‘Docile Instruments’: Disabling Criticism, Enabling Totalitarianism
Totalitarian roots of woke ideology
While open societies strive to make the best use of the possibilities of man, totalitarian regimes aim to change human nature itself, so that it is possible to manipulate humans into accepting absurdities, logical contradictions, and double standards. By disabling human creativity and criticism, totalitarian movements can more easily gain power and control their subjects. As Hannah Arendt observed in The Origins of Totalitarianism, totalitarianism destroys humans’ “inner spontaneity” in order to make them more compliant and easier to control, and this is why “the aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”
Woke ideology’s totalitarian character is reflected in the fact that it insulates itself from criticism by labeling all other explanations of problems in society as a form of bigotry and instead imposing a single idea to social reality. This is often said under the cover of good ideas, such as that discrimination and racism are morally unacceptable. Combined with ostracization of those who do not conform to the ideology, these actions subvert critical thinking and shut down any debates and institutions that make critical discussion of problems possible. The one-sided view of the…
