HANSON: Orwell and the awakening

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Epigraph: “Twelve voices cried out in anger, and they all sounded alike. No question, now, of what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from the pig to the man, and from the man to the pig, and again from the pig to the man; but already it was impossible to say who was who. George Orwell, Farm animal

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What were we to do with multimillionaire Barack Obama’s 60th birthday party on his estate in Martha’s Vineyard, and the crowds of the rich awakened and their masked helper servants?

Was Socialist Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) suffering for the people when she wore a designer dress to the Met Gala over $ 30,000 a ticket? The needs of those around him were certainly well met by masked Morlock servants.

Did left-wing celebrities at the recent Emmy Awards come together to discuss opening Malibu beaches to homeless people when the (unmasked) stars signaled their awakening?

For answers on these hypocritical wokists, always talk to George Orwell first. In his brief allegorical novel, Farm animal, an array of animal figures – led by the thinking pigs of the farm – have staged a revolution, driving out their human overseers.

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Anti-human animal comrades began by resembling zealous Russian Bolsheviks (“four paws good, two paws bad”). But soon they found themselves duped by a murderous pig cult led by a leader similar to Joseph Stalin. And so, the revolution became what it had opposed (“four legs good, two legs better”).

Our own awakened revolution from year zero is now in its second year. Yet last year’s four-legged revolutionaries are already strutting around on two legs. They don’t just hang out with “white supremacists” and “capitalists”, but surpass them in their revolutionary zeal for the rarefied privileges of the good material life.

BLM’s Marxist co-founder Patrisse Cullors is now on her fourth awakening. She went from barricades to security fences of her Topanga Canyon excavation in a mostly all-white and all-wealthy rural paradise – the rewards for groundbreaking service.

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Professor Ibram X. Kendi evolved from the groundbreaking groundbreaking work of flying nationwide, peddling his Orwellian message of “All racism is bad!” But a little racism is good! Now he has mastered the art of zooming in on the aspirant awakened for his avant-garde harassment at $ 20,000 an hour.

What about Colin Kaepernick, the mediocre second-string quarterback suddenly turned into a brand? He refused to defend the national anthem and spread its “kneeling” kitsch in all professional sports.

Kaepernick has grown into a revolutionary multimillionaire boutique. For $ 12 million a year, he launches Nike sneakers, often made in Chinese forced labor camps.

Awakened NBA star LeBron James from his $ 23 million Brentwood mansion slams America for its endless injustice – in the service of its totalitarian Chinese payers who will secure a good life with a possible lifelong payment $ 1 billion for hawking their wares.

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Our other elite wokists sailing around the revolution are even more cynical. Wall Street corporations and capitalists believe that a little bit of a virtue signal, gaudy diversity coordinators, and awakened publicity will more or less buy the latest version of Al-Sharpton-style shake-down artists.

Then there are the trimmers and facilitators. These are the wealthy, wealthy and professional classes. They feel – in the abstract – absolutely terrible about inequality, but barely enough in the concrete to mix with the unwashed.

For them, wokism is like joining a party in the last ethically bankrupt Soviet Union. It is necessary for peace of mind and a good income, but is not an obstacle to maintaining a privileged and comfortable life.

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The more television hosts complain about the “systemic” of this and the “supremacy” of that, and the more college presidents write harsh penance notes to their faculty about “it’s not who we are,” the more they not only feel good about themselves, but relieved of any real obligation to live and socialize with the Other.

As for the self-proclaimed Non-White Other, Wokism is also a top-down revolution of celebrities, intellectuals, actors, activists, academics, crooks, lawyers, the upper middle class and rich. And they are not calling for a Marshall Plan to bring classical education downtown. They themselves have little desire to settle down or expand their wealth. They rarely coach others on their shrewd capitalist expertise that has made them rich.

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They are much more cynical than that. The regrettable violence in the street, the 120 days of looting in 2020, death and arson, are the levers of awakened professionals. They fight with different tribes of the same class and mentality over the slices of the same coveted elite pies. But they are scrapping the unspoken club that, without larger de facto quotas for non-whites in comics, TV commercials, Ivy League colleges and students, symphonies and sit-coms, then “systemic racism” could once again ignite downtown Portland or Seattle or Baltimore.

Orwell would say of the awakened Obamas, Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Bernie Sanders, LeBron James or Ibram Kendi – and their supposedly unawakened, but equally wealthy and privileged enemies – “It was impossible to tell who was who.

VictorDavis Hanson is a classic and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,” from Basic Books.