...Wokeism is the only of these terms, unlike "identity politics" or unlike "political correctness" or unlike "virtue signaling", it has very strong religious connotations, right? It connotes "awakening" and this shows what I think is really at the heart of wokeism. That it's basically a sort of civil religious movement. It's a kind of a secular awakening, somehow in the tradition of earlier great awakenings in American culture. And thereby actually the term wokeism, against the intentions of the people on the right you use it, implies a critique of religion, and again, that's why I do like the term.
Now my central argument is that today's wokeism is the civil religion of the West, and it combines two elements. Traditional US American civil religion and German guilt pride. I'm gonna discuss American civil religion first and then German guilt pride second.
There's an excellent essay on what American civil religion is. It's written by Robert Bellah in 1967 and is called "Civil Religion in America". Bellah takes the term civil religion from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and like Rousseau, conceives of it as a shared spiritual, political, moral vision, and ideology that has kind of a national foundational impact. He rightly says that American civil religion is grounded in Christianity, but then also in the largely secular ideas that we find in such crucial foundational texts as the Declaration of Independence of the United States. Bella, at the beginning of the article, quotes someone else, SM Lipset to make an important point so I quote this quote, here it says, "at least since the early 19th century, a civil religion has been predominantly activist, moralistic, and social rather than contemplative, theological, or innerly spiritual."
So, a civil religion basically represents a shift from strictly theological, let's say transcendent values, to activist moralistic and social movement. Now, what does American civil religion consist in? Well, it has strong elements of individualism, a focus on liberty and private property as well. A sense of equality, pursuit of happiness, individual happiness, and also collective happiness progress, prosperity, a sort of pragmatic optimism. Obama's famous slogan, "Yes we can!" also embodies it. And it combines it with a sense of national destiny, some sort of missionary zeal that is supposed to guide the whole world, or the idea of the United States is some form of beacon of liberty, whose role it is to liberate everyone basically.
Bellah pointed out that this American civil religion comes in different forms, and he saw one as positive and one as a negative. So it can, and it did, equally inform something like the US civil rights movements of the 1960s and seventies, as well as it did inform the Vietnam war, which also supposed, you know, to liberate the Vietnamese people. So, there are clearly different denominations of American civil religion, one that is more Republic, one that is more Democratic, one that's more progressive, one that's more conservative, one that's more left, one that's more right, and Bellah was strongly sympathizing with the more progressive, more leftist denomination, and was actually strongly arguing against the Vietnam war. And he tried to use civil religion to argue against the Vietnam war.
And equally today we can say generally, that the American civil religion as a whole equally informs the Black Lives Matter movement and the War on Terror. However, there are two different denominations within this civil religion, and the one is more strongly behind Black Lives Matter, and the other one, the more conservative one, is more behind the War on Terror. I think it's pretty obvious that this activist, individualistic, post-leftist American civil religion, as represented by the civil rights movement and by feminism, is what gave rise to identity politics in the usa in the 1970s, which in turn then later on gave rise to Wokeism. So, American civil religion, and particularly its' progressive post-leftist denomination, are one decisive element that later on constituted Wokeism.
U.S. American Civil Religion + German Guilt-Pride = Wokeism
Now, let's move to the second element, a German guilt-pride. Of course the situation in Germany was very different from the situation in the United States after the Second World War, right? Germany lost the war, it was exposed for having committed genocide, and the country ended up divided. And the two different Germanies after the war reacted very differently to their fascist past. Communist Germany defined itself as anti-fascist, the government said, "we had nothing to do with the fascists, we were victims, our leaders were themselves persecuted by the Nazis, and we actually liberated Germany from fascism. So we are by no means continuing the fascist regime, we are anti-fascists."
Now in West Germany, this was different. Western Germany somehow acknowledged that it was a successor state of Nazi Germany, but it also, of course, acknowledged that Nazi Germany was basically just an enormous crime. And so Western Germany adopted the following strategy. The aim was to basically admit a guilt, but, at the same time, trying to pay off the debt. And so there was the idea that Germany can somehow work towards "sluschtis", a final line when all the debt has been paid off.
