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When did "woke" become part of everyday vocabulary? What does "woke" mean, and why is it everywhere now? The date the term woke originated is disputable, but the most cited years are between the mid-1940s and 1960s. At that time, "woke" was synonymous with black progressives and the civil rights movement. Its meaning symbolized becoming and staying aware of social injustices and racism in America. More pointedly, to be woke was to acknowledge and reject the subjugation of Black Americans, embracing Black Americans as fully human and worthy of dignity, respect, and the same rights as their fellow Americans.
Today "woke" no longer means what it once did and now is used as a slur that serves as a trash bin for all things progressive or collectivist. Everything that challenges the status quo or doesn't serve a reactionary purpose is now labeled "woke." Conservatives, libertarians, moderates, centrists, and neoliberal Democrats use this term as a trash bin that contains and represents everything they may dislike. Hell, even capitalism is now "woke!" Yes, even capitalism is marked "woke" because corporations respond to the demands of their customers. Wasn't the consumer supposed to be almighty and sovereign from higher powers?
Since both of America's political parties adopted neoliberalism in the 1980s, the belief that government intervention is the root cause of most American social and economic issues has grown in popularity. According to neoliberalism, the cure for these issues is a smaller government allowing unfettered capitalism and unregulated markets to reward those who work the hardest and are the most innovative. In other words, merit and healthy competition would naturally distribute wealth most equitably. This system would be open to all regardless of race, skin color, sex, religion, creed, or anything else, and the success of those who rose to the top would trickle down to everyone else. What happened?
Decades of lobbying efforts by those with means have decreased the enforcement of antitrust laws by underfunding government entities that regulate commerce and taxation, changing rules in their favor, and reducing workers' rights. The result is wealth concentrated in increasingly fewer corporations and individuals while individual citizens are left powerless and without true representation from their government. Clearly, the individual sovereignty promised by neoliberalism was not for the ordinary individual. Instead, neoliberalism has freed wealthy individuals and corporations from their responsibilities to the state and its citizens. Offshoring of labor and taxes are prime examples of their enabled dereliction.
Thanks to neoliberalism and globalization, corporations and the rich have enjoyed a level of influence on government and the market not seen in America since the Gilded Age. Ironic that after decades of neoliberalism and government capture by corporate and special interests, consumers have made capitalism woke when ordinary people still find ways of expressing themselves. Apparently, the almighty sovereign consumer is not allowed to embrace socially progressive views nor be at odds with the interests of corporations or wealthy individuals by adopting progressive economic ideas. Monopolies could rid corporations and the rich of this nuisance.
Defenders of this status quo quickly point out that neoliberalism has increased opportunities for many across the globe. They maintain that merit does spread wealth the most equitably so long as a person is willing or able to work. Oddly, as more people worldwide move out of poverty thanks to neoliberal policies, social mobility in certain Western countries has slowed due to stagnating wages, particularly amongst the working class. Simultaneously, corporations and wealthy individuals have flourished, giving rise to increasing resentment amongst the established middle class. Unfortunately, these frustrations often are misdirected toward those seen as undeserving of their success.
These underserving people are generally an ambiguous group of "others" who are not true Americans. They range from the undocumented farmhand to the Ivy League trained academic. With such a broad range, narrowing down what makes these people undeserving, much less Un-American, is difficult. A person can be hard-working, educated, and born in America but still be classified as Un-American by some if they adopt the wrong political or economic beliefs. The more a person challenges the current neoliberal status quo, especially if they embrace collective or government solutions to national or international issues, the more likely accusations of being Un-American will follow.
Despite having moved past the House Un-American Activities Committee era and McCarthy's Red Scare, the fear of collectivism remains prominent in the American psyche. It is easy to think that rugged individualism has always been the American way. Yet, the current strain of neoliberal individualism was primarily manufactured in Austria before being imported to America during World War II. Landing in New Deal and Big Government territory Neoliberalism initially found little traction amongst a population of individuals who, through collective means, recovered from the Great Depression and moved on to turn America into a Global Superpower after the war.
