Thank you, thank you, yet again Mr. Rufo, for your deep insight into the nature and intent of our adversaries, and your exceptional ability to expose their battle strategies!!
I have just emerged from a beautiful Easter weekend shared with friends. As usual, the experience was intensely bittersweet. I had not seen many of these friends since the spring of 2020 when the COVID lockdown was initiated. Most of them are practicing Catholics and we had started our Easter Sunday by going to Mass together. Portland has finally emerged from enforced COVID restrictions, so for some of us, it was the first time in three years that we had gathered in a large enclosed building with a couple hundred other people.
Nowadays when I reunite with friends I haven't seen in awhile, my pleasure is diluted with a felt need to steel myself against the reaction I expect to receive when I tell them what I have been up to recently. It feels like "coming out" as some kind of pariah to a disapproving family, while at the same time being unwilling to be silenced or intimidated. I of course did receive the predicted reactions, because that is pretty much all that ever happens in Portland. My friends responded with stark expressions of horror and revulsion to my disclosure that I was not as thrilled as they are by the indictment of Donald Trump, and that I am focused on a far more dangerous Enemy of Our Democracy.
They are at least as terrified of Gov. DeSantis as they are of Trump, and were aghast that I am supporting his work. We had to have a conversation about the "Don't Say Gay Bill," and when I explained that there is no such thing, I was immediately told that my friends "do not trust anything they are told by anybody anymore." I told them that I feel the same way, which is why I go to original sources, like the actual text of the Parental Rights bill.
The people at this gathering had absolutely no awareness that the Woke Cult exists. They have not been exposed to any significant media coverage of the Cult, even from a favorable perspective. They asked me, obviously perplexed, "but who are they and where are they?"
It is very difficult to answer that question when the Cult is hidden in open sight. Critical Theory is too esoteric and inaccessible for most normal people to read about, and the believers accept it as Truth, rather than one of many ideologies that can be deconstructed. This is of course typical of cults, which pretty much always have private languages and bizarre beliefs. The difference is that the previous cults that flourished in Oregon didn't mange to take over the state, so the population here didn't need to study their nonsense to protect themselves.
The takeaway from my most recent encounter with Democratic friends is that they are completely oblivious to the fact that there has been a successful takeover of our country by an authoritarian cult. The leftist media have achieved a near total lockout of any accurate information about it, and have managed to substitute the distraction of the Trump prosecution to keep their constituents entertained.
As I left the Easter dinner gathering, my primary feeling was one of gratitude to you and to the other activists on Substack for keeping me sane. A year ago I felt completely alone with my fear and anger as I live here behind enemy lines. "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," (one of my lifetime favorite movies) often comes to mind. I make a point of calling the adversary The Woke Cult because that is precisely what they are.
The Left has been moving the lexicon for decades. It’s a shell game. They were liberals until they were progressives until they were woke. Now that they have been nailed again, they want to bar that term.
Simply stated, the Left are the agents of chaos. They are ALL “AOC” now. Let’s just call them AOC. 😎
There are still too many that continue to play defense, letting the woke either define terms or imply ambiguity where there's concreteness. "Transphobe" has no definition that I know of, yet it's slung around to shut up debate, so I'll define it as I see it: one who doesn't believe adults should be allowed to cut parts off children, one who remembers the basic biology lessons from middle school, one who believes female sports should remain female, one who does not believe children are the property of the state or school system, and one who believes in bodily autonomy and privacy vis-a-vis the opposite sex. This makes me a transphobe and it's an honor to be called a transphobe.
Agreed! If they are going to continue changing the meaning of a word, or dictating who’s allowed to say it, the “anti-woke” should define them with our own words. Words with clear meaning that can’t be redefined, and most importantly used by anyone on either side of the issues. I’m going to suggest “the sleep” or “the delusional”. As a supporter of democracy and meritocracy, I encourage you all to share your ideas below or vote for a winner.
Apr 12, 2023·edited Apr 12, 2023Liked by Christopher F. Rufo
Just when I think the left can stoop no lower, a new atrocity surfaces.
