THE WOKE SUPREMACY by Evan Sayet
The WOKE SUPREMACY by Evan Sayet is as uncompromising, concise, and crucial as was his prior work, THE KINDERGARDEN of EDEN, and something of an informal sequel to it.
The former work explores the aberrant mind-set of the radical progressive; where the latter work explains its history and current consequences, in the form of its most recent manifestation, named Democratic Socialism.
The manifesto and the message are shocking, galvanizing, clear, and clearly overdue. One cannot defeat an enemy who is not named, whose aims and tactics are unknown.
Evan Sayet is perhaps the most insightful political commentor writing today, and it is odd that his fame and background come from his work as a comedy writer. On the other hand, seeing the state of the political landscape today, perhaps only a comedy writer will do.
Sayet first came to prominence in politics due to a now-famous lecture at the Heritage Foundation, which formed the basis of his later work, entitled, aptly enough, How the Modern Liberal Thinks: And Why He’s Convinced That Ignorance Is Bliss. View the lecture here, for a taste of Mr. Sayet’s style and approach.
THE WOKE SUPREMACY is subtitled to be a manifesto against ‘Democratic Socialism,’ but Sayet soon makes it clear that this is a false name, as are ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ and nearly all the names and terms used by the enemy; and not merely false, but diametrically opposed to truth.
Perhaps to avoid this Orwellian jargon, in his book, Evan Sayet coins a new term: Woke Supremacy, and defines the characteristic they hold in common with other Supremacist movement. This grants insight into their aims and means.
He begins by saying what they are not.
Woke Supremacists are not liberal democrats.
Liberty is abolished, not protected, by collectivist totalitarianism or a two-tiered justice system. Likewise, the hallmarks of representative democracy, namely, limited government equally protecting individual rights under impartial law, are the mere opposite of the openly partial victim-system of Woke “intersectionality” system where creed or color, sex, deviance, or social rank, determines who is sacrificed to appease whom.
Sayet avers that the Conservative is the true liberal. The Conservative is democratic in the sense of opposing alike monarchy and mob-rule, absolutism and anarchy. The classical liberal institutions meant to protect freedom of faith, speech, assembly, as well as freedom of our self-defense of life and land and livelihood, is precisely what Conservatives seek to conserve, so far without success.
Sayet next defines “Nationalism” as the political philosophy of where each nation-state, content within its own boundaries, coexists with neighboring states without mutual jealousy or mutual invasion.
Just as the ideal of a constitutional government within a state guards the rights of all men, minority or majority, high or low, regardless of number, rank, power; just as the ideal of capitalism in the marketplace protects the property rights and enforces the contractual obligations of all parties, rich or poor; so to does the ideal of nationalism protect the boundaries of all nations, large or small, from invasion by the other, and seeks trade, rather than conquest.
Sayet contrasts nationalism with globalism or socialism, which, by its nature, cannot tolerate to coexist with any other nation. The notorious history of socialist entities in the Earth for the last century and counting is one of continual bloodshed, both the slaughter of unarmed populations at home, and the invasion of neighbors abroad.
Only the threat of an armed and vigilant America, and other western nations devoted to the Nationalist ideal of mutual international respect for law, during World War Two and during the Cold War, repelled the Supremacists or deterred their aggression, and currently form the only check on Chinese and Russian threats of invasion against their neighbors. Under Trump, a similar setback was suffered from the Supremacist movement currently domineering and terrifying the Middle East, when the ISIS Caliphate was uprooted from its territory.
In each case, the constitutionalist, the capitalist, and the nationalist guards the rights of others as jealousy as he guards his own, for he holds that injustice to one expose all to injustice.
This ideal of equality under law and equal protection, which is the Spirit of America, forbids that one group is endowed by birth with the right to reign supreme over any other.
America is the mere antithesis of Supremacism. By its nature, Supremacism is unamerican.
Likewise, the ideal of all men as equal brothers under God our Father, sharing one Creator who endows us all with natural rights, is the very soul of Biblical teaching.
Hence, Supremacism by its nature is anti-Semitic and anti-Christ.
Supremacism is the theory that one supreme trait grants membership into the Elect, who have a right to enjoy all the rights, privileges and protections of society.
Those who lack this supreme trait are Reprobate, and have no such rights, privileges or protections, and, indeed, it is a moral imperative to deny the enjoyment of such rights to them.
The Elect have a positive duty to silence, dispossess, ostracize, marginalize, enslave, expel, or murder the Reprobate.
The idea of mutual respect or peaceful coexistence, which is the core of nationalism, constitutionalism, capitalism, is vehemently rejected by the Supremacist, and the opposite is vehemently embraced: Supremacists by nature support violence for political gain.
