Woke and Weaponized Bureaucracy Pt. 1

How woke activists take over and weaponize institutions and bureaucracies.

This is the first piece in a series which will focus on how woke activists take over and weaponize institutions and bureaucracies.

I’d like to explain how wokeness has been able to take over many, if not all, of our societies most valuable institutions of culture, business, knowledge, government, and education.  Many of these institutions have been taken over by Social Justice ideologues (AKA: woke activists) and have had their influence, credibility, resources, and prestige redirected away from their original mission and toward the cause of spreading woke ideology. To be fair, woke activists are not the only people that try to take over institutions and hijack them for their own ends. There are all sorts of people that try to do this in various ways and it always has disasterous results. The result of an institution that has been taken over and had it’s mission and actions bent to the will of the people who took it over is called “ideological capture.”¹

One of the biggest mistakes people make in fighting wokeness is refusing to understand how woke activists think. Because they do not know how woke activists think, they can’t predict what those activists will do. So what we need to do is understand how the woke worldview informs woke tactics so that we can anticipate and counter woke attempts at institutional takeover.

To understand how woke activists think about strategize we need to know how the woke think about “discourses.” When a woke person talks about discourses, what they are talking about is all of the discussion, conversation, messaging, communication, art, and so on that occurs around any given topic. In other words, a “discourse” is all the concepts, words, terminology, symbols, language, ideas, viewpoints, norms, and rules that influence and direct the discussion and communication about a given thing. This means everything that has been said about or communicated about a certain topic is a part of the “discourse” about that topic. Discourses are the sum totally of how we talk about any given thing.

Now, on woke theory “discourses” are responsible for determining which ideas become popular, which ideas gain prominence, which ideas become credible, which people become credible, which ideas get dismissed, which concepts get used, which viewpoints become “central” to a discourse, which ideas are dismissed and sent to the fringe, and so fourth.

If you take all of that together, the picture that emerges is that the discourses are responsible for at least these two things:
1. Which ideas become influential, popular, credible, and powerful, and which ideas to do not.

2. The ways that ideas are communicated, and to who they are communicated.

So, according to wokeness discourse is responsible for which ideas are spread through a society, which ideas gain power in society, who gets to spread their ideas, and how far ideas are spread. If you can control the “discourses” of a society you can control which ideas are believed and which ones are not, which ideas gain legitimacy and which do not, which people get to spread their ideas and which don’t. Basically since according to wokeness all thoughts are communicated via discourses, if you control discourses you can control ideas, and if you can control the ideas of a society you can exercise a lot of power. As such, wokeness is obsessed with controlling all the mechanisms in society which generate ideas, or are used to communicate.  

So how does this inform woke takeovers?

What the woke do when they attempt to take over institutions is to gain control over the ideas that govern the institution. They way that the do this takes many forms, but at each point what the woke activist is going to try to determine the set of ideas according to which the institution operates.

Whereas corporations try to take over institutions by purchasing the majority of the shares of a company, or try to get their people on the board of directors of companies; woke activists seek to instead seek to try to control the ideas, concepts, plans, goals, values, and so on that run the company. In other words, the woke want to control the “discourse” that determines which actions an institution takes, and what messages an institution communicates. This means the woke activist is going to try to change all of the rules, regulations, policies, directives, values, goals, and mission statements of any institution they take over. If the woke can control all the aforementioned things, they can control which ideas, concepts, goals, and aims that direct the institution bringing it fully under their control. At this point they will have successfully hijacked that institution in the name of woke ideology.

They do not need to “own” a corporation, or be in charge of a corporation in order to hijack it. If they are able to engineer a change in the rules, regulations, policies, directives, values, goals, aims, direction, and mission statement of the institution then they are going to be able to control that institution.

So, how do they do this?

The main tactic that we will talk about for this series is the use of so called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives to take over and institution. The way this will work is simple, the woke activist will use DEI as the excuse to bring woke ideas into the institution, and then will seek to make those ideas the ideas which dominate the institutional culture such that every aspect of the institution is brought under the control of woke ideology.

So how does it do that?

Wokeness leverages it’s view of society in order to create a series of obligations on institutions to adopt policies which place that institution under control of wokeness. Wokeness claims that society is unequal, and that in order to create social justice and fix inequality institutions need to make a number of changes that bring the institution in line with “social justice,” AKA wokeness.

Borrowing from Neil Shenvi, we can say that wokeness believes that society is divided into oppressed/oppressor groups along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. It believe that this is done through hegemonic power, which is the power that is gained through dominance over the culture. Thus, we need to then dismantle everything in society that was or is built according to the values, beliefs, concepts, norms, and views of the western culture that is dominant and (according to wokeness) the source of all the racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, inequality, and bigotry in society which oppresses people.

Neil Shenvi @NeilShenvi

Wokeness in 1 Tweet: 1) society is divided into oppressed/oppressor groups along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc via 2) hegemonic power. But privileged people are blind so 3) we need to defer to the lived experience of the marginalized to 4) dismantle unjust systems

The woke argue that society is rigged so that almost everyone who has power (or is at the top of the food chain) is a straight white male, and everyone who is not a straight white male is excluded from access to resources, prestige, clout, success, wealth, and power. In order to fix institutions so that they no longer “uphold” the oppressive system the institution needs to make diversity, equity, and inclusion a consideration in everything the institution says or does.

