giving examples of people who have become more famous after their cancellation, despite examples of cancelled people being all around them if they dare look. This is nothing but selection bias. They don’t hear of the people who have been successfully cancelled, because they’ve been cancelled.
These people who garner followings after attempted cancellations showcase that people have had enough. The tide is turning and there is an anti-cancel-culture culture. This is one of the many signs that the woke ideology is failing. Society can only put up with coercion for so long and we’re starting to see the fall of wokeness. They’ve overplayed their hand in almost every aspect. They’re losing power and they know it.
Let’s see one of the most egregious examples of them trying to control other people’s actions.
Hogwarts Legacy
Nothing in recent history is a better example of an overreaction to something so innocuous than the release of Hogwarts Legacy. It was simply a game based in the Harry Potter universe. This was the mortal sin that the developers decided to commit which caused a visceral reaction to a group on the internet - unbeknownst to most of its players. The terminally online leftists banded together.
This was the hill they decided to die on.
Nobody was allowed to play this game.
To the ultra progressives, JK Rowling is the devil. If your only context were what people said about her online, you’d assume she was a despot dictator of a country executing trans people on sight. Instead, she believes men and women are different and there should be a clear delineation between them, and trans people, especially when it comes to bathrooms and sports. There are arguments on both sides which I won’t be getting into nor giving my opinion because it’s irrelevant to the topic at hand. What you need to know is that there’s a disagreement. And remember how the woke feel about disagreement?
Now, if you don’t know much about gamers, it’s that we don’t like to be told what to do. I initially thought the game looked decent and I would eventually buy it when it came on sale. However, after seeing the seething hatred from one side and being told that I wasn’t allowed to play it, I immediately purchased it upon release, completely out of spite.
The woke people tried their best. This was their D-day. With their keyboards in hand, they stormed the beaches of Steam, review bombing the game so that it would come up with negative reviews, classifying it as a ‘genocide simulator’, rather than an open-world RPG. They found streamers playing the game on Twitch, invaded the chat, throwing insults and spoiling the game for other viewers. They created a website so people knew what streamers had played Hogwarts Legacy to boycott them. In an ironic twist, they called it, ‘Have they streamed THAT wizard game?’ (the Voldemort effect).
All this over a video game.
Remember, the theme of this is going too far.
It didn’t work. It backfired and initial sales went through the roof. Was it a particularly good game? Not really. It was alright. But the fact that so many people, like myself, supported this game considering the controversy shows that there is significant pushback to this ideology of control.
Popular ultra-progressive Twitch streamer Hasan Piker knows his audience well and admitted it’s not worth being bullied for playing a game.
An interesting thing to question is, why this game? Out of everything Harry Potter-related, Lego, the theme park, and t-shirts, this is the thing they decided to get so upset about. They chose this because it didn’t require anything of them. They didn’t need to leave the comfort of their homes, they sat back and bullied people from their chairs while feeling like the soldiers of World War 2 fighting against European fascism.
To the outside observer, one might see bullying people to the point of tears as a not-so-good thing, despite these optics, they followed through with their vicious attacks. They felt morally justified in being cruel because, to them, genocide was happening. A genocide of trans people because of a Harry Potter game or something, I don’t know. Of course, the drama around the game died out and the leftists with the memory of a goldfish now say things like ‘hehe, I forgot that game even existed’.
Really? You said this was a genocidal campaign. How could they forget this when it was (to them) a clear advocation for genocide? These people do not use words to communicate, they use them to manipulate.
And they went too far.
Hope.
New Zealand elected a centre-right party after a few years of the left being in charge. Argentina has elected a right-leaning libertarian. The Netherlands voted in a right-wing candidate. Coincidence? Was this going to happen regardless of what the left did to embarrass themselves in recent years? Quite possibly. The countries may even be worse off voting these people in, my point is this was an inevitable outcome when the left decided to go too far. The pendulum always swings back.
The woke are unable to say that calling for the genocide of Jews constitutes harassment. This is incredible.
We’re past the woke apex. People have seen how this ideology has acts and they’re fed up.
It’s one thing to make a distinction between gender and sex: software and hardware, but they go too far when they say sex isn’t binary, or there’s no difference between men and women in sports.
It’s one thing to have empathy toward the Palestinian people, it’s another for Black Lives Matter to show support for the Hamas paratroopers who invaded Israel and slaughtered over 1,300 innocent people.
Their views of oppressor/oppressed have warped their worldview so much that it doesn’t matter what a terrorist organisation does, as long as it’s against an ‘oppressing’ force all will be forgiven.
We need to hope that this momentum toward the right doesn't continue with so much force that we live to regret it. The left went too far, I’d hate to see the right go too far again. Nature thrives when there’s a balance between predator and prey, so too, do we survive when there’s a balance of the left and right.