No evil thing can be said or thought about any Elect, nor can his word be doubted; and, likewise, no credit can be given any Reprobate, hence they have no right to be heard.
The Reprobate can be allowed no platform, no day in court, no due process of law. Nor can anything be done to “normalize” or “humanize” a Reprobate. The Elect is under a positive duty to libel, slander, and demonize the Reprobate, regardless of facts. Fairmindedness is a sin.
Just as, in the Old South, even a single Negro ancestor, or, as the saying goes “a single drop of blood” is sufficient to make a Caucasian into a non-Caucasian, so too, here, will even a single allegation of nonconformity to Supremacist doctrine is sufficient to expel one from the ranks of Elect. There is Original Sin in all Supremacist theories, but no atonement, no forgiveness, no salvation.
Please note there is also no peace with this doctrine. No compromise can be made with any Supremacist movement, since their moral imperative is the belittling, silencing, marginalizing, exile, dispossession and murder of any and all who are not Supreme.
They vow no limit to their demands, until Utopia is reached — which it never will be, by definition.
The idea of independent coexistence or mutual respect is the one idea the Supremacist explicitly rejects as impossible and undesirable.
Sayet does not say, but it should be clear from this description, that Supremacism is a cult, a sham religion, ruled by inerrant dogma it is treason and heresy to doubt.
It also should remind one of a certain book by Doctor Seuss, where Sneetches on beaches either had or lacked stars on their bellies, and divided their society accordingly. The Star-belly Sneetches were Supremacists. (It comes as no surprise that it was this very book that the Woke Supremacists have so recently banned and cancelled.)
And, as a sham religion, there is also a sham paradise, a Utopia, at which all Supremacism aims. Different Supremacist groups take different traits to be the Supreme Trait which grants membership in the Elect. Thus, each Supremacist group has a different vision of Utopia.
Ironically, all have the same enemy: their enemy in heaven is Christ in particular, God in general, and their enemy on Earth is America in particular, the West in general.
In America, Sayet argues, Supremacism is most often framed as a racial supremacy, with Democrats subjugating Negros and Chinamen, or exploiting wetbacks sneaking across the borders.
And this is not without reason: racism was at the core of chattel slavery of the Democrats of the antebellum South, as well as of Democrat Jim Crow laws; racism was at the core of the Trail of Tears when Southern Indian tribes were raped of their lands by the founder of the Democrat party, Andrew Jackson; racism was the core of the Japanese Internment camps erected by the Democrat hero of heroes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (Meanwhile, the founder of the Republican party, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.)
While the Democrat terrorist group the KKK did indeed visit arson, beatings, and lynching on Catholics, which is a creed and not a race, for the most part, no Supremacist movement other than that based on the racism promoted by the Democrats has ever existed in America.
But the three major Supremacist movements haunting the world today are not racial supremacists. Each are framed as another type of conflict between different groups of Elect and Reprobate: Mohammedanism, Marxism, and Cultural Marxism.
Among the Mohammedans are a violent and vocal group of Islamicist Supremacists, called Political Islam or Islamofascists. For them, the Supreme Trait is conversion to their particular brand of Islam, and all others must be reduced to a serfdom called dhimmitude, or slain.
Marxism is a brand of socialism where being a proletarian is the Supreme Trait, and the bourgeoise are destined for extermination.
Please note that Marxism, being atheist, and Islamicism, denouncing as blasphemy all laws not based on Koranic law, should be natural enemies. Instead, both cooperate with their Woke brethren against their mutual enemies: Israel, America, Christendom, the West.
Please also note that Islamofascism is more civilized than Marxism, since it allows the infidel to convert, and since it enjoys an objective book of law, the Al-Coran, which in part might shield some serfs and concubines from the ferocious excesses of a Sultan, whereas the victims of a Marxist despot have no such protections, in law or theory.
The third Supremacist movement is an offshoot of the second: Neo-Marxism or Cultural Marxism expands the downtrodden Elect from the exploited proletarian to include any group, real or imagined, suffering any form of oppression, current or past, real or assumed.
The movement identifying a cluster or intersection of sets of groups of oppressed victims is called ‘Intersectionism.’ The dogma of Instersectionism is that the oppression is systemic hence invisible, so that all men, oppressors as well as oppress, are asleep to it. To be awake to this hidden oppression is called, ungrammatically enough, ‘Woke’ or ‘Wokeness.’
Oddly, Cultural Marxism does not take membership in the victim group as the Supreme Trait, but, rather, the mere act of being aware of the oppression, including such forms of oppression that are invisible to others, as a glass ceiling, or spread by hate-speech inaudible to others, as a dog-whistle.
