If you wish to learn at least one buzzword in preparation for 2025, it should be ‘wokeism’.
The Oxford English Dictionary describes the disparaging term as follows: ‘progressive or left-wing attitudes or practices, especially those opposing social injustice or discrimination, that are viewed as doctrinaire, self-righteous, pernicious, or insincere.’
Remember when ‘snowflake’ and ‘social justice warrior’ were thrown around all the time? Wokeism is a term that extends that mockery.
If you are struggling to pin down a precise definition, it’s because it’s deliberately vague. After all, anything can be described as insincere if you try hard enough.
Think of the manufactured outrage that erupts online whenever a famous person says something questionable and people waste hours from their precious lives arguing about who’s right and who’s wrong.
The debate is always split – one side says people shouldn’t say questionable things without being held to account for it, the other says people have a right to speak their minds freely.
Welcome to the wokeism debate.
In the social media era, the anti-woke crusade extends towards anyone who turns social causes into publicity stunts without contributing anything truly meaningful.
You may have also heard something along the lines of ‘go woke, go broke‘. It is a phrase used by the American far right to criticise companies that align themselves with social causes.
The claim behind the argument is that companies that adopt policies focused on inclusion, diversity, and equity or otherwise inject such values into their marketing message are shifting their focus away from a company’s sole purpose – profit.
In other words, if you are against racist discrimination in whichever shape or form, you are woke.
If you are against gender discrimination, you are woke.
If you call out patriarchal privilege or other forms of systemic discrimination, you are woke.
If you want your government to take tangible action to address wealth inequality, you are woke.
If you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community or consider yourself an ally, you are woke.
If you are pro-choice, you are woke.
If you are in favour of fair policies that address under-representation in politics or in business, you are woke.
If you are an environmentalist who believes the planet should be prioritised above profit, you are woke.
The tidal wave of hatred towards anyone identifying with any of the above social causes has swelled to the size of a tsunami. We’ve all seen this year’s elections – the far right is in power all across the world.
Wokeism is a powerful slur that is gaining traction. The amount of traction it’s gaining is directly proportional to the level of misery people feel in their everyday lives. In this context, the idea that someone else would be given special treatment as a form of ad-hoc reparations sounds like lunacy.
After all, it is one train of thought, as steady and traceable as they come. Most people are stuck dealing with a myriad of problems which have not been addressed.
Why should someone else get more attention than me? Why does a refugee deserve care from the state when my family and I can barely scrape by? Why should women’s issues be a priority when men also suffer?
And so, the vicissitudes of fate have cast suffering parties against one another.
If your heart bleeds for the disenfranchised, you are wrong. If you forcefully exclude everyone outside your bubble under the pretext of protecting that bubble, you are wrong.
The biggest accusation levelled against ‘the woke’ is the notion that their calls for addressing social issues are performative in nature.
Anything that is meant to level the playing field – one flashpoint seems to be attempts at making children’s education more inclusive of LGBTQ+ community voices, for example – is seen as an assault on social norms.
There is no denial of the existence of injustice. The argument is about which injustices exist and if so, should we address them or is this simply the way things are?
This is how the theatre of wokeism comes to life: by engaging parties in endless debates. A game of perpetual equivocation.
The irony of the anti-woke movement is that its form is entirely purposeless. Much like its performative counterpart on the left, it is ineffective at achieving its stated aims.
The tactic does work to boost electoral polls whenever an amoral politician wishes to score points with dissatisfied swathes of angry voters. But we are yet to see a functional far-right government whose policies convincingly alleviate human suffering rather than displace it. We are yet to see a far-right government that provides solutions to the major existential crisis of our time.
Constantly throwing yourself against every type of effort made to address social injustice – however harmless or effective those efforts may be – is not only ineffective. It’s a mirror of the theatrical posturing on the left that irritates its supporters so much in the first place.
Look at every far-right pundit decrying woke culture and tell me you don’t see a performer gracing a stage.
Tell me what is different between Ben Shapiro ranting and raving against diversity, equity, and inclusion and a vapid celebrity who thinks they will stop discrimination with an advert.
The singular difference is that the former builds his audience by selling wholesale hate while the latter is doing it purely for their own personal branding. The first manufactures outrage against ‘the other’, the second pretends to care about diffusing it for public relations purposes.
Both deliver opposing arguments in the same ineffective manner: preaching to the home audience without any interest in persuading anyone who disagrees. There is no desire to engage.
There is no nuance in the message. It’s not reaching out – it’s pulling in like a phalanx.
So, here’s what will be achieved with this grand theatre of nothingness.
People who are against discrimination based on gender, sex, race, or any other defined attribute will keep calling out anyone who does discriminate. Those who discriminate will continue to do so.
Women who fight for equity in all spaces will keep fighting, because surrender is not an option. Men will keep insisting there’s no such thing as inequality and will retreat on the defensive while saying so.
Women who fight for bodily autonomy will never give up on something so intrinsic to their existence. Anyone else who thinks they have no definitive right to it will continue forcing the argument.
The rich will continue filching the poor. The poor will continue fantasising about being rich and hating their guts at the same time.
Members of the LGBTQ+ community have no choice but to continue fighting. People who do not want to shift away from what they perceive as ‘the norm’ will keep feeling entitled to doing so.
Climate advocates will persist in their quest to remind everyone we are being slowly boiled alive. Climate change deniers will keep denying.
If you want to address the same issues that animate the woke debate, the least feasible way in which to do so is to go around in circles in this manner.
The reality is that we’ve gotten so used to things being generally bleak and unsatisfying that many of us forget to really question why things are so bleak for everyone.
This isn’t about what ‘the other’ is doing.
This is about fundamental, systemic flaws which were designed to centralise power in the hands of the extremely wealthy.
This is about the slow, patient corruption of governments, authorities, and organisations which were meant to facilitate human life but are instead used as instruments to subjugate it.
The person waving that flag you don’t like isn’t the enemy.
The real enemy is anyone telling you to bend your knee.