Unfortunately, this one has FBI backing (surprise, surprise!) so anyone criticizing woke leftists and even complimenting fellow dissidents by calling them "Chads" or "based" or "red-pilled" is now considered by the FBI to be "promoting violent extremism." Beware, Michael Malice!
I'll tell you something: the more such actions are taken the more likely violent reactions will occur. I suspect the FBI is baiting the Right, deliberately trying to provoke angry, threatening email responses and dearly hoping for actual violent retaliation. Unlike the race riots of the past few years and the perpetual antifa insurrection, any action from the Right anywhere close to "violent" will be pounced upon by the Feds and their whores in the media as the next January 5th-style "insurrection," justifying even more imprisonment without bail and re-igniting their demands for a Ministry of Information.
The left are looters and bullies. They appropriate language to manipulate. They appropriate our tax dollars for extreme green energy and diversity agendas. The term woke now has a negative connotation, so they cry foul. Too bad. They earned it.
I vaguely remember years ago when some rapper started using the n word in songs etc. there was some debate for a while whether that was appropriate. At first it was startling, but then it became common. I think it was important for blacks to take away the power of the slur for them. It worked. My son recently said to me that being called a racist holds the same slur connotations to white people. I had already given up that fear when I realized that I could be called a racist merely for my existence by any stranger who hurled it at me. So I agree we know what woke means and I for one am not afraid to use it.
Apr 13, 2023·edited Apr 13, 2023Liked by Christopher F. Rufo
Writer Jonathan Kay, one of the reasons Quillette lost its mojo (The other Claire Lehman's COVID decent into madness) just published an article entitled "Defining ‘Woke’ (a Word We Should Probably All Stop Using)". Chris is correct in that we all know it when we see or hear it. Just like porn. But if we have to pick a side, we should have an expectation that the political or conservative elite class we are told to rely on relative to any hope of legislation to confront it should be able to explain it with confidence. Not a dissertation on CRT but a short concise elevator speech will do. With the acceptation of Gov DeSantis and POTUS candidate Vivek Ramaswamy who understand it and speak to it with confidence, way too many make a mess of it, and we all know what the social media fallout looks like. That's why conservatives have lost control of abortion conversation and it will hurt in 2024 unless we understand that language matters and consistency across all of us is crucial.
Excellent expose using the semantics of sign / meaning in a linguistics semiotician’s vocabulary and pointing out the value of signifier/signified in relation to the passage of time that allows for redefinition of a hot-potato ( old childhood game) issue.
That your analysis advances the thesis “ point/counterpoint “ can no longer stand since the point maker now has signaled policy must be made due to the need for a taboo or “ submission” to the victorious “ point” without the danger of “the hydrogen bomb” of opposition obliterating all positive qualities in life! Bam!
My doctoral professor was writing about one single poem by the Russian poet Ivanov and directing his attention to the shifting of semantics when the signifier was not in flux ... he meticulously presented a book length analysis only available to the initiated. I say this to point out that language itself (in dualities of speech/writing) has contextual aggregates few are willing to assess in depth. I heartily approve of your tracking how in a particularly political/ culture-wars manner the left is at work foraging a network of censorship unheard of before the post modern era.
You are cutting through to challenge them on their own grounds which IS the proper way to make an intellectually detailed defense of free speech. So thank you.
I want to go a step deeper based not on what I learned from my doctoral professor - a linguist - but on my reading these last few years. I asked myself how we ( the United States) managed to create, drop, and improve a nuclear arsenal and what affect - if any - it has produced in culture.
To do this I have researched Oppenheimer, Heisenberg, Los Alamos, ( the major discoveries and the European physicists who achieved each) as well as the mind and thrust of Neil’s Bohr, the political world of President Franklin Roosevelt, and Henry Agile Wallace ( among others) and still working through many more players.
