FOR all the talk of wokeness and cancel culture, it didn’t just spring out of nowhere – it has a long history.
There’s no doubt politically correct woke ideology and cancel culture dominate Western societies and determine government policy, how individuals interact both privately and at work and what happens in our schools and universities.
We saw evidence of this last week when the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that the new wave of “cancel culture” was threatening the very social fabric of the country.
DESTROYING
But there’s more to it than that. Evidence also includes the global Black Lives Matter movement destroying statues and rewriting history, academics denouncing Western civilisation and removing whiteness from the curriculum, indoctrinating school students with LGBTIQ+ gender fluidity programs and de-platforming and flaming on social media any who fail to conform.
As argued by Tracey Rowland from the University of Notre Dame, to understand why “wokeness” and cancel culture are so pervasive a good place to start is the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci whose seminal work The Prison Notebooks was written during the time of his imprisonment by the Fascist government led by Benito Mussolini.
Central to Gramsci’s philosophy is the concept of cultural hegemony – defined by Rowland as “the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values and moral norms of a ruling class whose world view is accepted as the cultural norm”.
Drawing on Gramsci’s writings cultural-left radicals argue capitalism reproduces itself by ensuring concepts like meritocracy, the right to private property and to make a profit, the importance of the nuclear family and the need to minimise government intervention are accepted as worthwhile and beneficial.
For Gramsci, instead of a violent revolution, the most effective way to transform society and bring about the socialist utopia is to engage in the culture wars.
Roger Kiska in an essay published by the Acton Institute quotes Gramsci as arguing: “Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity … In the new order, socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via the infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society”.
OVERTHROWING
The Marxist academic Louis Althusser’s puts a similar case when arguing society’s institutions constitute the “ideological state apparatus” that must be captured if the revolution is to succeed.
Linked to cultural hegemony is the neo-Marxist concept of critical theory associated with Germany’s Frankfurt School established during the early 1930s. Critical theory is an emancipatory and liberating school of thought directed at overthrowing capitalist ideology that supposedly dominates the West’s schools and universities. Instead of knowledge, for example, being inherently beneficial and worthwhile those committed to critical theory argue it is a social construct employed to disadvantage the marginalised and dispossessed.
In part, as a result of the cultural revolution that swept the Western world during the late 60s and early 70s critical theory has morphed into a rainbow alliance involving postmodernism, deconstructionism and feminist, LGBTIQ+ and postcolonial theories.
While often in disagreement, what all hold in common is a commitment to radically change society by enforcing their particular brand of ideology.
BIOLOGY
As argued by James Lindsay in his essay Decolonising The Curriculum, education has especially been targeted on the basis what is taught in schools and universities reinforces the power and privilege of “mostly straight, white Western men with an Eurocentric bent on things like science, reason and rationality”.
In schools students are taught radical, neo-Marxist inspired gender and sexuality theory based on the assumption boys can be girls and girls can be boys as, instead of biology, a person’s gender and sexuality are dynamic and limitless.
Teaching literature no longer focuses on appreciating the moral and aesthetic value of the novels, plays, poems and short stories that constitute the West’s cultural heritage; instead texts are deconstructed in term of power relationships involving race, gender, class and ethnicity.
In English the focus has also shifted from clear thinking and logic to teaching critical literacy. Developed by the South American Marxist Paulo Freire, the belief is learning a language must empower students “to perceive themselves in dialectical relationship with their social reality … to assume an increasingly critical attitude toward the world and so to transform it”.
Science is not immune from the onslaught of wokeness and cancel culture. When teaching the Australian national curriculum teachers are told “Indigenous history, culture, knowledge and understanding can be incorporated into teaching core scientific concepts” on the basis teachers need to “provide a more culturally responsive curriculum”.
Central to Western science, as opposed to superstition and witchcraft, is a commitment to rationality and reason and even here woke ideology dominates. Such concepts are condemned as Eurocentric, binary, misogynist and, as noted by James Lindsay, guilty of favouring “white, Western epistemologies and pedagogies”.
Two American academics go so far as arguing science education must embrace cultural diversity and difference as Western science embodies whiteness; a situation that enforces “a hegemonic racial dominance that has become so natural it is almost invisible”.PC
Dr Kevin Donnelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University and his most recent book is ‘How Political Correctness Is Still Destroying Australia (available at kevindonnelly.com.au)
Frankly I don’t know why you bother to even mention the word “woke”.
Wherever “woke” is deemed descriptive or “necessary”, just substitute the word “bullshit”.
It works for all instances of “woke”. It is colloquial, 99% of Australia understands exactly what it means or is getting at, and is very accurate.
My father always used to say the good old days. I used to say why would you wan’t to drive a non air conditioned car or drive a tractor without a canopy and sitting on a steel seat with a hat on in the middle of summer. But guess what he was right, I did see the last of the good times being the 70s, 80s and mid 90s – now it is just government regulation by three tiers of being told what and what not to do.