Woke Right? - American Reformer

On an Empty Catch Phrase

In light of James Lindsay’s recent prank, some Christians and conservatives in America have been introduced to the phrase “Woke Right.” In fact, if Lindsay is to be believed, the specter haunting America today is not simply unhinged leftism, but the equally deranged (and equally powerful?) reaction known as the Woke Right.

What is the Woke Right, you might ask? To answer this, I’ll use Neil Shenvi’s explanation. First, he defines the position of wokeism as the argument that:

1) society is divided into oppressed/oppressor groups along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc, via 2) hegemonic power. But privileged people are blind, so 3) we need to defer to the lived experience of the marginalized to 4) dismantle unjust systems.

Lindsay, Shenvi, and others have recently claimed that the New Right is itself woke because it, too, adheres to this exact analytical framework.

How should one evaluate this claim? Perhaps Shenvi may be of service again. In a co-authored American Reformer article, Shenvi argued that certain aspects of “antiracist criticism” can be profitably employed by Christians:

Although [George Yancey] acknowledges that we can’t assume that all disparities are caused by injustice, he rightly argues that injustice – both past and present – can contribute to disparities. Because all of these effects are conditioned on race, Yancey correctly argues that a ‘colorblind’ model which ‘ignores race’ is inadequate to address the complexity of racial issues that exist today.

Elsewhere, Shenvi has stated that “critical theory can provide an insightful analysis of the ways in which power can corrupt relationships and institutions,” while rightly warning that “it often functions as a worldview – an overarching narrative by which we interpret all of reality.” Others have argued similarly. Carl Trueman, for example, has stated that we could employ something like Marx’s critique of religion in service of critiquing modern identity politics:

[I]t is noteworthy that Marx considered the criticism of religion foundational to making people face up to the reality of their lives. We should similarly consider the criticism of identity politics to be central to our task in this present age.

Tim Keller once wrote that

Karl Marx was the first person to speak of ‘alienated labor’ in the heyday of the early-nineteenth century European industry… The great shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge and service economy has improved the immediate working conditions of many but has locked countless others into low-paying service sector jobs that experience the same alienating disconnectedness from the fruits or products of their work.

Whether one agrees with Shenvi (or Keller or Trueman) on the benefit derived in this particular instance from the employment of critical methods, it is clear to me that Shenvi does not adopt the entire worldview of antiracist critics. He simply argues that one of their analytical tools can be profitably employed in service of Christian truth.

Now back to the Woke Right. It is just as true that the major voices of the New Right do not adhere to the worldview of the Left. This is what made Lindsay’s stunt so silly: we all hate communism too. We even hate the entire materialistic worldview that stands behind it, which is more than could be said for Lindsay. A good faith effort to understand figures on the New Right might at least attempt to see if what they are doing is nothing other than what Shenvi contends for, namely “provid[ing] an insightful analysis of the ways in which power can corrupt relationships and institutions.” Etc., etc. I don’t actually find that many figures on the New Right even focused on that kind of analysis, but I don’t see how it must be ruled out a priori.

It seems so obvious as to hardly need saying that the intellectual substance of one’s political and cultural thought is what matters, not specific “analytical tools” used to argue for that position. If one is, for example, committed to a wholesome Christian influence in state and society, laws supporting God’s design for the family, law and order, anti-neocommunism, and the like, it would be exceedingly bizarre to claim that that person is basically identical to the Woke Left simply because he employs certain intellectual tools to make his case. Or is it that such tools are acceptable, but only if remaining within the framing of leftist usage?

The problem, if there is one, with Shenvi’s (or anyone else’s) use of these analytical tools, is not that he asks questions about unjust power dynamics, etc., but the use to which those tools are being employed. I think the same could be said about every aspect of Shenvi’s definition of wokeness. It is easy to superficially claim, for example, that someone lamenting present reverse discrimination against white people is dividing the world into oppressed/oppressor groups in exactly the same way as woke critical theorists, and so on.

In fact, the label Woke Right can easily be applied to anyone on the right because it is an empty and vacuous descriptor with no objective content. It is simply based on a vague, but very negative, association with the Woke Left. And that, in the end, appears to be the main impetus behind its use: it evokes the fear and loathing that most conservatives and Christians already (rightly) have for leftist wokeness, shutting down reasoned discussion before it can even begin. There are all sorts of critiques that could be lodged against New Right political and religious beliefs, but it is far easier, and no doubt polemically and rhetorically more effective, simply to sweep away the need even to engage in such critiques with a wave of the hand: “Oh, that’s Woke Right. And you know what that means.”

But, no, I don’t know what that means. I’ve yet to see an actual definition with substantive content. James Lindsay believes we’re a bunch of Marxists, so if the theory of Woke Right can lead to a conclusion like that I won’t hold out much hope that such a definition is forthcoming.

In the end, one of the most unfortunate consequences of the dismissal of a whole range of reasonable and carefully argued ideas, even if wrong, is that the Right spends so much of its energy attacking itself, rather than uniting to deal with the real challenges facing our country. That benefits no one. It is time to put the useless phrase Woke Right out to pasture and then duke it out in the realm of intellectual combat like men.

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