Progressive Enforcement of ‘Woke’ Ideology Creating Backlash

Gradually, then suddenly, a conceptual constellation of race, gender, sexuality, U.S. history, and the person as a whole has gone from relative obscurity to being the official creed of the federal government, Fortune 500 companies, many American media corporations, and the establishments of many professions (including education and medicine). Whatever it is called — “social justice” or the “Great Awokening” or “equity” or the “successor ideology” (as the essayist Wesley Yang has termed it) — it has been transformative. The successor ideology has scored many victories by working outside the democratic process — in corporate boards, elite universities, the judiciary, credentialing organizations, and the permanent federal and state bureaucracies. A vanguardist movement has been able to mount an “awokening from within,” as views that a few years ago were held by only a small percentage of the public have now become the dominant institutional consensus.

This sweeping transformation has caused some progressive activists to celebrate, and members of the center-left to alternate between bewilderment and anxiety. The Right is torn between hostility to this ideology and, at least for some, a touch of envy at the success of its tactics. Yet a politics of the commanding heights can face a certain paradox: In a democratic society, a comprehensive elite takeover can lay the groundwork for a broader political defeat. Institutional elites risk becoming increasingly insulated from the public at large. This opens the door to a democratic reversal — backlash, rebellion, electoral reckoning, call it what you will.

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Fred Bauer

Fred Bauer is a writer from New England.

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Gradually, then suddenly, a conceptual constellation of race, gender, sexuality, U.S. history, and the person as a whole has gone from relative obscurity to being the official creed of the federal government, Fortune 500 companies, many American media corporations, and the establishments of many professions (including education and medicine). Whatever it is called — “social justice” or the “Great Awokening” or “equity” or the “successor ideology” (as the essayist Wesley Yang has termed it) — it has been transformative. The successor ideology has scored many victories by working outside the democratic process — in corporate boards, elite universities, the judiciary, credentialing organizations, and the permanent federal and state bureaucracies. A vanguardist movement has been able to mount an “awokening from within,” as views that a few years ago were held by only a small percentage of the public have now become the dominant institutional consensus.

This sweeping transformation has caused some progressive activists to celebrate, and members of the center-left to alternate between bewilderment and anxiety. The Right is torn between hostility to this ideology and, at least for some, a touch of envy at the success of its tactics. Yet a politics of the commanding heights can face a certain paradox: In a democratic society, a comprehensive elite takeover can lay the groundwork for a broader political defeat. Institutional elites risk becoming increasingly insulated from the public at large. This opens the door to a democratic reversal — backlash, rebellion, electoral reckoning, call it what you will.