Here’s what my takeaway seems to be: culture has neither signifier or semantics related to the state of the world as we are experiencing it, in fact, the very split between word and meaning is itself highly related to our complete relationship with the chaos of our latest evolution into nuclear man - are we wave and particle ? Is that even possible for a creature who faces the essence that “ is” ? Einstein says NO! Heisenberg, YES, and Heisenberg refused to bring nuclear secrets to fruition in Germany! He self-censured and being the leader, engendered that censure among German physicists. Bohr followed by the atom splitting followers that came to our shores were adamant. We did it.
There’s something here in our latest linguistics phenomenon which points better than your idea of Totemism to the exact state of affairs of a creature facing the ultimate in guilt from all sides ( because let’s face it - Germany would have (like Russia soon did) unlocked bomb specifics.
I believe Rufo if you move beyond totem and beyond ( or through) the split of individual words into linguistic semantics and the doubling of seeing oppositional realities at one time according to who is using the word ( woke) for example you will have hit on the fractured nature of our own doppelgänger and how in spite of the split - it’s really a Singularity in the process of being NAMED.
Go back to your mention of the hydrogen bomb in your analysis and see if you can find the opening the gap where the matter becomes the light. Does this matter? Why, yes! It’s how the Western Tradition goes through chaos into maturity, a true aboriginal ceremony of initiation into truth. ( I’m not bothering to edit this or fix errors - it’s insight from me to you) 🌻🌟🌻
Excellent article. The left has used language very effectively to manipulate people. Trying to turn the word "woke" into a pejorative is genius. I hope those of us who can still think don't fall for it.
The cultural and political manifestations of Derrida and Foucault. Blech.
The power then lies in their ability to classify the truth and reality as "hate speech." A very dangerous road for the US to go down.
However, since the other option besides the Left is the Right, and Trump operates in a post-truth manner, then the Right has the inability to reclaim truth, reality, and objective fact. Whoops.
I was mentored well by my Russian transplant 😆 The program at Emory was called Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts which in the early 80’s - thank God MEANT the canon ! Thus I covered Euripides under his translator Arrowsmith ( The Bacchae speaks to warn “ the hysterical sex - 🤪 - of the dangers of usurping a son’s rights ); I studied James Joyce under his American Biographer Richard Ellmann; I studied “ The Russians” Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy under the Russian who created the Yale Russian Chorus; and Dante (winter quarter in Hell/Spring in Paradise - Purgatory “ in between”) ; I studied Anthropology under a Department Chair who was the musician writing the songs for a Broadway production as well as having studied with Tibetan monks! In brief, it was a stellar education in the best of all traditions: Western Culture !
I cannot imagine a limit to what New College can become were it to track forward as an honors college. I lucked into such a place obviously in that special program at Emory in Atlanta! Please connect me with anyone at NCF who wants to envision an institute for undergraduates born of, proud of, and intellectually challenged to further The Western Tradition!
Honors College SHOULD inspire like Niel Bohr’s Institute did worldwide in physics … I’m so glad a person of your insights sees this clearly. Remove DEI - YES; Replace - Definitely.
My Welsh pappy, who once ran a funeral home ad “ We will be the last to let you down,” also invented his own Greeting card mocking Hallmark. His watermark read ( in satire of their motto “ it’s good to send the very best”) with his “ the best is none to good.”
In Western Culture I’ll agree with Bohr - nothings good about the bomb : and yes my father, “ The best is none too good. To go pappy ( 1910 - 2009) one better: “ but the rest is an atrocious, insidious, ugly, bitter bastard” 🌟
I wonder if evolving word definitions can be linked to (Leftist) street culture? How many gangster rap lyrics have the latest "cool" phrases and word choices that also act as a shibboleth?
Shibboleth was a Bible word in a story where checkpoint soldiers demanded to hear all travelers say the word, to listen for the personal accent pronunciation, because outsiders could not correctly pronounce the word shibboleth.
So outsiders in your gangster neighborhood do not know the latest street code phrases of choice, or they still use outdated words and phrases that are no longer approved of on the street.
This also seems to act as a badge of honor, to be up-to-date with all the latest terminology, as a replacement for actual knowledge, this means you are cool.