Now, after 1989 after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, after German reunification and the end of the cold war, Germany got reunited, and then, obviously, those two strategies didn't really work anymore. And then a new strategy was developed. And this strategy, I think, is perfectly represented by what now became basically the symbol of the New Germany in the center of Berlin, the new capital of the reunified Germany, namely, the Holocaust Memorial. And the Holocaust Memorial represents this new idea, that "Yes we accept our guilt, but it is a guilt that can never be paid off, it will never go away. It's a guilt that we inherited from the previous generation, and that we also internalize. So we define ourselves by admitting this immense guilt and we take on basically everlasting responsibility for it."
And this is what the Holocaust Memorial at the center of Berlin symbolizes. Yet at the same time, comes a miraculous transformation, namely, by admitting the most serious guilt that, to such an extent no one has ever yet admitted, by accepting that one is guilty of such an enormous crime that no one ever accepted guilt for, Germany somehow becomes, in a paradoxical way, morally superior. Again, because our guilt is greater than everyone else, and our admission of guilt is greater than everyone else's, we become also somehow, more morally elevated than anyone else, and we can be proud of being capable of accepting such an enormous guilt. So a guilt-pride is this paradoxical redemption, and moral self-elevation through guilt admission.
Now, let's address the question what wokeism really is. It is neither cultural Marxism, nor is it a Post-modernist Leftism. At heart, it represents the incorporation of a German-style guilt-pride into the identity politics that took place after 1989, after the breakdown of communism, after the fall of the Soviet Union, after the end of the cold war. And thereby, by the way ironically, despite being against such things as white supremacy, it is actually deeply white, right? It's rooted in Christianity, it's rooted in Western individualism, it's rooted very much in the western historical experience regarding slavery, colonialism, the holocaust, and so forth. And that's why, by the way, the Chinese call it Baizuo, white-left. So from the Chinese perspective, it is clearly seen and identified as a Western, and thereby white phenomenon. And it consists, basically, in some form of taking the moral high ground through intense guilt admission with respect to such things as the holocaust, or in the American case, slavery.
There is, at the same time, a very strong focus on identity, right? Today, identity is very much curated through the creation of profiles, and I talk about length at this in the "You and your profile" book, which just recently came out. So it serves the function of creating an identity, both for individuals as well as for organizations, CIA for instance, an organization. So it is an identity politics that creates identity in the form of profiles. Now, what are profiles? Profiles are publicly projected images that once you get positive feedback on them, you can identify with and you can internalize. And we did some other videos on this as well, with regard to the philosophy channel, "Philosophy Tube."
So, this brings us now to an updated and more complex definition of what wokeism is. Wokism is a civil religion combining American individualistic liberalism with guilt-pride. It is based on, and comes from identity politics, and focuses on the creation of identity profiles. It is now penetrating all sectors of society in the West, politics, media, advertising, sports, arts, education, military, and so forth.
Now, what is religious about wokeism? First, a strong emphasis on guilt and redemption. Similar to Christianity, there's an emphasis on on confessing guilt and the hope of redemption through this confession. Secondly, very strong dogmatism. Of certain taboos of public speech and thought. Humor, for instance, becomes more and more suspicious. And there are punitive tendencies, as I pointed out with respect to the Derek Chauvin trial. So basically, all these phenomena that we can nowadays call, or associate with, so-called "cancel culture". Thirdly, there is a divisive moralism to it, right? Jesus Christ famously says in the bible, "Who's not for me is against me". They're somewhat similar to wokeism, right? There is not much room for neutral ground, there is no fence sitting, right? You're either for it or against it. And that creates a very binary good-bad distinction with not much middle ground between us and them.
