I subscribe to and receive online publications from Christopher Rufo. He sent one to me on 4/12/2023 entitled The Universal N-Word (The Left wants to turn the word ‘woke’ into a slur—and suppress all criticism of left-wing racialism.), and I will quote the passages from his publication and comment on them.
Rufo: “For the last few weeks there’s been a spirited debate about the word ‘woke.’ You’ve probably seen some of the headlines and surface-level commentary. But I’d like to go deeper and show how this fight over language reveals some significant undercurrents and explicates the relationship between language, ideology, and power.
The first attack from the Left was that the right can’t define the word ‘woke.’ You see this very pedantic tactic all the time. It’s almost a meme at this point. ‘Define this. Define that.’ It’s a debater’s trick that is clever and appropriate in high school, but unfortunately, has metastasized upwards where it has become a part of our mainstream adult political debate—and, of course, in this particular instance, it is ridiculous.
Of course we can define ‘woke.’ We can define it as ‘left-wing racialist ideology.’ We can define it as the attempt to achieve ‘critical consciousness,’ which is a neo-Marxist term, meaning awakening the subject to his own oppression, then recruiting him into left-wing revolution. Or, if we use it as a stand-in for an ideology such as critical race theory, it simply means that ‘the United State is an oppressor nation that divides classes along the lines of race and then endorses active discrimination in order to create racial equity or equality of group outcomes.’
In a certain sense, it might be difficult for the average person to define in the same way that many abstract words are difficult to define but easy to use in practice. I think it was Wittgenstein who once said that defining the word ‘game’ is very difficult, but every knows how to play a game because we use language to participate in a community. We use language as a form of communication even if we don’t have a rigorous or scientific verbal definition for the words that we use.
But there is a second phase in this campaign against the word ‘woke’ that is even more significant. The left-wing commentator Tour’e made the argument that actually ‘woke’ is a racial slur. He said, ‘At this point, woke is a slur. The way the right uses it is an undercover way of saying ‘those people’ or ‘non-white people.’ It’s a polite way of saying the n-word but in this case the n-word includes Blacks, LGBTQ folks, and other marginalized groups. So he is saying that ‘woke,’ in a sense, is a dog whistle for people who can no longer say the n-word out loud—they use ‘woke’ as a substitute word.
But the, a little bit later, he also writes: ‘Woke is essentially saying be respectful to people who are not like you. Don’t be transphobic, don’t be ablelist, don’t be racist in your words or your language. Make space for marginalized people. Be aware of the needs of others even if you don’t understand their journey. So this is the very soft, left-wing version of woke. Tour’e and a number of other commentators would like us to believe that ‘woke’ is a racial slur, at the same time, ‘woke’ simply means kindness.
What does this all mean? How can we interpret this? How can we look at this double meaning in a way that makes sense?
First, we should say that this is ridiculous on its face. ‘Woke’ does not mean the n-word and the n-word does not apply to LGBTQ people, no matter how convenient that might be for left-wing ideologies But beyond the ridiculous surface nature of this, which was widely mocked and little accepted, there’s a deep game that is happening. There’s a deeper maneuver with language that I think is important to unpack.
So you can look at this with a very basic three-part semiotic analysis. First, you have the signifier: the actual word ‘woke.’ That is quite simple. That’s what we are talking about. Second, what is it referring to? What is the signified? And in this case you have a double signifier: it’s either the universal evil, the n-word, or it’s the universal good—kindness, love and justice. And, in total, the signifier and the signified as they come into a meaning, as the meaning is used in our society, you find that the sign that total meaning is always shifting. It’s always contingent. It’s always depends on who is saying the word who is listening to the word. It depends on political context. This is, of course, common in language. But ultimately, what it really depends on—on what the Left’s ideology as a whole depends on—is the who-whom distinction. And so, if a left-wing activist says ‘woke’ it means kindness, love, and justice. If a left-wing activist says ‘woke’ among his own compatriots or comrades, it an also meaning awakening to critical consciousness, abolishing the police, enacting a left-wing revolution, getting out into the streets.
But then, the defensive maneuver. As the Right has taken the word and used it as a signifier for left-wing racialist ideology, which is deeply unpopular with Americans of all racial backgrounds, it’s taken on this other meaning. It’s taken on a tone of mockery. It’s taken on a tone of critique. And its identified the ideology with a single simple memorable word that, for most people, now means outrageous racialist discrimination, resegregating institutions on the basis of critical race ideology, and embedding ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ style programs with the goal of redistribution and overturning the basic American principles of freedom and equality.”
