The Opposite of Woke is...Despotism

There is a purpose beyond prejudice to the MAGA assault on DEI and free speech

The war on diversity, equity and inclusion is founded in racism, misogyny and other forms of intolerance. For those reasons alone, it is repulsive. But it is part of a bigger and even more dangerous Trump-Musk-MAGA initiatives.

The opposite of woke is asleep. And that is what Trump and MAGA want the American people to be. Asleep. Unconscious. Oblivious to the crimes, corruption, abuses, betrayals, and traitorousness of their regime. They know the only way they can wield power is in a brain dead America. It's their number one goal.

That is because the foundation of democracy is not voting, essential as it is. It is an informed citizenry. That is why one of the paramount jobs of autocrats is to attack education, free thought, ideas, speech, knowledge and facts themselves.

Hitler did it. Stalin did it. Mao did it. Putin does it. Orban does it. And that is just what Trump, Musk and MAGA are doing. Everywhere you look.

As pernicious as declaring DEI out of bounds for any federal agency or any public or private entity seeking to do business with the federal government is on its face—because, after all, it is an assault on compassion, decency, and tolerance—it is worse because it is part of the effort to outlaw or penalize ways of thinking, ways of seeing the world that do not conform with the thinking of the small group that has seized the reins of our society.

And it is worse still because that in turn is part of a broader effort— the effort, to quote Orwell, “to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears” and effort referred to in “1984” as the ruling party’s “final, most essential command.”

Attacking DEI first was a strategic move, designed to feed the baser impulses of the MAGA base and to send a message that puts them in lock step with Putinist, right-wing, ethno-nationalist movements worldwide. But it was clearly a first move.

Through sweeping actions via executive order, the diktats of DOGE, and the action of Trump cabinet members and loyalists, a clear message was sent that there would be severe penalties for any program or initiative that sought to treat races or women or LGBTQ+ people in America as if they were equal, to remedy injustices, to celebrate the benefits of being a richly multifaceted society. Withholding federal funding from schools or other entities that promoted the heresy that all people “were created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” is one potent tool they have used—despite their application of the tool has often been illegal (in addition to being immoral.) Shutting government departments, agencies and bureaus for the same reason, firing employees working on these issues, and launching a mass program of censorship across the government to scrub away any references to actually seeking to live up to the evolving best aspirations of our society has also made their point powerfully.

(Of course, such efforts have not just carried with them the chill of incipient authoritarianism. They have also, periodically, been ridiculous such as the recent revelation that among the nearly 30,000 posts and photos marked for deletion from Pentagon websites were not just references to trail blazers and heroes who happened to be non-white, female, gay or transgender but also to choose one idiotic example, photos of the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima because it was called the “Enola Gay.”)

But it is clear that these actions are just the tip of the iceberg. Recently, we have seen members of the press excluded from access to the President or White House events because they have failed to buy in to outright lies like Trump’s assertion that the Gulf of Mexico should henceforth be referred to (international laws and norms and history itself notwithstanding) as the “Gulf of America.” Others have been blocked from their traditional access because of other differences with the administration while those who kowtow to the President or Musk are given preferential treatment.

More recently a law firm was targeted by the president—stripped of access to government buildings and its employees stripped of security clearances—because it was once involved in representing Hillary Clinton. Former government officials who were critical of Trump have been denied security clearances as well.

The Trumpist US Attorney in Washington, DC, Ed Martin, has threatened legal action against people like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez for daring to provide citizens with information about their legal rights in the face of the administration’s anti-immigrant push. In addition, he targeted Georgetown University Law School in a letter saying they would be investigated and punished for promoting DEI activities or ideas. (The Dean of Georgetown Law responded with a sharp letter detailing how profoundly dangerous and deeply illegal the Martin threats were.)

Most recently, the administration asserted it would withhold $400 million in grants and other forms of funding from Columbia University ostensibly because Columbia did not deal with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests during the course of the on-going conflict (and brutal slaughter) in Gaza. (The response of the acting president of Columbia to this was in every way inferior to the Georgetown Law dean’s. It essentially bent the knee to Trump with a long-winded “sorry, dear King, we won’t do this again…have mercy, Your Highness.”)

But taking all these examples together you see a broader pattern—one that will soon illustrate the dangerous folly of the Columbia president’s response and indeed, the profoundly wrong-headed alliance that was created between establishment pro-Israel groups and MAGAworld. Because none of this is about just “anti-Semitism” or DEI or supporting Hillary or criticizing Trump. It is about all those things with actions against each that go unchecked or produced the desired chilling effect on open discourse and freedom of thought strengthening the authoritarian powers and ambitions of Trump and his followers.

Being Anti-Truth is Being Anti-American is Being Anti-Democracy

Truth is the enemy of injustice. The only reason leaders or a movement actively oppose truth—whether in the form of words, ideas, free speech, history, or education—it is because they seek to promote and institutionalize injustice—whether in economic, political, or social form.

This administration, for those reasons is not just anti-DEI or targeting specific political opponents. It is anti-science. It is anti-history. It is anti-mathematics (for example in the case of anti-economic and statistical truth). It is anti-civics. It is anti- fact. It is anti education.

Indeed, as much as it is pro greed or pro power or pro racism or pro misogyny or pro Russia, this administration is the most openly pro ignorance, anti knowledge in our history. That is why funding for private universities will increasingly be withheld on the basis of differing pretexts. It is why Trump seeks to close the Department of Education. It is why statistical agencies are being shut down. It is why law enforcement agencies that might find facts that could be damaging to the administration or its allies in Moscow are being closed or unfunded. It is why funding for scientific research and departments that could challenge administration propaganda about vaccines or the climate crisis are being shuttered.

McCarthyism is was bad. The Know Nothings of the 18th Century were nativist and prejudiced against Catholics. Governments have had occasion during wars to censor certain kinds of communication deemed helpful to our enemies. But we have never seen anything like this. Not in terms of scope. Not in terms of intention.

We’ve Never Seen Anything Like What is Happening Now

This is a sweeping effort to end free-speech and academic freedom and the diversity of thought because they are a threat to those in power, because they are obstacles to those in power remaining so.

This is authoritarianism. It is despotism. It is laying the foundations for dictatorship. And I guarantee you that it will get worse, be made worse by efforts to paper it over or go along with it. And all of you who may say “he is over-reacting” need to know that what you are saying is serving their goal.

Minimizing what is being done is ensuring it will get worse in the future. Compliance is complicity.

But within this reality also lies the answer. They fear truth and facts because that is the antidote to their ambitions.

Standing up and speaking the truth is the one proven way to fight these wannabe autocrats. Rejecting their illegal initiatives and defending the principles on which the nation was founded or those that evolved to be among our stars to steer by over the course of our history is essential. We must do so regardless of the consequences for us or our organizations. Because each time we do not we make it certain that the number of victims of their anti-truth revolution will increase.

But all that begins with recognizing that we are in waters that are largely uncharted for Americans—but that are all too familiar to the victims of past and current despots.

We must acknowledge we have never before seen a similar threat so great here.

And we must accept that if we fail to defeat these efforts and we lose our freedom to speak, to write, to assemble, to protest, to manifest our will as citizens and to do so in a way that is not only informed by reality but that champions understanding, intelligence and wisdom in the face of those who promote ignorance and reject facts, then it will be the end of this country as we have known it.