Thank you, thank you, yet again Mr. Rufo, for your deep insight into the nature and intent of our adversaries, and your exceptional ability to expose their battle strategies!!
I have just emerged from a beautiful Easter weekend shared with friends. As usual, the experience was intensely bittersweet. I had not seen many of these friends since the spring of 2020 when the COVID lockdown was initiated. Most of them are practicing Catholics and we had started our Easter Sunday by going to Mass together. Portland has finally emerged from enforced COVID restrictions, so for some of us, it was the first time in three years that we had gathered in a large enclosed building with a couple hundred other people.
Nowadays when I reunite with friends I haven't seen in awhile, my pleasure is diluted with a felt need to steel myself against the reaction I expect to receive when I tell them what I have been up to recently. It feels like "coming out" as some kind of pariah to a disapproving family, while at the same time being unwilling to be silenced or intimidated. I of course did receive the predicted reactions, because that is pretty much all that ever happens in Portland. My friends responded with stark expressions of horror and revulsion to my disclosure that I was not as thrilled as they are by the indictment of Donald Trump, and that I am focused on a far more dangerous Enemy of Our Democracy.
They are at least as terrified of Gov. DeSantis as they are of Trump, and were aghast that I am supporting his work. We had to have a conversation about the "Don't Say Gay Bill," and when I explained that there is no such thing, I was immediately told that my friends "do not trust anything they are told by anybody anymore." I told them that I feel the same way, which is why I go to original sources, like the actual text of the Parental Rights bill.
The people at this gathering had absolutely no awareness that the Woke Cult exists. They have not been exposed to any significant media coverage of the Cult, even from a favorable perspective. They asked me, obviously perplexed, "but who are they and where are they?"
It is very difficult to answer that question when the Cult is hidden in open sight. Critical Theory is too esoteric and inaccessible for most normal people to read about, and the believers accept it as Truth, rather than one of many ideologies that can be deconstructed. This is of course typical of cults, which pretty much always have private languages and bizarre beliefs. The difference is that the previous cults that flourished in Oregon didn't mange to take over the state, so the population here didn't need to study their nonsense to protect themselves.
The takeaway from my most recent encounter with Democratic friends is that they are completely oblivious to the fact that there has been a successful takeover of our country by an authoritarian cult. The leftist media have achieved a near total lockout of any accurate information about it, and have managed to substitute the distraction of the Trump prosecution to keep their constituents entertained.
As I left the Easter dinner gathering, my primary feeling was one of gratitude to you and to the other activists on Substack for keeping me sane. A year ago I felt completely alone with my fear and anger as I live here behind enemy lines. "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," (one of my lifetime favorite movies) often comes to mind. I make a point of calling the adversary The Woke Cult because that is precisely what they are.
The Left has been moving the lexicon for decades. It’s a shell game. They were liberals until they were progressives until they were woke. Now that they have been nailed again, they want to bar that term.
Simply stated, the Left are the agents of chaos. They are ALL “AOC” now. Let’s just call them AOC. 😎
When people start changing the meaning of words, the deep totalitarian impulse is showing itself. Historians have seen this for ages.
There are still too many that continue to play defense, letting the woke either define terms or imply ambiguity where there's concreteness. "Transphobe" has no definition that I know of, yet it's slung around to shut up debate, so I'll define it as I see it: one who doesn't believe adults should be allowed to cut parts off children, one who remembers the basic biology lessons from middle school, one who believes female sports should remain female, one who does not believe children are the property of the state or school system, and one who believes in bodily autonomy and privacy vis-a-vis the opposite sex. This makes me a transphobe and it's an honor to be called a transphobe.
Agreed! If they are going to continue changing the meaning of a word, or dictating who’s allowed to say it, the “anti-woke” should define them with our own words. Words with clear meaning that can’t be redefined, and most importantly used by anyone on either side of the issues. I’m going to suggest “the sleep” or “the delusional”. As a supporter of democracy and meritocracy, I encourage you all to share your ideas below or vote for a winner.
Just when I think the left can stoop no lower, a new atrocity surfaces.
