A mob of LGBT allies will make your life a living hell if you don't pledge total fealty, so yes, they are fundamentalists and zealots of their own little religion.
Sure it is, and no where did I do such a thing. I merely pointed out the mob attacks that occur when you don't put the pride flag above everything else.
Third party PR firms in particular to bring in more cash and expand their business at the expense of everyone's sanity and the shareholders' financial health.
I find this take ridiculous. This is the liberal equivalent of “no systemic racism”. What would you call it when a significant portion of your company believes in woke values and promotes some of these individuals into influential roles where they have power to pressure people? I’m sure their influence on product always rationally optimizes shareholder value and is not influenced by their beliefs.
This is an almost-true fallacy levied against all ostensibly benevolent corporate behavior, not just "woke"ness. The theory is that, since profit is supreme, they must engage in benevolence only when it directly or indirectly increases profits (usually via the long-term game of public image).
However, it's a fallacy because those making these decisions are not "corporations", but, in fact, humans, and many of them (optimistically, most of them) are not sociopathic monsters, and therefore like the idea of engaging in benevolence. (You can make an argument that all benevolence is merely atavistic tribe/family-protection behavior on a long enough timeline, and that's another topic, but it is a good analogy for the "true benevolence" vs "false benevolence" theory of corporate behavior). All desires inescapably inform decisions to some extent, no matter how shrewd a person is - therefore, genuine benevolence plays a part in corporate benevolence. It's unrealistically pessimistic to assume all corporate benevolence is purely false, and it seems like that accusation is frequently used to make shallow arguments about social politics.
Alternatively, there is such a thing as a woke corporation, and there is such a thing as an anti gay corporation, and they might even be the same corporation at different points in space and\or time.
Wokism is a dominant religion (not demographically) in the US, therefore corporations there pray to wokism and observe its rituals. Anti gay islam is a dominant religion in the Middle East, therefore corporations there will do the same things they do to wokism elsewhere, if grudgingly.
This is quite different than what the employees of a corporation might think, which will depend on the cultural milieu they were raised in. The corporation itself, however, is an emergent non-human intelligence, and it tends to abhor non-profit-related conflicts.
Genuine question: what is the definition of 'woke' (in the context of how you're using it)?
Dictionary tells me it is "alert to injustice in society, especially racism". But the vast majority of time I see someone talk about 'wokeness' or 'woke culture', they use the word in a derogatory manner.
So I'm guessing the 'woke' mentioned is not "being alert to injustice" (as it is a pretty reasonable stance to be alert to injustices). In your case, you go as far as to call it a religion. Is being alert to injustice really a religion in your view? Or, how are you defining 'woke' and 'wokism'?
Earlier, 'woke' described a person who is alert to injustice, but now it describes a person who wants everyone to know that they are alert to injustice.
The dictionary definition is correct, but most people who use it online use it as a generic slur against leftists and progressives. As you can observe, actual good-faith academic usage of the term is all but nonexistent outside of progressive circles.
Tough question, it's always hard to be honest about one's definitions. I will try to formalize wokism in a way that will make it clear why I despise it to people who see nothing obviously wrong with it apriori.
- It's an ideology characterized by outsized obsession with and the veneration of a few identities, chief among which are women, queers, and varying subsets of non-white ethnic groups.
- It's an ideology characterized by outsized hatred\bias\dismissal against the "opposite" of the above venerated groups, namely straights and\or whites and\or men, among others.
- It's an ideology that is utterly convinced of the morality of every single one of its positions, and sees 0 utility in debating, compromising with, co-existing, or even ignoring in peace any of its myriad opponents.
- It's an ideology that is uniformly in power across Western (== USA, Canada, Australia, and north-western Europe until the border defined by Russia, Poland, Hungary and the Balkans) institutions, chief among which are media, PR/HR departments of any corporation, law, secular universities, non profit organizations and think tanks, any left of center political organization, and, of course, mainstream social media.
Solve this system of constraints to whatever degree of accuracy you desire, and whatever the solver spits out is a wokism.
As to why someone would hate wokism, several reasons.
- They belong to a group mentioned in #2, or adjacent\similar to one.
- #3 makes sure that any single opposition or push back to wokism is a declaration of war against all of wokism. For instance, I'm atheist, vegetarian, non-white, left-leaning on economic matters, and very moderately progressive (== A lot of tradition is stupid, but we don't know which, and so one must be always very careful overriding it) on social matters. All of this isn't enough to offset the fact that I'm a straight man who is pro free speech.
- #4 makes wokism pattern-match to patterns that describe other authoritarian ideologies. Wokism is extremely similar in rhetoric and actions to religious fundamentalists in my country for example (which is why I call them a religion, they tick all the boxes except having a prophet, a god, and a path to forgiveness), other people who witnessed communist dictatorships often compare wokism to one. Regardless of whether those comparisons are in fact valid, wokism reminds (and promises) some of its opponents of much uglier things.
>Dictionary tells me it is "alert to injustice in society, especially racism"
Dictionary was right till about 2018-2019. The word 'Woke' dates back to the 1930s, originally meaning literal awareness and coined in AAVE, as in "Those cops appear to be looking for trouble, stay woke". By the 1960s the term refered to more abstract awareness of cultural\political matters, and by the 2000s the term reached wider English usage and had primarily positive connotations. See Wikipedia and linguist John McWhorter for more details about the history of the word.
The negative connotations of the word appears to have started roughly in early to mid 2020, replacing 'SJWs' or 'Social Justice Warriors' (itself an originally positive term, originally coined by the ideology itself and later used as an insult by roughly 2013-2014). Now it's the dominant word used to refer to the ideology described above and its adherents.
The relation to 'social justice warriors' (and the negative connotation attached to that phrase) makes it more clear what you were referring to, and now I can better understand your initial comment.
You literally explained what a woke corporation is, while simultaneously denying its existence.