"Cultural Marxism is a made-up term, and 'woke' is racist!"

This thread comes from the Wokal DIstance Twitter account.

You may have heard or read variations of the following scolding language:

— Don't call it "woke" that's racist
— Don't call it "Critical Social Justice," that term is made up
— Don't call it "Critical Race Theory," that's incorrect

Here are some samples:

They clearly don't want facets of their perverse ideology to have a name. Let's talk about why.

The people who say terms like "Critical Social justice," and "woke," are pejorative, made up, meaningless, or substitutes for the N-word, are playing a rhetorical and linguistic game in order to undercut and subvert your ability to criticize their ideas.  Here's how it works.

I'm going to explain this using zebras as an analogy.  Trust me, this will explain it perfectly.

Many animals have fur, feathers, skin or skin that matches the color of their environment. This acts like camouflage so they can blend in and hide.

Zebras are different. They're covered in black and white stripes even though the environment they live in is mostly brown and green. If you see a zebra by itself, it's very easy to see. It's like they have a neon sign over them saying "lions, please eat me".

But the zebras' stripes don't help them blend into the environment... they help it blend into the herd. Zebra camouflage works by making zebras blend with the herd so that lions can't focus on any one zebra and target it.  All zebras look alike and all blend into the herd.

If lions can't pick a target, the zebras are safe.  This strategy keeps the zebras alive.

How do we know this, by the way?  Almost by accident.  Scientists discovered this as they studied zebras and got confused about which zebra was which. They tried to "fix" this problem they had by tagging a zebra with red paint so they could tell it apart from the others.

Guess what happened?

The lions killed the tagged zebra!  A tagged zebra stands out from the herd so lions can tell it apart and focus the hunt on it.  Turns out the lions don't so much catch weak zebras — they catch the identifiable zebras they can focus on.  Single zebra = dead meat.  A herd of zebras seamlessly blending into an unidentifiable whole is a much harder task.

This is a great analogy for the game the woke are playing — their constant attacks on any and every term you use to try to name their ideology.

You can't criticize something you can't focus on.   But once a worldview can be named, labelled and defined, it can then be pointed out, highlighted, and subjected to criticism.   We fundamentally label things and name them in order to help us "tag" them, so we can point them out and focus on them.  Once in focus, you can highlight it, point it out, examine, and critique it.

The woke like to say criticisms of their ideas are not legitimate — they deceitfully say it's just an attempt to "protect our ideology so we can hold on to power and privilege."  Despite that, the woke know that most of the public accepts valid criticisms founded on logic, reason and evidence.  Woke ideas really can't withstand proper rational and logical analysis.  The lions of reason: evidence, logic, rationality, etc, will eat the zebras of wokeness, CRT, and Critical Social Justice for lunch... if and only if the lions of reason can focus on and identify the woke zebras.

That is the exactly ability that the woke want to sabotage.  They want to make their ideology, their worldview, impossible to focus on, and therefore impervious to critique.  The woke are trying desperately to destroy all of our linguistic "tags." They know once we tag them we will be able to examine their idea, criticize them, and communicate those criticism effectively.    The woke don't want anyone to be able to give a name or label to their ideology because, if that happens, we can "tag" examples their ideology with a label when we see it.  And once it's in focus, it truly is game over for the poor woke zebra.   So, to avoid getting eaten by the lions of reason, the woke want to mix their ideology into society and have it blend in so well, it becomes just another taken-for-granted part of the social fabric.  They don't want wokeness to be, seen, pointed out, highlighted, or (in woke parlance) "made visible."

To remain impervious, their ideology must remain hidden.  They want to hide their worldview by making it impossible to focus on and impossible to tag, label, or name. so they can throw out plausible misdirections such as "we are just doing history" or "just discussing gender," and blend in as though they fit right alongside reason, evidence, logic, and rationality.  They want to act like all the bits of woke activism we see are unconnected phenomena spontaneously springing forth in the name of justice in an undefinable way... when in fact woke activism is the fruit of a well thought out and clearly defined academic ideology/worldview.  If they must go to extreme lengths like deleting evidence from the Internet to continue their camouflage, they'll do exactly that.

If you can't discuss their ideas, their ideas are safe.  This is the strategy the woke zebras use to stay alive.

Using labels like "woke," "CRT," AND "Critical Social Justice," allows us to tag woke ideas so we can hold them up to the light and examine them. It also lets us point out wokeness to other people so they can see it too, and reject it.  This is why they are so desperate to discredit any word, term, or phrase we use to names, label, point out, or highlight the woke ideology.

Do not let them do this. Do not let them play games and use linguistic and rhetorical sleight of hand to hide their worldview.  Label, name, highlight, and point out their ideas.  Label fairly.  Use labels from their literature.  But label those woke ideas and then subject those woke ideas to the bright light of rigorous criticism and analysis.

The Rectification of Names is good and necessary.