This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. . . . [T]he deans and department chairs at the [ten] University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”
Those who control language control society. One way to control language is to use “open-textured” terms that appear reasonable, fair, and even moral on their face but that in fact have no intrinsic meaning. They are all entirely subjective terms into which the activist pours meaning that advances a specific political end. This process may lack specific meaning but, if successful, replaces other possible meanings and controls the “linguistic field” by blocking other interpretations. “Diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” (DEI) are examples of an Orwellian strategy of linguistic cleansing. This includes “White supremacy,” “privilege,” “micro-aggression,” “insensitivity,” and much more. One example is offered by the National Education Association (NEA). In endorsing Critical Race Theory in schools, the NEA recently pledged to fight against anti-CRT speech and to: “issue a study that ‘critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.’”
What is happening with language control is not accidental. It is a deliberate political strategy. Feminist scholar Mary Joe Frug explained the powerful strategy of using imagery and shifting word meanings to “appropriate” power in the feminist movement. In the Harvard Law Review she wrote: “This is not a proposal that we try to promote a benevolent and fixed meaning for sex differences. . . . [T]he argument is that continuous interpretive struggles over the meaning of sex differences can have an impact on patriarchal legal power.” The Woke/CRT movement is, as Frug admits, all about power.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali compared America’s Wokeism and Islamic Jihadism through a unique lens created by her journey of abandoning Islam, leaving Somalia and her family, becoming a member of the Netherlands parliament, and being put under a death sentence imposed by Muslim fanatics for what they saw as her heresy. She then migrated to America and is serving a prominent role in the Hoover Institute. Hirsi Ali experienced the forms of Wokeism on multiple levels and is uniquely able to describe its behavior, motives, and intentions. She writes:
The main goal of the woke is to seek unchecked and absolute power, advancing from the academy and out into other institutions of society,” Ali [said]. … One reason why it’s difficult to pin down wokeism is that the theories of [philosophical] deconstruction are constantly expanding with grievance after grievance,” Ali said. . . . “If you can pin an idea, you can expose it . . . But if its meaning keeps shifting, with the grievance of the day, it becomes elusive. It’s not social justice theory. Weirdly, though, it’s not a theory at all . . . You can’t treat it like other theories … by taking it through the process of scrutiny for certification or verification.” Ali asserted that a “key element” of wokeism is the “contamination of language,” pointing to its “lexicon” of terms like “micro-aggressions, safe spaces” and “equity.” And that existing language is “policed” by the woke “to become purified of any perceived bigotry or injustice.” In other words, they've turned education into indoctrination.
Marshall McLuhan was a brilliant thinker who is probably best known for his insight that the “medium is the message.” This stands for the idea that the systems we use to communicate and educate are “mediums” that inexorably lead to specific behaviors, structures, and systems of thought and behavior depending on the scale, focus, and power of the specific medium in question. Universities, and our entire educational “medium,” including the K-12 system that feeds its graduates into the university and societal systems, are powerful mediums. Their goal as advanced by the Woke/CRT strategy has been to transform the “message” being transmitted to students and the society, and to create obedient cadres of “soldiers” and “social justice warriors”.
Mao Tse Tung wrote in a 1937 tract that open-minded, thoughtful, and critical Liberalism of the traditional kind was a threat to his “revolution.” Mao condemned Liberalism in its true and original form because he understood it empowered people to question authority in ways that would cause them to deviate from the dictates of his leadership. To Mao, school’s function was to create people who accepted the principles and strategies of “the revolution.”
As with Mao, and Karl Marx for that matter, the underlying thesis of the Woke/CRT strategy is to “get our youth” while they are young. This is because the young are only partially formed in terms of their core worldviews and values, and are particularly susceptible to the power flowing from “wise” authority figures in the form of teachers. The intended result is the creation of cadres of true believers. This is a vital part of the Woke/CRT Movement’s quest for transformative power.
In contrast, consider the wonderful principles offered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Nelson Mandela. MLK described a primary purpose of education as “to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.” Malcolm X stated the purpose of education as follows: “Education is our passport to the future, tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” The incredibly courageous South African civil rights and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela offered another powerful insight into the vital importance of teaching critical thinking, wide-ranging knowledge, personal empowerment, and vital skills. Mandela states: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. Education is the first step for people to gain the knowledge, critical thinking, empowerment and skills they need to make this world a better place.”
In short, we are being victimized and exploited by an aggressive and intolerant “War of Attrition” of the kind Sun Tzu wrote about three thousand years ago in his strategic classic The Art of War. In such a struggle the excellent general never allows the enemy to see his true strategy until after victory has been achieved. Sun Tzu emphasized the need for misdirection, deception, and stealth in overcoming opponents. A key element was the stealthy placing of your forces at an unaware enemy’s points of vulnerability so that when you acted you were victorious while leaving the bewildered opponent wondering “how could this have happened?”
A Woke Critical Legal Studies and Critical Race Theory professional friend who taught at Harvard University admitted to me in a 1992 discussion that the Left was engaging in such a “war of attrition” rather than a frontal assault. This was required, he said, because throughout the 1970s and into the later 1980s, the numbers and power imbalance between more long-standing university faculty and administrators and the Woke academics and critical political theorists heavily favored the traditionalists. The “Woke/Crit” strategy infiltrated the educational system, populated the ranks of administrators and faculty with Left-leaning academics who shared the Woke/Crit vision, and gradually seized power. This was all accomplished while eliminating opposition through hiring policies aimed at seemingly benign and virtuous values of diversity and inclusion coupled with a significant degree of intimidation aimed at anyone who opposed the Woke/CRT agenda. And unfortunately, what worked in academia is now working all over America.
The above excerpt is adapted from the book CONFORMITY COLLEGES: The Destruction of Intellectual Creativity and Dissent in America’s Universities (Skyhorse Publishing, 2024).
