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Rob McMillin's avatar

You missed McWhorter's larger point about the obvious, core similarity of religion and wokeness, and it is this: wokeness has first-principle dogma that may not be questioned without identifying the questioner as a heretic.

https://bit.ly/4413FBB

>>The secularism of this new therapeutic approach to racial progress may seem fundamentally dissimilar to the previous two phases. In fact, however, third-wave anti-racism is a profoundly religious movement in everything but terminology. The idea that whites are permanently stained by their white privilege, gaining moral absolution only by eternally attesting to it, is the third wave’s version of original sin. The idea of a someday when America will “come to terms with race” is as vaguely specified a guidepost as Judgment Day. Explorations as to whether an opinion is “problematic” are equivalent to explorations of that which may be blasphemous. The social mauling of the person with “problematic” thoughts parallels the excommunication of the heretic. What is called “virtue signaling,” then, channels the impulse that might lead a Christian to an aggressive display of her faith in Jesus. There is even a certain Church Lady air to much of the patrolling on race these days, an almost performative joy in dog-piling on the transgressor, which under a religious analysis is perfectly predictable.<<

Any analysis of wokeness that fails to recognize, let alone grapple with, this key problem has already lost the plot.

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Benjamin, J's avatar

I mean, sure: the 'woke' do not recognize themselves as part of a religion (probably because most of them are formally atheists) but I do not think it's right to say that this movement is not like a religion, or an ideology if you prefer. I would argue that Communism is like a religion; it's definitely spread like a religion with Communists trying to convince those of us, particularly Liberals, who are not believes in the proletarian revolution.

I don't think 'Wokism' (which I've tried labeling Egosumism, Latin for 'I am') is directly a religion. But it does have dogma, you listed it admirably. It also has things that are close to 'sacred texts' like "How to Be an Anti-Racist" and "White Fragility" and the works of Tema Okun.

I also don't think most 'woke' people 'just view themselves as decent people' I would suggest they actually think that they have access to morality that others must learn, or be forced to accept. This is definitely like a religion. It's part of their dogma: "there is no moral passivity in these efforts. If you are not actively anti-oppression, you are complicit in oppression. The personal is political." With this kind of dogma it's really hard, in my view, to not come off as a zealot since your dogma inherently divides the world into a binary: those who accept the world as the evil, horrific place it is (and are going to change it) and everyone else. And those of us who aren't bigoted racist homophobes are just as complicity as the actual bigots, racists and homophobes.

Just my 2 cents.

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