THE FRAGILITY OF THE WOKE
Victor Davis Hanson
The Daily Signal [1]
A TikTok video that recently went viral on social media showed a recent
Harvard graduate threatening to stab anyone who said "all lives matter." In
her melodrama, she tried to sound intimidating with her histrionics.
She won a huge audience as she intended. But her video also came to the
attention of the company that was going to give her an internship later
this summer, Deloitte, which decided it didn't want to add an intern who
threatened to kill strangers who said something she didn't like.
This wouldn't have been much of a story. But then the narcissistic Harvard
alum posted a very different video--one that showed her weeping in a
near-fetal position.
She fought back tears while complaining how unfair [2] the world had been
to her. Her initial TikTok post had earned cruel pushback from the social
media jungle she had courted. Deloitte, she sobbed, was mean and hurtful.
And she wanted the world to share her pain.
The Harvard grad instantly became an unwitting poster girl for the current
protest movement and the violence that has accompanied it. What turns off
millions of Americans about the statue toppling [3], the looting, the
threats, and the screaming [4] in the faces of police is the schizophrenic
behavior of so many of the would-be revolutionaries.
On one hand, those toppling statues or canceling their own careers on the
internet pose as vicious Maoists--the hard-core shock troops of the
revolution. Their brand is vile profanity, taunts to police, firebombs, and
spray paint.
In homage to Italy's blackshirts of the past, they wear black hoodies, don
makeshift helmets, and strap on ad hoc protective padding--part lacrosse
attire, part cinematic Road Warrior costume.
The televised stereotype of the Antifa activist is a physically
unimpressive but violent-talking revolutionary. He seems to strut in
laid-back, blue-city Minneapolis but wisely avoids the suburbs and small
towns of the nation's red states. He spits at police when standing beside
fellow agitators but would never do that when alone confronting an
autoworker or welder.
When police march against the Antifa crowd and their appendages in order
to clear the streets, they often scream like preteens, objecting to mean
officers who dare to cross them.
When arrested, the trash talkers are usually terrified of being jailed or
of having an arrest on their records.
Federal authorities are currently searching thousands of videos to ferret
out looters, arsonists, and assailants. Perpetrators who are caught are
shocked that the evidence that they once posted online in triumphant
braggadocio is now being used to charge them with felonies.
What is going on?
Black Lives Matter [5], Antifa [6], and their large numbers of imitators
and loosely organized wannabes are mostly made up of middle-class youth
[7], often either students or graduates. They deem themselves the brains of
the rioting, the most woke of the demonstrators, the most sophisticated of
the iconoclasts.
In truth, they are also the most paranoid about being charged or being
hurt.
What explains the passive aggressive nature of these protesters and
rioters?
Many no doubt are indebted, with large, unpaid student loans. Few seem in
a hurry to get up at 6 a.m. each day to go to work to service loans that
would take years to pay in full.
While some of those arrested are professionals, many are not. Few seem to
be earning the sort of incomes that would allow them to marry, have
children, pay off student loan debt, buy a home, and purchase a new car.
Historically, the tips of the spears of cultural revolutions are
accustomed to comfort. But they grow angry when they realize that they will
never become securely comfortable.
In today's high-priced American cities, especially on the globalized
coasts, it's increasingly difficult for recent college graduates to find a
job that will allow for upward mobility.
The protesters are especially cognizant that their 20s are nothing like
what they believe to have been the salad days of their parents and
grandparents--who did not incur much debt, bought affordable homes, had
families, and were able to save money.
Earlier generations went to college mainly to become educated and develop
marketable skills. They weren't very interested in ethnic and gender
"studies" courses, ranting professors, and woke administrators. For the
students of the 1960s who were, protesting was a side dish to a good
investment in an affordable college degree that would pay off later.
But when such pathways are blocked, beware.
The woke but godless, the arrogant but ignorant, the violent but
physically unimpressive, the degreed but poorly educated, the broke but
acquisitive, the ambitious but stalled--these are history's ingredients of
riot and revolution. [8]
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