Former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras took issue with woke culture – once again – in his speech to the Parliament yesterday, arguing that both he and those who disagree with the marriage of same-sex couples are being bullied.
“There were also related “tutorials” in fact. Where, among other things, it was said that we should vote for this bill because “we belong to the West”, he says”, said Mr. Samaras and in his well-known style added:
“Because I fought to ‘belong to the West’ – and I paid for it a few years ago – to tell you that we should not confuse the West with its pathogens. In the West there are also countries that rejected it. Just as there are countries that are rethinking it.”
The former prime minister continued: “In the West, precisely because it is a place of Freedom, various things are voted on and some are revised afterwards. Many flowers bloom and many thorns. In some Western countries, the woke culture dominates, the culture of deconstructing everything. Which is already causing major upheavals everywhere and trends for revision. Are you sure you want us to imitate everything that some Western countries vote for?”
He also argued that: “Being in the West does not mean I ape every trend, every fad that comes our way.”
Eurokinissi
What is wokism?
Woke is an adjective derived from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning “awake to racial prejudice and discrimination.” Beginning in the 2010s, it came to include a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and the denial of LGBT rights.
According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the adjective woke is mainly used in American slang and means one who is aware of and actively interested in important events and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice). Merriam Webster reports that the first appearance of woke in this meaning was in 1972. But most likely, the roots and origins of woke go back many years.
The Urban Dictionary, meanwhile, explains that “to be awake (woke) means to be aware… to be aware of what is happening in the community (related to racism and social injustice).” The bottom line is that once one has been awakened, one cannot easily “go back to sleep.” In other words, to act as if he doesn’t know. Casually. It became synonymous with “socially conscious”.
However, according to a report in abcnews the term has recently been used by some conservatives as an umbrella term for progressive values, often using it with negative connotations.
The culture of “woke” and vigilance against prejudices and stereotypes – The objections
The term was originally coined by progressive Black Americans and was used in racial justice movements in the early to mid-1900s. To be politically “woke” in the Black community is to be informed, educated, and aware of social injustice and racial inequality, states the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
As it states provocateur for years “woke” was widely used as slang by African-American communities. Then, in 2008, singer Erykah Badu brought it back into the public consciousness when she used “I stay woke” in her song Master Teacher. The hashtag #staywoke was first used on Twitter in 2009, as a catchphrase recognizing that the political system is not fair.
As the article points out, privileged middle-class whites around the world call themselves “woke” because they occasionally write statuses speaking as members of minorities, not because they’re trying to make any concrete effort to change the racist status quo. In 2022, anti-woke became an ideology in itself, an attempt by the right to rebrand bigotry as a resistance movement. The movement found a leader in DeSantis (the Republican governor of Florida). Tucker Carlson, Fox News’ most famous anti-woke host, informed his audience that everything from Black Lives Matter to brown M&Ms are purveyors of evil wokeism. In fact, even Elon Musk hates the culture of awakening.
On the contrary, there are those who have objections arguing that Wookism is the “culture of -supposedly-awakening” which supports the emerging New Order, while its real agendas are presented under the cloak of progressivity, tolerance, human rights, of emancipation and other such otherwise noble ideals. Essentially, it cultivates a beautified fanaticism that, like a Trojan Horse to the woke culture, threatens to dissolve everything that holds societies together, sowing confusion, paranoia, division and polarization.
During this last phase of its ideological content, many objections have been expressed not only from the right, but also from the left (as well as from a republican center-right). The objections from the left, above all, touch on the fact that Wokism has now become a dominant ideology, as it is appropriated by neoliberal ideology in order to shift the debate from political, social and economic changes, concerning labor issues, towards issues of individual social groups and their progress within the capitalist system.
Many have gone so far as to speak of the “new totalitarianism” of Wokism due to the fact that very often Wokism becomes an identity element of the West versus other cultures of the present or of late modernity versus outmoded periods and as such becomes a new paradox ” discrimination” against people with a different worldview, even reaching “cancellations”, which constitute a new witch hunt.
In fact, as noted in the book “WOKE: the Catholic deconstruction: nation – gender – race”, “the movement of the woke – “awakened” – expresses a messianism and a fanatical adherence to orthopolitical orthodoxy that refers to the darkest moments of totalitarian regimes without no distinction between the positive and negative elements of European culture’.