Overcoming Woke Ideology—James Lindsay

Source: ukcolumn.org

Tuesday, 28th March 2023

Having been intrigued by the strange world of feminist glaciology, James Lindsay (Twitter | YouTube: New Discourses | YouTube: Sovereign Nations) and his associate Peter Boyle started to explore the literature of the New Left.

This resulted in their writing, and in their having accepted for publication, a number of spoof academic papers, most memorably The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct.

The response of the peer-reviewed journals and left-wing academia to some of the (fake) ideas that the writing duo suggested was so concerning—so potentially aggressive, even genocidal, in its basic worldview—that Lindsay decided to quit his job and work full-time with New Discourses on exploring and exposing the ideology of the woke.

What Lindsay has discovered is that the Marxist left in politics has shifted from seeking to redistribute private property to seeking to redistribute cultural property. Hence, racial, sexual and other characteristics have replaced economic class as the defining division for the neo-Marxists. Thus, Marxist envy and hatred has been reinvented and now takes the form of critical race theory, queer theory, colonial theory and similar woke ideologies.

Lindsay explains the real meaning of the words that now define politics in the UK, as with new Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, and elsewhere. In particular, he analyses how the reification of “fairness” is a manipulation of our best instincts, using them against us to form a system that always breeds failure, resentment and demoralisation. 

He also looks at the underlying concepts hidden below the badge of “sustainability“. This, he argues, is the tyranny of the twenty-first century and arises from a neo-Marxist pushback against the material success of capitalism and the material failure of the socialist alternatives.

This counter-attack has made huge progress by claiming that the material progress associated with capitalism is unsustainable and destined to end in catastrophic collapse. Having swapped black for white—or, in this case, plenty for barrenness—the New Left has succeeded in convincing many that “something must be done”. As a result, international and unaccountable bodies such as the UN and WEF meet to decide what is, and is not, sustainable; what is, and is not, permissible; what is, and is not, virtuous.

By this means, power is transferred and material progress stymied.

James and David also discuss the stresses visible in national coherence and in the nation state under the unrelenting criticism that is the policy, the tactic and the strategy of the woke left.

James Lindsay also reviews the response of Christianity—specifically, evangelical Protestantism—to the challenge of the new religion of woke. He finds much of the response to be disappointingly political and catty. He sees Christianity as a potentially powerful cultural force, but one that is losing a great portion of the middle of the country by use of a narrow lexicon and an inward-looking focus. He concludes that Christianity possesses a set of ideological tools that can refute Marxism in a way that the secular world can never do—if only Christians would use them.