The Woke Mind: Five mind games leftists use to gain power over you
When they get in your head, they win.
The Woke Mind is a series of articles that seeks to explain, in plain English, how you can expect the woke left to behave and why they do what they do. If we don’t understand this, we can’t defeat them.
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In the previous articles in this series, we discussed that the primary goal of the woke left is to gain power, and that the thing they fear most is losing control. If we know what they covet and what they fear. We can use that information against them to make them make mistakes and take their power away.
In order to do that, we need to understand some of the primary tactics the woke left uses to gain power over you.
Power means they can coerce you to bend the knee to their demands. And oftentimes, they don’t even have to work very hard in order to do it.
There are different ways to get power.
When many people think of power, they typically think of what the MBA textbooks call “legitimate” power. That means you’re in some sort of officially sanctioned position - a CEO, President, Priest, Principal, etc. You are invested with all of the power that comes with the title, which may be a little or a lot depending on a variety of factors.
However, “legitimate” power is limiting. You only have power within the confines of the specific position and whatever its authority extends to. For example, if you’re CEO, you only have power within the company you’re CEO of, and if you leave that role you lose the power associated with it. Or, if you’re a school principal, you can implement policies in your school…but not in any other school. You get the idea.
The woke left does use this type of power. They wouldn’t control every major institution in America if they didn’t.
However, here’s the problem: It’s really hard to fight this type of power because the only way to defeat it is to get that person removed from their position.
It’s doable. If you get voted on to a school board, that school board can fire the superintendent and can tell the superintendent to fire the principal.
But in most cases, this is a very difficult battle to fight. It takes a long time to get in a position to do so, and can be very costly.
And the reality is this: Most of your encounters with the woke left won’t deal with hard “legitimate” power.
They’ll deal with the soft power of influence, a power that can always travel with them no matter what titles they hold, and one they can pull out at any moment to get you to bend the knee to their goals.
And the most insidious part is that they will do it in a way where it seems like your decision. You go along with what they want because they trick you, or it seems like the path of least resistance.
Always remember that the primary goal of the woke left is to gain power over you. If they are talking to you, they are trying to gain power over you. Everything they do is to gain power over you.
This is about learning how to spot what they are doing by understanding their most common tactics.
Five ways the woke left will try to gain power over you
The woke left use a lot of mind games to gain power over you when you’re interacting with them, but these are the most common.
#1. They Lie
If you call any public school or school district in this country and ask them if they are teaching critical race theory, the answer will be no. That answer is almost certainly a lie.
Here’s a video from a required teacher training in the Portland Oregon School District that says they focus on Black and Native Americans because of their belief in critical race theory:
I dare you to call the Portland Oregon School District at your earliest convenience and ask them if they teach Critical Race Theory in their schools.
Pretend you’re a parent that just got a new job and is moving to the area and want to research the schools. Play dumb. You heard about this thing…CRT? Do they teach that?
See what they say. Please report back in the comments if you do this.
The point is that the woke left have absolutely no problem lying to your face. It’s not a mistake. It’s not a miscommunication or a misunderstanding.
They are lying to you.
They feel no obligation to tell you the truth because telling the truth reduces the power they have over you, and power is their primary concern.
You should always be skeptical of anything they tell you by default, and research primary source evidence for yourself. Do not believe them unless there is proof. No pinkie swears.
#2. They gaslight you
Gaslighting is a bit different than lying. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse that makes you question everything you know is true. You can have evidence right in front of you and they will try to convince you to ignore your lying eyes.
Building off of the example in the first technique, a mass gaslighting attempt that the woke left has been undertaking for over two years is the lie that “critical race theory isn’t taught in schools.”
In fact, they just did this to Chris Rufo again recently:
Of course, it’s taught in schools. We all know that. There are mountains of evidence of that. No serious person believes that it’s not taught in schools.
But the woke left ignores than evidence (they won’t look at it, will never speak to it) and just declares the story they want to be true.
And then they act like it is an established fact.
They repeat it over and over and over again, so much so that they probably believe their own lies at this point.
And because they speak so confidently and they repeat it over and over and over again, they can actually make people ignore the reality that is right in front of them.
The intent of this is to create cognitive dissonance so that you either (a) give up and believe them or (b) drive yourself crazy.
#3. They manipulate the language
Language is the most powerful tool the woke left has to use against you.
They take commonly known and understood terms - racist, racism, white supremacist, etc… - and re-define them so that they mean something else.
They will even change the dictionary definition.
It is very important to understand which definition they are using, as well as what the properly, commonly understood definition is.
For example, if you’re call a racist, it has more to do with your political ideology than it does with your skin color, because they woke left are likely referring to systemic racism and your implicit support for it because you don’t vote for their favored political candidate.
But they use the term because they know how you interpret it - it’s one of the worst possible things you can call a person.
And because it’s the worst thing you can call a person, the shock of being called it is typically enough to get you to stop doing whatever you were doing.
But know this…you are under no obligation to accept their definition. And that leads me to the next way they gain power over you…
#4. They dictate the rules of the game
Imagine the devil came up from hell (if hell exists) and said to you:
I want to play a game. Here are the rules:
I write the rules of the game.
I can rewrite the rules of the game at any time for any reason.
You are required to agree to my rules of the game.
If I win the game, you come to hell with me.
If you win the game, I’ll leave you alone.
Would you play?
Doesn’t seem like a very fair deal to me.
This is what the woke left try to do every single time they engage with you. And you have to see that you can never win.
So, the only way to win is not to play at all.
You always have that choice - you don’t have to agree to their rules, you don’t have to play their game. And they win as soon as you do.
So, why don’t more people do it? Let’s get to our last point:
#5. They make you fear what they’ll do to you
Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky famously said:
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
Most of you fear being canceled. The woke left knows this, and they use it against you.
They make prominent, public examples of people they have canceled as if to say “You think this is bad? Wait until we get to you.”
That’s the virtue of cancel culture. It has nothing to do with the person being canceled. Sure, it’s nice if they give in and bend the knee but that’s just one person.
Why take the one when you can influence thousands, or even millions, of people to keep their mouths shut?
The real value of cancel culture is that it shows other people that they will be hurt if they disobey. And that is enough to keep most people in line to the point where they won’t even think of questioning the insanity happening right in front of them.
They want you to be afraid. People who are afraid are easy to control.
By the way, the political right does this too. It’s not exclusive to the left. But that’s a different problem for a different day.
What do you think? Anything to add?
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Great stuff, super easy to digest and insightful. Request examples of how to respond.
There’s got to be a way to neutralize it and make it go away. How do we turn the tables?