It's Not Actually True That Woke People Love Imperialism

Sorry but the suspiciously convenient narrative is false

Among leftists, there is a popular idea that woke ideologues who talk about pronouns and gender and gay flags really love imperialism. In a recent clip, a communist Trump supporter who goes by the internet handle “Infrared,” (I feel like having any of these properties disqualifies you from being a serious person) said “shove your fucking fake ass ‘post-colonial’ defending the FBI studies up your fucking ass.” This idea is a common theme from people on the anti-woke, anti-interventionist segment of the political spectrum. Perhaps nothing illustrates this idea better than the meme below, which is very popular on the internet:

This would be quite convenient if it were true. The woke are annoying. It would be nice if they weren’t just annoying, but also loved interventionism and imperialism, having their pride flag soaked with the blood of Iraqis. It would be suspiciously convenient to anti-woke, anti-interventionist narratives if all the most annoying people who crow endlessly about race and gender were really a vehicle for U.S. imperialism. It’s sort of like when you dislike someone because they’re annoying, but then they turn out to be a cannibal (many such cases)—now you feel even more vindicated in your hatred of them. It would mean that there is a wide political gulf between the the real left™ and repulsive HR people in DEI offices.

Sadly, I don’t think it is true.

I mean, first of all, it would be extremely surprising if it were true. Left-wing political ideas tend to be correlated with each other, just as right-wing ideas tend to be. What a surprise it would be if people who have far-left ideas on race and gender issues did not, by and large, have far-left ideas on other things. We should certainly not expect such a bizarre inversion of the normal pattern. Especially because more left-wing governments tend to behave less aggressively in foreign policy.

And speaking for myself, I haven’t actually witnessed any instance of woke people loving U.S. interventionism. When I think about the woke people who I find most irritating—Emile Torres, for instance—they’re generally extremely anti-interventionist. They don’t actually support dropping bombs on randomly selected middle eastern countries to Show Resolve.

Sure, you hear this narrative a lot. It floats around like Casper the Ghost in the cultural Zeitgeist. But have you actually witnessed it? I certainly have not!

Who are the most influential critical theorists/postmodernists/poststructuralists/whatever else is associated with the weird, incoherent, horrendous prose and social commentary of the postmodernists? Judith Butler? She is firmly against U.S. intervention, having even said nice things about Hamas. Zizek? He’s called the war in Gaza a genocide. Habermas? Derrida? Both strenuously opposed the Iraq war.

One could keep going through the list. The same is true of Nancy Fraser, Cornel West, Achille Mbembe, and all the other influential critical theorists. They’re all against aggressive foreign policy. In other words, if you write sentences like the one below, you probably oppose U.S. intervention.

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."

Got that? And here I was, like a giant dumbass, thinking that the move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations would not be subject to to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation that brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure.

(This sentence comes from Judith Butler. And though she claims to oppose U.S. intervention, surely that sentence is a serious war crime, on the scale of Hitler’s invasion of Poland).

But maybe I’ve been misrepresenting what the anti-woke, anti-interventionist people say. Perhaps the claim is not that the influential thinkers from whom woke ideas are drawn all love imperialism. It’s instead that the woke everyday person who works in a DEI office and occasionally appears in Matt Walsh movies talking about the importance of reading queer bipoc femme indigenous authors loves imperialism.

But this is just completely ridiculous on its face. Have you ever met these people? Queer librarians who love Judith Butler don’t support the foreign policy of George Bush! Why in the world would they? Why would this be the one issue where they are not left-wing? The people who are most zealous about putting up pride flags, using pronouns, and the like aren’t mostly moderate liberals—they are leftists. They do not support American interventionism!

Now, perhaps the narrative is just that the Democratic party, despite talking a big game about social liberalism, really is just the mirror image of the Republican party on foreign policy—albeit with more pride parades. Perhaps this is not a claim about the furthest left people, but instead the sort of homogenousish mass that’s slightly center left.

But, in fact, this example goes to support my model. My model is that left wing ideas are correlated. Those who are further left will, in general, support a less interventionist foreign policy. This is in fact what we observe. The left and right aren’t actually the same on foreign policy. While there are various kinds of intervention they both supported—for instance, the Iraq war—there are other kinds that the right supports but the left doesn’t.

Just take Iran policy, to use the example of the week. Does anyone think that Biden would have unilaterally attacked Iran the way Trump did? The only reason we’re in this mess is because Trump pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal. Once again, this is an action that Biden didn’t do and wouldn’t have done.

Or take arms sales to Saudi Arabia. It’s true, of course, that both Democrats and Republicans approved arms sales. But only Trump was so extreme as to overrule congress to push through extra arms sales to Saudi Arabia, so the hands of American taxpayers could be soaked with even more Yemeni blood. In practice, Republican presidents behave far more aggressively than Democratic presidents. While perhaps neither is as non-interventionist as one would like, the idea that they’re the same is laughable.

Now, there are a few sparse areas of foreign policy where Democrats are slightly more hawkish. One of those areas is Ukraine. For all sorts of weird, contingent reasons, Republicans started loving Russia, and Democrats started loving Ukraine. But by and large, Democrats are far less interventionist than Republicans and have been consistently.

So unfortunately, the common narrative that there are huge numbers of woke people who fly pride flags and zealously demand you use zee/zim pronouns for their non-binary kitten—all while hanging up pictures of Henry Kissinger and John Bolton in their living room—is not correct. Contra “Infrared,” the “fucking fake ass ‘post-colonial’ studies,” are critical of the FBI, not in support of it. You can accuse the woke of many things quite legitimately, but loving imperialism is not one of them.