Wokeism! Cancel Culture and CRT! Oh My!
If the initial social media cannon fire from the right is any indication, the 2024 Presidential election will heavily involve “anti-woke,” “CRT,” or “Cancel Culture” tropes on the Republican side. To paraphrase adult Yoda, the 2024 culture wars begun has (cue: Star Wars imperial march).
This morning, former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, once considered a serious person in politics, tweeted the above triggering comment, days after the murder of Tyre Nichols. It is difficult to imagine that the same person that would conjure up such a tweet at such an unfortunate moment in time was once the voice of reason, ahead of her party on matters like the Confederate flag. But former Ambassador Haley has instead gone the dark side path of De Santis and Trump, Jr., tossing long-triggered bombs into an already massively divided electorate.
Wokeism! Cancel Culture and CRT! Oh My!
Former Ambassador Nikki Haley is certainly cunning, if politically amoral, in her calculus. Anti-Wokeness is the key cultural-political issue on the right, just ask Joe Rogan (Or Bill Maher, for that matter). And Haley is positioning herself well in the gladiatorial fundament to be considered the running mate of the next Republican nominee, whether it is Trump or DeSantis, or whomever rides cultural issues to the top of the ticket. Haley, herself, will probably not be at the top of the ticket. The party, clearly, has not been historically fair to women at that level (nor do they apologize for it). Further, according to the latest Morning Consult poll, she is presently at around 3 percent. A new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey also had her around 3 percent, so there's some statistical agreement on the state of her nascent campaign.
Granted, it is about a year before any of the Republican primaries, so it is extremely early to be taking these polls seriously. But the former Governor has been in the single digits in all national polls for over a year. And low single digits is not exactly the best place to be, even a year out from New Hampshire, as fundraising for the Presidency begins in earnest. But she’s drinking “WOKE,” the pause that refreshes. As the Haley campaign wades into the thimble-deep waters of Woke, expect some uplift in polls, and some national attention. Could Haley hit 7%, or even 9%? Any mention of Wokeism seems to surge electrical voltage into the nervous system of Republican voters. Nikki knows what she is doing …
But — What exactly is this hellacious Woke landscape that we must all, with our dying breaths, inveigh against? Considering its positioning at the forefront of the GOP mind — Youngkin won the VA Governorship on education and Wokeness; DeSantis made it the core of his election night victory speech in 2022 — it deserves a good-faith definition. Linguistics professor John McWhorter, author of “Woke Racism,” articulates it thus:
But why I am disinclined to call this just another ideology is because of a certain fervency in how this ideology is conducted. Where, for example, body language comes into it, that is modeled on what we call a religion rather than ideology. People put their hands up into the air, people put their bodies on the ground, in the name of this particular religion.
And then more to the point, I would say there’s the issue of heresy. What do you do if you have an ideology, if someone disagrees? And if you’re “the elect,” if someone disagrees, you don’t just not like them. You feel that they should be defenestrated, they should lose their job, they should be stripped of their honors, they should be basically banished from society. I must read something that happens every day based on this sort of thing. That fervor is different from an ideology.
So you have the “knee-jerk liberal” and the archconservative in 1973 having an argument. And they’re going to be going at it; they’re going to hate each other. Okay, that’s fine. But today that liberal, the elect person, doesn’t only not like the conservative’s views; the elect person thinks the conservative is somebody who should not be around them.
Or — even worse — “Cancellation.” McWhorter’s articulation of Wokeness is a criticism of a new religion, or a liberal idolatry. The defenders of Woke, in his estimation, are priests, “elect,” with the medieval powers to excommunicate. And his worry is about those that dissent from that liberal theology will be excluded from making a living. I suspect that those that dissent the loudest against Wokeism are largely older people, set in their ways, not against sharp racial or gender-focused jokes, or comedians, set in their style, not against a sharp racial or gender-focused jokes, in dire fear of losing gigs. Here Wokeism and “Cancel Culture,” another right-wing bugbear, come into confluence. It must be noted here that what Wokeness and “Cancel Culture” have in common is an irrational fear of liberal power. The notion that “The Woke Mob” has the power to destroy a career — or the ability to draw money forever — is wildly exaggerated.
