Wokeism Is A Poster
A little over a year ago, I flew from San Francisco to New York to speak at a book event with John McWhorter. HarperCollins had just published San Fransicko, and Penguin had just published McWhorter’s Woke Racism. In both Apocalypse Never and San Fransicko, I argue that progressive politics has become a religion. In Woke Racism, McWhorter argues the same thing.
Detecting a pattern, I opened up my journal and wrote a set of religious categories across the top, including “Original Sin,” “Guilty Devils,” “Myths,” and along the left-hand side wrote a set of progressive issue concerns: climate change, trans, crime, racism, etc. I started filling in each of the boxes with relative ease.
Upon landing, I transferred my rough notes to a Google Sheet and showed it to my friend Peter Boghossian. Peter immediately grew excited by the project and with the help of a few others, we spent the next few weeks filling out all of the boxes. Lo and behold, we discovered we had created a Woke Religion Taxonomy.
I wrote an article, “Why Wokeism Is a Religion,” to accompany the release of the taxonomy, and it was, until I wrote about the attack on Paul Pelosi, the most popular article on my Substack.
Many complained that they couldn’t read the Taxonomy because the type was too small, and they encouraged us to create a poster out of it. I’m happy to announce that we’ve done just that, and the poster came out looking great. We printed it on thick, high-quality paper that will last 100 years or longer.
Please consider buying one for yourself and giving away a few copies. It will make a great holiday gift for someone you love. If you like, I’ll sign it and dedicate it, too. Shoot me an email if you’d like me to write something specific. Othewise I’ll sign it over to you and use the email that you use through the Substack payment service, Stripe.
While you’re at it, consider buying a signed and personally dedicated copy of San Fransicko or Apocalypse Never. Click here to visit the new Store page of my Substack! And be sure to buy an annual subscription for yourself and your loved ones. The 50% discount ends on Friday.
When You’ve Lost The New York Times…
Yesterday, after I criticized President Joe Biden and other global leaders for being shamefully silent about the protests in China, I was delighted to see others, including The New York Times, make the same point. “The statement [by the White House] was in sharp contrast to the repeated condemnations of Iranian authorities for their monthslong efforts to put down protests against Tehran’s government,” noted The Times.
The protests in China are the largest in 33 years and have gone far beyond anger at covid restrictions, but in order to remain silent, the Biden administration is downplaying them. Anonymous administration officials told The Times “they had doubts that the protests that played out on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai over the weekend would be sustained, or that the calls for an end to Covid restrictions amounted to a fundamental call for government change.”
Even if that were the case, is it really a reason to remain quiet?
U.N. Can’t Quit The Apocalypse
Last summer, scientists announced that they had discovered more coral on the Great Barrier Reef than at any other point in the 36 years since they started measuring it. It was an awkward moment for the activist scientists and journalists who had been prematurely proclaiming the Reef’s death for over three decades.
Well, the apocalyptic powers-that-be weren’t having it. Yesterday, a United Nations report announced that science schmience, the Reef was “in danger” and had to be protected from… the Australians. “The mission team concludes that the property is faced with major threats that could have deleterious effects on its inherent characteristics, and therefore meets the criteria for inscription on the list of World Heritage in danger,” said the U.N. report authors.
Declaring the Reef a “World Heritage in danger” is viewed by many Australians as a pretext for the U.N. to demand control over it. Naturally, they objected to the U.N. designation. “Yes, climate change is a risk to ecosystems like the Great Barrier Reef,” said its environment minister, “but that means it’s a risk to every reef globally. There is no need to single the Great Barrier Reef out in this way.”
The U.N. is quickly turning into a Bond movie villain. It spreads misinformation about climate change. It is trying to get rich nations to pay poor nations not to develop. And it is trying to rapidly slash the use of nitrogen fertilizer around the world.
It’s enough to make one wonder what beneficial purpose the organization, beyond the Security Council, actually serves.
Me And Spiked!
In the fall of 2019, I went to London to encourage the new Boris Johnson government and members of parliament to support the expansion of nuclear power. While there, I had a chance to sit down with Brendan O’Neill of Spiked! where we discussed the increasingly apocalyptic nature of climate protests.
The “Just Stop Oil” protesters who have been throwing food on works of art show that we were still, way back in 2019, far from peak climate nihilism. I had a chance to catch up with Brendan again last week on a podcast you can listen to here. Excerpts from the transcript are below.