Hence being awakened to the pervading presence of the oppression, not being a victim of it, is the Supreme Trait.
It is for this reason that the “Woke” can be Supreme by being aware of the oppression, let us say, of well-off upper middle-class college grads, lawyers and doctors, who have no legal barriers to any career imaginable, and are hence not themselves aware of any oppression, but who happen to be female or black or somesuch.
It is for this reason that we see the inexplicable spectacle of unintentional self-parody when a black and female First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, complains to a black and female multimillionaire entertainer, Oprah Winfrey, that both are oppressed and victimized.
Someone allegedly in the alleged victim group of the invisible oppression, such as conservative columnist Candice Owens, or presidential candidate and world-renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, who neither sees a glass ceiling nor hears a dog whistle, or who neither fears the police when told to do so, nor hates on command whomever they are told to hate, are not among the Elect, and, if anything, are held in deeper contempt than are other Reprobate.
Again, even the most trifling of deviation from orthodoxy is sufficient to excommunicate the apostate, but, unlike other religions, there is no forgiveness, no way to return to grace.
And, unlike other religions, the Woke Supremacy is particular in that its standards of orthodoxy are ever-changing, and what was perfectly Woke on Monday morning might well be heresy by Wednesday night.
Now, looking at the ten centuries and more of violent atrocities on the part of Islamicist Supremacism, from the siege of Constantinople to the Armenian genocide to the fall of the Twin Towers, and then looking at the mass murders and mass starvations orchestrated by Soviet Russia and Red China, one might conclude that the Woke in American are not so violent as other forms of Supremacism.
If so, this is due to lack of opportunity and means, not of motives.
Sayet examines the roots of Woke Supremacy, before it was called by that name, pointing at the radical anarchists of the 1960s who bombed police precincts and provoked race riots, trying to engender a full-scale race war. Violence has always been a core of their creed.
Seeing how the Woke treat the Alt-Right shows their love of violence. They demand the Alt-Right be denied any platform, any freedom of speech, any freedom of assembly. They demand the Alt-Right be denied a livelihood. None can hold a job or engage in trade.
Their glorification of punching Nazis, which has since morphed into the “knock-out” game where Jews or Orientals are randomly assaulted, is a reminder of what they intent.
And since the Woke make it abundantly clear that all mainstream Rightwing or conservative figures are one and the same with Alt-Right or Neo-Nazis, or White Supremacists violent extremists and insurrectionists, the only conclusions is that no principle, no sentiment, no idea present in Woke Supremacy inhibits absolute violence toward others. They merely lack the present capacity for full-scale genocide.
The rioting, assault, arson, and murders being perpetrated daily are a sufficient witness of what the Woke intend, as soon as their hold on power is sufficient.
This seems an apt point to mention something that many Conservatives greet with tongue-tied confusion, but which should be clear as clear. When the Woke pressure compliant companies and Big Tech oligarchs into de-platforming, silencing, and firing non-woke unpersons, this is not a boycott.
A boycott is when you decide no longer to support a person or a business with your money, because you do not want your money to fund the growth of political causes opposed to yours, that this person or business supports. You do not want your money to go to people who hate you.
Even if you urge your neighbor to join you, you are merely trying to get your neighbor not to give money to people who hate him.
Cancel culture is when you decide no one else should be allowed to support a person or a business with their money. You do not want to take your business elsewhere: you demand everyone to take his business elsewhere. You demand his customers, advertisers, suppliers be cut off and driven away. You do not want him to leave one business and open another: you want him to starve.
This is why the Woke approach advertisers and HR departments, or use lawfare to get their way, or get the cooperation of compliant Big Tech oligarchies.
In the same way socialism is not charity, because giving your own money to the poor is not the same as giving other people’s money to the poor, likewise boycotts are withholding your own money from the offensive, whereas Cancel Culture withholds the money of other people, by interference with patrons, customers, suppliers, advertisers, financial services, and so on.
In Common Law, this is called tortuous interference with contract, and is grounds for a lawsuit. It is classed as an unfair trade practice, and may carry criminal penalties.
Everything is offensive to the Woke, because everything is racism, everything is global warming, everything is hate speech, everything, including non-violent speech or lack of speech, is violence. Silence is violence.
Any violence on the part of the Woke is excused, not prosecuted by the state, not reported in the news. See the fiery but mostly peaceful protests of Antifa and BLM for details, or contemplate the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone established as an open act of insurrection in Seattle, and allowed to continue for months, unchallenged.
Likewise, any non-violence on the part of the non-Woke is open to being reframed as violence, prosecuted as such, and not allowed ever to depart from the news. See the unarmed armed insurrection by orderly crowds invited into the Capitol building by police on January 6th, or contemplate the frequency with which the number of deaths was and is misreported.
