It’s time to admit it: Postmodern progressivism is no longer simply a political ideology. It has become a secular religion dedicated to rolling back progress and eliminating discordant debate in America.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “religion” as “commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance” and “religious” as “relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity.” Postmodern progressivism — or “wokeism” — unquestionably fits both criteria, the “ultimate reality” being the worship of an anti-individualistic socialist state that seeks to level all groups through coercive redistribution.
Interestingly enough, wokeism appropriates many aspects of Christianity. It has an Edenic prehistory — a time before colonialism, capitalism, and corruption of the state by international corporations. Somehow, in the wokeist theology, humanity was corrupted by capitalism and must return to “locally owned and operated” collectivist subsistence farms. Or at least, that’s the implication given the wokes’ disdain for the very system that spared humanity from scratching out a feeble, miserable existence on wasteful, bleak farms.
It has an apocalyptic vision of the future. Actually, many apocalypses, but their favorite is climate change. Like the Catholic Church throughout the centuries, the wokeists regularly proclaim that the end times are near. Every time, it is prophesied with absolute certainty, and the previous assertions dismissed as misguided. “But this time, we know for sure!”
How do you solve the climate crisis? Invest in nuclear energy and prepare the infrastructure to protect against rising seas? No! Stop eating meat, traveling by plane, using straws, and playing video games.
You see, solutions in wokeist theology must hurt. There is penance to be paid for having wronged “Mother Earth.” This penance policy also applies to wealth and race. We shouldn’t innovate a change — instead, we must abandon our sinful ways and regress to a more primitive and holy time.
Humanity must fundamentally change not just its behavior but how it views its place in nature. Therefore, like a theistic religion, wokeism dictates not just rules for you to follow, but a mindset to hold as you follow them.
Then, there’s the doctrine of original sin. According to wokeism, everyone is born into sin. This sin is called “privilege,” and it is not just the sin of the straight white cisgender male. No, go down the list, and you will find some way that every group is superior to another group because of some unseen injustice.
And if a group isn’t obviously afflicted by or afflicting another group, it becomes white. Don’t believe me? In February 2019, a New York Department of Education panel stated that “Asians benefit from proximity to white supremacy.” Because of this privilege, the wokeist left believes it’s okay to discriminate against Asians in college admissions. In 2018, Tamika Mallory, a founding member of the Women’s March, said this while trying to explain she wasn’t antisemitic: “White Jews, as white people, uphold white supremacy …”
Because Jews and Asians are successful in America or “aren’t victims,” according to the wokeist dogma, they must be a part of the oppressive regime. So, even if your peer group isn’t connected with actively oppressing anyone, you are still a part of the evil system. There is literally no winning the privilege game — success itself is a sin.
Wokeism also has a path to salvation. To overcome original sin, one must become “woke” to it. Indeed, borrowing from religious and spiritual ideas, you can only truly change when you realize that you are asleep to the world and your imperfections in it and therefore become awake to reality. To be clear, denial of the wokeist Catechism doesn’t represent a simple disagreement or difference of perspective; it represents a denial of reality. Debate, in this religion, is meaningless.
The wokeist vision of America is not merely left-of-center; it is a totalitarian theocracy in direct opposition to the republic, which tolerates the wokeists’ zealotry.
Dallas Emerson is a writer, public speaker, and activist with Young Americans for Liberty from Austin, Texas.
