“And fundamentally opposition to wokism is motivated by wanting to treat all people equally regardless of race or sex”
I think this true of a lot of public opposition to wokeism: plenty liberals, socialist and libertarians with very universalist cosmopolitan moral views find a lot of woke stuff annoying, plenty working class people of colour are not that woke on race, and lots of moderate conservatives believe in equality of this sort. Many people in all these groups genuinely express opposition to various woke ideas based on a genuine belief in colourblindness and its gender equivalent, and even if that sort of views is somehow mistaken it is very annoying and unfair when very woke people pretend that it is always just a mask for bigotry.
But it absolutely is not true of all opposition to woke stuff, or all but a tiny minority:
Some people are genuinely openly racist, sexist and homophobic, in the sense that they will admit to being these things. If you go and actually read the infamous “neoreactionnaries” you will find them very openly attacking the very idea of “equality”. They are a tiny group, but they do have the ear of some powerful people: definitely Peter Thiel, probably J.D. Vance (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-interview.html).
But in addition very many ordinary American Christians believe that men in some sense have authority/leadership over women, but would sincerely (and sometimes accurately) deny feeling hostile to women. For example the largest Protestant denomination in the United States is Southern Baptism, and here’s the NYT reporting on them making women even more banned from leadership with the organization than they already were, all of 2 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/us/southern-baptist-women-pastors-ouster.html There are 13 million Southern Baptists, which isn’t a huge share of the US population, but many other conservative Protestant denominations also forbid women to serve in leadership positions and there are a lot of conservative Protestants overall, and some Catholics, and officially the Catholic Church itself share this view. Of course, unlike the previous group, almost all of these people will claim that men and women in some sense have equal value. But almost all woke people who openly hate on white men will also claim to believe everyone has equal value, and develop elaborate theory about why their seemingly anti-white male views are actually totally compatible with that. If you don’t believe the latter, I wouldn’t believe this group either that men being “the head of the household” is somehow compatible with the good, proper kind of equality. (Note that it’s not primarily the sincerity of that belief I am skeptical of, just it’s accuracy.)
More generally, outgroup bias is a ubiquitous feature of human cognition. People can have various groups that wokeness presents itself as protecting as their outgroup, and because of outgroup bias some of those people will then oppose wokeness as a result of that bias. This is actually a pretty weak claim, compatible with the idea that woke or liberal people have equal or even greater levels of outgroup bias as conservatives. And it means that even a lot of people who sincerely claim to hold egalitarian views are motivated to oppose wokeness at least partially because of outgroup bias. (Just as some Americans liberals who are not white men and claim to be in some sense egalitarian in fact have dislike of white men as a significant motivation behind their political views: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534 There are obviously people like Jeong on the right. Not a random sample, but go on twitter and you’ll see dozens of them.)
Literally all of these factions/types of person on the right have reason to oppose wokeness that are not a preference for colourblindness and equality of opportunity (the last group may of course also genuinely be aggravated by open woke attacks on those things yes, it’s not an either or.) Since there are lots of these people, and they are generally interested enough in politics to care about wokeness in the first place, there is no reason whatsoever to think they are not well represented in the population of “people who oppose wokeness”. The idea that no one really opposes wokeness except because they believe in a particular centre-right version of colourblind equality of opportunity both fails to take account of what the offficial, publicly stated beliefs of many people on the right actually are, and also fails to apply very normal levels of everyday skepticism to the stated motivations of (other) anti-woke people who endorse colourblindness.
I appreciate that you have a pretty nuanced view here. Much of it I agree with, some of it I do not, but I don’t want to get into these weeds. I’m not sure how any of it undermines the point that wokism and opposition to foreign aid are basically orthogonal.
It’s relevant because if people’s opposition to woke is driven by racism or dislike of leftist-coded things or groups, that will currently also drive opposition to foreign aid, which is meant to help Black people and is broadly (centre) left coded*. (There are of course old-style Bush II type conservatives who both hate the left and like foreign aid, so this sort of polarization is not inevitable at the individual level, but it does happen.)
*Obviously there are lots of aid critics as you go further left who think it is just a instrument of US imperialism etc. And some centrists and centre-left people are aid critics too of course.
Again you are not making the connection, or maybe not seeing my basic point. Even if someone dislikes leftist-coded things, and this causes them both to oppose wokism and to oppose foreign aid, this still does not make opposition to foreign aid about anti-wokism. The original post suggested there was a causal arrow running between foreign aid and wokism, not that both have a causal arrow coming from the same source.
Having read it again, all I can see them saying about aid and wokeness is that aid is at risk of being perceived as woke. That’s not a claim about exactly how the causation works as far as I can tell.