The conclusion of World War II also gave rise to another superpower, The Soviet Union, a Communist state at ideological odds and hostile to America, western capitalism, and democracy. This new ideological dichotomy provided fertile ground for the tenants of Austrian Economics to begin influencing American thought away from collectivism and towards individualism. It wouldn't be until the 1950s, in the shadow of the Cold War, that neoliberalism would begin to take root in America amongst the conservative fringes of neoclassical economic thought. One of the most well-known institutions that helped Americanize this Austrian strain of thought was the Chicago School of Economics.
Purposefully or not, in the process of Americanizing the primacy of the individual and property rights, these economists thought very little about how the historical issue of colonialism, slavery, and racism could affect this form of economic thought. Notably, this school of thought was so fearful of collectivism that it placed property rights and personal liberty above representative forms of government. The result was the creation of a highly Eurocentric form of capitalism whose main concern was combating the dangers collectivism, particularly communism, posed to commerce, property, and individual freedom. Indeed, several of the most influential minds behind this ideology preferred fascism to communism.
Stalin's Soviet Russia, with its severe curtailment of individual rights and its command economy, was precisely what the Austrian economists feared. The fear of communism led some in the Austrian School to support Mussolini's fascist government, whom they praised for saving Europe from communism. Unfortunately for the Austrians, Adolf Hitler, another Austrian fellow, also adopted their love of fascism, leading several of them to flee to the safety of democratic America. Ironically communism, by serving as an example of the perils of collectivism on "freedom," helped popularize this new individualistic form of economics in Post-War America.
Using communism as a foil to American individualism would prove a valuable tool in the Americanization of Austrian Economics and in the perversion of American values. American individualism was born from rejecting European-style religiously sanctioned aristocratic rule and the ordinary person's desire for self-determination. The Deceleration of Independence was a mutual pledge amongst free men to create a state in which all men are created equal in the eyes of their creator. The Founding Fathers were clear that religious freedom was paramount to avoid the strife of the religious wars that plagued Europe. No longer would divine rights create inequality in the eyes of the law.
The Austrian interlopers would exploit examples where American ideals fell short to deconstruct the administrative state in the name of "individual freedom." In reality, they were looking to free capitalism from government restraints, specifically, to release corporations and wealthy individuals from their responsibility to the state and its citizens. Although this form of economic thought would find its home in the Republican party, it was not from the measured and evidence-based conservativism of Rockefeller Republicans' lineage. No, instead, with its fears of central government and its radical support of property rights, it would work to slowly turn the party of Lincoln into the party of state rights and covert aristocratic white oligarchy.
To turn Americans against their government, they would join efforts with anti-communist individuals and organizations such as the John Birch Society and the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation. In addition, by ginning up intra-party suspicion against the elitist moderate Republicans of the east coast, they successfully nominated Barry Goldwater as the 1964 Republican presidential candidate. Barry Goldwater, the radical archconservative from Arizona, would help combine the laissez-faire of the Old Right with religiously driven nuclear anti-communism and anti-collectivism. Goldwater's extremism would cause him to lose the presidential election by a landslide.
Despite this embarrassing loss, the groups who backed Goldwater's political philosophies remained undeterred, having found a new constituency to appeal to, the conservative Democrats of the South and fearful white Northerners. This new GOP would have to find a way to speak directly to this silent constituency in a way that was no longer allowed in polite company, much less in public. Support for law and order replaced support for Jim Crow laws. Support for state rights replaced support for segregation. Orwellian pragmatics became their most effective rhetorical tool to obfuscate racism and use American individualism to pit American workers against each other and their interests.
