The decentralized religion that persecutes heretics

Eric Kaufmann writes,

Viewing wokeness as a highly decentered liberal religion helps us understand the movement’s extremism, its witch hunts, and its awakenings. It explains why high-status people and elite institutions mouth its mantras, why its moderates can’t stand up to its fundamentalists, and why it is both the product of, and an engine of, polari­zation.

It is a powerful essay, difficult to excerpt. One of his themes is that liberalism may have once been a set of principles, but it is now a quasi-religious identity. Another theme is that a decentralized religion tends toward radicalism, as extremists “outbid” moderates in the contest for emotional support from those who identify with the religion.

At this point, I am going to call this the best essay I have read this year.

By the way, American Affairs is the publisher of the essay. This journal does publish some real nuggets. But it also publishes a lot of essays that toss around “neoliberal” and “market fundamentalist” as epithets. Also, it has a paywall that kicks in after one article (I think), so you have to choose carefully when to click through to read. Note that I have a couple of forthcoming posts that reference other interesting essays, but I do not recommend those essays as highly as Kaufmann’s.

12 thoughts on “The decentralized religion that persecutes heretics

  1. Wokeness is like a religion in that it’s a group that wants people to believe uncritically. But it’s unlike a religion in that its precepts change every few months or years, so that if you try just to learn it and have done, it leaves you behind. For example, the Feminist agenda and Gay Agenda (which were both about freedom to be what you wanted to be) will get you in trouble today because they’ve been replaced by the Tranny Agenda (where if you get deceived into a sexual situation with someone you don’t want, you’re supposed to not only accept it but say yes to them). Ugh!

    This is not accidental. A better parallel is that Wokeness = orthodoxy of The Party in the world of 1984, or in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. “We have always been at war with Eastasia!”

  2. Kaufman and Lind are both excellent and interesting historians with many highly regarded books between them. Both the Lind essay yesterday and the Kaufman essay today offer insightful perspectives on how we got to where we are. Neither though seems to offer much in the way of remedies. Lind offers nothing, Kaufman’s ultimate paragraph boils down to “think different.” Neither, I think, is going to change many minds in the academy, news rooms, board rooms, or 501(c)(3) organizations and foundations.

    To get to a politically viable policy response, it would help to get past simplistic notions of majoritarianism and look to building consensus-producing institutions as a way forward. It remains to be seen what the next administration does, perhaps race-based government jobs, wealth redistribution, helicopter drops on university campuses, new social programs, green energy subsidies and firearms taxes will produce a prosperous and happy population. If so, fine. But if not, simply standing athwart screaming no is not going to do much.

    An alternative agenda focusing on alleviating the insecurity that makes individuals vulnerable to the allure of the woke religion would offer much better chance of gaining popular support. Borrowing from Dr Kling, such an agenda might look like:

    – Government provided healthcare for illness and accident and elimination of tax exemptions for employer provided health care;
    – Replace payroll taxes with a VAT;
    – Substitute a basic income grant for means-tested programs, including food stamps and Medicaid;
    – Minimalist foreign policy and treat friends better than foes;
    – End subsidies and preferences for energy across the board; and
    – Open significant shares of the federal real estate inventory to commercial development in particular housing.
    Such an agenda hopefully would be depolarizing and open to constructive consensus building and would subvert religious power.

    • Speaking of policy responses, this post today by Joanne Jacobs about Loretta Ross seems to point in a pragmatic direction. Ross
      “advocates ‘calling in,’ which means messaging or talking privately to discuss an issue with ‘compassion and context,'” which seems like an improvement over “call out” culture.

      https://www.joannejacobs.com/2020/11/calling-in/

      It would be nice if it works.

      • But dealing with issues in private means not being able to display one’s moral superiority to the world, which is, I suspect, the main point (and the one “joy”) of being woke.

  3. Kaufmann implies, rather than states, that liberal fundamentalism’s foundation was a “pro-minority/anti-majority emotional” bias. The rationales for that bias came later.

    He also argues that “there is no countervailing moral power in most institutions, and thus no competing source of values to counter the tide of liberal fundamentalism.” However, the need for corporations to make a profit does provide a countervailing, if morally neutral, power. The more fundamentalists drive out dissenting and heretical employees, the more toxic a company’s work environment will become, ceding the marketplace to non-fundamentalist rivals.