So it's basically manifesting itself, in this increasingly hostile schism between traditional American civil religion (Trumpism) without guilt-pride and wokism with guilt-pride. We see a very strong symbolic struggle about this as well, like there was this conflict about statues and monuments in the U.S where the woke people wanted to take down the monuments, and Trump was saying this cannot be done. So the wokists wanted to admit and ascribe guilt, whereas Trumpism wanted to basically not allow any form of guilt into American civil religion.
Then, fourthly, there is a strong ritualistic conformity pressure, and that's what the notion of virtue signaling points to. But that's also what we see when I gave this example at the beginning of the video when it comes to diversity statements. When you apply for a job in academia, right? You have to demonstrate that you are willing to conform. So there is some form of systemic hypocrisy here, right? We have all the woke celebrities famously, and also the CIA video, which are basically regarded, easily regarded as forced statements. And therefore, their credibility is questioned because they seem just to be a sort of, as I said, ritualistic conformity.
Fifth, there is woke-washing of Capitalism and Imperialism. Again, very much represented through the CIA ad. And that's the very same function that Christianity had in the 19th century, for instance, and earlier during imperialism, right? The ships that brought soldiers and took the wealth of the colonies, also brought bibles with them, right? And similarly today, CIA doesn't embrace Christianity anymore, but it embraces wokeism. So it serves a moralistic profile creation of Capitalist and still imperialist institutions.
And number five, there's a strong personal internalization that becomes possible through wokeism, just like in religions. It enables a certain fundamentalism, it enables zealotry. So for instance, one friend once told me, and this was a remarkable statement, he said that one of his family members had become a reborn Christian, and this somehow destroyed the family, because the person developed such a strong zealotry. And, in a similar way, I think, we see this phenomenon, that wokeism also, of course not in everyone but in some, breeds fundamentalism, breeds zealotry, and leads to what we could probably call a personal over-internalization.
And then, sixth, of course it helps the creation of a public identity, some form of civil religious affiliation becomes possible. And that's, on the one hand, similar to traditional religions, where you could also define your identity through publicly adopting a faith, or publicly professing a faith. However, this now happens of course, in a very different environment. And as I like to say, it happens on the basis of profilicity, profile based identity. So instead of, whatever, having monks and nuns who, you know, create an identity by going to a monastery and reading text from the bible, now you demonstrate your affiliation with wokeness, for instance, by being a youtuber and by producing social media communication.
Now, still we may ask, isn't wokism about all the right things? Isn't it all great? I mean, people like Bellah and Rousseau also thought that civil religion is basically a very good thing if it's done right. So we could say, "Yeah wokeism is perfect, it creates public enthusiasm for justice, equality, human rights." But well I mean Christianity also could be considered as having been all great, after all you know, it created enthusiasm for love and peace. However with Christianity in hindsight, we also know that it created a lot of problems. Wars, even genocide, fundamentalism, and so forth. I think it's important to see that, just as Christianity did not invent love and peace,
Wokeism also did not invent justice and equality. I think it can be said that Christianity somehow appropriated, and to a certain extent even monopolized, love and peace, and thereby imposed a sort of dogmatic belief system onto it which led not only, but also, to war and fanaticism. And these problems with Christianity have been pointed out by many people, just to mention few, Nietzsche, in the 19th century, and very recently Sam Harris. And to point out these problems, of course, of Christianity, for instance, is not to argue against love and peace, but against what could be called the corruption of love and peace through some form of religious appropriation. And similarly, I guess, to point out problems with wokeism as a civil religion, is of course not to argue against justice and equality, but against their civil religious appropriation and even monopolization.
So to conclude, I think maybe in these times of a new awakening in form of wokeism, we might again be in need of a second Enlightenment, as I pointed out in an earlier video, right? And we might remember Kant's Critique of Philosophy as the "maidservant of theology" and ask of philosophy that it doesn't become the maidservant of wokeism. Its' job is not to abolish wokeism, but to critically shed light on it. To question it, so that it does not turn into a fundamentalist frenzy.