My response: I let Rufo lay out his linguistic case, but it seems as if woke was adopted for a different signifier purpose than that of the Leftists. It now means universally the discredited anti-American racialist ideology of the Left. Words matter. He who controls words and their meanings is able to put concepts into words, and then put an argument out that states his point of view, and Rufo is fighting this battle so that leftists do not deprive the Right of the words it needs to wage the cultural counterrevolution. Rufo is pushing Leftist back linguistically.
Rufo: “And so this is where is where the transposition, or the substitution, comes in. They are saying that ‘woke’ is a racial slur, ‘woke’ is used in lieu of the n-word, which cannot be used in polite company. What are they trying to do here? Well, as we’ve seen often with many words that start of the Left and then get degraded as they become popular and people understand actually what they mean, they’re trying to play it both ways. And what they’re really trying to do is prohibit any word for left-wing racialism They’re saying: ‘We have an ideology, but you can’t call it ‘woke.’ They’re trying to poison the idea with an association with a horrible slur the n-word—which, again, shouldn’t be used in public by anyone—and attempting to say that these are substitute words, and therefore, they are taking the word ‘woke’ off the table. They’re creating a taboo.”
My response: Note that the Left does not debate the merit of the two signifiers for the word woke or anything else. They just seek to end debate and deprive critics of woke, a useful, productive word that accurately captures and identifies for opposing the racialist ideology of the Left. If woke can be identified as a dog whistle for the n-word, then the debate ends, and they win, and they continue with the Marxist revolution of racialist attacks on the West, and conservatives are deprived of terms to identify the attack, let alone explain it to the masses, so we can organize and halt them in their tracks, but Rufo knows their game and he will not let their attempt to blur the lines between woke and the n-word succeed.
Rufo: “This is not just the word ‘woke,’ of course. We can’t say ‘race Marxism,’ which is supposedly a theory of red-baiting. We can’t call it ‘critical race theory,’ because, as we started to use that term—accurately—they said that critical race theory doesn’t exist. So we can’t use that as a signifier for their ideology, either. And so, what are we left with? We’re left with an ideology without a name. You’re left with a philosophy without a signifier. And it’s gotten to the point where even a left-wing commentator such as Freddie DeBoer writes an article with the title, ‘Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand.’ There is a frustration, a sense that everyone knows something is happening—we see the phenomenon, we see the signified, we want to have a shared meaning we want to have a shared sign that we can start to grapple with—but they’re refusing to allow us to call it anything.”
My response: those that shut down debate by playing word and language games are inherently bad people of bad faith out to do evil to society, but they want to win, so if they can keep their opponents from identifying and labeling them, they hope to get the revolution finalized before the opposition can get organized, and powerful enough to thwart them. We must not let them control words or language, or tell us how to think, how to categorize them and how to fight back so we can win and stop these radicals.
Rufo: “The step is to extend this concept to other parts of language. When you extend social taboos when you deploy an atomic bomb of racial epithets such as the n-word, and you try to associate it with other words, it can be very powerful. And so, after this initial idea of Tour’e, Damon Young at the Washington Post tries to extend this and conquer different words that should no longer be used.
In a piece titled, ‘Woke is now a dog whistle for Black. What’s next?,’ Young says explicitly that he want to take many other words and categorize them as a dog whistle for black and, by extension, a dog whistle for the n-word. What does this include? Terms like ‘urban,’ ‘inner city,’ ‘at-risk,’ ‘undeserved,’ ‘low-income,’ ‘Chicago,’ even if, of course, we know that Chicago exists. Chicago is a real thing. Chicago is a city in the Midwest. It has its own seal, it has its own government. No one can deny that Chicago exists, but they’re saying that if a conservative says ‘Chicago,’ he is using ‘Chicago’ as a substitute for the n-word.
This is a form of linguistic nominalism—they’re denying the existence of abstract categories like ‘woke’—but it also goes further. They’re giving a sense of magical power, of magical properties, to language, They’re saying, ‘If you name something, it becomes a reality. And conversely ‘If you prevent the act of naming something, the underlying concept doesn’t exist at all.’ And they would love a world in which they can operate ideologically, using their own terms within their own community and then make all of those terms disappear as soon as it exits from their own group, as soon as they might be used as a form of criticism.
