Just entered the Little Robert, is wokism already losing ground? A few months ago, it was necessary, in France, to clarify the meaning of the word “woke” (“awakened” in English). Today, it has everything from a cream pie. On the right, it is slain, on the left, it is minimized by reducing it to a simple moral panic. Even M&M’s chocolate candies have been accused of promoting this ideology centered on social justice and minority groups. Media like Popular Front Or Boulevard Voltaire go so far as to use the neologism “wokist”, in order to further accentuate the pejorative turn that the word “woke” did not have at the start. Sign that fashion is turning, the snobs begin to avoid the cliché, preferring the more chic “deconstruction” or “cultural left”.
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In October, the political scientist Ruy Teixeira thus wondered, in The Economist, if the movement had not exceeded its peak. According to the electoral demography specialist, its social peak took place in 2020, with the global emotion aroused by the murder of George Floyd. Bibles of “systemic racism” and “white privilege”, white fragility by Robin DiAngelo and How to be an anti-racist by Ibrahim X. Kendi were top sellers. But very quickly, the excesses of the militants put off even the voters of the left. The ambition to “defund the police”, for example, came up against the rise in violence in American cities. In San Francisco, a city on the left, the very progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin was dismissed last year, paying for the strong feeling of insecurity felt by the population. The city school board’s decision to rename schools Abraham-Lincoln or George-Washington has been reversed. For Ruy Teixeira, the woke ideology is thus in decline politically, but holds firm in its institutional strongholds: universities, media, art, NGOs…
Oracle of the end of history, Francis Fukuyama confirms to the Express that the peak of wokism has undoubtedly already passed. “There is a real backlash against the woke ideology. In San Francisco, Portland and New York, the crime rate has increased. This has angered citizens, who have made it known in the elections. C “That’s why it’s good to be in a democracy. Every day, we make mistakes there. But the system corrects itself” describes the author of Liberalism, Headwinds (Editions Saint-Simon).
Featured Columnist of FinancialTimesJanan Ganesh estimated also that the “cultural left has reached its peak”. Ganesh refers in particular to the Roald Dahl controversy. Following the outcry caused by the announcement of a rewriting of terms deemed offensive in the work of the author of Charlie and the chocolate factory, publisher Penguin had to announce the reissue of the original versions, leaving readers to decide. The FT columnist also cites JK Rowling’s resilient sales despite accusations of ‘transphobia’, or the resignation in Scotland of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who was behind a bill making it easier to recognize change in gender, from the age of 16 and without medical advice.
luxury belief
We forget it, but cultural revolutions are often the privilege of periods of calm and prosperity. May 68 is the child of the Trente Glorieuses. Born on the campuses of major American universities, wokism also has everything of a luxury belief. However, today, the context has changed, and cultural debates seem more secondary when international, economic or climate news is threatening. “It’s hard to care that Augustus Gloop is being called ‘fat’ in an era of double-digit inflation. It’s hard to lament microaggressions when Ukraine is undergoing macroaggression,” writes aptly. Janan Ganesha.
In France, the “pschitt” of the Julien Bayou affair, whose name had been tossed about by Sandrine Rousseau on a television set, undoubtedly represents a turning point, and has shocked many people on the left. The internal cell of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) dedicated to gender-based and sexual violence recently decided to “close the file”. Two days later, we learned that the investigation into suspicions of cyberbullying targeting the LOL League was closed, which was the subject, in 2019, of a media frenzy that now seems totally disproportionate. We can notice that a François Ruffin, who tries to address a popular electorate, is much more popular than a Sandrine Rousseau, defender of the “virilist barbecue”.
If wokism may already be on a downward slope on the left, anti-wokism still has a bright future ahead of it on the right. In the United States, it has even become the main political program of candidates for the Republican primary. Favorite Ron DeSantis said in January that “Florida is where wokism is going to die.” Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a possible candidate, assured that “toxic wokism” is a more serious threat than international issues. Nikki Haley has just called it “a virus more dangerous than any pandemic”. As a reminder, the Covid-19 has killed more than a million people in the United States…
Putin, world champion of anti-Wokism
In France, Marion Maréchal, vice-president of Reconquête!, has placed herself in the same niche and announcement a clash between a “civilizational right” and a “left of deconstruction”. Eric Zemmour also has in Talker, denounced “a whole generation caught between Wokism and Islamism”. One can seriously doubt that this very elitist anti-woke crusade is, electorally, more promising than social and economic questions.
But the world champion of anti-Wokism is none other than Vladimir Putin, who seeks to seduce the conservative right. By dint of describing a decadent West, supposedly ravaged by “gender theory” or “cancel culture”, the Russian leader has completely blinded himself to the ability of the United States and Europe to oppose his invasion of Ukraine.