As I said in another post on here yesterday, I generally hold to the view that the central thrust of PC/SJWism/Wokeness/whatever is largely just the latest rendition of bourgeois morality, filtered through the lens of sectarian WASPish Protestant pietism in its “progressive Christian” and “social gospel” forms.

It is bourgeoise morality for the digital capitalist/professional-managerial classes just like Victorianism was bourgeois morality for the industrial capitalist and nascent white/blue-collar classes (when those classes started to experience upward mobility in the 19th century for the former and in the 20th century for the latter). Instead of “Faith, Family, and Flag” it is “Race, Gender, LGBTQ, Green Consciousness, Health Uber Alles” and a number of other things. Pat Buchanan with a BLM banner or Jerry Falwell with a Rainbow flag.

I do think the other stuff comes in on the periphery: Marxist theories of alienation, Gramsci’s theory of hegemonics, Frankfurt School, Marcuse’s “polymorphous perversity” and “repressive tolerance,” Adorno/Horkheimer’s “culture industry” critique,” Ted Allen’s “privilege theory” (later popularized in the academy by Peggy McIntosh), Maoism imported into the West by 60s radicals, Jewish influences rooted in what MacDonald calls the “culture of critique” (although I’d argue PC has more direct Christian influences than Jewish ones), the therapeutic state identified by Szasz, the postmodern critique of language and power, 60sesque romantic naturism, mysticism and irrationalism, Romantic counter-Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau, etc.

All of these are little streams of thought that feed into the Ocean of Wokeness, but the real tidal waves are the digital capitalist revolution accompanied by the growth of the urban cosmopolitan professional-managerial class (which was preceded by the emergence of the “new class” in the 60s and 70s as a lower rung in Burham’s managerial class that came out of the Depression-era).”