    In addition, Kaufmann’s asymmetrical multiculturalism – “ethnicity as wonderful for minorities, poisonous for majorities” – is an internal contradiction that will drive opposition from within and without. Majorities will push back.

    Kaufmann argues that the Left’s pro-minority / anti-majority emotional bias will dominate until it is replaced by a stronger emotional bias. A pro-majority bias – sparked by reflexive reaction to the Left’s bias – will be at least as toxic as the latter.

    Perhaps a more constructive bias will spring from the bottomless misery and endless conflict that accompanies adoption of the woke mindset.

  4. I read Eric Kaufmann’s essay, and would like to push back.

    Kaufmann draws a useful distinction between bottom-up movements and centralized organization of politics, religion, culture. And he rightly emphasizes political emotions. But the essay is largely an exercise in erudite shoehorning.

    Why classify wokeness as “liberal” anything? Core norms of wokeness—for example, cancellation, outcome equality, group guilt—are plainly contrary to standard liberal concepts (whether J.S. Mill, Isaiah Berlin, or MLK).

    Why classify wokeness as “religion”? Consider, for example, the ratchet of commitment. Compare persons who have religious anxiety. The anxious are keen to arrive at true beliefs about high-stakes matters that cannot be verified directly; for example, about dogma and an afterlife (so-called “inscrutable goods”). There are various, rival suppliers of inscrutable goods. Whom to trust? A psychological mechanism might lead the anxious, more or less behind-the-back, to settle on beliefs and allegiances that are ‘confirmed’ by observing others’ commitment. If, say, adherents of religion X exhibit stronger commitment, then an anxious person might consider this the best available evidence. This is but one mechanism in social epistemology. It helps to explain why religion sometimes exhibits competition in commitment. As far as I can tell, wokeness doesn’t involve this particular mechanism. And Kaufmann doesn’t specify other mechanisms, characteristic of religion, that would ratchet commitment in wokeness.

    Like Pluckrose & Lindsay, Kaufmann provides an elaborate sketch of intellectual history. The authors present their interpretations as explanations (causal accounts). However, their histories assert much, but establish little. We will make more headway if we focus tightly on current mechanisms in political psychology; disruption by new technology; and markets for ideas (entrepreneurship, demand).

    Kaufmann concludes: “The way forward must therefore involve bolstering an emotionally compelling narrative of freedom […].” Absent new charismatic liberal leadership, of the caliber of MLK, it might be wise to temper political emotion with prosaic virtues, such as numeracy.

    • Pushing back on your last statement, if Kaufmann is right and the woke movement is emotionally based, then it won’t be replaced by numeracy. Something needs to fill the emotional niche now taken up by wokism.

  5. Seconding Arnold’s recommendation. I thought Kaufmann did a particularly good job in laying out the intellectual history for wokeism. You learn that the current fashion is not something strange and new, but a product of long-standing elements of American history. Tying wokeism to liberalism I thought surprising and original, and worth thinking over. I learned a lot reading this essay.

  6. Michael Huemer provides a different explanation of ratcheting commitment in wokeness, in his blogpost, “Language Police Are Messing with You” (Fake Nous, Nov. 11, 2020):
    https://fakenous.net/?p=1948

    He discerns four “functions” of increasing language policing. Here is my paraphrase:

    1. Signaling and sorting: Stilted norms distinguish your group. Arbitrarily updating norms reduces false positives in tests of membership. Multiplying norms makes ordinary conversation always a test of membership.

    2. Politicization of everything (like totalitarianism).

    3. Silencing of others (through fear of cancellation).

    4. Dominance (making others dance to your tune).

    A cynical theory of cynical theories?

    To my mind, a key question is: How fully can these “functions” be reduced to intentions, behaviors, effects, and feedback loops (the framework of methodological individualism).

  7. I have just read this line:

    “It is now okay to hate Deplorables again, and maybe even mandatory.”

    Be ready. You have to choose: join the rotten and corrupt Democrats, or be canceled.

Comments are closed.