This article first appeared in Telos magazine on December 28, 2023.
Followers and even simple sympathizers of wokeism readily assert that it does not exist, claiming that this word was invented by their adversaries to discredit them. This is a common point with the mafiosi, who deny the existence of the mafia, "an invention of literary figures and journalists", and refuse to use this word, preferring to refer to themselves as "men of honor".[1]. However, in the United States, it is the "wokes" themselves who created and claimed this word. And one only has to identify, in the profusion of causes stamped "woke", the alliance of communitarianism and the exclusive focus on the opposition dominant/dominated to see what unites inquisitorial neo-feminism, guilt-inducing decolonialism, victimizing intersectionality, proselytizing transactivism and Islamo-leftism with anti-Semitic undertones.[2] : they all fall under this “totalitarian atmosphere”[3] what is “wokeism”.
We should therefore not be afraid to pronounce a word that is readily preempted by the American right and even the extreme right, but that it is time to take seriously as soon as we are a defender of democracy, universalism, rationality, secularism and freedom of expression – all values trampled by the woke movement.
But wokeism has other things in common with mafias (even if, unlike them, it does not rely on an organized structure, does not kill and does not resort to weapons): it asserts its power through collusion, intimidation, parallel networks, infiltration into institutions and corruption. This, however, is not the kind that anti-corruption organizations are tracking down, but the kind that we, specialists in words and ideas, should be tracking down under the pen of some of our colleagues: the corruption of language. It operates through semantic entryism, through which words with an eminently progressive connotation are diverted to causes that are much less so. This is how, as Samuel Fitoussi writes, "semantic confusion - the one Orwell denounced in 1946 - allows regressive ideas, packaged in positively connoted words, to disguise themselves as apolitical and universal struggles, to gain ground thanks to well-intentioned useful idiots. And for wokeness to become institutionalized, to the point of merging with neutrality."[4]
And so, we must now be wary of the word "diversity", because beyond its friendly, open, welcoming connotation, it actually signifies the imposition of a communitarian vision of citizenship, where individuals must be treated as members of a "community" and not as members of a nation or even of common humanity.
We must be wary of the words "inclusive" or "inclusivity": it is not a question of the humanist concern of integrating foreigners into the community, but of giving rights to communities under the guise of better welcoming their members.
We must be wary of the word “equity”: it is not about treating people according to standards of justice, but about trampling on this essential criterion of justice that is the value of merit or competence, by substituting for it the criterion of belonging to a “community” considered as “dominated” or “discriminated against”, including in fields such as science or art, where only talent should guide evaluations. “DEI”, for “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion”: this is the devastating acronym of the new university, cultural and entrepreneurial standards, which impose the eradication of the criterion of competence or talent in favor of belonging to a sex or a race, or even a sexual orientation.
We must be wary of the word "anti-racism": it is no longer about our good old fight against discrimination against Arabs, blacks or Asians, but about the imposition of a "racializing" reading grid, where individuals are reduced to their skin color, itself associated with a status, either dominant, therefore guilty because necessarily racist as white, or dominated, therefore victim as "racialized".
We must be wary of the word "decolonialism": it is no longer about encouraging or welcoming a necessary decolonization, but about reducing the current history of a nation to its colonial past, separating its citizens between, on the one hand, those who were born on its territory and must therefore be assimilated to the "colonizers" of whom they are the heirs, and, on the other hand, those whose ancestors suffered from colonization and who must therefore, as such, benefit from the status of victim, whatever their current situation (and including when their ancestors themselves were colonizers). And if you protest against this reductionism, it is because you refuse to become aware of your "white privilege", or because you are only an "Arab on duty", complicit in the "systemic racism" of "Western societies".
We must be wary of the acronym "VSS", for "sexist and sexual violence": it is no longer about the legitimate fight for equal rights for women, led for generations by activists with remarkable results, but it is about imposing an agonistic and puritanical vision of relations between the sexes, where men would necessarily be predators or even potential rapists, profiteers of an omnipresent "patriarchy", and women would necessarily be innocent victims who should always be taken at their word, in contempt of the presumption of innocence and the rights of the defense. And besides, what sense does it make to talk about "sexist violence" when it is about discrimination based on gender, and "sexual violence" when, most of the time, it is about indecent assault or harassment? Certainly, these are reprehensible and criminal acts, but calling them "violence" implicitly equates them with rape, in disregard of the real violence that raped women suffer, which is not comparable to being touched or solicited against their will. The abuse of the term "rape" to better victimize women and make men feel guilty is nothing other than an insult to raped women. And, by the way, an excellent way to make a lot of money on the backs of taxpayers for the agencies created to offer the "VSS training" imposed by the European Union.
We must also be wary, therefore, of the word "feminism": unfortunately it no longer has much in common with the egalitarian and universalist feminism of the early days, because it is nothing more than an inquisitorial, puritanical, aggressive, sexist neo-feminism (because it tends to discriminate against men as they are men), willingly racist (because it castigates "dominant white men", making skin color a reason for rejection) and even anti-Semitic. Thus the association "Nous toutes", which organized a demonstration on November 25 against violence against women, excluded a group of women who came to protest against the rapes committed on October 7 by Hamas: "Nous toutes" and "#Metoo", okay - yes, but not for Jewish women!
We must be wary of the term "LGBT rights": it is no longer about the legitimate fight against discrimination against homosexuals, but about the desire to impose a communitarian conception based on sexual orientation, which should not be part of the public or political space; and to erect desires (being a parent) into rights, then "rights of" (freedom rights) into "rights to" (claim rights), requiring the community to satisfy at all costs individual aspirations that are undoubtedly understandable and respectable but which do not constitute rights, especially if they must be exercised without any concern for their consequences on the weakest, such as children deprived of their genealogy, or surrogate mothers.
We must be wary of the word "cisgender": this neologism implicitly stigmatizes all those who identify with the sex that was "assigned to them at birth," according to the new transactivist vocabulary - as if the observation of sex was an arbitrary decision, independent of physiology. It is of course opposed to "transgender," this category newly erected as a solution to the identity problems of young people, and the object of frenzied proselytism on social networks, as well as a financial windfall for surgeons and laboratories producing hormone treatments.
At the same time, we must be wary of the word "transphobic": it is used to stigmatize all those who refuse to recognize this new category of duly communitarianized victims, or who warn of the enormous public health scandal that will not fail to break out when we have taken the measure of the irreversible mutilations inflicted on adolescents whose consent to the massacre of their sexual and reproductive faculties is presumed, under the threatening propaganda of the transactivist lobby, which has succeeded in infiltrating many institutions - Family Planning, Dilcrah, CAF... The stigma "transphobic" therefore does not signal the legitimate fight against the refusal of transidentity, but the will of a small group of activists determined to impose on the social body the deconstruction of this structuring reality that is the difference of the sexes.
For the same reasons, we must be wary of all suffixes ending in "phobe", such as "grossophobe" (stigmatization of the obese) and, above all, "Islamophobe", invented by the Muslim Brotherhood to disqualify any criticism of Islamism. We must be wary of "validism" (stigmatization of the disabled) and "speciesism" (inferiority of animals), because they aim less to help victims than to make "dominants" feel guilty. And we must now even be wary - misery! - of the word "academic freedom", misused by academic activists[5] to justify the protection of any position taken in the public space by academics, including when it has nothing to do with their mission and uses the authority of the teacher-researcher to advocate terrorism, as was seen after October 7.
We must therefore be wary of the new semantic traps sown by woke entryism: they are terribly effective. The perverts definitely know how to do it.
