by Mark Schwendau
For those Americans who have been awake for a long time, wokeism originated to create awareness of problems facing black Americans some 100 years ago. Today it has been hijacked to promote Marxist ideologies as a disguise. “Woke” is tied to the idea of a specific awareness of anti-blackness in the philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey, published in 1923.
See: “When Did ‘Woke’ Lose Its Meaning & How Do We Get It Back?”
Almost a year ago, British writer and broadcaster Emma Webb addressed the New Culture Forum’s 2022 Conference in London. In that conference, she listed ways in which she believes the average person, and an entire society, can resist wokeism and fight back. Quoting Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s sage advice from his essay “Live Not By Lies,” Emma paraphrased his list for the modern age in a world of wokery and social media.
“Anti-Woke Rules for Everyday Life: How To Fight Back”
Webb-Solzhenitsyn’s modified list is as follows:
- If you get hounded by a mob, don’t issue a forced false apology and grovel if you don’t believe you said anything wrong.
- Don’t virtue signal to win social points or cover your back by saying things you don’t believe are true, usually by posting faddish things on social media, unthinkingly, just so you can feel safe and ‘in’ with a certain crowd.
- Don’t nod along and force yourself to sit through ideological preaching or accept things like ‘unconscious bias training’ if you think it’s hokum.
- Don’t let yourself feel peer pressured to go onto ideological marches or make gestures like taking a knee because you fear your peers will view you as a racist, or a sexist, or whatnot if you don’t.
- Don’t ever let your speech be compelled by social pressure.
- Don’t take on the words, phrases, and slogans of other people or piece them together and regurgitate them. Do your own thinking. Come to your own conclusions so that you know what you think.
- Don’t let your employer or colleagues force you to do anything ideologically, like putting pronouns in your email signature if you don’t want to.
Try to create a situation in which your employment is secure enough that you can feel brave by joining organizations like the Free Speech Union as a kind of insurance policy.
- Don’t betray your own conscience. Be willing to make sacrifices for the things you believe to be true.
- Keep an eye on your own mind and try to be as truthful and independently-minded as possible, knowing where your ideas are coming from.
Emma Webb today is the director of the Common Sense Society UK branch. She also hosts Newspeak, the New Culture Forum’s weekly current affairs show.
Previously Webb was deputy research director at the “Free Speech Union” and now sits on their advisory council. She was a co-founder of the campaign group “Save Our Statues.” Before that, she was the director of the “Forum on Integration, Democracy, and Extremism” (FIDE) at Civitas, where she remains an associate fellow. Before that, Emma was a research fellow at the “Centre on Radicalisation and Terrorism” at the Henry Jackson Society, specializing in Islamist social networks and institutions.
As a political and cultural commentator, Webb has written for the Telegraph, Times, Spectator, Independent, spiked, Unherd, ConHome, CapX, among others, and regularly appears on broadcast media, including talkRADIO, GB News, and the BBC over in the United Kingdom.
OPINION:
Sometimes we, as writers, begin writing a piece and then leave it to sit a bit as we think on it and exactly what it is we want to express in it. Since this presentation by Emma Webb is coming up on a year old now, you can see how long I have left this sit as well as why I finally opted to bring it to you now.
What made me finally conclude it and bring it to a conclusion is something we just saw happen related to Webb’s point #1 above.
Major league ball pitcher Blue Jays’ Anthony Bass made a very innocent post of a Christian video that encourages Christians to boycott Target and others over their recent endorsements of both LGBTQ and Satanism relative to their sale of items targeting children.
Yesterday (June 1st), Bass was roundly booed at the next game he pitched in Toronto by several fans. After that, he publically apologized for his anti-LGBTQ social media post. The implication is he had his job threatened by the front office. He caved on his Christian upbringing over his career.
This is the video he posted:
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People of Canada should stick up for Bass instead of allowing a small minority to shame him!
Copyright © 2023 by Mark S. Schwendau
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Mark S. Schwendau is a retired technology professor who has always had a sideline in news-editorial writing where his byline has been, “Bringing little known news to people who simply want to know the truth.” He is a Christian conservative who God cast to be a realist. His website is www.IDrawIWrite.Tech.
Have independent thinkers left the building?