The turmoil of the civil rights era and the threat of communist expansion provided fertile ground to sow distrust in social progress as federal government overreach and as an attack on religious freedom. By falsely linking social progressivism to communism, support for government intervention in economic and social issues became less palatable to white Americans. Despite having benefited from New Deal and War Veteran programs, which specifically excluded non-white minorities owing to racist Southern Democrats and small government Republicans, the American middle class of the 1960s was tricked into abandoning their support of "costly" government programs and regulation for tax cuts and meritocracy.
The uncertainty caused by the Vietnam War, the Nixon scandals, and the stagflation of the 1970s drastically altered the relationship between Americans and their government. Instead of forming new interracial coalitions around class issues to maintain the abundance postwar Americans had enjoyed, the civil rights movement's successes led to a backlash from those benefiting from the status quo. Sadly, white ethnic Americans with Irish, Italian, Jewish, and other European roots who suffered from the laissez-faire social Darwinism and discrimination of the Gilded Age embraced the same ideology repackaged as colorblind neoliberalism in full force as they moved into the suburbs.
Given how robust America's middle class was, it would take decades for the ramifications of these policies to trickle down to the average white American and their children. America's millennial generation, particularly those born to parents without a college education, took the full brunt of the effects caused by deregulation and the gutting of federal programs that help contain the prices of housing, education, and healthcare. The consequences of this divestment in Americans, compounded with deindustrialization and globalization, 9/11 and the subsequent wars in the middle east, plus the subprime mortgage crisis and the great recession, made the American Dream elusive for this generation for both minorities and the white majority.
To be clear, this divestment has not affected all races equally. This is still America, plagued with systemic inequity. But it is worth highlighting the extent of the economic fallout and general devaluation of working Americans' lives of all skin colors. The less educated, the worse the depreciation and the more difficult it is for individuals to "pick themselves" up by the bootstraps. Without government protection from global competition, there is little free markets will do to help Americans; instead, there is the constant fear of losing jobs to offshoring or those willing to accept lower pay. Further, the removal of racist immigration laws provides companies with a perverse incentive to import educated people from other countries instead of investing in educating their American employees.
Neither of America's two main political parties is blameless in enabling neoliberalism's plundering of America and the world. Unlike the Robber Barons and their corporations of yore, primarily confined to the United States, today's multinationals and wealthy individuals only have limited allegiances to the countries they operate in. Despite relying on the rule of law and infrastructure provided by Western democracies, these new oligopolistic entities work tirelessly to avoid accountability to the state and its people. Attempts to regulate these neoliberal entities often result in massive lobbying campaigns or threats to move their business and money elsewhere.
By virtue of history, the composition of those at the highest echelons of power and wealth remains primarily white men. Although perhaps more ethnically and religiously diverse than before, it is hard to ignore the parallels between the modern oligopoly with old-school colonialism's use of religion, commerce, and divide-and-conquer tactics. The goal remains to amass grotesque amounts of power and influence by using some form of righteous justification to allow them to act with impunity, even if it comes at the expense of democracy. To make this more palatable for the average person, they cloak themselves in faux patriotism and present as saviors of traditional "Western" values to people besieged by an invasion of "foreign" change.
Yet, if people were paying attention, they would see that those that created the conditions of scarcity today are the same ones who now threaten representative democracy. Despite benefitting the most from neoliberalism and globalization, wealthy white men were able to convince working and middle-class Americans that it is minorities, foreigners, and other underserving groups who are responsible for the ramifications of their unregulated greed. Scarcity creates fear, making individuals irrationally blind to the actual drivers of their discontent, the consequences of supporting neoliberal policies that have further consolidated wealth and power in the hands of those who already had both.
Perhaps it is easier to believe in false narratives that demonize those already vulnerable by labeling them communist or woke than to face the more challenging reality of feeling powerless. A powerlessness that comes from working hard, doing your part, and following the rules but still not obtaining a semblance of financial security or a path to upward mobility. In a country that values individualistic capitalism so much that productivity and wealth equal morality and virtuousness, the inability for advancement must feel like apocalyptical impotence. The moral distress this causes is enough to turn the most faithful Christians to Platonic nihilism and Nietzschean ressentiment, exemplified by their support of Donald Trump.
