Wokism From Equality Thesis

Sailer’s critique hinges on a contested intellectual foundation: elites who start from an equality‑as‑axiom view interpret affirmative‑action outcomes differently; this connects to the idea that adopting an equality‑first thesis drives certain 'woke' policy framings that then crowd out trade‑off language.

Cofnas directly critiques a version of the claim that elite egalitarian commitments and changing demographics produce wokism. He tests a demographic causal story (timing of women becoming majorities in institutions) and treats Andrews’ demographic explanation as a truthiness‑style narrative — this maps closely to the existing idea that links equality premises to the rise of woke politics.

Both the existing idea and this review focus on how an equality premise becomes the seed for broader political projects. The article discusses the West‑Coast Straussian claim (Lincoln/Jaffa) that an abstract equality principle defines America and shows Spalding pushing back toward a contextual, culturally rooted reading—the same terrain where claims about an 'equality thesis' producing woke politics operate. Actors named: Harry Jaffa, Abraham Lincoln, Matthew Spalding; the connection is the interpretive status of 'all men are created equal' in elite political argument.

The article pushes back on reductionist origin stories (Gnosticism) and implicitly invites more precise genealogies such as the 'equality‑thesis' explanation in the idea bank — Woods argues the Gnostic label is a rhetorical move rather than an explanatory account, which connects to debates about what intellectual history best explains woke currents.

Graham distinguishes sincere social‑justice aims from the performative mechanics of political correctness; this maps to the existing idea that wokism grows from particular equality assumptions and institutional dynamics — Graham offers a complementary origin story (humanities hiring + cohort effects) that helps explain why equality‑framed rhetoric hardened into the contemporary movement.

Magoon foregrounds the same core claim as the existing idea: an equality‑first moral premise among elites (especially college‑educated Boomers) made identity‑based moralization politically potent. He traces how the equality thesis, institutional careers, and expectations management created the conditions for Wokeness to scale in the 2010s, directly connecting to the existing idea’s proposition about the equality premise driving elite alignment.

The author foregrounds the 'equality thesis' (the prior acceptance that groups are equal) as the root that makes progressive remedial arguments persuasive and thus enables wokism—this is the same proposition in the existing idea that equality assumptions structurally generate current woke reasoning and political advantage.

Both the article and the existing idea foreground how an equality‑first premise among elites produces a coherent progressive orthodoxy; the Aporia piece adds a Pareto/Burnham political‑realist layer that explains woke as a justificatory derivation for managerial power (it cites Clinton/Blair policy choices and demographic change as concrete actors/events).

Huemer questions the taboo against stereotyping and points out how acceptance of certain equality premises drives moralized outcomes — this connects directly to the existing idea that an equality thesis among elites leads to wokism; Huemer interrogates the downstream moral logic and partisan selectivity in enforcing anti‑stereotype norms.

The article ties the feminist revolution and modern liberalism to changing norms about equality and sex differences; that maps onto the existing idea that elite belief systems about equality generate particular political trajectories (wokism) and helps explain the cultural and policy tensions Razib discusses.

Cofnas explicitly argues that if elites assume equal innate ability across groups, disparities are read as oppression, producing 'wokism'—and that only rejecting the equality thesis (i.e., embracing hereditarianism) can stop it.

Cofnas argues ‘wokism is simply what follows from taking the equality thesis seriously’ and urges the right to challenge that thesis to win over smart elites.