INTRODUCTION
With the advent of the technology and its constant rise at the speed of light, humans have seemingly achieved the best of their potential, so far. In the past couple of decades we have been introduced to the technologies, unseen and unheard of earlier, with the introduction of ‘Facebook’, to which majority of people living around the globe are familiar with, it marked the start of an era which none of us could have predicted. The most revolutionary among all of the social media apps currently existent in the world are ‘You tube’, ‘Tiktok’ and ‘Instagram’. These three platforms provide a constant stream of ‘entertainment’ to the people and the very platforms are responsible for the birth or should I say re-birth of the woke culture, better termed as ‘WOKEISM’. As we in this part of the world are not much familiar with the concept of wokeism, one could ask, what does it mean? Well, to answer that briefly, wokeism means showing of intolerant behaviour or attitude by the people sensitive to social and political injustice.
A BRIEF HISTORY
Now, it might seem to be a new term but as aforementioned already, it has been reborn. Wokeism as an ideology dates back to 1860 at the time of the slavery abolitionist movement in support of the then president Abraham Lincoln and later appeared in the columns of various known media outlets of the America every now and then, but it was not until the 25th day of May in the year 2020 when amongst the inevitably looming danger of a virus that had claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and was continuing to do so, the death of a single man took the world by storm and that man was George Floyd. It was that very moment that made wokeism an ideology associated to the liberal section of the society and with the passing of time, now it only stands as a Slang! Yes, a slang! a movement to break the shackles of slavery and racial injustice, an ideology earlier associated with the Civil Rights Movement now stands as mere slang!
THE TRANSITION
One might wonder, what took place? What caused a just movement to become a tool to serve the political interests of the liberal section of the society and fall prey to the clutches
of extremist of left- liberal movement? The only reason wokeism was revitalized in this day and age was to serve something different under the guise of racial equality and the issues that have currently taken the reins of the movement are LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, white privilege and the most horrific among them Right to Abortion and many other.
CONCLUSION: CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS AND POSSIBLE REPURCUSSIONS
At present, this ideology has held the western world by its ear and has abruptly grown into a cult, mostly being propagated by the teen demographic, it has given immense power to the cancel culture resulting in a humongous amount of toxic intolerance towards any counter opinion, giving the vibes of a dystopian society where you are not to speak your mind even when stating a fact or you will have to face the dire consequences. The current absurdity and chaos is at the unprecedented levels, and an idea of the current state of affairs in the west can be derived from the fact that the issue that is been presented as necessity of the hour at U.S congress (Texan) in the month of October this year is whether a Male can give birth to a baby while at the same time the country is at the brink of financial emergency with soaring gas and food prices and severe shortages of daily pantry items at the same time.
There are many pressing issues around the world and the recent among them the world hunger index report 2022 in which YEMEN has been named as the world’s hungriest country, the U.S is itself facing a growing concern of gun violence and mass shooting, especially in schools, but those issues seem to die out after a few days of mourning without any effective measures being taken to solve it. Using the clout extorted from the youth mainly though online forums to serve the far-left propaganda the attention has been taken off the real issues. Another instance of such ironic hilarity is something that happened in the month of May which took place in a far progressive Scandinavian country like Norway, where a lady named Christina Ellingsen, who also happened to be the representative of a global feminist organisation, was sentenced to 3 years in prison for telling a Trans gender (born male) that he cannot be a mother as he happened to be a man. From the abovementioned instances we can at least draw some idea as to how bleak the future could be of a society in which this ideology has cemented it’s place. Now, the most dangerous face of this movement is the method of indoctrination that it applies to the kids as young as K.G level students, YES THAT YOUNG! by the introduction of objectionable reading material, most of the times sexual in nature, Flags of the movement (pride), gender awareness campaigns, and most of all by the state sponsored gender studies in the institutions.
Looking at the things progressing the way they are, we can say that ‘all is not well’. Although we, in this part of the globe, are not much aware of this movement but it is slowly creeping up to us and is ready to take us by surprise and although we are facing issues that are to be tendered to immediately, this one could be detrimental for the generations to come and should be paid attention to and taken care of sooner than later. To counter the propaganda, we have to walk the parallel lines and follow the same pattern like, the introduction of the proper reading material, awareness
workshops and etc. and make our younger generation, our kids, mentally prepared and possessed with requisite knowledge to counter the inevitable abomination and drive out the impending degeneracy. “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing”, the quote attributed to the 18th century Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, though currently a matter of debate whether if it was misattributed, nonetheless carries the lesson to be passed down to the generations for them to “STAY AWAKE NOT WOKE”.
(Author is a student of B.A.L.L.B University of Kashmir)