And so, by arguing that ‘woke’ is a dog whistle for the n-word, they’re creating a technique that can be applied to any critique of their ideology at all. They can vacuum in any potential signifiers that could be used to construct a critique—even their own words, even their own direct phrases, even if you quote them verbatim—to say, ‘We’re going to pass this through this great mechanism to create what would be a universal n-word. They can turn any descriptor into a taboo. That’s the linguistic machine they are trying to build. And let’s be clear, once again: the n-word has an ugly history. It should be a taboo. But what they’re doing is hijacking the moral sentiment and moral outrage around the n-word and applying it indiscriminately to legitimate ciritiques of their ideology and seeking to turn normal discourse into a forbidden discourse.”
My response: Dennis Prager insists that we seek clarity of speech and ideas above all else, so we can discover what is true and how to act. Leftists play these word games to hide their plot to overthrow Westernism and Americanism. Prager also notes that those that censor and prevent opposition from speaking are the ones that are lying. I think Rufo would buy all of this, as he describes how they seek to delegitimatize every descriptor the conservatives come up with to characterize Leftist machinations and schemes—they denounce them as dog whistles the universal taboo is the n-word, and debating their linguistic hegemony is attacked as racist. One can see how academics would fold under these withering accusations.
Rufo: “They’re devaluing the rightful taboo on the n-word and conflating it with a whole series of normal terms. In practice, they are destroying a well-deserved moral agreement. Virtually no one in the United States thinks that using the full form of the n-word is okay. This is good. This is a form of progress. We all agree on this, but they’re consciously degrading it, much in the same way that they degraded words such as ‘racist,’ ‘white supremacist,’ and ’fascist.’ And this movement toward creating a ‘universal n-word’ is the end of the line. It is the most taboo word in the English language, certainly in the American context. And they’ve used up the power surrounding the other words—‘racist,’ ‘white supremacist,’ ‘fascist’—and this really is the final word.
What are they actually trying to do with the dog whistle maneuver and the universalization of the n-word? The ultimate goal is speech suppression.”
My response: With the cultural Marxists, totalitarian, absolute control of everyone in America by the federal government was all that they have ever been about, and complete suppression of free speech goes a long way to meet that aim.
Their language games are meant to obfuscate and distract their opponents in the cultural and political wars so that the Left can gain ultimate power without effective opposition being able to be mustered against them in time to stop them.
Euphemisms and punishing hate speech and politically incorrect speech are two of their favor linguistic means of attacking and taking down dissident.
On Page 186 of his book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucalt, Stephen Hicks writes this under a section titled Machiavellian postmodernism: “So let us try the second option, that postmodernism is first about politics, and only secondly about relativistic epistemology. Frederic Jameson’s oft-quoted line—‘everything is ‘in the last analysis’ political’ should then be given a strongly Machiavellian twist as a statement to use any weapon—rhetorical, epistemological, political—to achieve political ends. Then, strikingly, postmodernism turns out not to relativistic at all. Relativism (Ed Note: Linguistic or rhetorical relativism, as identified here by Hicks, is what Rufo is warning about in this article.) becomes part of a rhetorical political strategy, some Machiavellian realpolitik employed to throw the opposition off track. (Ed Note: To dazzle or blind the opposition with bullshit.)
On this hypothesis, postmodernists need not believe much of what they say. The word games and much of the anger and rage that are characteristic of much of their style can be a matter—not using words to state things that they think are true—but rather using words as weapons against an enemy that they still hope to destroy.
Here it is useful to recall Derrida: ‘deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.”
It is obvious that Hicks, who wrote the first draft of his book back in 1999, was well aware that postmodernism was not the core belief of cultural Marxists, that their epistemology, their rhetoric, their linguistic sleight-of-hand were but tools or weapons to advance their political agenda, the conversion of all America to accepting and living under their socialist utopia.
Now Rufo is eloquently pointing out the same use of language for political gain by Leftists, 24 years later.
Rufo: “If you look at the critical race theorist and a book called Words That Wound, they directly make the case for curtailing the freedoms of the First Amendment and making ‘harmful’ speech illegal, punishable by law. And if you read another book by the critical race theorists, Key Writings That Framed The Movement, they ask the question, what should be the standard of something that is ‘offensive’ or ‘harmful’ speech? And they say very clearly, if a person of color, or, in the specific illustration, if a black woman is offended, then the speech is by definition offensive—a total subjective notion that takes into account ‘positionality.’