Unfortunately, this one has FBI backing (surprise, surprise!) so anyone criticizing woke leftists and even complimenting fellow dissidents by calling them "Chads" or "based" or "red-pilled" is now considered by the FBI to be "promoting violent extremism." Beware, Michael Malice!
I'll tell you something: the more such actions are taken the more likely violent reactions will occur. I suspect the FBI is baiting the Right, deliberately trying to provoke angry, threatening email responses and dearly hoping for actual violent retaliation. Unlike the race riots of the past few years and the perpetual antifa insurrection, any action from the Right anywhere close to "violent" will be pounced upon by the Feds and their whores in the media as the next January 5th-style "insurrection," justifying even more imprisonment without bail and re-igniting their demands for a Ministry of Information.
Edited for idiom
The left are looters and bullies. They appropriate language to manipulate. They appropriate our tax dollars for extreme green energy and diversity agendas. The term woke now has a negative connotation, so they cry foul. Too bad. They earned it.
I vaguely remember years ago when some rapper started using the n word in songs etc. there was some debate for a while whether that was appropriate. At first it was startling, but then it became common. I think it was important for blacks to take away the power of the slur for them. It worked. My son recently said to me that being called a racist holds the same slur connotations to white people. I had already given up that fear when I realized that I could be called a racist merely for my existence by any stranger who hurled it at me. So I agree we know what woke means and I for one am not afraid to use it.
Writer Jonathan Kay, one of the reasons Quillette lost its mojo (The other Claire Lehman's COVID decent into madness) just published an article entitled "Defining ‘Woke’ (a Word We Should Probably All Stop Using)". Chris is correct in that we all know it when we see or hear it. Just like porn. But if we have to pick a side, we should have an expectation that the political or conservative elite class we are told to rely on relative to any hope of legislation to confront it should be able to explain it with confidence. Not a dissertation on CRT but a short concise elevator speech will do. With the acceptation of Gov DeSantis and POTUS candidate Vivek Ramaswamy who understand it and speak to it with confidence, way too many make a mess of it, and we all know what the social media fallout looks like. That's why conservatives have lost control of abortion conversation and it will hurt in 2024 unless we understand that language matters and consistency across all of us is crucial.
No fucking way. I’m not allowing them to police my language anymore. It’s over.
Excellent expose using the semantics of sign / meaning in a linguistics semiotician’s vocabulary and pointing out the value of signifier/signified in relation to the passage of time that allows for redefinition of a hot-potato ( old childhood game) issue.
That your analysis advances the thesis “ point/counterpoint “ can no longer stand since the point maker now has signaled policy must be made due to the need for a taboo or “ submission” to the victorious “ point” without the danger of “the hydrogen bomb” of opposition obliterating all positive qualities in life! Bam!
My doctoral professor was writing about one single poem by the Russian poet Ivanov and directing his attention to the shifting of semantics when the signifier was not in flux ... he meticulously presented a book length analysis only available to the initiated. I say this to point out that language itself (in dualities of speech/writing) has contextual aggregates few are willing to assess in depth. I heartily approve of your tracking how in a particularly political/ culture-wars manner the left is at work foraging a network of censorship unheard of before the post modern era.
You are cutting through to challenge them on their own grounds which IS the proper way to make an intellectually detailed defense of free speech. So thank you.
I want to go a step deeper based not on what I learned from my doctoral professor - a linguist - but on my reading these last few years. I asked myself how we ( the United States) managed to create, drop, and improve a nuclear arsenal and what affect - if any - it has produced in culture.
To do this I have researched Oppenheimer, Heisenberg, Los Alamos, ( the major discoveries and the European physicists who achieved each) as well as the mind and thrust of Neil’s Bohr, the political world of President Franklin Roosevelt, and Henry Agile Wallace ( among others) and still working through many more players.