The catch here is that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are not used how you and I would normally use them. Diversity is not merely making sure that various view points are represented. Equity is not making sure everyone is treated equally. Inclusion is not making sure that people are not unjustly excluded. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, are terms of art in woke ideology and they don’t mean what we think they mean. They are defined by the woke as follows:

Diversity:
“Diversity” in the Critical Social Justice usage, while occasionally claiming to be tolerant of differences of ideas and political viewpoints and nodding toward “philosophical differences,” focuses, in reality, almost entirely on physical and cultural differences, which it evaluates according to the Critical Social Justice conceptions of privilege and marginalization (see also, positionality). It therefore aims to privilege the marginalized and marginalize the privileged in order to redress the imbalances it sees in society. A such, in woke thought, diversity is what happens when you have a group of people who all look different but all think exactly the same. As such a "diverse" situation in woke ideology is what happens when you have people of different sexes, races religions, orientations, nationalities, abilities, and genders who are all woke. ²

Equity:
In Critical Social Justice, the meaning of “equity” takes pains to distinguish itself from that of “equality.” Where equality means that citizen A and citizen B are treated equally, equity means “adjusting shares in order to make citizens A and B equal.” In that sense, equity is something like a kind of “social communism,” if we will—the intentional redistribution of shares, but not necessarily along lines of existing economic disparity but in order to adjust for and correct current and historical injustices. Shares here can refer to what the woke see as their "fair share" of literally anything (money, power, prestige, clout, resources, respect, authority, popularity, visibility, ownership, decisions making, etc).

Within Woke conceptions of the world invisible systems of power and privilege are understood to hold some people back in often invisible ways because of their race, gender, sexuality, or other marginalized identity factors. Therefore, “equity” requires giving some identity groups privileges in order to redress the perceived imbalance.

In common parlance, this is the difference between attempting to force equality of outcome by enforcing some resource allocation system on the one hand, and equality of opportunity on the other.³

Inclusion:
Inclusion, in the general sense of the word, means to welcome everybody, but in woke ideology inclusion means to create a welcoming environment specifically for groups that woke activists think are oppressed. A such, the woke concept of inclusion requires the exclusion of anything that could feel unwelcoming to any identity group. This is because according to wokeness, everything must be understood in terms of systemic power dynamics that it thinks are baked into every aspect of society.

Thus, inclusion is an expansive concept that could apply to silencing certain ideas like conservatism, meritocracy, or support for freedom of speech, usually in the name of safety and preventing the “trauma” or “violence.” Wokeness thinks that conservative ideas could inflict harm and trauma upon woke people who think all ideas they disagree with perpetuate systemic harm. Further, "inclusion" could be used to prevent specific terminology like “ladies and gentlemen” from being used. Why? Because wokeness thinks that phrase assumes everybody is male or female (which is thus not inclusive to gender minorities like queer, genderqueer, genderfluid, gender non-conforming, or trans people).

In wokeness inclusion means "never allowing anything that might bother or offend any woke person." In effect, this means that the woke definition of "inclusion" really means excluding anything that is not woke.⁴

So now I hope you can begin to see how their tactics will work. They will claim that for the reasons already mentioned that DEI needs to be made part of everything that an institution does. However, because of the way they have defined those terms, what will happen is that in order to satisfy the DEI requirements, the institution will need to analyze everything it does through the woke worldview and ideology. Once that happens, the institution will be radically transformed because in practice diversity means hiring people of different races, genders, abilities, and so fourth who are woke, equity means making sure that outcomes (not just opportunity) are the same, and inclusion means never doing anything that might make any woke person feel uncomfortable.

The result of this is that the institution has to hire woke people, it has to stop using merit as the metric by which people are hired and promoted, and it has to make sure that everyone adopts woke views and walks on eggshells around woke people so they don’t feel offended. Once this process has been completed by adding DEI requirement to every aspect of the institution it results in a radical shift in the culture of the institution, and the goals of the institution.

The results of this will, of course, be disastrous. Hiring and promoting based on equity rather than merit is going to decrease overall competence in the institution. Hiring people for diversity (race, gender, sex) rather then on qualification is going to decrease talent within the institution. Running the institution according to inclusion rather then on honest assessment will create an in ability to resolve disagreement in a coherent healthy way. A heavy focus on identity is going to increase the salience and importance of thing such as race, class, gender, sex, sexual orientation, disability status, and so fourth.  Adopting DEI as a part of every part of the institution is going to require redirecting resources towards DEI initiatives at a cost of the effectiveness of the institution while directing resources away from the original mission of the institution. Finally, once DEI is part of every aspect of the institution, even what the institution communicates publicly will have to be reconfigured so it communicates DEI platitudes in all communication, which in practice turns the institution into a megaphone for woke activism.

All of this makes the institution less effective as it’s ability to draw talent, promote competence, and focus on it’s original mission are sacrificed on the altar of woke ideology.

I hope that now have the basic outline of how this institutional process works. In the next few weeks I will be writing a series of essays which will go through each member of the woke trinity: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I will give you all a full explanation of each of these terms, how they function, and the role they play in handing over control of an institution to woke activism and bringing the institution under woke control.

I hope you all find this series helpful.

Sincerely,

Wokal_distance

1. Ideological Capture

2. (This is a definition I modified from New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-diversity/

3. (This is a definition I modified from New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-equity/

4. (This is a definition I modified from New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-inclusion/