Woke Supremacy has one strange mutation, Sayet argues, making it differ from all prior strains of this pathology: The Supremacists here claim to be inferior, not superior.
Sayet here sums and repeats an argument from his prior book, giving what amounts to a Unified Field Theory of Liberalism, that is, a single and simple explanation which fits all known facts. This theory is that the Woke blame all the evils of mankind, from hurt feelings to the Holocaust, on the fact that men have different convictions, and use discrimination in their judgements. The Woke, so says Sayet, hold that it is not the rightness nor wrongness of a conviction that makes it dangerous to the peace and safety of mankind, but the mere fact that the conviction convinces. All evildoers in history were convinced of their own rightness, and thought themselves superior one man to the next.
By this logic, all that is needed to produce world peace, and abolish all evils of mankind, is to abolish discrimination, that is, to abolish all convictions of right and wrong, good and bad, fair and foul, vice and virtue. Once we all agree to have no opinions and no strong feelings about anything or anyone, no differences of opinion can arise, and, with no differences, all men will be as lacking in rough edges as eggs is a carton, and as equal.
See the lyrics to the Lennon song ‘Imagine’ for details.
It proposes, first, to abolish God (“Imagine there’s no heaven, &c”) second, to abolish goals (“Imagine all the people living for today”) third, to abolish nations (“Imagine there’s no countries”) and ideals (“Nothing to kill or die for”) which allegedly will eliminate wars. Then it proposes abolition of property will eliminate hunger.
But, if a man owns no no crops, he cannot be assured of gathering the fruits of his labor, and he will not sow. Property is needed to cure hunger. Likewise, nations are formed primarily to deter invasions from neighboring lands. The proposals are beyond idiotic: they are the exact mirror reverse of the truth. As if curing all disease would follow from killing all doctors. This particular odor of mirror-world insanity hangs over all Woke arguments, from the economic ideas of borrowing one’s way out of debt, to the political ideas of using racism to cure racism.
Sayer argues that it is on these grounds that the Woke come to the conclusion that an utter lack of discrimination is called for in all realms of human thought: moral, intellectual, scientific, artistic. No body shape can be better or worse than another, no one be fatter nor uglier. In Art, nothing beautiful. In science, nothing factual. In culture, nothing better nor worse. And all religions are to be treated equal and with equal toleration, except one.
It is for this reason that the Woke are not just wrong in many cases, occasionally being right by mere random chance, but rather are deliberately and notoriously wrong, obviously wrong in a howlingly obvious way, and not just wrong, but devoted to the literal and absolute opposite of the truth in every case.
This absolutism in wrongness is inevitable, since it falls out of their philosophy. It is not just being right or wrong in certain areas the Woke anathematize, but the concept of rightness itself.
The Buddha, by enlightened thought, came to the noble truth that all suffering is caused by desire, therefore, to eschew desire would abolish suffering.
Likewise, the false Buddhas of the Woke, by benighted thoughtlessness, come to the ignoble falsehood that striving for truth, beauty and virtue cause the differences of conviction which cause suffering. Therefore, to eliminate difference of conviction will abolish suffering, hence we must replace truth with falsehood, beauty with ugliness, and virtue with vice, so that the only virtue is toleration of vices in others.
Sayet has a long meditation on why the Jewish people in such large numbers so vehemently support the Woke movement, which is so clearly bent on the destruction of their nation, people, and traditions, and which celebrates every current and past act of anti-Semitism, up to and including genocide. Myself, I would ask the same of any Catholic, or anyone enjoying, directly or indirectly, the benefits of any institution with roots in Christendom, or in the Classical world. The self-destructive nature, the pure hypocrisy, of the Woke Supremacists movement is at once risible for being so grotesque and terrifying for being so near total victory.
I recommend this book in the strongest possible terms. An acute observer of the political and cultural scene in recent seasons, or decades, or generations, will find nothing new here. But what this book does is place the known facts into a new pattern, so that a single and elegant explanation springs into clear view, and many clouds of doubt or ambiguity vanish.
Evan Sayet earns the grateful thanks of all men of good will for naming the hitherto unnamed foe.
The Western world is like a sleeping giant that is being strangled in its bed by dwarfs. The stranglewire took generations to entwine around the great neck, and the first few twists to tighten the noose were hesitant and slow.
Now, the giant murmurs and mutters, and perhaps one eye is open, but this brain is still clouded by sleepy fogs, and he has lifted no hand as yet. It is still an open question as to whether the noose will close, and the giant die while half asleep, or if he will wake, and smite the puny assassins.
Evan Sayet’s book is both an alarm clock and a bedstand candle calling the giant to wake up, and showing where the enemy stands.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
