Wokal Distance, an expert in postmodernism and critical theory and a visiting fellow at the Center for Renewing America, believes that woke ideology will destroy itself because it is not grounded in truth, but rather seeks power.
Distance said a sign that people are starting to see the flaws in woke ideology is that mainstream comedians are making jokes about their ideas.
“Humor exposes it, making fun of it exposes it. … The reason why the left made fun of Bush so much is because the best way to take the social power out of something is to mock it,” he said, referring to former President George W. Bush.
“The social justice, branding, and packaging of ‘We just want to be tolerant and kind and caring,’ that held for a long time,” Distance said. “But now that people are getting to have a look at what’s inside the social justice box and what they actually believe, people are beginning to see it for what it is.”
Distance said that inside the “social justice box,” there is a cynical attempt to guilt people into giving revolutionists and critical theorists power and clout, and that “they now realize that they were browbeaten and morally scolded and shamed into giving people the benefit of the doubt.”
He cited comedian Bill Maher questioning the sanity of woke ideas such as defunding the police, gender surgery for 13-year-olds, and the idea that men can become pregnant.
Distance was referring to the fact that Maher has repeatedly called out the elite left for their restrictions and regulations, saying they are providing a lot of material for his jokes.
“People sometimes say to me, ‘You didn’t use to make fun of the left as much.’ Yeah, because they didn’t give me so much to work with,” Maher said during a January 2022 episode of his show HBO talk show, Real Time with Bill Maher.
“Members of Congress tweeting things like ‘cancel rent,’ ‘cancel mortgage,’ and ‘no more policing or incarceration,’ declaring that ‘capitalism is slavery,’ canceling Lincoln and Dr. Seuss, teaching children they’re oppressors and math is racist, making Mr. Potato head gender-neutral, and now an emoji for pregnant men,” Maher said. “Real—I’m not making it up.”
Maher isn’t the only comedian calling attention to the radical left’s new ideas.
Joe Rogan, a comedian and podcaster who has been attacked by the left for hosting guests who disagree with mainstream narratives, has said that woke culture will eventually completely cancel white men.
“That’s the problem. It keeps going. It keeps going further and further and further down the line. And if you get to the point where you capitulate, where you agree to all these demands, it will eventually get to, ‘straight white men are not allowed to talk,’” Rogan said in a May 2021 episode of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.
Distance said Republicans are now more in line with average people. Even though the left calls conservatives “crazy” and “transphobic,” people are starting to see through the irrationality of the left’s ideology, he said, from children being allowed to change their gender to defunding police in urban areas.
“That’s not a crazy position. That’s the position that everyone in America agreed on until three minutes ago, and a very small group of radical lefties have brought an entirely different conception of the world and are trying to make that the center, and they’re trying to act as though all of this new stuff that they invented last week is normal, correct, true, good, right, proper,” Distance said. “It’s absurd, and they can’t see the absurdities.”
The left’s concept of intersectionality is at the heart of woke ideology. Intersectionality links two ideas together: The first, that society is made up of many systems such as the education system and economic system, and the second, that each person has multiple identities, such as man, gay, white, black, woman, and mother, added Distance.
“All of these systems oppress people, according to these various identities. And so, intersectionality is the idea that we’re going to study the way these various identities intersect with power,” Distance said. “It’s the theory that says, ‘Look, your role in society, your position in the social hierarchy … is in part determined by, limited by, controlled by these various identities.’”
According to the left, there is a hierarchy of oppression and privilege with heterosexual white males having the greatest privilege and a transgender black female being a person who faces some of the greatest levels of oppression in society.
“All of it has been built for the interests of, and to the benefit of, straight white males,” Distance said about how the ideology sees American society.
“It’s something that [white men] invented for ourselves, and that it needs to be challenged because that system was invented by white males, and therefore the interests and the benefit of white males have been centered in that system, and therefore needs to be deconstructed,” said Distance, explaining the intersectionality argument. “Because there is no absolute, objective, universal, eternal truths that can be stated. Because there is no God’s eye view … to get these absolute truths. You’re a finite, limited, biased, self-interested person who’s been warped by power.”
Distance said when white men speak, Marxists and those on the left are not asking whether or not what the white men are saying is true. What they’re doing is focusing on who gets power, whose interests are served, and who benefits, rather than whether or not the statements are true, said Distance.
“The truth of those questions is thrown away because [they] don’t care about the truth. It’s expressions of power to control people, and that’s how they view everything. So, you always end up with this endless back and forth, where people are arguing about ‘Well, who benefits?’” said Distance.
Distance said it’s useful to turn this process around and ask critical theorists and Marxists to explain their definition of justice, who benefits from their work, and their motivations for pursing Marxist ends.
“This dissolves everything it touches because it gets rid of truth and replaces it with an analysis of interests,” he said.
Distance cited the many communist dictators who proclaimed to be on the side of justice, including Joseph Stalin in the former Soviet Union, Pol Pot in the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, and Mao Zedong in the Cultural Revolution in China. Once they established their power, these dictators killed millions of working people.
Distance said anyone who challenges critical theorists or the left will be branded as having privilege, wanting power, or suffering from “white fragility.”
“There’s nothing I can say because no matter what I say, it does not get viewed for its content. It does not get viewed for its truth. It doesn’t get viewed for its argument. … The only question that they’re asking is, does that agree with us,” Distance said.
He believes the left’s woke culture will disintegrate because its proponents are already having to use force and coercion to make people listen to them.
“Truth doesn’t care, reality doesn’t care about your ideology. Truth is unconcerned by whatever you think someone else’s interests are. It persists,” said Distance.
Radical leftists have “sacrificed the truth in order to get power so they can enact their vision of justice,” Distance said.
He said woke ideology is disconnected from reality and truth, and it will meet with the same fate as the oppressive communist regimes of the past.
“When the Soviet Union came down, it didn’t crumble because of bombs and guns,” he said. “It collapsed under the weight of the lies that were propping it up.”
