The political right and other conservatives are blissfully, or purposefully, unaware of their long history of appropriating and devaluing terms that historically originate in progressive circles. "Wokeness" and associated terms are in danger of becoming the next victims in this long history of right wing appropriation of left wing ideas and idealism.
Image by EpicTop10.com - source: Flickr
Let's first turn our attention to some of the most prominent historical thefts of progressive terminology, like "anarchism" and "libertarianism". The original advocates for the abolition of the modern state were communists. Communism is the ideology that has as its ultimate goal a stateless, classless and moneyless society wherein all private property is abolished. It is in fact the only ideology that truly adheres to the anarchist ideal of the abolition of all unjust hierarchies; that's the stateless and classless parts. The right wing appropriation of the anarchist ideology is a silly one, known as anarcho-individualism and anarcho-capitalism. These are the extremist versions of classical liberalism as described by Adam Smith, who believed in the "spontaneous order" that would come about in a mostly unregulated and ungoverned free market in which all individuals act as rational free agents who seek to maximize their own personal benefit through voluntary transactions. Like I said: this is just silly. Why? Because we can all see with our own eyes that deregulation of markets has only led to more concentration of wealth and political power. And besides that, a child can deduce that the process of competition and maximizing profits can only lead to monopolies; at the end of the road there can be only one or a handful of collaborating winners in the arena of brutal competition.
Oh wait, you say that we should then break up those corporations that are "too big to fail"? Well, then I ask you, isn't that exactly the use of power of an overbearing government you freedom-loving free marketeers oppose? Like I said: it's silly. The stratification of society in an upper and lower class, sometimes with a fabricated middle class, and thus the imbalance of power and wealth, is inherent in capitalism. Now one might say that this is a legitimate or just hierarchy, and that it knows no use of force, but I disagree with that assertion because the use of force is implied in the power imbalance.
Libertarianism was also stolen from progressives, and the modern use of the word by the political right has been popularized by none other than Murray Rothbard. He also openly and unashamedly admitted to this theft:
Rothbard described this modern use of the words overtly as a "capture" from his enemies, writing that "for the first time in my memory, we, 'our side,' had captured a crucial word from the enemy. 'Libertarians' had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over".
source: Wikipedia
The appropriation of "woke" takes a slightly different shape, as it is used in service of conservatives' victim mentality. Yes, you read that right: conservatives have used what they perceive as leftists' victim mentality to cultivate a victim mentality all of their own, one in which they constantly whine about being "canceled", their freedom of speech and freedom of association being repressed by the "woke left". This, my friends, is beyond silly. The mere idea that the dominant social group, i.e. white men, successfully portray themselves as victims of historically and traditionally marginalized groups, or historically and traditionally repressed progressive political and social institutions is ludicrous. Mind you, there are some legitimate criticisms to be had of wokeness in so far that it's used as a cosmetic, for example by corporations or entertainment media in attempt to increase market share and profits, or by center-left liberals who use it to signal their support for marginalized groups without doing the real work necessary to actually and materially improve their lifes. Yes, I also am not a big fan of this constant virtue-signalling. But conservatives go one step further and see corporations' pandering to marginalized groups, again just to make more profits, to answer to the demands of the market, as part of some shadowy leftist conspiracy to destroy society as they know it, which is society based on Judaeo-Christian and classical liberal patriarchy. Conservatives, after all, have as their main goal the preservation of the status quo and will fight change as hard as they can.
Lead Belly - "Scottsboro Boys"
The term "stay woke" originated in Black American communities; it was a call to stay "woke" and alert to systemic injustices against African Americans, going back all the way to the ideas of Jamaican social activist Marcus Garvey whose summons "Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!" served as a call to global Black citizens to become more socially and politically conscious. The phrase "stay woke" turned up as part of a spoken afterword in the 1938 song "Scottsboro Boys," a protest song by Blues musician Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly. Later the term became associated with Black Lives Matter, specifically after the 2014 police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, of Michael Brown; when black citizens took to the streets to protest this shooting, they urged each other to "stay woke" against police actions and other threats. The term has been used in black culture and music to signify alertness, to not fall asleep, and as a call to sociopolitical awareness. Jordan Peele's masterful film Get Out opens with Childish Gambino’s popular 2016 single "Redbone" and its "stay woke" refrain. In the film a black man must literally stay awake and alert to horrible racism in the white suburbs. Peele later in interviews said that "staying woke" is what the movie is about.
But all that was before conservatives began to use "wokeness" as a catch phrase for progressive policies. In their vocabulary there is no more traditional left, there's only the "woke left" who use their "militant wokeness" to suppress cis-gendered white men and their freedom of speech. This has gone so far that it's legitimate to assert that not the left, but the right is waging the "culture war". In their eyes it's a defensive war against the onslaught of Cultural Marxism, or Neo-Marxism, or post-modern nihilism, or whatever conjured up threat they want to use to divert attention from their inability to come up with actual policies or proposals to move society forward. Attacking "cancel culture" and "wokeness" has become the GOP's new political "strategy"... Now, enjoy the videos included in this post; the Childish Gambino single is one of my personal favorite songs and at the end of the "Scottsboro Boys" video you can hear Lead Belly's address to black people going on the bus to "stay woke". Oh, and read the Vox article A history of "wokeness" which I used as an important source for this post, along with Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Childish Gambino - Redbone (Official Audio)
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