“And fundamentally opposition to wokism is motivated by wanting to treat all people equally regardless of race or sex”
I think this true of a lot of public opposition to wokeism: plenty liberals, socialist and libertarians with very universalist cosmopolitan moral views find a lot of woke stuff annoying, plenty working class people of colour are not that woke on race, and lots of moderate conservatives believe in equality of this sort. Many people in all these groups genuinely express opposition to various woke ideas based on a genuine belief in colourblindness and its gender equivalent, and even if that sort of views is somehow mistaken it is very annoying and unfair when very woke people pretend that it is always just a mask for bigotry.
But it absolutely is not true of all opposition to woke stuff, or all but a tiny minority:
Some people are genuinely openly racist, sexist and homophobic, in the sense that they will admit to being these things. If you go and actually read the infamous “neoreactionnaries” you will find them very openly attacking the very idea of “equality”. They are a tiny group, but they do have the ear of some powerful people: definitely Peter Thiel, probably J.D. Vance (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-interview.html).
But in addition very many ordinary American Christians believe that men in some sense have authority/leadership over women, but would sincerely (and sometimes accurately) deny feeling hostile to women. For example the largest Protestant denomination in the United States is Southern Baptism, and here’s the NYT reporting on them making women even more banned from leadership with the organization than they already were, all of 2 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/us/southern-baptist-women-pastors-ouster.html There are 13 million Southern Baptists, which isn’t a huge share of the US population, but many other conservative Protestant denominations also forbid women to serve in leadership positions and there are a lot of conservative Protestants overall, and some Catholics, and officially the Catholic Church itself share this view. Of course, unlike the previous group, almost all of these people will claim that men and women in some sense have equal value. But almost all woke people who openly hate on white men will also claim to believe everyone has equal value, and develop elaborate theory about why their seemingly anti-white male views are actually totally compatible with that. If you don’t believe the latter, I wouldn’t believe this group either that men being “the head of the household” is somehow compatible with the good, proper kind of equality. (Note that it’s not primarily the sincerity of that belief I am skeptical of, just it’s accuracy.)
As for sexuality, around 29% of Americans still oppose same-sex marriage: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx Around a quarter think having gay sex/being gay is immoral: https://www.statista.com/statistics/225968/americans-moral-stance-towards-gay-or-lesbian-relations/
More generally, outgroup bias is a ubiquitous feature of human cognition. People can have various groups that wokeness presents itself as protecting as their outgroup, and because of outgroup bias some of those people will then oppose wokeness as a result of that bias. This is actually a pretty weak claim, compatible with the idea that woke or liberal people have equal or even greater levels of outgroup bias as conservatives. And it means that even a lot of people who sincerely claim to hold egalitarian views are motivated to oppose wokeness at least partially because of outgroup bias. (Just as some Americans liberals who are not white men and claim to be in some sense egalitarian in fact have dislike of white men as a significant motivation behind their political views: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534 There are obviously people like Jeong on the right. Not a random sample, but go on twitter and you’ll see dozens of them.)
Literally all of these factions/types of person on the right have reason to oppose wokeness that are not a preference for colourblindness and equality of opportunity (the last group may of course also genuinely be aggravated by open woke attacks on those things yes, it’s not an either or.) Since there are lots of these people, and they are generally interested enough in politics to care about wokeness in the first place, there is no reason whatsoever to think they are not well represented in the population of “people who oppose wokeness”. The idea that no one really opposes wokeness except because they believe in a particular centre-right version of colourblind equality of opportunity both fails to take account of what the offficial, publicly stated beliefs of many people on the right actually are, and also fails to apply very normal levels of everyday skepticism to the stated motivations of (other) anti-woke people who endorse colourblindness.
I appreciate that you have a pretty nuanced view here. Much of it I agree with, some of it I do not, but I don’t want to get into these weeds. I’m not sure how any of it undermines the point that wokism and opposition to foreign aid are basically orthogonal.
It’s relevant because if people’s opposition to woke is driven by racism or dislike of leftist-coded things or groups, that will currently also drive opposition to foreign aid, which is meant to help Black people and is broadly (centre) left coded*. (There are of course old-style Bush II type conservatives who both hate the left and like foreign aid, so this sort of polarization is not inevitable at the individual level, but it does happen.)
*Obviously there are lots of aid critics as you go further left who think it is just a instrument of US imperialism etc. And some centrists and centre-left people are aid critics too of course.
Again you are not making the connection, or maybe not seeing my basic point. Even if someone dislikes leftist-coded things, and this causes them both to oppose wokism and to oppose foreign aid, this still does not make opposition to foreign aid about anti-wokism. The original post suggested there was a causal arrow running between foreign aid and wokism, not that both have a causal arrow coming from the same source.
Having read it again, all I can see them saying about aid and wokeness is that aid is at risk of being perceived as woke. That’s not a claim about exactly how the causation works as far as I can tell.