Brenner:Das Ende des Wokeismus

In just a few years, public cultural life in Europe and the USA has changed dramatically. Terms that previously played a role in completely different areas, for example at airports, now also regulate and regulate the lives of those on the ground: events are cancelled or safe spaces are opened. Just as a flight suddenly disappears from the scoreboard, lecture titles suddenly disappear from the organisers' programmes. It is no different for musicians who are suddenly considered >impossible< due to their hairstyle. Those who don't want to make themselves impossible will therefore have to listen carefully to what is opportune to say and, above all, scrupulously avoid anything that is considered ostracised in the new culture. To put it in a nutshell, you have to be woke in the new culture of wokeism. What wokeism is also doing away with in the furore of its cancellation is the movement of enlightenment. And so it is no longer individuals but collective identities that count, no longer arguments but beliefs. In doing so, however, the new culture undermines its own foundation, which is why we can already speak of the end of Wokeism today, at the height of its impact.