Here’s what my takeaway seems to be: culture has neither signifier or semantics related to the state of the world as we are experiencing it, in fact, the very split between word and meaning is itself highly related to our complete relationship with the chaos of our latest evolution into nuclear man - are we wave and particle ? Is that even possible for a creature who faces the essence that “ is” ? Einstein says NO! Heisenberg, YES, and Heisenberg refused to bring nuclear secrets to fruition in Germany! He self-censured and being the leader, engendered that censure among German physicists. Bohr followed by the atom splitting followers that came to our shores were adamant. We did it.
There’s something here in our latest linguistics phenomenon which points better than your idea of Totemism to the exact state of affairs of a creature facing the ultimate in guilt from all sides ( because let’s face it - Germany would have (like Russia soon did) unlocked bomb specifics.
I believe Rufo if you move beyond totem and beyond ( or through) the split of individual words into linguistic semantics and the doubling of seeing oppositional realities at one time according to who is using the word ( woke) for example you will have hit on the fractured nature of our own doppelgänger and how in spite of the split - it’s really a Singularity in the process of being NAMED.
Go back to your mention of the hydrogen bomb in your analysis and see if you can find the opening the gap where the matter becomes the light. Does this matter? Why, yes! It’s how the Western Tradition goes through chaos into maturity, a true aboriginal ceremony of initiation into truth. ( I’m not bothering to edit this or fix errors - it’s insight from me to you) 🌻🌟🌻
Excellent article. The left has used language very effectively to manipulate people. Trying to turn the word "woke" into a pejorative is genius. I hope those of us who can still think don't fall for it.
The cultural and political manifestations of Derrida and Foucault. Blech.
The power then lies in their ability to classify the truth and reality as "hate speech." A very dangerous road for the US to go down.
However, since the other option besides the Left is the Right, and Trump operates in a post-truth manner, then the Right has the inability to reclaim truth, reality, and objective fact. Whoops.
Video keeps stopping on this app
I was mentored well by my Russian transplant 😆 The program at Emory was called Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts which in the early 80’s - thank God MEANT the canon ! Thus I covered Euripides under his translator Arrowsmith ( The Bacchae speaks to warn “ the hysterical sex - 🤪 - of the dangers of usurping a son’s rights ); I studied James Joyce under his American Biographer Richard Ellmann; I studied “ The Russians” Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy under the Russian who created the Yale Russian Chorus; and Dante (winter quarter in Hell/Spring in Paradise - Purgatory “ in between”) ; I studied Anthropology under a Department Chair who was the musician writing the songs for a Broadway production as well as having studied with Tibetan monks! In brief, it was a stellar education in the best of all traditions: Western Culture !
I cannot imagine a limit to what New College can become were it to track forward as an honors college. I lucked into such a place obviously in that special program at Emory in Atlanta! Please connect me with anyone at NCF who wants to envision an institute for undergraduates born of, proud of, and intellectually challenged to further The Western Tradition!
Honors College SHOULD inspire like Niel Bohr’s Institute did worldwide in physics … I’m so glad a person of your insights sees this clearly. Remove DEI - YES; Replace - Definitely.
My Welsh pappy, who once ran a funeral home ad “ We will be the last to let you down,” also invented his own Greeting card mocking Hallmark. His watermark read ( in satire of their motto “ it’s good to send the very best”) with his “ the best is none to good.”
In Western Culture I’ll agree with Bohr - nothings good about the bomb : and yes my father, “ The best is none too good. To go pappy ( 1910 - 2009) one better: “ but the rest is an atrocious, insidious, ugly, bitter bastard” 🌟
I wonder if evolving word definitions can be linked to (Leftist) street culture? How many gangster rap lyrics have the latest "cool" phrases and word choices that also act as a shibboleth?
Shibboleth was a Bible word in a story where checkpoint soldiers demanded to hear all travelers say the word, to listen for the personal accent pronunciation, because outsiders could not correctly pronounce the word shibboleth.
So outsiders in your gangster neighborhood do not know the latest street code phrases of choice, or they still use outdated words and phrases that are no longer approved of on the street.
This also seems to act as a badge of honor, to be up-to-date with all the latest terminology, as a replacement for actual knowledge, this means you are cool.
Cool is a Fonzie word. Golly. Ironic.