Excusing his transgressive behavior in the name of religious morals and traditional values demonstrates the extent of this destructive nihilism and the transactional nature of embracing this politician. Supporting a man whose behavior devalues the moral and traditional values supposedly championed by conservatives renders these values' "symbolic" truth hollow. By untethering the politician's will to power from the restraint and accountability of the matters they wished to conserve, they provide a carte blanche for even more aberrant behavior. Worse, they frame America's tradition of democratic secularism as illegitimate and oppressive when it comes into conflict with their version of the truth.
Regardless of the hollow nature behind promoting symbolic truth, it is difficult, if not impossible, to refute using rational or factual reality. "Sincerely held beliefs" are instrumentalized to contest democratically established equality and justice in the name of religious freedom. In this way, religious beliefs are used to political ends by turning what should be dispassionately scientific and apolitical issues into controversial ones in which individual liberty is "threatened" by secular government action. The result is a cynical oppression of minorities, women, and other vulnerable groups in the name of individual freedom.
The overturning of Roe vs. Wade and the resurrection of the Comstock Act are only a few of the most contemporary examples. These two occurrences demonstrate the use of religious beliefs and state rights to deny women access to abortion and contraception while disregarding the clear medical benefit of access to both, the legal precedent, and overwhelming public support. Whatever form of jurisprudence utilized to revoke a civil right can only be described as undemocratic, legally unprecedented, unscientific, and the antithesis of individual liberty for women. It is also blatant revanchism to coerce religiously sanctioned heteropatriarchal norms upon women through government.
It is easy to forget that these religiously sanctioned heteropatriarchal norms also justified slavery, the ownership of women and children, and indentured servitude in America. In truth, the ubiquity of religiously sanctioned heteropatriarchal norms necessitated the compromises that limited the applicability of all men created equal and popular sovereignty. These issues tainted America's constitution, led to civil war, and continue to cause conflict and strife as America strives to make a more perfect union and live up to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. Distressingly, the economic issues caused by neoliberalism threaten to undo all the social progress America has made and even threaten democracy itself.
The scarcity caused by neoliberalism has made many Americans question the value of democracy, as demonstrated by the election of politicians who seek to curtail the franchise of the undeserving. They attribute the economic consequences of neoliberalism to poor fiscal decisions brought about by democratically enabled mob rule while seemingly blind to the outsized influence of the wealthy. They also blame social progress and demographic changes for their inability to progress economically, not the lack of government investment in its citizens. Having bought into the idea that wealth is equivalent to morality, they justify the level of inequality instead of acknowledging that rugged individualism has failed them.
Rugged individualism fails because it lacks moral or social responsibility, contrary to human nature. No human has ever independently made themselves, nor has humanity survived all these centuries solely on the shoulders of individuals. The belief that a single person can have all the power needed to control life is a stepping stone in accepting "natural" social hierarchies of fascism. Colorblind neoliberalism justifies these social hierarchies based on meritocracy while also erasing from visibility the historical injustices and disadvantages wrought by the religiously sanctioned heteropatriarchal norms. The result is a self-reinforcing hierarchy that has consolidated power and wealth away from the government into fewer and fewer private hands.
The accumulation of power and wealth is so significant that it is hard to deny how much those at the top influence government. Such is their monopoly on government control that it bends to their will at the expense of everyday Americans. Using the government to socialize their costs and privatize their gains robs all Americans of their upward mobility as money transfers from programs for the people to tax cuts for the rich. It is hard to answer why white working and middle-class Americans continue to support these policies despite all the damage they have done. Waking up to the reality that being of the societally prioritized race, sex, identity, and religion do not protect from class subjugation may be painful, but it is necessary.
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