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Wake up! Anti woke is anti-democracy [1]

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Date: 2023-06-14

Wake up! Anti-woke is anti -democracy

There is a shadow over the land. An authoritarian movement is growing. All authoritarian movements have an ideology based on a dystopian future, mass conformity and obedience. Authoritarian ideologies depends on a singular narrative and language that supports their political agenda.

Like all authoritarian movements, MAGA is opposed to the self-determination and protection of rights for all of its citizens unless they conform and are obedient to its dystopian ideology.

Self determination for all groups of people is a prerequisite for democratic societies. It is a direct threat to any authoritarian movement. Self-determination depends on acknowledging the diverse rich narrative stories of all citizens.

For an authoritarian state, all other narratives are a threat and must be extinguished. all other voices. All other stories. Anyone who does not accept the official narrative that supports the ideology of the state is unworthy of citizenship and forfeits the protection of their rights by the state. They are considered dispensable, open to injustice and violence.

The annihilation of all forms of self-expression that support self-determination for groups within the state that compete with their ideology is an essential hallmark of all authoritarian regimes including the MAGA movement. Consequently, authoritarian movements need to dismantle and destroy all institutions that protect and support the democratic process. This includes assaults on the courts, universities , libraries, police, banking, environmental, work, medical and health care institutions, the arts, and the media at the very least.

This assault takes the form of annihilation through language and the dismissal of all other narratives, all other histories , but the one selected by their ideology. This process of annihilation to control language and narrative is the most dangerous form of violence. It is not torture, persecution, imprisonment, or physical assault, as egregious as each of these acts are. It is the destruction of language and the annihilation of each individuals personal story that is most violent.

In this way the anti-woke movement is an assault on everyone’s agency, narrative, story, voice, history. It eats away at each person’s integrity, dignity and self-respect. It leads to the deterioration of critical and reflective thinking. This has a profoundly deadening effect on each individuals sense of meaning and purpose, impairing our ability to participate in the political sphere of our world and preventing any act of self-determination. This is exactly what is intended by the anti-woke movement.

It is not just an attack on black American historical scholarship, or an attack on evidence based medical and public health guidelines, or an assault on scientific methodology, or the rights of women to control their bodies, or on diverse religious affiliations, or on different expressions of gender that fall outside of its dystopian ideology.

It is an assault on everyone’s right to participate and engage in the world of human experience and social interaction in their own communities as equals. It is meant to deny and destroy the practice of a democratic society. Isn’t that what self-determination requires to succeed? A sense of voice and agency?

Consider:

They are not patriots, they are traitors.

Not a Freedom Party, a Fascist Party

Not enablers, but fascist sympathizers and collaborators

Not pro life, pro afterlife.

Not insurrectionists, but criminals

Not pro gun rights, but right to own a gun and kill

Not anti -vax, but punitive rationing

Not pro family values, but book burning and censorship

Not anti-abortion, but coercive reproduction

Not election denialists or voter suppression but White supremacists

Not pro gospel of love, justice, and forgiveness, but the gospel of greed, violence and hatred: not evangelical but never angelical

Not pro medical choice, but anti scientific methodology

They have to kill the children in order to save them!!!

Not religious freedom but religious imperialism

Silence is not neutrality but complicity

Accommodation is not civic decency but appeasement

Indifference is collusion

The Republican party is now the Vichy Republicans

Centrist democrats are Chamberlain Democrats

Resistance begins with reclaiming our language, our narratives, our stories, our histories and sharing them with each other as an act of democratic citizenship. As a deep expression of love and respect for each other. This is the profound mystery of a free society: sharing our narratives and stories with each other enriches and strengthens us, it does not threaten or weaken us unless they are suppressed.

Denying each person’s own history and removing their narrative from the public sphere undermines our collective sense of self determination and creates a dependency and obedience upon the authoritarian movement for information, interpretation, validation. That is indoctrination. Denying our individual narratives is the ultimate form of violence and is fundamental to all authoritarian movements. It is a form of mass violence. We are all woke, or we are all slaves.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/14/2175483/-Wake-up-Anti-woke-is-anti-democracy

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