Of course this is rife for abuse. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that if the standard is, ‘I am offended, therefore this language is racist,’ and racist language is illegal, you can see the categorization of language extending further and further, and you can see that the point of control of language is only the departure point for the eventual destination of control of law as a whole. And even if this seems somewhat ridiculous or implausible now, we’ve seen incursions into freedom of speech accelerate over the past five to ten years, to the point where things that seemed ridiculous five years ago are not the status quo. And so, you should watch this process over time to see how it is operationalized.”
My response: Jordan Peterson has warned for years that he accepted no speech restrictions from his Canadian free speech from 2016 onward because he was oracular in detecting the sinister aim of those that censored free speech, from the beginning, in the name of preventing an outlawing free speech deemed to be hate speech, was totalitarian censorship by federal governments of free speech and free thought.
He sensed that they started out with the need to socially and professionally at work to speak with political correctness, and now governments are outlawing free speech—they deprive us of our free speech, incrementally, as they are doing with our gun rights, and our culture by the long march through the institutions that Rufo ably drew attention to in is recent book: in about 8 to ten years, a Leftist dictatorship of the UniParty in America will outlaw free speech, confiscate our guns, and confiscate the remnants of our culture.
We have to fight the cultural Marxists hard, today full bore to save our nation from their take over, if it is not already too late.
Rufo: “But there is an upside too. By trying to forbid even naming their ideology, the Left has made a tacit, or implicit, admission or weakness. They don’t want to defend their ideology on its merits. They don’t want to defend their political movement out in the open. They want to hide it. They want to shame people. They want to shut down open discourse because they know that their ideology is fundamentally weak and would have little public support if it were subject to rational debate. And so, we have to oppose this without reservation. We have to attack this head-on. We have to be fearless. We can’t submit to these incursions on language, even when they are trying to use highly-charged words that are really dangerous to even discuss in public. We have to know that we are on the moral high ground. We are on the political high ground. We are on the linguistic high ground. And we’re not scared to talk about these things directly, to subject them to rational critique.
We have to tell people such as Tour’e and Damon Young that we’re not afraid to have this debate. We’re not going to let you degrade the meaning of these words, and we’re not going to let you turn them into cheap political weapons to advance your ideology that has nothing to offer for anyone of any racial background. We know what ‘woke’ means. We know the ideology it represents. And we’re going to fight it with everything we have.”
My response: I like Rufo, for he is very, very smart, sensible, and principled. He knows Leftists are the enemy of America. He understands and translate flawlessly their doublespeak. He knows their presuppositions. He knows where they are coming from and where they hope to go. If he can disabuse the public of being flummoxed and overawed by their linguistic tricks and gymnastics, he can tell us what they are saying, and how to thwart their diabolical plans.
It could be if conservatives understood that the Divine Couple and the good deities were Individualists that love near pure free speech and independent thinking as sacred, inviolable, and not to be touched by governments on any level, that we would love free speech and free thought, to the point that we will take up arm and fight to the death to preserve them.
Then we will have progressed a long way towards knowing how precious and rare publicly and privately expressed free speech and free thought are, and how recent and uncommon it is in human history that people are allowed real and extended liberty to live, speak and think as they will. That is America’s cultural, constitutional, legal, and political gift to its people and to the world. America is still the New Jerusalem on the hill, and its light must not be extinguished by hating, hateful ideologues of any stripe.
If the public comes to know what is at stake, and what is required by armed organized, alert Americans to defend against Leftist incursion, then we have gone a long way practically towards protecting America, and her foundational freedoms that come from God.
We must devise a plan of defense right how to respond to Marxists attempts to deprive us legally of free speech and free thought, and they know how we will unitedly, quickly, and firmly resist them if they declare martial law during some cooked-up Covid-type national emergency, and outlaw free speech and free thought.
We are telling them publicly and in advance: Keep your damned totalitarian, grubby hands off our guns, our constitution, our Modern, Western culture, our Judeo-Christian faith, our American constitutional republic and its cherished traditions, our free speech and free thought, our lives, our property and our pursuit of happiness. We mean it and we will back up our words, if need be, with resolute action.
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