My Political Journey Part 7: The West's Woke Cultural Revolution
Political Correctness as Woke 1.0, Gramsci, The Long March Through the Institutions, The Failure of Classic Liberalism, What Is To Be Done?
Previous Entry: Pax Americana
I clearly remember when I first heard the term ‘systemic racism’. I was an undergrad in university in the 1990s, and a scandal erupted in the Political Science department where some Jewish grad student with a Russian origin name charged the faculty with this ‘crime’. I had no idea what it meant and didn’t wish to pursue it any further at the time. To me, it seemed like some sort of jockeying for position in the department pecking order. It would be some time before ‘systemic racism’ would re-appear on my radar.
There was a class that I wanted to take in first year to stream me into a coveted school later on. I learned early on that the professor was an open homosexual with an interest in males around my age, decades younger than himself. Within the first two weeks I quickly learned that the assumptions of most in this class were almost 180 degrees away from mine, and that the values that I was taught and held were seen as regressive….sinister to some. I took myself out of that class because I was ngmi (‘not going to make it’, per internet parlance). The institutional power was directed against me, so I moved elsewhere.
“I’m not interested in going to that set, it’ ll be full of gay guys”, I explained to my friend and his girlfriend. Some DJ was in town, and his scene was a very gay one. A guy that I met through my friend who I was with began to yell at me “my brother is gay and you better apologize!” I didn’t and instead chose to leave. This was in second year of university.
Political Correctness as Woke 1.0
What is now known as ‘woke’ was once referred to as “Political Correctness”. The thrust of PCism was to avoid offending minority (or female) sensibilities during the 1980s and 1990s. You weren’t supposed to call Blacks the en-werd, and you weren’t supposed to call women ‘bitches’, unless you were a hip hop MC. The notion of respecting others who are not like you was how this trend was framed in the public eye. Newer minorities that have been created out of thin air and legalized and represented today were not yet present. Regardless, one could still make off-colour jokes as a comedian, for example, and not lose one’s own career.
One of the very first manifestations of Political Correctness that I recall seizing the media spotlight was when comedian Andrew “Dice” Clay was invited to host Saturday Night Live on May 12, 1990. SNL Comedienne Nora Dunn, on her way out of the lineup, decided to boycott the show to protest Diceman’s presence. She ran to the media without consulting her SNL collegues, and was championed by NOW (National Organization for Women).
Dice, a Jewish standup comedian, took on the comedic persona of an overexaggerated Brooklyn Wop: leather jacket, crude language, over-the-top gutter mannerisms, objectification of women, and so on. He was making fun of a stereotype by overemphasizing its characteristics much like how rival standup comedian, Denis Leary, did much the same in “No Cure for Cancer”, but simply exaggerating his own Boston Irishness.
Lorne Michaels and Saturday Night Live stood firm and allowed Dice to perform. There would be no cancellation. Both sides were heard, and the side of artistic freedom aka liberalism, won out. “You don’t like it? Don’t watch it”, is what Nora Dunn’s supporters were told. Political Correctness was viewed by the majority as whiny and annoying, even if their calls for respect were understood and adopted for the most part. The trend fizzled out in the larger culture within the next few years to give way to the de-politicized libertine hedonism of the Clinton Era.
It did not entirely leave, though. While the conservatives were engaged in expelling protectionist and anti-immigrant rightists, they, together with centrists, were busy speeding up Globalism either through the misguided thought that free market liberalism that knew no national borders was a net plus for their own people, or through simple greed, both their own and of their donor class.
In the meantime, the purveyors of Political Correctness strategically retreated to their redoubts in academia, accumulating institutional power, leading and staffing the exploding NGO sector, and infiltrating various government bureaucracies. Their “long march through the institutions” was beginning to pay off, but was not yet ready to seize power.
In Toronto, the presence of this type of ‘liberal’ was more pronounced. Their communities were much more present and visible in the downtown core, and their politics were even more public. They managed to convince then-mayor Barbara Hall to stop the incredibly anodyne and inoffensive band Barenaked Ladies, from performing at City Hall simply due to their name being offensive to some women. Where the fight for ‘Black equality’ took prominence in many parts of the USA, in Toronto it was ‘gay rights’ that took centre stage due to its outsized gay and lesbian population. My Canadian readers who recall this era will most certainly agree with me that much of what has come to pass in the USA in terms of cultural change from the ‘woke’ was already present in parts of Canada, especially in Toronto.
Most people were content with the retreat of Political Correctness, thinking that the beast had been slain, or at least relegated to academia. “It won’t leave campus”, many assured us through the late 90s and into the new millennium. Little did they know.
The Long March Through the Institutions
There were public figures who were warning us of what was to come. Patrick J. Buchanan in particular sounded the alarm repeatedly, popularizing the term “Cultural Marxism”, to describe this movement. This term describes what we now know as ‘woke culture’ as being the legacy of the Frankfurt School of thinkers such as Marcuse or Adorno. This piece will not concern itself with getting into the mammoth subject of that movement, but I will now share with you an article from 23 years ago (!) that influenced me and helped me understand then what was to come and was has now taken over.