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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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"Everybody is theocrat" is the something that many people only recently realized.

Only if you have an overly broad definition of theology and religion. I know many people on the right like to categorize Wokeism as a theological/religious movement but then they immediately balk when you ask what base theology did Wokeism form from. So either every collective philosophical movement really just tickles the religious part of the human mind and is consequently a "theology", or you have a much stricter definition of "theology" and then no, not everyone is a theocrat.

Wokeism = Secular Christianity. Scoop out the Holy trinity and you get the logical conclusion of championing the meek, the downtrodden, the oppressed.

Wokeism = Secular Christianity. Scoop out the Holy trinity and you get the logical conclusion of championing the meek, the downtrodden, the oppressed.

This isn't true, though. Wokeism has a lot of similar principles, but it also attaches to it its own set of faith-based claims about reality. That's what makes so many people call it a religion (including myself, as far back as 2015 back when it was just called "social justice" - though, quite honestly, this should have been obvious even as far back as the late 00s, by my estimation), rather than merely an ideology. Its core tenets rely irreducibly on faith to support claims about how certain individuals are oppressed by other individuals in society.

I probably should rephrase that Wokeism isn't the same thing as Christianity. Wokeism is a genealogical descendant of Western Christianity. It's core theological morality is very Christian in nature. In a way that cannot be said of other religions even other Abrahamic religions. The concept of Original Sin, The Confession, Repentance, The emphasis of the sanctity of the meek, it's universalism, etc. Christian slave morality is a direct ancestor of identity-based oppression morality. There is a distinct status inversion to Christianity vs the older European Pagan religions, and the Eastern religions. Core Christian symbolism is literally God suffering on the cross and being holy for that sacrifice. The apparently humiliated and defeated victim can possess supreme moral status, while worldly authorities can be radically mistaken about who is righteous. Now the structural oppressor–oppressed components are substantially Marxian in nature, but breed that belief system with other religions and you would not co-evolve to Wokeism. The Eastern religions are easy to ablate out. Islam, sharing many moral beliefs with Christianity still does not contain the moral primitive of original sin nor does it's central sacred narrative place God himself as the humiliated, tortured, and executed victim.

The concept of Original Sin, The Confession, Repentance, The emphasis of the sanctity of the meek, it's universalism, etc.

A good chunk of those can be found in pagan religions, though.

Let's take Communism: capital is the original sin, confession/repentance is done through continual revolution, the meek are the workers, Comintern are the missionaries, etc.

Woke, same thing: ability is the original sin, confession/repentance is done through continual humiliation, the meek are the disabled, USAID are the missionaries, etc.

So while I do think it presses the same moral buttons as Christianity (or perhaps more relevantly, Islam) does/did in the average follower (which is what I think people actually mean when they say it's a religion), I don't think it's actually a proper descendant.

Yes. It does rely heavily on unproven claims and implications such as all differences in crime sanctions arising from police forces who simply hate dark skin, etc.

It also wants you to label huge groups as 'oppressors' with a very broad brush and claims that the individuals inside those groups cannot be legitimate victims, so feel free to tread on them. Jesus wouldn't approve of group identity based discrimination and revanchism.