Chris Hedges's Criticism of Woke Ideology Is Half Right and Half VERY WRONG.

If we don't understand the main reason woke ideology is wrong, then the haves will remain in power over the have-nots; so let's get it right!

Chris Hedges’s recent post, titled, “How Wokeness Kills Class Politics and Empowers Empire (w/ Christian Parenti) | The Chris Hedges Report,” is half right and half VERY WRONG.

Hedges and the person he interviews, Christian Parenti, are right in saying that ‘woke’ ideology “is actually a weapon used to further suppress marginalized people, prevent the awareness of class politics and class struggle and further divide the working class.”

But Hedges¹ and Parenti are wrong in saying:

““What a lot of the story comes down to,” Parenti tells Hedges, “[is] detaching class struggle from cultural struggles. And what woke is, is the continuation of all of the goals of the Enlightenment left, but in the realm of culture war, in the realm of cultural struggles, and that material conflict is increasingly elided and erased.”

Here’s why.

Woke ideology is NOT a “continuation of all of the goals of the Enlightenment left” and its wrongness, the fact that it “prevent[s] the awareness of class politics and class struggle” does NOT consist merely in the fact that in woke ideology “material conflict is increasingly elided and erased.”

Woke ideology doesn’t just “elide and erase” material conflict and class struggle, it repudiates these very ideas and substitutes for them the opposite ideas. Let’s examine this closely now.

The key idea, and TRUTH, of class struggle is that “Among working class people, AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL.”

The key idea in woke ideology is, on the contrary, that among working class people (and others as well), an injury to some (a minority in terms of any characteristic) is a benefit (a privilege) to others (the majority in terms of that characteristic), an undeserved benefit (privilege), in fact a benefit (privilege) the enjoyment of which constitutes unjust oppression by the majority of the minority.

In woke ideology, racial discrimination against non-whites benefits (privileges) whites and therefore whites are the oppressors of non-whites. This is the woke Critical Race Theory, about which I have written here.

Read why this woke assertion, that racial discrimination benefits ordinary whites, is flat out false here. Read here how MLK, Jr. refuted this false idea in his famous Selma, Alabama 1965 speech about how the racist Jim Crow laws harmed, not benefited, the poor whites; in this same linked article read how Frederick Douglass refuted the false idea that slavery benefited ordinary white people. Read more about this here.

Likewise, in woke ideology discrimination against any other kind of minority as well, be it based on biological sex (male chauvinism, a.k.a. sexism), sexual orientation (homophobia), sexual dysphoria (transphobia), etc., benefits (privileges) those not in the minority; therefore the majority are the oppressors of the minority. Furthermore, in woke ideology the majority is oppressive just by being the majority even in the absence of any particular discriminatory actions. Thus the mere fact that most people are heterosexual means, according to woke ideology, that heterosexuals benefit from an oppressive “heteronormative” culture and are hence oppressors of non-heterosexuals.

This is why one will NEVER see the fundamental idea of class struggle—“Among working class people, AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL”—ever even hinted at by advocates of woke ideology. Never! This idea, central to class solidarity and class struggle, is on the contrary declared by woke ideology to be false in the context of every conceivable example of minority/majority status in society. In aggressively declaring to be false what is in fact the true and fundamental idea of class struggle, woke ideology is much worse than if it simply “elided and erased” that vitally important idea.

The knowledge that “Among working class people, AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL” is the basis for solidarity of the have-nots against the haves. Here is how this fact relates to the ruling class’s strategy of social control.

The #1 strategy of the ruling class for staying in power over have-nots is to prevent the have-nots from personally knowing that in wanting an egalitarian revolution they are not alone but are joined by the vast majority of other have-nots (a fact that I prove here.) The ruling class knows that as long as the have-nots don’t know this, they will remain hopeless about the possibility of making an egalitarian revolution and thus will not even try. One of the chief ways that the ruling class prevents the have-nots from learning they are not alone in having an egalitarian revolutionary aspiration is to make them believe that most of the have-nots are oppressors, i.e., that they are part of the majority who oppress the minority and that they want to maintain oppression in order to maintain their undeserved privilege. This is exactly what woke ideology says. It tells the have-nots that if you are against oppression then you are a tiny minority. This is why the ruling class promotes woke ideology: to make the have-nots feel hopeless about the possibility of abolishing today’s oppressive class inequality and therefore not even try to abolish it.

Read here how YOU can help build the egalitarian revolutionary movement to champion the truth, that “Among working class people, AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL,” and remove the rich from power with solidarity of ALL the have-nots.

1. I have written earlier, here, about how Chris Hedges does not grasp the key fact, that “Among working class people, an injury to one is an injury to all,” in the context of Israelis and Palestinians. My present article shows he doesn’t grasp it in the context of woke ideology either.