Beitrag
Fr., 15.08.2025, 17:04
James Greenberg: Many of the ideals now dismissed as “WOKE” are the same ones once taught in civics class: equality before the law, respect for pluralism, freedom of expression, protection of minority rights, empathy for the vulnerable, environmental stewardship, and the belief that government should be accountable to all its citizens. For much of U.S. history, these weren’t controversial in principle—even if the country often fell short in practice. They were part of the moral foundation of the democratic experiment.
The redefinition is deliberate. It takes the vocabulary of inclusion and solidarity and flips it into a warning sign of overreach. Racial justice becomes an attack on whites. Affirming LGBTQ rights becomes sexual indoctrination. Acknowledging climate change becomes economic sabotage. Supporting public institutions becomes creeping socialism. “WOKE” becomes a scarlet letter—marking policies, people, and institutions as illegitimate before the argument even begins.
A Moral Economy in Reverse
In a healthy democracy, the shared sense of what’s fair and legitimate rests on transparency, equality, civic participation, and mutual responsibility. What’s emerging instead is an authoritarian counter-ethic built on hierarchy, exclusion, loyalty to a leader, and the sanctity of “order” over rights.
In this new framework, inequality isn’t a flaw—it’s treated as a natural state to be defended. The right to vote isn’t a universal guarantee—it’s a privilege to be guarded. Truth isn’t an objective standard—it’s whatever reinforces the movement’s narrative. The public good isn’t a shared project—it’s a prize for the deserving few.
Old Playbook, New Branding
The demonization of “WOKE” is part of a much older strategy: stigmatizing opponents by tying them to alien, dangerous ideologies. In the past, the favored terms were “communist,” “liberal,” or “unpatriotic.” Now “WOKE” serves as an umbrella insult, collapsing an entire spectrum of democratic commitments into one despised identity.
Like those older labels, it’s flexible enough to target teachers, scientists, journalists, activists, or anyone else who challenges the political program. And because it’s so vague, it can be stretched to fit whatever or whoever needs to be discredited next.
The Political Economy of the Culture War
Attacking “WOKE” isn’t just about winning the culture war—it’s also about reshaping the economic order. If equity, public investment, and environmental protection can be dismissed as WOKE overreach, that clears the way for dismantling regulations, privatizing public services, and funneling resources toward political allies.
When attention is fixed on drag queen story hours or diversity training, it isn’t fixed on tax breaks for billionaires, environmental rollbacks, or the sale of public assets to private hands. Outrage is redirected away from the policies that shift wealth and power upward.
Propaganda by Definition
The power of the WOKE label lies in its framing. Once the word is defined as inherently bad, the values it’s attached to—fairness, equality, accountability—become suspect by association. That’s why it’s always left undefined. The less precise it is, the more easily it can be used against whatever stands in the way. It’s not meant to describe. It’s meant to destroy.
Global Parallels
Similar tactics appear in other countries sliding toward authoritarianism. Leaders there redefine democratic virtues as existential threats, using new language for the same purpose: to recast defenders of pluralism as enemies of the nation. The label changes, but the strategy is constant—change the moral baseline so defending democracy sounds like betrayal.
The Stakes
If this redefinition of democracy’s core values takes hold, it won’t just distort political debate for an election cycle. It will reshape the moral language of the country, making it harder to defend equality, fairness, and pluralism without triggering the reflexive rejection built into the smear. Once those values are successfully framed as dangerous, their legal and institutional protections can be dismantled with less resistance.
This isn’t only a battle over culture. It’s a fight over the meaning of democracy itself. And in that fight, the words we choose matter as much as the laws we pass.
Die Grenzen meines Körpers sind die Grenzen meines Ichs. Auf der Haut darf ich, wenn ich Vertrauen haben soll, nur zu spüren bekommen, was ich spüren will. Mit dem ersten Schlag bricht dieses Weltvertrauen zusammen.
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