Cultural Marxism (or Wokeism): A Quick Summary
By Dom Nozzi
There has been a disturbing rise over the past few decades of what is called "cultural Marxism." A closely related term is “woke” or “wokeism” or “wokester.”
Here is a quick summary of what I believe are the elements of this societally suicidal concept.
An emphasis political correctness and multiculturalism. We must dismantle or at least transform the nuclear family, marriage, patriotism, traditional morality, and law and order.
There are right-thinking people and wrong-thinking people (who hold the ideas of oppressors). Wrong-thinking people must be re-educated or banished. The contemporary version of the Soviet gulag becomes being canceled or fired or imprisoned or having their reputation destroyed.
Class-based oppression and power imbalances emphasized by Marx – and the capitalistic economic system that fueled the counterrevolutionary traditional family -- are replaced with oppression and power imbalances based on not just class and capitalism but also cultural/demographic status such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and physical handicap. The “Frankfurt School” concluded that the needed revolution to achieve paradise would not happen if revolutionaries relied simply on class (the proletariat), but also needed to include cultural/demographic groups.
There is no objective truth. There is no objective beauty – for people or buildings or art.
The Counterculture of the 1960s – a revolution characterized by a rejection of traditional values – should be celebrated.
Western civilization is strongly characterized by (systemically) colonialism, imperialism, racism, cultural appropriation, materialism, white and male supremacy, sexism, violence, and the destruction of the natural environment.
Truth is relative. Each individual can have their own truth (when they are oppressed), and any truth claimed by an oppressor must be questioned.
Oppressors to be attacked, punished, and treated unfairly to level the playing field include white people, men, heterosexuals, fathers, capitalism, and Christians. Cultural Marxists came to realize that capitalism could not be overthrown by relying solely on the oppressed lower classes, and instead needed revolutionary bolstering by the addition of several new oppressed groups. These new oppressed groups were females, non-whites, non-heterosexuals, citizens and ethnic groups who lived in economically less developed nations, the handicapped, the obese, and transgendered individuals.
To claim society should not engage in the identity politics of favoring the oppressed (such as women, minorities, Muslims, mothers, homosexuals, or the transgendered) is to engage in hateful, bigoted, phobic speech.
The US should become more socialist and less capitalist.
Meritocracy should be replaced with group identity as a way to judge individuals.
Equal opportunity should be replaced by equal outcome.
The highly successful principles of Western Civilization should be replaced with such concepts as cultural relativity and acceptance of even the most dysfunctional of behaviors.
Diversity of ideas should be replaced with diversity of skin color and gender.
All people should be considered either oppressed or oppressors. All must fully agreed with our new secular religious dogma – that is, to become “woke.” If you do not fully submit to the dogma, you are to be banished from our cult-like tribe. As James Howard Kunstler so aptly put it, this is a Revenge of the Losers.
Oppressors are never right and the oppressed are never wrong.
As a way to explain personal failure, the oppressed must point to their victimhood when they don't succeed. Their failure is never their fault. It is okay that this promotes a lack of accountability or responsibility or hard work or merit.
Microaggressions are so traumatic to fragile oppressed minorities that we must create safe spaces on university campuses and trigger warnings from professors at the beginning of semesters. Teenagers are fragile snowflakes that must be coddled. They are to never mature into strong, mature, responsible adults but frozen in a perpetual adolescence. Being frozen in childhood means being easily offended and often throwing temper tantrums. The boogie man oppressor is everywhere, and our delicate oppressed minorities are always in danger of being victimized. As a perpetual victim, I am entitled to rewards, compensation, and privilege. Others are to blame for my failures – not me. I must not be held personally responsible or accountable.
Cruel, unethical, unfair means are justified by glorious ends.
Unfairness is okay to level the playing field.
Western science is unreliable, whereas "feminist" or "black" or "Muslim" or "transgender" science is reliable.
Men should be allowed in women's locker rooms, women's sports, and women's prisons.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are more important than societal success.
The voluntary, free exchange of capitalism should be eliminated and society should return to the barbarism of an extractive, genocidal, socialist economy.
Masculinity is toxic and men should become more like women.
Critical race theory – a race-based concept of radical, aggressive, relentless criticism leveled against all institutions of Western Civilization, such as science, capitalism, and the family – is a necessary and desirable form of teaching throughout our school system to destroy respect for or admiration of the history of America or Western Civilization. This disparagement of such history and principles (a form of Marxist indoctrination) helps pave the way for the replacement of white, Western, patriarchal, male, sexist, objective, rational, racist capitalist traditions and principles with a subjective, socialistic, relativistic, irrational, extractive, leveling paradise. As a race-based theory, all societal problems are seen as caused by racism, and any disagreement with the theory is, by definition, racist.
Hard work, rationality, objectivity, beauty, truth, science, punctuality, merit, family, planning for the future, accountability, doing well in school, speaking proper English, reading, writing, and neutrality are “white” principles and must therefore be rejected.
Socialist China and the Soviet Union both tried applying many of the above principles. Doing so led to the genocidal murder of about 100 million people in the 20th Century, economic misery and high levels of poverty, an extreme reduction in quality of life, a significant decline in individual liberty and freedom, high levels of self-censorship, a corrupt media, barbaric and authoritarian leadership, a loss of cultural and scientific innovation, a substantial rise in people accusing friends and family of "crimes against the state," a rise in militarism, liquidation of skilled and highly-educated citizens, and a catastrophic destruction of the natural environment.