Is the woke movement here to stay or will it end up eating itself?
Michael Brendan Dougherty of National Review wrote a piece earlier this month speculating about what the woke movement will look like in the near future.
Indeed, the elite and upwardly mobile can use wokism to withdraw from their duties to the community and the nation-state. After all, if America, or any Western country for that matter, was founded on bigotry then there’s no real incentive for the affluent, striver classes, or many other segments of the population to make sacrifices for the greater good or at least seek to preserve their nation.
In many regards, such scenarios will lead to forms of petty despotism or generate blowback due to the anarcho-tyrannical mindset of woke elites who do not feel like the rules apply to them. Nature abhors a vacuum and when political systems are in disarray and the ruling class carries out crimes with impunity, there is a natural tendency for people to turn to a strongman for guidance.
The rise of wokism tends to be concentrated among affluent whites and elite educational institutions. It’s by no means a grassroots, bottom-up movement. In fact, most minority groups don’t even care much for wokeness. When analyzed properly, wokeness can be viewed as a strategy to avoid conversations about the growing inequality and pauperization of the American working class.
Indeed, a case also be made that wokeness has a redistributionist aspect to it. Many ethnic panderers argue that they and their ancestors have been slighted by an allegedly white supremacist society. Therefore, they believe that they are entitled to some form of reparations that the state will confiscate from the white population.
The more neoliberal wings of the woke crowd are more receptive to woke virtue signaling from corporations and would try to placate ethnic activists by putting more minorities on their corporate boards. However, the more progressive wings of wokeness are more redistributionist in nature and some appear very Marxian in their approach to economic policy,
Dougherty raised a good point that the elites pushing wokeness tend to be the ones on top so far, while their more redistributionist rivals are not as influential at the moment. But Dougherty concludes with a rather prescient observation about how this entire game will end
However, there comes a point when the disillusioned woke masses end up turning on their patrons and make a move to take power. Revolutions generally have the initiators eaten by other power-hungry revolutionaries. This is the end result of playing with proverbial political fire.
Such leftist schemes can only go on for so long until infighting emerges. Given the Left’s history, such internal squabbles can get violent. In the end, America gets a raw deal if we reach a point of leftist hegemony. Eventually,these coalition will implode and the results could prove to be catastrophic.