McWhorter, in the same Vox interview, cited Andrew Sullivan’s 2020 exit at New York as a textbook example of a Media Cancellation. Sullivan himself, however, seemed to accept the Vox-owned magazine’s decision. “What has happened, I think, is relatively simple: A critical mass of the staff and management at New York Magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me, and, in a time of ever tightening budgets, I’m a luxury item they don’t want to afford,” he wrote. “And that’s entirely their prerogative.” Still, the issue rankled McWhorter enough that he mentioned it in his interview — with Vox. Cancel culture, for all its poisonous, hideos Evil, apparently is not so authoritarian a movement as to be against — cough, cough — interviewing a defender of Andrew Sullivan.
Such facts, however, do not deter the demonization of Wokeism and Cancel Culture. It is — Wokeism, Cancel Culture, CRT — the wedge issues, par excellence (Chef’s kiss). Forget the fact that Bill Cosby plans to return to the stage this year. Or that Louis CK (see above) performed to a sold out Madison Square Garden Stage last night, despite being allegedly "Cancelled.” Or that the ridiculous “Harper’s Letter,” in which prominent writers and thinkers, in the thick of COVID lockdowns, overreacted, collectively clinging to a spurious document, for fear of public criticism. What was worse about the Harper’s Letter — the fact that it was signed by 153 intellectuals or the fact that, as hyper-intelligent people, they knew full well that it was more about securing their social positions than about free speech?
Stand not between the social climber and his mountain!
Finally, Trump is now incorporating “Culture Wars” rhetoric into his ‘24 stump speeches in South Carolina and New Hampshire. Initial criticism of his campaign thus far is that it was “low energy,” in both states. He is injecting more DeSantis into the rallies, however. According to SEMAFOR:
But the candidate earned his biggest applause when he leaned into more recent culture war topics, like when he promised to “eliminate federal funding for any school that pushes critical race theory or left-wing gender ideology.”
In those moments, he sounded noticeably like the man everyone expects to be his chief rival: Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor has in many ways usurped Trump’s old role as the GOP’s chief culture warrior. While the ex-president has spent the past couple of years focused on his legal woes and litigating the 2020 election, DeSantis has enacted red-meat policies that included everything from barring critical race theory and conversations about sexual orientation in schools to probing public schools in his state on gender-transition services.
Trump did target some of the culture war issues that now preoccupy much of the GOP as president. But on hot-button topics like gender and schools, DeSantis is clearly setting the pace.
Trumpism, in many ways, is too 2016 and DeSantis is setting the pace. Nikki Haley’s morning tweets showed as much. Every candidate or wanna be candidate has already incorporated brash, off-the-cuff, culturally insensitive, white supremacist, Christian nationalist rhetoric into their presentation. 2024, thus far, is next-level Trumpism, it is more about Youngkinship or, rather, DeSanctimony — tying the fear of our children being taught anti-white perversions, while, at the same time, distorting crime statistics. Basically, a fear-driven campaign. If Trumpism of 2016 was about being off-script, unapologetic and “authentic,” 2024 will probably be about preserving white Christian nationalist identity, without coming out and saying something so exclusionary and downright stupid. Because, among other things, Jesus Christ is not a nationalist.
“Live Nation was put on the spot Tuesday in the very first hearing of the new Congress. Many such moments are easy for corporations to dodge, with a few old uninterested men reading boring questions that are easily dodged by slick lawyers. This time, the opposite occurred. For four hours, Live Nation’s President Joe Berchtold had to absorb the anger of both Republicans and Democrats, virtually every one of whom accused the corporation of having and abusing its monopoly. The Senators were so good that some moments became TikTok memes.” (Matt Stoler)
In Uganda, the president’s son is getting ready to run (SEMAFOR)
CNNs Chris Licht deleted his Twitter account. (LAT)
Enter: “Paramount+ With Showtime.” (Variety)
What Became of the Oscar Streaker? (TNY)