Did ideology of wokeness infect Israel and how the Israeli public views it?
Did ideology of wokeness infected Israel and how Israeli public views it?
The wokeness movement overtook the social, political and economic spheres of existence in United States, Canada, UK and other countries of liberal democracy from 1980s. The ideology of wokeness is dividing people into oppressed and oppressors, denying the heritage and true history of countries and introducing cultural relativism which leads to appearance of millions of confused people who lost the ability to build something new and useful but can only reject and critic everything. There is a link between the ideology of wokeness and extreme progressive liberalism of present day.
The origins of liberalism and its extreme expression wokeness.
The origins of liberalism and its extreme expression wokeness are going back to the Age of Enlightenment. Enlightenment sought to abolish the hereditary privilege, state religion and absolute monarchy and was propagating the ideas of religious tolerance, natural rights, reason, separation of church and state, individual liberties and application of empirical knowledge.
All branches of liberalism, Classical, Modern, Social and Neoliberalism, by stressing individual liberty, religious tolerance and separation of church and state, are promoting secularism. The secular worldview on family, marriage, childbearing has changed dramatically from the traditional pre-liberalism mindset: the marriage is not considered now as a religious male-female obligation, it’s viewed as a mutually rewarding partnership between consenting adults, with legal recognition of the same-sex marriage. Secularism has given the couples more autonomy in childbearing, leading to increase in childless families. Religious belief in having large families was shattered by the changes to the traditional gender roles-the female partner is working now and delaying childbearing.
This contradicts with the views of Edmund Burke (1729-1797), an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher and politician and the father of modern conservatism, who viewed religion as a cornerstone of civil society, traditional family, marriage, morality and ethics.
The ‘Cut Flowers Thesis’ is a metaphor comparing the denial by liberalism the religion’s roots of society’s morals and ethics with uprooted flowers. The thesis is conveyed by present day social scientists like Glen C. Grager, Os Guinness and Denis Prager. The essence of it was clearly stated by great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy as far back in time as in 1894: “The attempts to found a morality apart from religion are like the attempts of children who, wishing to transplant a flower that pleases them, pluck it from the roots that seem to them unpleasing and superfluous, and stuck it rootless into the ground. Without religion there can be no real, sincere morality, just as without roots there can be no real flower”.
In a post on X, a French intellectual Brivael Le Pogam, attributes the origins of wokeness to the works and theories of his countrymen, contemporary French philosophers: Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Giles Deleuze. American progressive social scientists such as Edward Said, Judith Butler and Kimberle Crenshaw were using the French philosophers’ writings to address their social, political and cultural grievances and create instruments to propagate these venomous ideas into the minds of the youth.
Patrick J. Deneen in his book ‘How Liberalism Failed’ does not see the deformation of classical liberalism into social and modern varieties as a revolution but as a gradual colonization of existing language and existing institutions with progressive ideas. He compares it to a parasite destroying the old tradition.
It was not only one factor leading to appearance of wokeness but a combination of various influences. Secularism robbed the religious roots of traditional family, morality and ethics. Gradual colonization of the classical liberalism with the parasitic progressive ideas created a barrier for public to recognize this drastic transformation of liberalism. The distorted application of the theories of French philosophers by American progressive social scientists such as Edward Said, Judith Butler and Kimberle Crenshaw, are examples of social and cultural opportunism to justify their antisocial and abnormal cultural and social grievances. Amalgamation of all above factors led to the emergence of wokeness.
Did ideology of wokeness infected Israel and how Israeli public views it?
The article ‘Woke Movement in Israel, the UK, and the United States: A Comparable Analysis’ by Vincent James Hooper, depicts a unique approach by the Israelis to wokeness movement. Their worldview is shaped by the Jewish State geopolitical realities and national security concerns. The Israeli society is skeptical of wokeness, especially witnessing the biased reaction of the Western countries and, specifically on its university campuses, to the barbaric assault by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023. The author identified four areas forming the deniability approach by Israelis to wokeness: misrepresentation of Israeli reality, selective outrage, rise of antisemitism and digital activism and social media misinformation.
In the article ‘The U.S., Israel, and the Traditional family’ by Yehezkel (Gary) Schiff, the author emphasizes that the foundation of the Western civilization is a traditional family and provides data demonstrating the attack on the marriage and traditional family in the West. The birth rates in the countries of Western civilization are historically low which is caused by secularism-the outcome of ideology of liberalism. Gary Schiff says:” In Israel, even for a non-religious couple, getting married and raising kids is just ‘cool’”. The Jewish State’s high birth rate, which is averaging 3.0 children per woman, compared to 1.2 to 1.8 per couple in the countries of Western democracy, is a result of the country’s belief system and collective aim to build families to the benefit of all. We should not forget that Israelis are fighting on many fronts. It is surprising and admirable that the childbearing in Israel had increased during the last couple years, despite the pressure of Iran and its proxies to make the lives of Israelis miserable. The increase in fertility is a sign of the nation having an optimistic outlook on the future. All over Israel the communities have clinics, called Tipat Chalav, which main goal is to provide consultation and assistance to pregnant women and new mothers. The positive attitude of Israelis toward marriage and childbearing shows they do not accept wokeness.